The US government will not send any official representatives to the Winter Olympics in China this coming February. Through the diplomatic boycott, it enables its own athletes to take part in the competitions while sending a clear message to China. The decision was overdue – and it is spot on.
The boycott will continue to worsen US-China relations. Beijing has been raging and threatening for months, now it wants to react with countermeasures. Washington probably also helped with the decision that the opportunities for foreign representatives to attend will be extremely limited anyway. The Chinese side has not even invited a large part.
But it shouldn’t get confused what the propaganda in Beijing likes to mess up: The aggressor is neither the USA nor other states that are considering a boycott. The decision is a compelling consequence of a decade under party leader Xi Jinping, which has fundamentally changed China: the brutal treatment of the Muslim minorities, the crackdown on the protests in Hong Kong, the threats against Taiwan. With Beijing raving about the boycott, almost in the same breath the regime published a white paper with its supposedly new model of “democracy”, which in reality means autocracy – a direct attack on free systems around the world.
The fate of the Peng Shuai
It is a simple and necessary insight that has apparently yet to be implemented in the future German federal government: We need a new way of dealing with China because the world is dealing with a different China. It is almost macabre that the boycott debate has only picked up pace as a result of the fate of a well-known tennis player, while millions of people in Xinjiang have been persecuted and abducted for years. The outrage over the disappearance of Peng Shuai may give victims a face, but their case is above all part of a system of oppression.
The demand from the Chinese government not to “politicize” the Games in the interests of sport sounds all the more ludicrous. For Beijing, the athletes are nothing more than useful extras. The games serve solely to cultivate the image and to try to strengthen national and international support for the regime. The authorities are already doing everything they can to keep control of the images. Journalists are systematically monitored and hindered.
The American rejection will not change China. The decision even plays into the hands of the Communist Party and its propaganda for a short time: the boycott is not a reaction to the human rights situation, but the foul of a bad loser in the competition for progress and power.
The errors of the west
However, the fact that the exchange with the rulers in China automatically leads to more freedom for the people there was one of the great Western errors in dealing with the CP there. The free world has little influence on what happens in China. Yet every foreign government official who visits Beijing in February strengthens the regime. Germany should therefore go along with the US decision.