Global fears of China’s authoritarian growth cover the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and call for a boycott.
Why does it matter: By openly defeating human rights norms while claiming the leadership of the international system, China is breaking the foundations on which global traditions, such as the Olympic Games, are based.
- Democratic governments worry that allowing Beijing to hold non-protest Olympics would further strengthen China’s authoritarianism at home and abroad.
- The US and its partners are also concerned about China’s growth as a rival amid a growing sense of democratic vulnerability, impregnating the 2022 Games with a new current of geopolitical fear.
News management: A coalition of 180 rights groups has called for a traditional boycott of the Beijing 2022 Olympics, citing human rights abuses against China’s ethnic minorities.
- But the White House said on Feb. 3 that the Biden administration currently has no plans to boycott the games or support their relocation to another country.
The 2008 Beijing Summer Games were the first Olympics in China, and many Chinese, both at home and around the world, felt a huge sense of pride and patriotism. That enthusiasm instilled in the games a sense of unforgettable joy and hope.
- The whole country mobilized for this occasion, organizing amazing opening ceremonies and without saving costs in building new facilities.
- Western democracies hoped that the Olympics would mark a new era of democratic reform for China. In the short term, it seemed to work. China is opening its doors to the world in the months leading up to the games, giving journalists unusually easy access.
Yes but: Human rights lawyers criticized China in 2008, citing China’s repression in Tibet and its support for Sudan amid the Darfur genocide.
- During the torchlight procession before the games began, pro-Tibet activists staged protests in more than a dozen cities around the world, while the Chinese quietly helped stage counter-protests.
- In a January 2008 New York Times column entitled “China’s Olympic Games of Genocide,” Nicholas Kristof wrote that “in exchange for access to Sudanese oil, Beijing is financing, protecting and diplomatically supplying weapons for the first genocide of the 21st century.”
Now China is actually committing genocide, not just to help him. In January, the US State Department ruled that the ongoing policies of the Chinese Communist Party’s mass internment and the forced assimilation of ethnic Uighurs into Xinjiang were genocide.
- But unlike other regimes that have committed genocide in recent decades, including Myanmar and Rwanda, China is the second strongest country in the world and is on track to overtake the US economy in a decade.
- Beijing’s leaders are using this action to silence the cows, charging heavy costs to governments and organizations that are determined to protest against China and producing global consensus on its policies.
Many countries have boycotted the past Olympics to protest against the host country, but there is also a precedent for the IOC to take action itself. He banned South Africa from 1964 to 1988 because of his apartheid policies.
The whole picture: It is harder than ever for an Olympic boycott to gain traction.
- Even if liberal democracies could organize one, such an answer would highlight the fundamental paradox created by China’s global influence: either participate in China’s conditions, or withdraw and create smaller alternatives.
While a full boycott of Beijing 2022 seems unlikely, some Uyghur and Tibetan advocacy groups are meeting to urge a diplomatic boycott of Beijing 2022.
- A diplomatic boycott would allow athletes to compete while throwing away some of the weak power that hosting the Olympics can bring.
What happens: “The International Olympic Committee won’t talk to you if you don’t want the games to happen. If you try to boycott the games, the broadcasters won’t talk to you, the athletes won’t talk, the sponsors will win.” I’m not talking to you, “said Pete Irwin. programs at the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
- As a more realistic alternative, Irwin said, he called on governments to “make an easy choice not to send a high-ranking official to the games.”
The IOC itself is also facing anger. Mandie McKeown, chief executive of the Tibet International Network, which is also calling for a diplomatic boycott, told Axios that she was “extremely disappointed” by the IOC for refusing to address massive human rights violations in China.
- In a July 2015 letter to the Tibet International Network in response to the group’s concerns, the IOC’s director of communications wrote that “as far as Beijing 2022 is concerned, human rights, labor rights and the right to demonstrate have been ensured.”
- McKeown said he had repeatedly asked the IOC to provide evidence that such insurance had been taken out and what exactly that insurance was. The IOC never provided this information, McKeown said.
Bottom line: “The IOC knows that the Chinese authorities are arbitrarily detaining Uyghurs and other Muslims, expanding state surveillance and silencing many peaceful critics,” Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson said last week.
- “His failure to publicly address serious human rights violations in Beijing mocks his own commitments and claims that the Olympics are a ‘definitive force’.”