The Beijing Winter Olympics are catching up with the peak of a new wave of CCP virus (COVID-19) outbreaks in China. Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on the 19th that from 0:00 to 18:00 on the 19th, 5 new cases of local nucleic acid test positives were added in Beijing, and 5 of them were engaged in freezer loading and unloading.
According to the data provided by the Beijing authorities, the epidemic situation in Beijing continued to be severe, and two new variants of the virus were discovered at the same time within three days. On the 18th, Beijing added 3 new local cases, one of which was infected with the Delta variant of the CCP virus, and the other 2 confirmed cases were close contacts of those who were infected with the new variant of the CCP virus, Omicron, on the 15th.
People familiar with the matter in Beijing said that in order to ensure that the Winter Olympics go ahead as scheduled, Beijing’s entire city’s epidemic prevention is strictly guarded. In order to prevent and control the epidemic, maintain political stability, and do a good job of face-saving projects, the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee recently announced that only “targeted ticket distribution” (that is, organizing specific audiences to watch the game on site), and not selling tickets to the outside world. This has displeased spectators eagerly looking forward to the Olympics. Some netizens sarcastically said on Weibo that they knew that this Winter Olympics was looking forward to a loneliness.
Some observers have analyzed that the so-called specific distribution of votes is nothing more than a politically strong group.
Li Hengqing, a scholar at the Institute of Information and Strategy, a Washington think tank, analyzed that these people may be mainly employees of enterprises, “They must also be some enterprises that the party can control, at least they can’t go there to make trouble, such as some large state-owned enterprises, assign some to you. ticket.”
The netizen “European Royal Rose” wrote on Weibo that the targeted organization to watch it is estimated to be a matter of institutions and institutions. After all, I am unworthy.
He Anquan, a surgeon in New York, believes that the practice of not selling tickets is consistent with the CCP’s “clearing” policy. The CCP’s Olympic measures based on the zero-clearing policy reflect the authoritarian characteristics of the CCP authorities. “They all use administrative means to solve problems that should be solved by medical means.”
Li Hengqing also believes that for the CCP authorities, political stability is always the most important thing, and the CCP government hopes that the epidemic will not happen as much as possible. It doesn’t matter how many people watch the Olympics and how many tickets are sold. Their “biggest task is to open the 20th National Congress”.
The outside world has also noticed that the measures taken to prevent the epidemic in the Beijing Winter Olympics are much stricter than those in the Tokyo Olympics. Although nearly 4 million tickets were sold before the games during the Tokyo Olympics last year in order to prevent the new crown epidemic, most of the games were not open for viewing, and tickets were refunded after the games. Moreover, the practice of the Tokyo Olympics is much looser than that of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The Beijing Winter Olympics adopted a “closed-loop” system, where participating athletes, spectators, journalists and Olympic staff were isolated in so-called “bubbles” and could not leave the Olympic Village and competition venues. Chinese people who have entered these “bubbles” will also be quarantined for 21 days after leaving.
He Anquan said that during the Tokyo Olympics, “they did not deliberately separate the athletes from the Japanese people. Some athletes can go shopping in Japanese stores and eat at the same restaurant with the Japanese people. There is communication.”
This approach of the Beijing Winter Olympics is more consistent with the strict measures taken by the local government of the Chinese Communist Party to prevent and control the CCP virus epidemic, but the outside world is not optimistic about its effect.
Huang Yanzhong, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a U.S. think tank, told Reuters a few days ago that China has “pushed itself into a corner”; although the Chinese government is very confident in the strict prevention and control measures, due to the large number of populations, there is no Immunity against the new coronavirus epidemic, the new Omicron virus will soon spread throughout China.
Although Sun Chunlan, Vice Premier of the State Council of the Communist Party of China, has been in Tianjin to supervise prevention and control, and Gu Qing, director of the Tianjin Municipal Health Commission, also said on the 19th that the CCP virus epidemic in Tianjin has been effectively controlled. From 0 to 24:00 on the 18th, Tianjin added 14 There were confirmed local cases and no new asymptomatic infections. The new cases are all quarantined and controlled personnel. But two videos circulated on the Internet on January 17 showed that people from the entire community were pulled away and quarantined, and all lanes on the road were full of buses transporting quarantined people.
Netizens questioned that this was a political “clearing”: all “high-risk groups” were locked in centralized isolation points, and the “social clearing” was completed.
In addition, the Republican Congressman Michael Gallagher of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday (January 18) the introduction of the “Fight for Peng Shuai Freedom Act”, the core content of which is based on the “Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability” The Global Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on IOC President Bach and other high-ranking members of the IOC.
He accused the International Olympic Committee of colluding with the Chinese authorities last year to help Beijing resolve the public relations crisis caused by the disappearance of Peng Shuai, and to remove obstacles for the smooth holding of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Gallagher MP said Peng’s absence from the world‘s most important tennis tournament in Australia showed she was still not free. He said it was not enough to call for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics or to hold the Olympics relocated, given that the IOC helped to cover up the Chinese authorities’ serious human rights abuses. Time for officials to impose sanctions.
In 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act in memory of Russian human rights lawyer Magnitsky, authorizing the U.S. government to sanction Russian officials who violate human rights or are corrupt. In 2016, the U.S. Congress passed the “Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act”, extending the sanctions to government officials who violate human rights and corrupt people around the world.