Editor's note: Alessandro Golombiewski Teixeira is a national Thousand Talent distinguished professor of public policy at the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, and a professor of international business at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua. He is a former special economic advisor to the president of Brazil and former Brazilian minister of tourism, and minister of development, industry and foreign trade. He was also president of the World Investment Association. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN. 

On March 4, after the successful conclusion of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, the torch relay of the Beijing Winter Paralympic Games again lit up Beijing, the "City of Two Olympics Games." The opening ceremony, themed "The Blossoming of Life," continued the warmth brought to the world by the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and made the event mean much more than sports – putting aside the barriers of country and race and breaking through the shadows of war and strife.

The Paralympic Games have long gained less attention than that of the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics, but it is indeed worthy for us to understand and feel the spirit of struggle and advancement of the Paralympic Games. The first official Winter Paralympic Games were held in 1976 in Enschelzvik, Sweden. Prior to that, winter sports for the disabled developed after the World War II as many injured soldiers and ordinary people tried to get back into the winter sports such as skiing.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the honorary life president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) who presided over the IOC for two decades (1980-2001), once said sports for the disabled could awaken the conscience of mankind. Promoting peace, tolerance and the integration of human beings is the important connotation of the name of the Beijing Paralympic Winter Games mascot "Shuey Rhon Rhon" and the warm message it sends to the world. Through the Paralympic Games, we hope to create a more inclusive and less discriminatory world and build a community of human destiny.

During the transition from the Winter Olympic Games to the Winter Paralympic Games, the image, landscape and facilities have changed. However, the careful warmth of creating a barrier-free environment that reflects equality and respect remains the same. There are more than 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide, accounting for about 15 percent of the total population, of which China has around 85 million.

The Beijing Winter Paralympics provides a window for the world to focus on their existence, efforts and difficulties and gives the world a chance to applaud the hardworking for overcoming huge difficulties, showing the world the self-improvement of disabled athletes and promoting the care of the whole society for the disabled.

Since the opening of the Beijing Paralympic Games, athletes have praised the professional and comfortable barrier-free environment, warm and efficient services, and safe and reliable epidemic prevention initiatives. The Beijing Winter Olympic Games and Winter Paralympic Games have played an exemplary and leading role in promoting the construction of a barrier-free environment and provided a Chinese solution for the world.

Beijing has implemented a special action for barrier-free environment construction since 2019, identified 17 key tasks in areas such as urban road renovation, public transportation, public service places and information exchange, and completed 336,000-point renovations in total, basically realizing the accessibility of the core area of the capital function, and significantly improving the level of standardization, applicability and systematization of an urban barrier-free environment. Zhangjiakou also actively promoted the construction of barrier-free public facilities, and the city's barrier-free environment was significantly improved.

With the Winter Paralympic Games greatly driving the overall improvement of the barrier-free environment, the city has become friendlier to people with disabilities. Taking this as an opportunity, we should also raise the awareness of barrier-free environment construction to a new height, step up urban planning and construction, and make it the standard of the future development of the city, and even the "pre-condition" of future urban and rural construction planning.

It is worth noting that many of the accessibility modifications to venues such as the National Stadium and the National Aquatics Center will remain in place permanently, which means that these venues will also be open to people with disabilities after the Games. The right to play sports for people with disabilities is not needed only in professional teams, and it is not only present during competitions. These venues are good demonstrations of how to get sports into the daily lives of the general public with disabilities.

The Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Winter Games Accessibility China Program, which is currently being organized and prepared, will summarize and showcase the results of the accessibility construction of this Winter Olympic venues, serve as a Winter Olympic legacy and provide a model reference for the national and even worldwide accessibility construction.

The Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games have not only provided a Chinese solution to barrier-free construction but also significantly enhanced the social and humanistic environment for people with disabilities.

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