The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games have reaped lasting and wide-ranging social and economic benefits for people in China, according to an article by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday.

Nearly one year after the Games, China's winter sports industry is booming, with the Winter Olympics attracting about 346 million people to engage in winter sports in the country since 2015, said the IOC.

This surge of interest in winter sports was felt far beyond China, thanks to cutting-edge technology and digital innovation. A total of 2.01 billion viewers around the world watched the Beijing Winter Olympics on television and digital platforms, a 5 percent increase from the number of viewers who watched the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games.

"One year on, the most outstanding feature of these Games is the way they touched the lives of millions of local people by making them discover the world of winter sports," said Olympic Games Executive Director Christophe Dubi.

The mushrooming growth of this sector has had knock-on benefits for health and leisure, society, and the broader economy, said the IOC.

China is expected to welcome more than 520 million tourists during the ice and snow season from 2024 to 2025, with an estimated revenue of more than 720 billion yuan ($107.27 billion) for the winter leisure tourism industry, according to a forecast by the China Tourism Academy.

Meanwhile, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics also ensured that the environmental impact of the Games was minimized by prioritizing the use of existing venues, using renewable energy to power all venues, and employing innovative technologies.

The IOC said 85 percent of the Games were powered by fuel-efficient vehicles and – for the first time at the Olympic Games and in China – natural CO2 refrigeration systems were used to reduce carbon emissions from the process of cooling the ice rinks to nearly zero.

In addition, the Beijing Winter Olympics created an important legacy in terms of gender equality. 

Of the 2,834 athletes in Beijing, 45.4 percent were women, the highest proportion of female athletes ever at a Winter Olympics event. The Beijing 2022 also had a record number of women's events, a total of 46, and for the first time moved seven disciplines to balance gender.