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Why countries should boycott the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

 


There is no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party will use the Games for its own propaganda purposes, strengthening its legitimacy at home and abroad. A major international sporting event should not be used to give legitimacy, let alone glory, to the CCP.

We win! Beijing wins the 2022 Winter Olympics bid! celebrated the Peoples Daily, a state-controlled newspaper six years ago following the vote of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The glory belongs to China, said the Xinhua News Agency, adding that the people should always remember July 31, 2015, another magnificent moment in Chinese history. If the Games continue, Beijing will be the first city in the world to host the Summer and Winter Olympics, a huge propaganda stunt for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Despite concerns about geography and climate, not to mention toxic air, Beijing had sold itself to the IOC as a safe bet, an infrastructure expert with a population large enough to fuel a boom in the winter sports niche. . The final presentation of the candidacy was delivered by the great man himself, President Xi Jinping, who appeared on television hours before the IOC’s decision to personally guarantee a fantastic, extraordinary and excellent Olympic Winter Games.
Beijing narrowly won the IOC’s 44-40 vote against Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, another country heavily criticized by hundreds of human rights groups. Neither country deserved to win, they argued, given their repressive political systems and intolerant approaches to dissent. The International Tibet Network called the announcement a propaganda gift to China. China wants the world to ignore its deteriorating human rights and instead be impressed by China’s pragmatism. Human rights violations in China have now reached the level of genocide, according to the US administration.
But of course, neither morality nor human rights play a role in decision-making by organizations like the IOC. It’s all about money and politics. The Games will be a huge boon to China’s prestige and its relatively undeveloped winter sports market, a tempting venue for sponsors and others looking for ways to tap China’s market of 1.4 billion people. Neither Beijing’s brutal winters, with thick, suffocating air covering much of the area for days, sometimes weeks at a time, nor the lack of snow, which will have to be artificially generated, seem to have bothered the IOC during of his decision.
They were also not concerned about their own Olympic Charter, which promotes respect for universal fundamental ethical principles and the preservation of human dignity. Immediately after its IOC victory in 2015, Beijing cracked down on lawyers and activists across China, dramatically increasing state control over the media, the internet, universities and publishers. Since then, it has also detained journalists, harassed and further attacked activists and dissidents even outside China’s borders, closed non-governmental organizations, demolished Christian churches, Tibetan temples and Muslim mosques, and persecuted until ‘to the death of Falun Gong believers. But it was the recent evidence of China’s detention, rape and mass sterilization of ethnic Uyghur and Kazakh women by state authorities in China’s Xinjiang region that really made headlines. The leaders wonder how this atrocious and totally unacceptable behavior by Beijing fits with the principles of the Olympic Charter. This is not the case, of course. But are countries brave enough to do anything about it, like boycotting the Games?
A nervous Beijing sensed the possibility and launched the offensive last week, when a foreign ministry spokesman dismissed accusations of abuse against ethnic minorities in China, warning of a Chinese response no specified for a possible boycott of the Olympics. Politicization of sport will harm the spirit of the Olympic Charter and the interests of athletes in all countries, spokesman Zhao Lijian said. The international community, including the American Olympic Committee, will not accept it. Perhaps Beijing has forgotten the events of 1980 when, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, China joined with the United States and many Western countries in boycotting the Olympic Games in summer in Moscow the following year. Four years later, the Soviet Union returned the favor by leading a boycott of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, although the impact was diluted due to the large number of sporting powers still participating.
The effect could be very different and much greater if there was an organized boycott of the Beijing 2022 Olympics. The simple reason is that the Winter Olympics have far fewer nations vying for medals than the Olympic Games. Summer Olympics, with the countries dominating the medal rankings being highly concentrated in the developed world. Many of them are liberal democracies, which have also been the loudest on China’s human rights record. The result is a massive overlap between the countries that are expected to perform well at the Beijing Olympics and those that would be most likely to participate in a boycott, if at all. Take a look at the all-time Winter Olympics medal chart and you’ll find that nine of the ten highest-medal winning countries except Russia have officially expressed concern over China’s abuse by signing. a letter to UNHCR in July 2019..
The IOC is unlikely to revoke China’s right to host 2022 matches, even though it is under heavy pressure to do so. After all, the most likely reason he won the right in the first place was that, in 2015, Kazakhstan was the only other bidder. Nonetheless, some Western politicians are calling for the Games to be moved from China to a country that embodies democracy and the spirit of the Olympic Charter, calls that are meeting deaf ears at the IOC. The US State Department spokesman said last week that the boycott is something we certainly want to discuss; but this was later clarified by a statement that no high-level discussion of a boycott was planned. Obviously, the boycott issue remains sensitive. Foreign governments and multinational corporations are reluctant to court China’s wrath, and some companies have already suffered for speaking out against mass internment camps and forced labor practices in Xinjiang.
This is exactly the point. Xi Jinpings China is a tyrant, ready to use his economic influence to punish governments and companies that dare to criticize his internal affairs. Already, the Chinese reaction to boycott calls has followed the same pattern as other critics targeting the CCP in retaliating violently through state media while deploying censorship among the masses. Searches to boycott the Winter Olympics on Chinese social media website Weibo have been banned, and the editor of the official newspaper, Global Times, said last week that Washington should not dare to threaten China with an Olympic boycott. If that happens, it will be a small group of white supremacist nations opposed to the Olympics, a demonstration of their self-isolation, he said. It seems to me that he protests too much, to paraphrase William Shakespeare.
There would almost certainly be corporate boycotts from these countries that signal a desire to avoid gambling. If you have any doubts, consider Beijing’s recent reaction to concerns about slave Uyghur labor harvesting cotton, Xinjiang’s main crop. Swedish clothing retailer H&M has come under fire on Chinese social media for its statement to disallow the use of Xinjiang cotton, amid a state-backed backlash. H&M stores were removed from Baidu cards and their products disappeared from Chinese e-commerce platforms. Another clothing brand, Hugo Boss, faced a similar boycott after denouncing the use of forced labor in Xinjiang, before taking to social media to enthusiastically announce its intention to continue using cotton from Xinjiang. Days later, their head office deleted the post, calling it unauthorized, and then released a statement acknowledging concerns about forced labor in the Uyghur region. This about-face reflects the complexity of the challenge faced by companies trying to balance market access in China with fundamental respect for human rights. If any sponsors of the Games were to give up, they would risk a huge backlash in China’s gigantic consumer market, angering shareholders.
But governments and businesses need to put morality ahead of trade. A boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will be a golden opportunity for the world to demonstrate its horror of the Chinese genocide practiced in Xinjiang and Tibet, its disapproval of China’s breaking of an international treaty and of the repression in Hong Kong; and China’s illegal activities in the South China Sea.
Beijing used the 2008 Summer Olympics to portray China as a legitimate power on the world stage, able to do whatever it wants, regardless of criticism. He plans to use the next Olympics to consolidate this perception. There is no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party will use the Games for its own propaganda purposes, strengthening its legitimacy at home and abroad. A major international sporting event should not be used to give legitimacy, let alone glory, to the CCP, which is so blatantly guilty of crimes against humanity. If the 2022 Winter Olympics go ahead, it will be a stain on the collective consciousness of the world. The event should be boycotted.

John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in the office of British Prime Minister John Majors between 1995 and 1998.

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