Indian Tibetans in exile make props out of Olympic symbols to protest Beijing’s hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Several members of the U.S. Congress have continued to call for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics as a countermeasure to China’s human rights abuses. One lawmaker said that the Chinese Communist Party’s bid to host the Olympics is not motivated by a love of sports, “but rather as a political cause. Some Republicans also argued that since the IOC has failed to respond to concerns, “it’s time to take tougher action.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL)
“After seeing what the Chinese Communist Party has done, I think it’s very unconscionable,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) of Florida at a roundtable discussion on human rights in China Thursday (April 15).
“How can we offer the Chinese Communist Party a global stage, which is the Olympic sports competition, as a prize,” Rep. Waltz said, “and importantly, it would send a very strong message that the world is willing to turn a blind eye to these atrocities and allow the Communist Party to whitewash all this horrible of things to whitewash, and to me that’s very unconscionable.”
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), a Republican U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, echoed Walz’s statement. He said at the meeting that if the U.S. ignores everything and continues to push for the Winter Olympics, then Beijing will only grow bolder and in turn make more aggressive moves.
“For us to do nothing is to acquiesce to those actions (by the Chinese Communist Party), or at least it means we won’t do anything to oppose or stop the genocide that a hostile totalitarian regime like that is committing in western China,” Reschenthaler said.
Reschenthaler believes such a trend could even have an impact within the Chinese Communist Party’s political arena. “Xi Jinping has done a lot of nasty things that will help him consolidate power within the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.
Republican U.S. Rep. Walz (top right) hosted an online roundtable to discuss human rights in China.
Rep. Walz introduced a resolution in February calling on the International Olympic Committee to immediately move the location of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, saying the Biden administration should boycott the games if the venue is not changed in response to human rights violations by Chinese Communist authorities in Xinjiang Uighurs. Reschenthaler is involved in cosponsoring the bill.
“We have been asking the International Olympic Committee to move the games to another country so our athletes can compete,” Waltz said. However, the legislator said their calls have been continually ignored by the IOC.
Waltz went on to emphasize, “I want to make it very clear that moving to another country is the better option, but so far, with only 11 months left, I think we need to take stronger action.”
Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) was also present at Thursday’s roundtable discussion. As the first congressional Democrat to publicly voice support for moving the games to another country, Malinowski did not explicitly endorse efforts to fully boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics, but he emphasized that the issue of defending human rights in Congress knows no partisan boundaries.
“The Chinese Communist authorities are not fighting for these Olympic games to be held in China simply because they love sports; from the Chinese Communist Party’s standpoint, it is clearly a political cause. It would be naive of us to ignore that.”
Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)
Malinowski, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2014 to 2017, also called at the conference for the U.S. to promote international cooperation and work together to pressure China on human rights issues.
“One thing that I have found from my diplomatic experience dealing with the Chinese Communist Party is something that the Communist Party takes quite seriously, and that is the unity of the United States and its allies on an issue. So relying only on the United States alone will not achieve the results we want,” Malinowski said.
In addition to bringing together lawmakers from both parties, Thursday’s event also featured former Speaker of Congress Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, for her part, recorded a video message of support for congressional efforts to promote a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Also at the meeting were a number of people from various human rights and democracy activist groups and members of non-governmental organizations.
Gingrich said he, too, believed in the 1990s that China was headed for modernization and democratization. “But over the last six to 10 years it has continually disappointed,” Gingrich said, adding that seeing everything Xi Jinping has done, he believes it is important for the U.S. to send a signal to the Communist Party at this moment.
“If the Beijing dictator thinks the world doesn’t care, then we are sending an extremely dangerous signal that will probably lead to even more serious behavior in the future,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich further spoke of the key role that U.S. businesses play in addition to demanding government action.
I think it’s also important to communicate with the leaders of American business that you can’t tell us how worried you are about political correctness in the United States, but you kowtow to a dictator in Beijing,” he said.
Malinowski revealed that Congress is considering a bill that would primarily target U.S. businesses.
“I think we have to consider legislation that emphasizes the responsibility of corporate America to not succumb to the pressure of authoritarian regimes like the Chinese Communist Party to censor. I hope we can work together in a bipartisan way,” Malinowski said.
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