<Ul> <Li> IOC </Li> <Li> COC </Li> <Li> SF&OCHK </Li> <Li> BOCOG </Li> </Ul> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The 2008 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (Chinese: 第 二 十 九 届 夏季 奥林匹克 运动会; pinyin: Dì Èrshíjiǔ Jiè Xiàjì Àolínpǐkè Yùndònghuì) and commonly known as Beijing 2008, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from 7 to 24 August 2008 . A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in 28 sports and 302 events (a total of one event more than the schedule of the 2004 Games). China became the 22nd nation to host the Olympic Games and the 18th to hold a Summer Olympic Games . It was the third time that the Summer Olympic Games were held in East Asia and Asia, after Tokyo, Japan, in 1964 and Seoul, South Korea, in 1988 . </P> <P> The Games were the most watched Olympics in history, attracting 4.7 billion viewers worldwide and landed on Guinness World Records . The event was also the second most expensive Olympic Games ever held (after Sochi 2014), reaching a total cost of US $40 billion, and widely considered as the most successful of all time . The opening ceremony was lauded by spectators and numerous international presses as spectacular and spellbinding, and accounted by people throughout the world as "the greatest ever". </P>

What country and city hosted the 2008 summer olympics