boycott, human rights, ecology… How does China respond to international criticism?

“The Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, given the People’s Republic of China’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.” It was through this statement by White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki that Washington announced on December 6 a diplomatic boycott of the event, starting with the opening ceremony on Friday February 4.

Several of the main allies of the United States (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom) quickly followed this position, which Beijing describes as “political manipulation”. China has warned that countries participating in this boycott in “would pay the price”.

We still do not know the real repercussions of this abstract response, which is part of a particularly tense international agenda (economic war, Hong Kong, Taiwan) between the United States and China. For Pascal Boniface, director of Iinstitute for international and strategic relations, “the Chinese regime has overreacted”, showing at the same time that this boycott “was not indifferent to him”. At the opening ceremony, Friday, Beijing “will want to highlight the countries present and explain the absences by jealousy towards him and the fact that the West does not accept that China is again standing on its two feet”, predicts the author of the book Geopolitics of sport (2014).

In the end, the boycott, which extends to only seven countries (out of 91 participants), should not overshadow the festivities at the National Stadium in Beijing, where the delegations of athletes will be present. On the podium side, the presence of official diplomatic representatives will however be scrutinized, in particular that of Vladimir Putin, in a context where China supports Russia’s position in the Ukrainian crisis.

The ceremony will include other important heads of state such as Abdel Fattah al-Sissi (Egypt), Mohammed ben Salman (Saudi Arabia) or Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev (Kazakhstan). According to Antoine Bondaz, researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research and teacher at Sciences Po, “Beijing will adopt positive communication and use the opening ceremony to highlight China’s ‘true friends’, and criticize those who are presented as influenced by the United States. The idea for Beijing is not to minimize this boycott, but on the contrary to assume it and almost to brag about it”.

“The argument will be not only that the United States wants to politicize these Games, but above all that the Americans are in reality isolated, unable to unite all of their allies in this boycott, including France, and therefore that the United States United are not as powerful as they say.”

Antoine Bondaz, researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research

at FC Geopolitics

The idea of ​​a boycott was indeed judged by Emmanuel Macron as “very small and symbolic”, but Paris sent only the Minister Delegate for Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, to “support the athletes”. She will not even be present at the stadium on Friday.

It is therefore not this question of the boycott that puts the communist regime in the most difficulty, but rather the health situation of the country. China is indeed experiencing an epidemic recovery (Beijing recorded the highest number of Covid-19 cases for 18 months on January 30) even as it pursues its “zero Covid” policy. The latter aimed to show the superiority of its model internationally.

Therefore, Beijing finds itself in a balancing act: it must both maintain its internal health line while hosting a large-scale international sporting event. To do this, China has set up a particularly strict health bubble in order to avoid any contact between participants in the Olympics and the rest of the Chinese population. A bubble also faced with the resumption of the epidemic, since a hundred participants have already tested positive.

Controlling the Games with a closed loop of venues and hotels, okay, but what about controlling the athletes? According to a Canadian research laboratory, Citizen Lab, the application serving as a health pass for participants would have security flaws allowing conversations to be spied on. Flaws have since been corrected, according to China, even if several countries advise their delegations to remain cautious. If malicious control by the authorities were proven, this “would be totally counterproductive for the regime and would create a huge scandal far beyond the simple Games”, believes Pascal Boniface.

These fears are all the stronger since the Peng Shuai affair has marked the international community in recent months. The Chinese tennis champion had indeed disappeared in November after accusing a former senior Communist Party official of rape. His allegations were later deleted from the internet. This disappearance goes beyond the simple framework of sport, with a significant mobilization of public opinion around the world, illustrated by the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai.

For Antoine Bondaz, “the authorities want at all costs to prevent athletes from referring to it, in particular because this affair has remained censored in China”. However, “if Beijing will have the upper hand during the opening ceremony, it may be much more difficult later on. Not so much during the events, but on the sidelines of them with athletes who could be tempted to pass political messages. It would not be the first time and not specific to the Olympics in China”.

The line of the International Olympic Committee remains clear on this subject, with the prohibition for athletes to demonstrate or to send political messages on the podiums and on the sports grounds of the Olympic Games, although this neutrality of sport has already been challenged at the Tokyo Games last year.

These international considerations should not hide the fact that these Olympic Games have above all an internal stake. For Jean-Baptiste Guégan, consultant in the geopolitics of sport, they “are also part of the next Chinese Communist Party Congress elections in the fall of 2022. Xi Jinping wants to make these Beijing Games a national storytelling to promote his re-election”. This national story aims to show that, beyond the organization of the Olympic Games, the Chinese regime can develop a winter sports industry at the service of the new Chinese middle class, which thus has the possibility of accessing a new offer. high-end entertainment.

The usual race for medals, as at the Summer Olympics, will therefore not be the main issue, for lack of Chinese champions. Since their first participation in 1980 at the Lake Placid Winter Games, Chinese athletes have won only 62 medals, compared to 634 at the Summer Olympics. The delegation only finished in 16th place in the nations table at the 2018 Olympics.

This lack of tradition of winter sports was also one of the main criticisms made when Beijing was designated as host for 2022. It is the first city to host both the Summer Olympics and the Olympic Games. ‘winter. If China had then only for competitor Kazakhstan (with Almaty), its capital remains all the same located in a semi-arid zone devoid of snow.

What does it matter! China swears it will host the Games “green” and “clean” focused on sustainable development, with the use of former sites of the 2008 Olympics, all of the electricity consumed from renewable sources, or even the improvement of air quality… However, nature is returning at a gallop since the main concern remains the lack of snow. For the first time in the history of the Winter Olympics, the events will take place on 100% artificial snow. In total for these 2022 Games, nearly two million cubic meters of water will be used to produce powder.

China is “well aware” critics, assures Jean-Baptiste Guégan. “Rather than submit, the regime fully assumes its strategy of developing a green industry and making these Games sustainable, of proposing the Winter Games of tomorrow which will inevitably have to do without snow in the future.“, explains the expert. Indeed, the trend is on the rise: 90% of artificial snow was used four years ago in Pyeongchang and 80% in Sochi, in 2014. This is why, upstream of the event, China communicates so much about its technological prowess to reduce the carbon footprint, its snow cannons, and its state-of-the-art facilities.

It is true that in the absence of a foreign audience, the success of these Games will depend more on the television experience and the quality of Chinese infrastructure than on popular enthusiasm. The fact remains that the organization of this sporting event, in such climatic conditions, revives the debate on the limits that the great world entertainment that sport has become can face. A debate that the next World Cup in Qatar is already facing. The planet vibrates for sport, yes, but at what cost?