Global fears about China’s authoritarian rise are overshadowing the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and sparking calls for a boycott.
Why it’s important: By openly reversing human rights norms while claiming leadership of the international system, China is breaking the foundations on which global traditions such as the Olympics are based.
- Democratic governments are concerned that allowing Beijing to host the Olympics without protest would further consolidate China’s authoritarianism at home and abroad.
- The United States and its partners are also concerned about China’s rise as a rival amid a growing sense of democratic vulnerability, which permeates the 2022 Games with a new underground stream of geopolitical fear.
Driving the news: A coalition of 180 human rights groups has called for the traditional boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, citing human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in China.
- But the White House said Feb. 3 that the Biden administration currently has no plans to boycott the games or support the move to another country.
The 2008 Beijing Summer Games were China’s first Olympic Games and many Chinese, both at home and around the world, felt an immense sense of pride and patriotism. This enthusiasm instilled the games in an unforgettable sense of joy and hope.
- The entire country mobilized for the occasion, holding impressive opening ceremonies and sparing no expense in building new facilities.
- Western democracies hoped the Olympics would mark a new era of democratic reforms for China. In the short term, it seemed to work. China opens its doors to the world in the months leading up to the games, allowing journalists unusually easy access.
Yes, but: Human rights defenders criticized China in 2008, citing China’s repression in Tibet and its support for Sudan amid the genocide in Darfur.
- During the torch relay before the games began, pro-Tibet activists staged protests in more than a dozen cities around the world, while the Chinese quietly helped organize counter-protests.
- In a January 2008 New York Times column entitled “China’s Genocide Olympics,” Nicholas Kristof wrote that “in exchange for access to Sudanese oil, Beijing diplomatically finances, protects, and supplies weapons for the first time. 21st century genocide “.
Now China is committing genocide, not just incite one. In January, the U.S. State Department determined that the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing mass internment policies and the forced assimilation of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounted to genocide.
- But unlike other regimes that have committed genocide in recent decades, including Myanmar and Rwanda, China is the second most powerful country in the world and is on track to outperform the U.S. economy in a decade.
- Beijing’s leaders are using this effort to silence the cow countries, imposing heavy costs on governments and organizations that are determined to protest against China and fabricating the emergence of global consent for their policies.
Many countries have boycotted the Olympics to protest the host country, but there are also precedents for the IOC to take action. He banned South Africa from 1964 to 1988 for its apartheid policies.
The big picture: It’s harder than ever for an Olympic boycott to gain strength.
- Even if liberal democracies could organize one, this answer would highlight the fundamental paradox that creates China’s global influence: either participate on China’s terms, or withdraw and create smaller alternatives.
While a full-fledged boycott in Beijing 2022 seems unlikely, some Uighur and Tibetan defense groups are joining together to urge a diplomatic boycott in Beijing 2022.
- A diplomatic boycott would allow athletes to compete while losing some of the soft power that the holding of the Olympics can bring.
What is happening: “The International Olympic Committee won’t talk to you if you don’t want the games to be played. If you’re trying 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, head of the program of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
- As a more realistic alternative, Irwin said, they are asking governments to “make an easy choice not to send a high-level official to the games.”
The IOC itself also faces anger. Mandie McKeown, executive director of the Tibet International Network, which also advocates a diplomatic boycott, told Axios she is “hugely disappointed” with the IOC for refusing to address China’s massive human rights violations.
- 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 “with regard to Beijing 2022, guarantees were provided” on human rights, the labor rights and the right to demonstrate.
- McKeown said he has repeatedly asked the IOC to provide evidence that these guarantees were given and what exactly these guarantees were. The IOC never provided that information, McKeown said.
The summary: “The IOC knows that the Chinese authorities are arbitrarily detaining Uighurs and other Muslims, expanding state surveillance and silencing numerous peaceful critics,” Chinese Human Rights Watch director Sophie Richardson said last week.
- “His failure to publicly address Beijing’s grave human rights violations mocks his own commitments and claims that the Olympics are a ‘definitive force.'”