THE UNITED STATES has announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, a calibrated rebuke of China’s human rights record that stops short of preventing US athletes from competing.
The decision comes after Washington spent months wrangling with what position to take on the Games, hosted in February next year by a country it accuses of perpetrating “genocide” against Uyghur Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
There was no immediate reaction from Beijing, but the Chinese foreign ministry had earlier threatened “resolute countermeasures” to any such boycott.
The decision was broadly welcomed by rights groups and politicians in the US, where President Joe Biden has been under pressure to speak out against Chinese rights abuses.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration would send no diplomatic or official representation to the Games given China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
Sending official representation would signal that the Games were “business as usual,” Psaki said.
“And we simply can’t do that.”
“The athletes on Team USA have our full support. We will be behind them 100% as we cheer them on from home,” she added.
The International Olympic Committee said the sending or not of officials was a “purely political decision for each government, which the IOC in its political neutrality fully respects.”
The announcement “also makes it clear that the Olympic Games and the participation of the athletes are beyond politics and we welcome this,” an IOC spokesperson said.
US-China relations hit a low point under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, with a massive trade war and incendiary debate over how the Covid-19 virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Biden has sought to re-engage with Beijing, while at the same time focusing on strengthening traditional US alliances to counter China’s ever-growing economic clout and military presence across the Indo-Pacific region.
The Olympics boycott is part of a complex diplomatic balancing act.
Biden’s administration has left Trump-era trade tariffs on China in place and continues to order naval patrols through sensitive international sea lanes that China is accused of trying to bring under its control.
However, with Biden also emphasizing the need for dialogue, critics on the right say he is being too soft.
This makes the looming Olympic Games a political flashpoint.
Members of Team USA, their coaches, trainers and other staff will still receive consular and diplomatic security assistance, State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
When asked about calls for private businesses to end any Winter Games sponsorships, he stressed that the decision was up to them.
“It is not in this country – unlike other countries – the role of the government to dictate the practices that the private sector should adopt,” Price said.
Campaigners say that at least one million Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in camps in Xinjiang, where China is also accused of forcibly sterilizing women and imposing forced labour.
Bob Menendez, the chair of the powerful US Senate foreign relations committee, welcomed the diplomatic boycott as “a powerful rebuke” of the “genocide in Xinjiang.”
He and top House foreign affairs Democrat Gregory Meeks called for other countries to follow the US lead.
Meeks warned the international community should not be helping China “whitewash its atrocities against Uyghurs and other minorities.”
But Republican Senator Tom Cotton called it a “half measure, when bold leadership was required.”
“The United States should fully boycott the Genocide Games in Beijing,” he said in a statement.
The last full boycott of the Olympics by the US was in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter withdrew in protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Human Rights Watch called the Biden administration’s decision “crucial” but urged more accountability “for those responsible for these crimes and justice for the survivors.”
Earlier Monday Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian warned the Games were “not a stage for political posturing and manipulation” – in response to reports a boycott could be imminent.
“If the US is bent on having its own way, China will take resolute countermeasures,” he vowed.
Coming just six months after the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Summer Games, the Winter Olympics will be held from 4 to 20 February in a “closed loop” bubble because of Covid-19 restrictions.
“To be honest, Chinese are relieved to hear the news, because the fewer US officials come, the fewer viruses will be brought in,” tweeted the Chinese state-owned tabloid newspaper, Global Times.
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Good. More countries should follow, with a full boycott even
@Séan Ó Nuanáin: As their own General Wes Clarke put it: “The purpose of the US army is to start wars and change governments”. Decades of assassinations, coups, death squads, illegal wars, murderous sanctions, drone bombings, torture camps, genocides – one massacre after another happeing before our eyes, ignored by a complicit Western media. The reason socialism does not work is because Capitalist psycopaths running Western countries murder it at birth – the white supremacists running the Western world cannot allow China to be succesful. https://twitter.com/Victor744498869/status/1467465631817551878?t=nwl7fDxf3C9-03kYA5FLDw&s=19
@Kerrill Thornhill: We don’t need pro China pro communists like you lecturing us. Thanks
@alan scott: Good for you, I don’t like being lectured by relentless war mongering propogandists, pro-capitalist, anti-chinese racists either. I’m not pro-China, I’m anti-war – These articles are coming from the same liars that killed over 1 million in Iraq and destroyed Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Vietnam +++. Here’s a map of the 75 million tons of bombs dropped on South East asia by your humanitarian friends: https://twitter.com/TheKommunist/status/1466883963205701632?t=BDPHxdIIK8UTcDnOf1FMGw&s=19
@Kerrill Thornhill: tell me of any nation that was at one time the most powerful in the world, that didn’t have blood on its hands. Roman empire, mongal dynasty, Napoleonic france, British empire, USSR superpower, US superpower and now emerging China. Nations do not become world powers keeping their hands clean. Its unfortunate but true. But you can’t point out the faults in one without accepting the other did the exact same.
@Kingshu: thanks for the considered post. So if you say they are morally the same, the US boycott of China is just cynical politics? Taking a more present day approach, rather than historical – there is a distinction in bombs dropped by the US are real & they kill real people, China does not drop bomb on anyone – yet years of intense media propagandisation has convinced to see China as aggressive and US is leader of the ‘free’ world. The entire narrative of Chinese authoritarianism versus US freedom is counter to all of the evidence. Institutional racism/ incarceration/ police brutality/ militarisation/ inequality/ homelessness/ healthcare – by every metric China is out performing the US as a government ‘for the people’. The mask of western supremacy is slipping
@Kingshu: For anyone genuinely interested in whats happening in this article and the current swath of China focused articles, this sums it up succintly: “The countries throwing accusations around about human rights in Xinjiang are the same countries that have been waging war on Muslim countries for the last 20 years. The commonality is that the War on Terror and the New Cold War are both about preserving US-led imperialist system.”
@Kerrill Thornhill: the only thing slipping is your mask
@Jonathan O’Riordan: excellent retort. You’re not looking very hard if you can’t see mismanagement in the US/UK & the endemic corruption of their politics/media/police/military – grotesque inequality & bad things happen when everyone is on the take: sewage in rivers, fuel shortages, school shootings, healthcare bankruptcy, food banks, race hate +++. Relentless diversionary attacks on China with made up stuff won’t stop the tide coming in on this crumbling empire.
Just tonight, Israel bombed a civilian port in Syria, Saudi bombes the capital in Yemen: both war crimes carries out with US made bombs, but nothing will be reported in our press – Julian Assange is rotting in jail as a warning to others. Unfortunately ignorance is bliss, you believe whatever you like
@Séan Ó Nuanáin: Biden boycott’s China over alleged human rights abuses but supports the world’s greatest terrorists state. No problem selling billions of dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia to carry out genocide in Yemen. Human rights? Pull the other one.
@Kerrill Thornhill: if the west is so war mongering what is your opinion on chinas actions regarding Taiwan?
@Tomas Ryan: I share the status quo and official policy of US, UK, UN and majority of world – who have a one China policy and recognise Taiwan as being part of China. It’s a fudge used to maintain stability, not unlike the constitutional hoops we’ve gone through to maintain stability in NI. The US putting troops/arms in Taiwan and ramping up tension in the region is just part of their China containment policy – they care as much about the Taiwanese as they do for the Afghan contractors they left behind or shot up in the airport in Kabul.
Politics should be kept out of sports
@Alan Campbell: Pollitics and sports have mixed since there were sports. Think of the Roman emperors winning over the masses with big gladiatorial and Chariot racing events. I’m sure it goes back even further than that.
@Alan Campbell: China/The CCP should be kept out of everything
@Kingshu: I wouldn’t call that sport; it was an open-air massacre
@Csilla: Oxford Dictionary defines sport as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or a team competes against another or others for entertainment” I’d say both Roman sports clearly meet the definition.
@Alan Campbell: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong”
The US accusing anyone of having a poor human rights record is beyond parody, up there with Henry Kissinger winning the nobel peace prize. I’m embarrassed for the many good journalists in this country that their employers post this insane propoganda uncritically.
Here’s a man in a wheelchair being shot 9 times by police and his dead body handcuffed, this is the country accusing others of being authoritarian! https://twitter.com/ndelriego/status/1466044458420551685?t=EJdQxvyXx7-3pp9bmhhUSg&s=19
@Kerrill Thornhill: any chance of the whole story on that clip? Or does it suit your agenda just to make out that the cops shot him for nothing?
@Karl Harty: He’s in a f…ing wheelchair and got shot in the back 9 times you ghoul. He was accused of shoplifting a toolkit and carrying a knife – in what warped mind is that worthy of execution without trial?
My agenda is calling out a regime that just killed 8 kids without holding anyone accountible, covered up the massacre of 80 civilians in Syria – but now claims it wants accountability from another Country for an imaginary genocide that has not produced any dead people, refugees or credible evidence whatsoever. I can post dozens of videos and images of US police/military appaling war crimes and brutality – our medias roles in laundering these crimes and erasing the victims needs to be called out.
@Kerrill Thornhill: less of the name calling. You obviously need to get out more. You are getting very aggressive. Maybe try having a conversation instead of name calling and people might not think of you as the ghoul.
@Karl Harty: Apologies Karl, my response was slightly harsh – seeing a disabled person murdered in cold is upsetting and it appears you are trying to justify it. I’m of the opinion that more people need to start speaking up about the atrocities being conducted in our (western civilisations) name, we’re in no position to criticise China or anyone elses human rights record. Is that reasonable enough for you?
@Kerrill Thornhill: nowhere in my comment suggests I was trying to justify it at all. If these clips and videos upset you do much you really need to stop watching them. For your own mental health reasons.
You can’t keep torturing yourself like that. Focus on the positive in your life because coming on the journal in a rage is not going to change anything.
@Karl Harty: Thanks Karl, calling out injustice is better for your mental health than remaining silent IMO. If you see atrocities being committed and being covered up, staying silent is unhealthy for you personally and for society. Just doing my bit to make the world a better place
@Karl Harty: “Does it suit your agenda to say the cops shot him for nothing” – I may be picking you up wrong, but this does sound like you’re trying to justify it… shooting someone 9 times in the back and handcuffing his dead body is not an appropriate response for shoplifting
@Kerrill Thornhill: you should try be a cop in America. Have you any stories or videos of cops being shot down and left for dead for doing their job?
It happens. You are just looking at it from one side. You jump on the “victims” side every time it seems.
@Karl Harty: Yes, I’m taking the side of the unarmed person that has been shot, unapologetically. The police are there to ‘serve and protect’ – not to kill disabled shoplifters. Policing is dangerous in the US as it’s a heavily militarised country, if you want to show solidarity with the police then speak out against the US arms industry and gun culture – locally and internationally. I’m a bit bemused, even confused by your quotes on “Victim”, are the people shot by US police/killed by their drone bombs somehow asking for it/ not really victims?
@Kerrill Thornhill: what about when I asked about the cops who were victims? Any comment on them? You seemed to have completely ignored that too.
@Karl Harty: of course, it’s appalling that anyone including police would lose their life just doing their job. Which is exactly why the US needs to get serious about their gun culture and reverence for militarism.
Any reason they didnt boycott the summer games?
@Roy Dowling: that was in a different country. Keep up
@Roy Dowling: because it didn’t suit their agenda or narrative back then
@Roy Dowling: I bet Emperor Ming is your favourite Chinese dude too.
Children killing each other in America and they say it’s there civil right a country were weapons are there right and they preach to countries what a joke
They should not be hosting it after giving the world covid. China should never be given a global event again.
Let us have our own diplomatic boycott of the games over Richard O’Halloran
Sport and politics should not intertwine