I’m boycotting these games in Beijing. Doing so does not come easy for me. As a life-long sports enthusiast, I have always looked forward to the Olympics. Watching the world’s preeminent athletes compete on the world stage and rooting for my own national team and others who seem to defy the oddsmakers never failed to excite me. As a kid, I even once dreamed of becoming an Olympic competitor myself. (Alas, my 1.7-meter frame was simply not up to the task of throwing the shot put or discus on the world, or any other, stage!)

Why Democratic Nations Must Boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics

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Here in the United States, NBC television is broadcasting the Winter Olympics, devoting at least six hours per day of coverage. Traditionally, its broadcasts dominate the ratings as Americans gather in front of their TV sets and computer and phone screens to watch and cheer on US athletes. I will be cheering on our athletes, too. But I won’t be watching.

The IOC’s Charter

I will not watch these games because they betray the very values enshrined in the IOC’s&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č; and its definition of “Olympism.” That is, it “seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.” It further states its goal “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.”

Based on its charter, the IOC should have flatly denied China’s petition to host the 2022 Winter Games. How could the IOC have been so blind to its values in awarding the games to Beijing? How was it possible to allow China to host the Olympic Games when the government of the People’s Republic of China has systematically persecuted, incarcerated, shackled and tortured up to 2 million Uyghurs, sterilized their women and sought to snuff out their Muslim faith? Uyghurs, a Muslim-majority, Turkic-speaking people, have inhabited China’s western Xinjiang province for at least 1,000 years.

But the suffering of the Uyghurs at the hands of an overbearing, intolerant Beijing isn’t a one-off. The Chinese have been doing largely the same thing for decades to the people of Tibet, effectively carrying out a campaign of cultural genocide.

Several years ago, the world again witnessed China’s notion of “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and “promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Beijing-directed henchmen attacked the people and institutions of Hong Kong, decimating the last vestiges of democracy in the enclave. The government has been arresting and trying any and all opponents, dissidents, and human rights advocates unwilling to buckle under Beijing’s iron-fisted, authoritarian order.

More recently, the world has observed Beijing turn its aggression to the island of Taiwan, the lone democratic outpost today within China’s one-party, one-man “Asian Reich.” Taiwan presents an unquestionably complex and difficult issue. But the inhabitants of Taiwan have embraced democracy and the freedoms that come with it. Resolving Beijing’s differences with the island and its people with menacing and aggressive behavior — dozens of mass warplane , repeated threats and belligerent bombast — cannot possibly lead to a solution. Rather, a threatened invasion of the island would not only likely crush its democracy, but also inject enormous instability in Asia and torpedo the global economy in a manner unseen since World War II.

To the IOC, however, none of this mattered. Its president, Thomas Bach, and even UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres traveled to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the games with nary a word about China’s abysmal human rights policies in Xinjiang, Hong Kong or Tibet. Instead, the IOC wants to see another “successful” games, which typically means an Olympics that makes money. Lots of it.

The IOC, NBC and Sponsors

Enter the American media giant, NBC. For exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2023, the network has paid the IOC $7.75 billion. That comes out to roughly $1.8 billion for the Beijing Games alone, or about 20% of the cost of the games. Tragically, revenues trump rights for China and for the IOC.

One would think that with that kind of leverage, NBC and the IOC’s numerous  and advertisers — globally recognized names like Allianz, Toyota, Bridgestone, Panasonic, Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Intel, Proctor & Gamble, Visa, Samsung and others — would have stood up to the IOC, explaining the harm to their brands of awarding the games to Beijing.

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And what about NBC itself? The Chinese government has imposed restrictions on journalists covering the games. The sort of 360-type coverage that is traditionally featured in its coverage of the Olympics — not just the events themselves but also the athletes, their lives and backgrounds, the host country and its people — is being severely . One Dutch journalist has already experienced China’s intolerance, having been  away while reporting live on camera.

Are the dollar earnings so great that NBC will sacrifice its journalistic ethics and responsibilities, all while other members of the profession  under Beijing’s crackdown on truth and free journalism?

China is not Nazi Germany. But Germany in 1936 was not yet the depraved hell of human suffering — the tens of millions of destroyed lives of Jews, Slavs, Roma and so many others — that it would become under Nazi rule. But we might have seen it, given the way the Nazis and Adolf Hitler engaged in over-the-top self-promotion and outward, sensational displays of Aryan superiority and Nazi rule.

The IOC, NBC and their many sponsors and advertisers have given China center stage to arrogantly parade and shamelessly hawk its own brand of unyielding, intolerant authoritarian rule. In China, the power of the state, its ruling Communist Party and great leader, XI Jinping, vitiate Olympism’s concepts of “social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and “basic human dignity.”

If they won’t recognize this contemptible undertaking for what it is, I will. I will miss the world’s best athletes and the great ritual of the world coming together for 17 days to celebrate individual struggle and achievement. I won’t be watching these Winter Olympic Games.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post A Personal Boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The choice is straightforward. Boycotting the Games in Beijing offers a rare, peaceful and relatively painless opportunity to send an unmistakable signal of disapproval to the Chinese elite, the people and the world at large.

China, the Bogeyman of the New Cold War

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In 1979, the city of Philadelphia entered a sister city relationship with Tianjin, China. Things have changed since those heady days for US-China relations, when every concession was offered to induce a weak, isolated and impoverished China to join the community of nations that abide by the rules of international law, trade and commerce. At the time, the hope was that China would introduce reforms and liberalize its economy and polity.

This turned out to be wishful thinking. Rulers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have shown time and again that their main interest is strengthening their rule, revising the international order in their favor, suppression at home and aggression abroad.

Sounding the Alarm

Finally paying heed to the mounting evidence of an aggressive China bent on global dominance, the US administrations led by Donald Trump and Joe Biden labeled China the number-one national security . 

China’s actions and ambitions alarm and unite an otherwise deeply polarized US Congress. Growing numbers of China’s neighbors and other countries around the world are joining hands to reduce Beijing’s malign influence on international institutions before it is too late. As Senator Jim Risch, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,  in March, “The Chinese Communist Party presents an unprecedented threat to not only U.S. values and interests, but also to the free and open international system characterized by individual freedom and the rule of law — something the United States has carefully built over seven decades.”

So, it is interesting that on October 27, a hundred days before the start of the Winter Olympics in February, China’s consul general in New York, Huang Ping, took out a full-page ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer (“Together for a Shared Future”) and the deputy consul general, Qian Jin, wrote a letter to the editor (“Meet in Beijing for 2022 Winter Olympics”). It is a safe bet that other major American news outlets also received similar appeals to boost awareness and attendance at the upcoming Games.

From 1936 to 2022

China’s anxiety to host a successful Winter Olympics is understandable. Consider the 1936 Summer Olympics, which was awarded to Germany in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler rose to power. Predictably, Nazi Germany used the Games for propaganda purposes, promoting an image of a new, strong, united Germany while masking the regime’s policies of racial supremacy, anti-Semitism and growing militarism.

Eager to impress, Hitler built a new 100,000-seater, track-and-field stadium and six gymnasiums. In the tense, politically charged atmosphere of 1936, the International Olympic Committee, fearing a mass boycott, pressed the German government and received assurances that qualified Jewish athletes could participate and that the Games would not be used to promote Nazi ideology. (These assurances, of course, were largely ignored.) The boycott movement narrowly failed, handing Hitler his propaganda coup and legitimizing his regime domestically and internationally, with 49 nations participating.

China would like to enjoy similar success, hoping that the world will focus on the shiny object (12 new competition venues) and ignore the brutality of the CCP’s single-party rule. But objections are being raised.

On July 27, the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a  on corporate sponsorship of the Games, questioning representatives from Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Intel, Visa and Procter & Gamble. Senator Jeff Merkley, the commission’s chair, said, “Holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in China and allowing its authoritarian government to reap the rewards in its prestige and propaganda of hosting this globally-beloved event does not uphold the Olympic spirit.” Merkley is right.  

China Will Not Cooperate

Still, some argue that engagement with China is the best path forward and that we need Beijing’s cooperation on issues of mutual interest, such as pandemic control and climate change. The folly of this view is exposed by China’s stonewalling of an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19; Beijing refuses to provide samples, records, and personnel. Hopes of figuring out how to prevent future, potentially even more catastrophic pandemics remain just that: hopes.

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Likewise, do not expect help on climate change from China, the world’s biggest polluter. Voicing his opposition to the US strategy of competing with China in some areas but keeping an “oasis” for climate cooperation, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi , “surrounding the oasis is a desert, and the oasis could be desertified very soon.” In other words, even on a matter as fundamental as the planet’s future, China intends to push forward with its Sinocentric worldview, no matter the consequences for humanity’s welfare.

The fact is that the CCP has used China’s immense economic, technological, military and diplomatic power not in ways that help its 1.4 billion citizens achieve political freedom or to work constructively with other countries. Beijing intends to perpetuate the CCP’s single-party rule, violate international agreements (the takeover of Hong Kong) and laws (militarization of the South China Sea), commit atrocities in Xinjiang, bully Taiwan and export to other countries its toxic surveillance-state model of controlling its own citizens.

We must not repeat the tragic mistake of 1936. We must deny the CCP the undeserved honor of hosting the Games. We must demand a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Why Democratic Nations Must Boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.