Beijing Olympics | China’s challenges

A golden opportunity for China to take care of its image as a great world power, the organization of the Winter Games has its share of obstacles for Beijing, political, sporting and logistical.

Yann Roche
Acting holder of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair, president of the Geopolitics Observatory and professor in the geography department of UQAM

The 2022 Winter Olympics will begin on February 4 in Beijing. Presented as the unmissable event of the beginning of the year, these Games go well beyond their purely sporting dimension and involve considerable challenges for the Chinese regime.

One of the latest examples was the controversy surrounding the diplomatic boycott decreed by the United States and its closest allies, including Canada. Indeed, in protest against the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority, many countries, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Lithuania and Japan, will not send official representatives to Beijing. This measure, which has the merit of not harming the athletes as a sporting boycott would do, will probably have an above all symbolic impact (for which some countries have criticized it for not following the movement). However, it will have succeeded in irritating China, which has vigorously condemned this politicization of the Games.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has always officially opposed this politicization, which is nevertheless inseparable from the magnitude of this event over the decades. From the famous example of the political appropriation of the Berlin Games in 1936 to the boycotts of those in Moscow in 1980 then Los Angeles in 1984^⁠1 to the parade of the two Koreas under a unified flag in PyeongChang in 2018, the Olympics have always been political, no offense to the IOC. The organizing countries also take full advantage of the visibility that the biggest sporting event on the planet offers to promote themselves internationally, through specific gestures or simply by taking advantage of the excellence of the sporting results of their athletes. . And this recuperation is not unique to authoritarian regimes.

Organizing the 2022 Winter Games is therefore an opportunity for China to strengthen its position on the international scene. Hold the Winter Games, which are less universal than their summer counterpart^⁠2, is nevertheless only one of the facets of the global strategy of the People’s Republic: these include among others the project of the new silk roads, the increased commercial competition with the United States or the diplomatico-economic offensive deployed for years in Africa.

The objective is to consolidate the country’s place as a leading power, and the role of sport in this overall strategy, while not major, is not negligible.

Despite the unshakable will of the Beijing regime, many pitfalls – political, sporting and logistical – stand in the way. The situation of the Uighurs has sparked tremendous international controversy, to which the Chinese government has responded by first denying any mistreatment, speaking of slander against them, then specifying that it is internal affairs, not concerning Westerners who, led by the United States, have no lessons to give in matters of human rights. Beyond this tragic case, other challenges have emerged. When, in 2015, the IOC awarded the organization of the 2022 Games to Beijing at the expense of the Kazakh city of Almaty, many observers had expressed reservations. China has no tradition of winter sports and its capital did not seem to benefit from the necessary natural conditions (climate, proximity to mountains) to organize an event with such specific characteristics. With its usual efficiency, China, which does not have to come to terms with popular protests aimed at the economic and environmental costs of new infrastructures, announced the construction of railway lines linking Beijing to two mountainous sites 80 and 180 km apart, for skiing events. And to compensate for the lack of snow in these places, the government has planned to produce huge quantities of artificial snow… in regions where water is scarce. China is also far from being a sporting power at the Winter Games. If she finished at 2^and rank of the medal table in Tokyo a few months ago, it was only 16^and position four years ago at the PyeongChang Winter Games. Nine medals, including only one gold, is not in itself a bad performance – it was even better than Finland! But this result is far from Norway’s 39 medals, and above all well below that of Asian opponents, whether it is South Korea (7^and, 17 medals) or Japan (11^and, 13 medals).

Chinese athletes will therefore have to rise in the rankings at the level of Western countries, which traditionally dominate the Winter Games, but also and above all to place themselves ahead of Asian rivals.

Faced with Western protest and major organizational issues, to which the Omicron variant has been added, China will have to meet major challenges in a few days. Whatever happens, the diplomatic victory is already officially announced, but its reality will depend on how these stakes are overcome, including on the sporting level.

1. In 1980, the Moscow Games were boycotted by the United States and a majority of its allies; four years later, the Soviets responded by boycotting the Games in Los Angeles.

2. The Chinese capital, which has already organized the 2008 Summer Games, is the first city to have hosted both Summer and Winter Games.