Recently, 180 international human rights groups, as well as members of parliament from the United Kingdom and Canada, accused the Chinese government of genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang and called on countries to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The Global Times, the official media of the Communist Party of China, published an editorial on Sunday, refuting the call for a boycott, saying that a boycott of the Winter Olympics is against the “Olympic spirit” and that the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and then the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics seriously damaged the sport. The evaluation was almost all negative.
But the Global Times forgets that the country that led the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics was China itself, in addition to the U.S. The April 25, 1980 editorial in the Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao, “Beijing Decides to Boycott the Moscow Olympics,” concluded as follows: “The boycott of the Soviet Olympics in Moscow is a huge battle between good and evil at the moment. The fight, representing a billion people in China …… has greatly increased the momentum against Soviet aggression, which is not a matter of a sports competition. Many athletes should think about world peace and justice, sacrifice the ego and take care of the overall situation, which is the right choice” – this 41-year-old editorial of the left newspaper, has not answered the question of the Global Times?
What is even more ridiculous is that the Hong Kong Olympic Committee originally followed the decision of the British Olympic Committee and intended to compete under the Olympic flag as an “individual” rather than as a representative of a region or a country. However, Hong Kong’s pro-China newspapers kept raising the banner of “righteousness” to oppose any way for Hong Kong athletes to participate in this Olympic Games, and eventually “successfully secured” the withdrawal of Hong Kong athletes from the competition. The left newspaper even said in another editorial that the conclusion that “sports has nothing to do with politics for years” “finally collapsed in the face of international reality”. So, where did the “almost negative outside comments” in Sunday’s Global Times come from? Is “outside” a newspaper representing the Soviet Union?
The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, for example, resulted in a bumper harvest for China due to the Soviet boycott; the gymnastics event, for example, produced a “gymnastics prince” Li Ning with three golds, two silvers and a bronze. China, which benefited from the Soviet boycott, is now saying that “external evaluation” is negative? Don’t you remember that these “Chinese achievements” were based on the boycott by the competitors, and that the “outside world” thinks that China has not won?
The diplomatic dilemma can only be solved by the Party’s eight units
This completely contradictory and self-contradictory approach is exactly the way the Chinese Communist Party is facing a diplomatic dilemma nowadays, which can only be solved almost by the Party’s eight points, which are completely unhelpful in gaining support overseas, but only by silver bullets and bullets, by bribes and intimidation. retaliate violently, and Beijing undoubtedly does not lack the resources and means to carry out retaliation.”
When in recent years this kind of talk has been almost the only thing left from the Chinese Foreign Ministry to pro-Communist overseas propaganda, it shows that Beijing says it does not want a Cold War and accuses others of thinking in Cold War terms, but the truth is that even “its own people” have fallen into the Cold War “trap” — Isn’t that what the Soviet Union said back then? So what’s the point of talking tough? In recent years, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s press releases have been protesting almost every day against various countries, but have relations with them changed for the better?
And how many sanctions does China have left to play, given the many international sanctions and the bad blood with China? The athletes competing in the Winter Olympics are mainly from Western democracies such as Europe and the United States, which have already taken a number of positions on China’s human rights issues, and China has already made threats of retaliation; however, with only retaliation, but without any mutually acceptable compromise, it is only a matter of Time before the world becomes dichotomous, i.e., a “new Cold War” again. It is just a matter of time.
From the new U.S. President Joe Biden‘s claim that he will not lift the previous administration’s sanctions in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table, to the recent news that the U.S., Japan, Australia and India intend to hold a four-nation summit to promote their “free and open Indo-Pacific” and encircle China, it is clear that the U.S. government’s hard line will not change significantly in the near future. There will be no major changes in the near future. Even if the Chinese Foreign Ministry talks about the “spirit of win-win cooperation” or “non-conflict and non-confrontation,” it is basically useless; instead of weakening the international encirclement network, what China has done in the past few months has caused the new U.S. administration to choose to follow a similar course as the previous one. The result is exactly what the Chinese Foreign Ministry loves to say: “Lifting a stone to smash one’s own feet.”
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