[New Tang Dynasty News, Beijing, January 4, 2022]There is only one month left before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics. However, the COVID-19 epidemic, the CCP’s poor human rights record, and the Peng Shuai incident have triggered international protests, giving Beijing winter Omon casts an ominous shadow.
International boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics
A few days ago, the “Global Imams Council” issued a statement calling for the Muslim world to be banned from participating in and attending the Beijing Winter Olympics out of concerns about the human rights situation in Xinjiang, China.
Xia Yeliang, a former professor of economics at Peking University, told Radio Free Asia that this is a very important event for the Muslim world. Although there have been actions to boycott the Olympics in the past, it seems that this is the first time that a religion or a religious group has boycotted the Olympics.
Prior to this, the Biden administration of the United States stated that it had announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in consideration of China’s “continuous genocide and humanitarian crimes in Xinjiang, as well as other human rights violations”. Subsequently, US allies such as Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom followed up and boycotted it.
Antoine Bondaz, a researcher at the French Strategic Research Foundation, told Agence France-Presse that the Winter Olympics will be more important to China’s domestic politics than to the international community. The Chinese authorities hope to use this to show the Chinese people the country’s international status. However, after the United States, Japan, Britain and other countries announced their diplomatic boycotts, the CCP faced an extremely complicated and difficult equation at the diplomatic level and had to do everything possible to stop losses.
How the Peng Shuai incident developed, the CCP is not sure
At the beginning of November 2021, the world‘s female internet star Peng Shuai accused Zhang Gaoli, the former deputy prime minister of the Communist Party of China, of “forcing her to have sex with her”.
Although Peng Shuai was mysteriously disappeared for a period of time, he appeared under official arrangements and denied being “sexually assaulted.” However, the CCP’s “television confession” type of operation cannot solve the outside world‘s doubts about Peng Shuai’s personal safety and freedom.
China expert Bondaz believes that the CCP is not sure how the Peng Shuai incident, which had a huge impact on the Winter Olympics, will develop.
He said that the Chinese Communist Party will continue to send images of Peng Shuai to avoid a crisis during the Winter Olympics. But the question is whether non-governmental organizations, civil society, and foreign opinion leaders will mobilize a few days before the opening of the Olympic Games to resist. The CCP can neither guide nor stop it.
According to Bondaz analysis, people often say that the CCP doesn’t care about its own image. In fact, the image problem is extremely important. Around the world, some governments and civil society are publishing articles against the CCP. This is a serious problem. The image cost paid by the CCP will be huge.
In addition, due to the impact of the CCP virus epidemic, the North American professional ice hockey league NHL has recently announced that it will not participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics. It remains to be seen whether more sports teams will retire in the future.
As for the star players expected by the audience, American ski star Mikaela Shiffrin recently tested positive for the virus, which may affect her competition.
The Winter Olympics will be held in a “bubble” composed of nearly 3,000 athletes and staff, and will become a major sports event with the strictest epidemic prevention restrictions.
However, a new wave of peaks of the epidemic has recently appeared in China, especially Xi’an has to be closed down due to the epidemic.
Xia Yeliang is not very optimistic about the Beijing Winter Olympics. He said, “Xi’an has been closed for more than ten days, and the local government’s approach has not made substantial progress compared to the Wuhan epidemic. Their mechanism is very rigid.”
Yang Weidong, a Chinese artist who was born in a family of sports, said that Beijing may not have an out-of-control epidemic situation like Xi’an. If it does, they may conceal the epidemic.
In recent days, the lack of food, lack of medicine, poor isolation conditions, and epidemic prevention personnel beating people out to buy food after the closure of Xi’an has aroused public concern.
The Xi’an authorities ordered the realization of “Social Clearance” on January 4. Wen Zhao, a current affairs commentator, said in his self-media program that why Xi’an is eager to clear it should be related to the Winter Olympics. Suppress the epidemic, but the situation is not optimistic. He predicted that Xi’an may not be the last city in China to be closed.
(Reporter Luo Tingting Comprehensive Report / Chief Editor: Wen Hui)
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