The Winter Olympic Games are held every four years, for sports played on snow and ice. Whereas the first winter games were held in France in 1924, the latest will be held in China in 2022. They grew out of the Summer Olympic Games, also known as the Games of the Olympiad, which, as the first games of the modern era, were held in 1896 in Athens, with ancient Greece having been the birthplace of the Ancient Olympic Games. Both sets of games are organized by the International Olympic Committee, established in 1894 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator and historian, to promote international understanding through sporting competition.
The 2008 Summer Olympics, held in Beijing from Aug 8 to 24, 2008, had as their motto “One world, one dream”, and were widely acclaimed as the most successful ever. With the holding of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, from Feb 4 to 20, 2022, in Beijing and Hebei province, Beijing will become the first city to have hosted both the summer and winter Olympic Games. The motto will be “Faster, higher, stronger — together”, and, once again, a spectacle is in prospect that will delight not only sports aficionados but also people around the world.
According to the IOC Charter, Olympism’s goal is to place sport at “the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity”. These are lofty ideals, and the same spirit informed the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York when, on Dec 2, it adopted the resolution of China and the IOC titled “Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal”. The resolution called on member states to cooperate with the IOC, as well as with the International Paralympic Committee, “in their efforts to use sport as a tool to promote peace, dialogue and reconciliation in areas of conflict during and beyond the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.
Once, therefore, President Joe Biden, as part of ongoing US hostility toward China, announced, on Dec 6, that no US officials would attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing, he ensured it was only symbolic. The American athletes would still compete, and he pledged they would have the support of his government. … Biden wants to have his cake and eat it, and this has upset some, including ex-president Donald Trump’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, who has called for a total boycott, despite it being “a terrible loss for our athletes”
Although the ethos of the Olympics is about sporting prowess and global harmony, some countries, regrettably, sometimes disrespect it by trying to politicize them. In 1980, for example, the United States, and some of its allies, boycotted the Summer Olympics in Moscow, Russia, because of the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. Although some athletes were allowed to compete as individuals, under the Olympic flag, American athletes who competed were threatened with revocation of their passports by the then-US President, Jimmy Carter. The athletes, therefore, who had worked for years to qualify for the Olympics suddenly realized that all their efforts were in vain, and that they were merely political pawns. Their sacrifice, moreover, was in vain, as their absence had no impact whatsoever on Russian foreign policy.
Once, therefore, President Joe Biden, as part of ongoing US hostility toward China, announced, on Dec 6, that no US officials would attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing, he ensured it was only symbolic. The American athletes would still compete, and he pledged they would have the support of his government. He has, therefore, learned from Carter’s blunder, and, apart from the absence of some officials at the opening and closing ceremonies, the games themselves will be unaffected. In other words, Biden wants to have his cake and eat it, and this has upset some, including ex-president Donald Trump’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, who has called for a total boycott, despite it being “a terrible loss for our athletes”. In trying to have it both ways, Biden has pleased nobody, and now, like all bullies, he is seeking safety in numbers.
While Biden’s pretext for staying away from the games is his professed concern over China’s response to religious extremism in Xinjiang, he knows that if he does not at least try to snub Beijing, his popularity at home will suffer further. Even he, however, cannot relish the hypocrisy of his stance, given the US track record. As the leader of the country that gave the world waterboarding, extraordinary rendition and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, promoted regime change throughout the Middle East, and supports the genocidal war in Yemen, he must realize he has no moral authority to lecture anybody.
Still, if Biden wants to play his silly games, so be it. The pity, however, is that several other leaders have chosen to jump into bed with him. First out of the blocks was Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, known these days as “POTUS’ poodle”, which surprised nobody. In September, he happily knifed France, a long-standing ally, in order to get some US-UK made nuclear submarines and join Biden’s AUKUS alliance, and he has also allowed US troops to expand their operations in his country. In 2019, moreover, Morrison tried to “out-Trump” Donald Trump in his eagerness to wreck Hong Kong, urging Australian businesses to leave, suspending Australia’s fugitive offender surrender agreement, encouraging its people to emigrate, and issuing a hostile travel advisory, designed to ruin its tourist industry.
Also falling into line was Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, ever fearful of getting on the wrong side of his powerful neighbor or missing out on lucrative trade deals. He duly announced that he was “deeply troubled” by China’s rights violations, which was odd, given that he is apparently unperturbed by US policy in Guantanamo Bay, the Middle East and Yemen, notwithstanding the rights abuses and deaths. Although New Zealand also joined in, it avoided the language of boycott, and referred instead to COVID-19 concerns. As for Lithuania, the tiny Baltic state now being used by the US to stoke tensions with China over Taiwan, it also did Biden’s bidding, acutely aware that its promised $600 million in export credits could evaporate if it failed to act as American proxies are expected to act.
Most disappointing of all, however, was the decision of the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, who, on Dec 8, announced that there would “effectively be a diplomatic boycott” of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, as no UK ministers or officials would be attending. He could, of course, have declined to follow Biden’s line, but he apparently decided that the easiest course, given the pressures from both the US and the anti-China lobby at home, was to cave in, something for which he has form. Indeed, in July 2020, having allowed China’s Huawei a 35 percent role in building the UK’s 5G network only six months previously, he abruptly changed his mind, following pressure, and history is now repeating itself.
Although, on Nov 17, British government sources made clear that a UK diplomatic boycott was not under “active consideration”, this was reversed within weeks, and the reason is not hard to find. Apart from Biden’s pressure, anti-China forces in the British Parliament were also mobilized. In November, for example, five parliamentarians, all previously sanctioned by China for their roles in spreading “lies and disinformation” about it, wrote to Johnson, demanding a U-turn. Having pointed out that the US was not expected to send officials to the Winter Olympics, they told him it was “vital that we keep up the momentum and follow suit in the UK”. A little digging reveals that the five signatories have long prided themselves on their efforts to demonize China, and have sought every opportunity to drive wedges between the peoples of the two countries.
They include Iain Duncan Smith, co-chair of the Sinophobic Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, who, in a bizarre publicity stunt, turned up on the fringes of the G20 Summit in Rome last month, wearing his IPAC hat, to protest over the participation of China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. He greets every negative news item about China as manna from heaven, and has forged close ties to Hong Kong Watch, the London-based propaganda outfit run by the serial fantasist, Benedict Rogers. Another signatory was Tom Tugendhat, who, like Smith, advocates the withdrawal of the British judges from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, and chairs the China Research Group, the pressure group that campaigned to end Huawei’s UK involvement. The letter was also signed, perhaps inevitably, by David Alton, who spends his days whipping up anti-China sentiment in Westminster, and whose name will forever be associated with the scandal that stained the UK’s body politic in 2020.
As the vice-chair of an unofficial parliamentary inquiry that investigated the Hong Kong Police Force’s role in policing the social disorder, Alton participated in what purported to be an objective inquiry, but which, as researchers discovered, was anything but. The inquiry, whose report condemned the police force, was found to have been financed throughout by Stand with Hong Kong, an anti-police body with close ties to Next Digital owner Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and Hong Kong Watch, of which Alton is himself a patron. What this meant, therefore, was, firstly, that the report was paid for by the very people who were critical of the police and sought their condemnation, and, secondly, that Alton, who had himself accepted a trip to Hong Kong financed by Stand with Hong Kong in November 2019, was happy to involve himself with this grotesque charade.
On Jan 14, 2021, Johnson warned that the UK should avoid falling into “unthinking Sinophobia”, and, by buckling to pressure from the very people who spend their time promoting just that, he has let himself down very badly, while also exposing how weak his position must now be.
However, while Morrison, Trudeau and Johnson were all willing to dance to Biden’s tune, many others are not, including France, whose president, Emmanuel Macron, dismissed their gestures as “insignificant”. He pointed out that, if there is to be a boycott, it should be “a complete boycott, and don’t send athletes”, something, of course, that Biden and his poodles are afraid of, knowing the popular backlash they would face. When France’s foreign minister was asked about the boycotts, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who clearly knows something about the Olympic spirit, replied that “sports is a world apart that needs to be protected from political interference”, and that the boycotters “could end up killing all of the competitions”.
Meanwhile, the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, has accepted an IOC invitation to attend the opening ceremony of the games, and many other world leaders are doing likewise. They are clearly heeding the IOC president, Thomas Bach, who has pointed out that, if the games are politicized, “it could be the end of the Olympic Games, as it was for the ancient Olympic Games”. In other words, Biden, Morrison, Trudeau and Johnson are playing with fire, and cannot be allowed to imperil an institution that has benefited mankind so greatly over the last 126 years.
Instead, therefore, of indulging in cheap grandstanding, Biden and his followers should be supporting the Olympic Games, encouraging their own athletes, and showing some real statesmanship. By staying away, they are demeaning themselves, not harming China, and letting the world see that, at heart, they are simply a bunch of petty-minded politicians, incapable of rising to the exigencies of a great world occasion. Indeed, given the high ideals associated with the Olympic Games, it is probably best they absent themselves, and Baron Pierre de Coubertin would certainly not have wanted to have individuals around who show contempt for the international harmony by which he set such store.
The author is a senior counsel and professor of law, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.