The Olympics are high points for diplomacy and the stories produced about the host countries. In the case of China, the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing wanted to highlight the country’s integration into international bodies and its openness to the world, while the Winter Olympics this year will take place in an icy context that the pandemic and its supposed place of origin only partially explain. How did we get here ?
We must first remember that, despite the stories produced at the time, the 2008 Games took place in a context that was not the most peaceful. They marked a loss of influence from the United States, which did not support the choice of China as the host country. This selection was also criticized by many NGOs who pointed to the lack of civil liberties in the country. The insurrections taking place in the Tibetan zone just before the holding of the Games and the ensuing repression transformed the route of the Olympic flame into a theater of demonstrations against the Chinese regime.
Despite these circumstances, these Games were a success for China. The first country on the medal table, the authorities have above all succeeded in eclipsing the asperities, however existing, from the majority of international media accounts. Very little mention was made of the movement of the population living on the site of the Olympic Village to a landfill in the north of the city, just like the campaign of “good behavior” to adopt in front of strangers, the spectacle remaining perfectly controlled by the authorities of the time. Will it be the same this year?
Unlike in 2008, US maneuvers vis-à-vis China are now publicly displayed. This change is explained by the fact that China is no longer a theoretical competitor. It is now actively seeking to reform international organizations by multiplying parallel bodies; it invests massively in the expansion of its ideological and technological model throughout the planet through the pharaonic project of the “new silk roads”; it concludes numerous bilateral economic agreements and adopts targeted economic sanctions, of which Australia is undoubtedly the most exemplary victim.
Moreover, the commissioning of the Chinese military base in Djibouti and the militarization of several islets in the South China Sea, or the increasingly frequent operations in Taiwanese airspace, only confirm the intentions that the China displays, in particular with the so-called diplomacy of the wolf fighters, an aggressive approach that its officials have adopted for a few years.
Internally, civil society (including journalists) has been completely put under guardianship in recent years, due to shocking examples such as the disappearance of opponents and public apologies. This reality is also essential in Hong Kong, where the self-censorship of the inhabitants becomes the norm in the wake of its progressive annexation.
As far as minorities are concerned, Xinjiang is covered with concentration and forced labor camps, which obliges liberal democracies to put in place coercive measures which nevertheless remain homeopathic for the moment. This discriminatory treatment goes beyond the questions of the Uighur, Tibetan or Mongolian national minorities, as shown by the ideological discourses concerning sexual or religious minorities.
However, and contrary to 2008, Western civil societies remain strangely voiceless, as if they had become desensitized to distant problems. The challenge is sometimes displayed in an inappropriate and unfair way, in particular by anti-Chinese acts in favor of the current pandemic, transforming people of Asian origin into responsible for the political acts carried out there.
Fourteen years after the Summer Olympics in Beijing, what will this time be the content of the media narrative? Foreign journalists will be closely watched under the pretext of the pandemic and the “zero COVID” management carried out by local authorities. Moreover, it is not up to sports journalists or athletes to describe the many challenges that the Chinese government poses to liberal democracies. Nor is it incumbent on them to deconstruct the narrative of the “Chinese model”, boasting of development and economic prosperity thanks to its authoritarian (and increasingly totalitarian) political system, while the inequalities produced are increasingly gaping. .
Despite this, it is to be hoped that the Chinese authorities will lose exclusive control of the story of these Games and that it will not be reduced to a list of medals.