On March 11, 2021, IOC President Thomas Bach announced that China is willing to provide vaccines for participants in the Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Recently re-elected IOC President Thomas Bach announced that the IOC has reached an agreement with China to provide a new vaccine crown for athletes at the Tokyo and Beijing Olympic Games, to be paid for by the IOC. China is using the IOC to expand its “vaccine diplomacy” and to clear the way for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, according to some concerned about human rights issues in China. (By Wu Yitong/Cheng Wen)
China has pledged to provide new vaccines for athletes competing in this year’s Tokyo Olympics and next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, recently re-elected IOC President Thomas Bach announced on his website Thursday (11). The IOC will pay for the vaccines, Bach said, while respecting the vaccination programs of the participating countries themselves.
Chinese official media also revealed in the release that “for every dose of vaccine purchased by the IOC, China will also provide two more doses of vaccine to participating delegations, which they can offer to their own populations.
The Chinese Communist authorities are using the IOC to expand “vaccine diplomacy” and to clear the way for the Beijing Winter Olympics. (Screenshot from China Youth Network / March 12, 2021)
Bach’s announcement has sparked an uproar in Japan, where Mongolian professor Yang Haiying of Shizuoka University told the station that Japanese society generally does not trust the quality of vaccines produced in China and questions the agreement Bach made with the Chinese government for his re-election.
Yang Haiying said: Many people have already proposed a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and interest groups do not want the Beijing Winter Games to end. Bach’s political sense is very sensitive, Bach for his re-election must be patting Beijing’s back.
While Bach released the news that China is willing to provide vaccines to Olympic athletes, a statement published on the IOC’s official website also said that the IOC rejects lobbying by any political groups. Yang Haiying accused Bach of shooting himself in the foot, saying that Beijing’s “vaccine diplomacy” is a political act. He believes that it cannot be ruled out that China and the Olympic Organizing Committee are jointly staging this political show, mainly to remove resistance to the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Wuer Kaixi, a former leader of the 1989 academic movement and deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Legislative Yuan Human Rights Promotion Association, said the IOC is clearly playing a “pawn” role in the Chinese Communist Party‘s “vaccine diplomacy.
I call on the world to clearly reject this “vaccine diplomacy” by the Chinese government. I call on the world to explicitly reject this “vaccine diplomacy” by the Chinese government, and for the Olympic Committee not to be a pawn of the Chinese government and not to be a drummer for China’s big foreign propaganda.
U.S. Dialogue China member Guan Yao also criticized the IOC for endorsing China’s vaccines in the face of questions about their quality.
China has used the vaccine as a diplomatic and propaganda tool, and now it is using the IOC to sell it to the world,” Guan Yao said. The IOC, as an authoritative international organization, has made this provision despite the controversy over the efficiency and safety of the Chinese vaccine. I think the IOC has now been reduced to a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.
Tibetans and other organizations and activists protest the Beijing Winter Olympics in New York on March 11, 2021. (Twitter image by Students for a Free Tibet group)
Toshiro Muto, CEO of the Tokyo Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, told the media that The Japanese side was never informed before Bach’s announcement, stressing that the vaccinations were handled by the Japanese government itself. On Friday (12), the Japanese Olympic minister made it clear that the team will not receive the vaccine provided by China because Japan has not approved the Chinese vaccine.
The Tokyo Olympics were originally scheduled to be held last summer, but were postponed for a year due to the New Crown Epidemic, and with more than four months to go, many uncertainties still loom. It is reported that more than 10,000 athletes will participate in the Tokyo Summer Olympics, plus coaches, media reporters, volunteers and officials, totaling tens of thousands of people.
Beijing has been accused of genocide against the Uighurs and of suppressing Hong Kong people’s struggle for democracy, and more than 180 organizations and parliamentarians from several countries have called for a global boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics by the International Olympic Committee and the world.
China has been hit by several vaccine scandals in recent years, causing mainlanders to worry about the quality of domestic vaccines. The recent deaths and severe reactions after receiving the vaccine in Hong Kong have again raised public concern about the safety of domestic vaccines.
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