Senator Mitt Romney this week joined a long line of people with a public opinion on whether the Winter Olympics should go ahead in Beijing, concluding that they should, but coupled with an economic and diplomatic boycott. Elsewhere, China has stepped up its vaccine game, but – so far, at least – it’s a lot of spin over substance.
Weekly Roundup
- Mitt Romney calls for “economic and diplomatic boycott”
- Latest vaccine developments and implications for 2022
- Boycott threats from around the world
- Further fallout from IOC Session
- Other features and stories in the build-up to Beijing 2022
Romney’s Alternative Boycott
It seems that any US Presidential hopeful – past or present – must offer an opinion on the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and Mitt Romney, who ran for the top job in 2008 and 2012, has done just that. However, unlike others – like Nikki Haley or Tom Cotton – Romney actually knows a thing or two about the Olympics, having been a key figure behind the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Writing in The New York Times, Romney mentions all the CCP trigger words du jour as he states that “China deserves our condemnation”, but says that the Games should go ahead, so that the athletes themselves aren’t punished by a “counterproductive” boycott, before appealing to nationalist sentiment back home with this corker plucked straight from the Hollywood playbook:
We would also lose the global symbolism of our young American heroes standing atop the medals podium, hand to their hearts, as “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays on Chinese soil.
His final sentence is this: “An economic and diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics — while proceeding with the Games — is the right answer.”
It’s an interesting piece, but I think it only half works. In terms of the diplomatic boycott, it certainly feels as if there will be far fewer western heads of state in attendance next year – compared with 2008, when leaders from Australia, Finland, France, Japan, Norway, South Korea, the UK and the US attended one or both of the Opening & Closing Ceremonies – even accounting for the different in scale between a Winter and Summer Games.
But it doesn’t seem as if Romney really understands how the Chinese economy works. It’s not North Korea, where dollars are all funneled up to the powers-that-be. Visitors – whether athletes, coaches, support staff or spectators (more on them later) – will be staying in western hotel chains, and spending money in many internationally-owned places, so his line about “preventing [Americans] from contributing to the enormous revenues the Chinese Communist Party will raise from hotels, meals and tickets” comes off as hyperbole. But hyperbole is certainly par for the course these days. See also: Mitt Romney onto something in his call for a targeted boycott of 2022 Beijing Olympics [USA Today]
China’s Vaccine Diplomacy Part II
Last week, I wrote about China’s deal with the IOC to provide Chinese-made vaccines to anyone heading to the Tokyo Olympics this summer – an offer the Japanese promptly declined. But behind the headlines, it appeared that these vaccines can only be provided through existing channels i.e. countries where China is already exporting its vaccines, which tallies 69 countries (donations) and 28 countries (commercial deals). Most of the traditional Olympic powerhouse nations are not on either of those lists, rendering this article from The Diplomat largely irrelevant:
Since then, there’s been another development, which has drawn a similarly large number of headlines, but also appears to be largely symbolic. A growing number of Chinese embassies around the world have announced this week that they have re-opened for visa applications under pre-pandemic rules, with one condition – that applicants must first be inoculated with a Chinese-made vaccine.
Many of the countries where the Chinese Embassies have made this announcement don’t have access to a Chinese-made vaccine, so it’s essentially useless and doesn’t open up China’s borders at all. [Side note: a “Chinese-made vaccine” could be either a Chinese vaccine (eg Sinopharm, Sinovac etc) or a foreign vaccine manufactured in China, even though so far none have been approved for this purpose.]
But what this does do is two-fold: it puts pressure on other countries to mutually recognize Chinese and foreign vaccines in some sort of health passport arrangement that could lead to a genuine loosening of the border restrictions, and it also puts pressure on foreign vaccine makers to submit applications to manufacture their vaccines in China. Both of these have huge political ramifications, which I won’t go into here, but, in summary, there is a possibility that we may be in a better travel situation by early next year.
That said, with Tokyo reportedly set to ban foreign spectators, there’s no guarantee that Beijing would act any differently and allow them (making Romney’s proposed economic boycott above a rather moot point). After all, it’s not at all clear what net benefits China would gain from an influx of foreigners for the Olympics. But, in the meantime, China is getting a decent amount of good publicity around the world when it comes to vaccines without actually having to do anything.
IOC’s China Challenge
This week’s long read comes from former FT sports editor David Owen in his column for inside the games titled Why the coming trial by op-ed over China could hit the IOC where it hurts. Among the excellent points made are:
- China appears to have declared war on the IOC’s most significant Chinese commercial partner, Alibaba.
- The IOC likely regrets not treating Norway – the early frontrunner as 2022 host – better back in 2014.
- A reminder that when Beijing won the race for 2022 by the skin of its teeth (awarded in 2015), relations between the West and China were a great deal better than today.
Owen also quotes a few of my tweets, and references my usual scepticism over the claim that 300 million people in China will participate in winter sports, to which he adds “a) that I doubt that this 300 million number would need to be attained, or anything like it, for winter sports executives to regard the whole exercise as a success, and b) it seems reasonable to expect a bit of a surge, even if I suspect it might prove, for the most part, short-lived.”
He’s absolutely right, of course. The winter sports market has seen unprecedented growth in China over the last few years, despite the challenges of COVID-19 over the past two winters, and the Olympic venue in Zhangjiakou is looking very impressive. We’ll never know what that actual growth is, though 30 million new winter sports participants – a tenth of the supposed goal – would be a resounding success. This target has been redefined many times: I was once told by a government official that the 300m figure simply referred to the population of northeastern China, the country’s traditional winter sports hub. But it speaks to the fragility of the system that this obviously ludicrous number cannot be revised to something more realistic for fear of admitting failure in public.
See also: IOC president believes boycotting Beijing Winter Olympics would achieve nothing [PA Media], Bach claims IOC “not a super-world Government” as Beijing 2022 criticism grows [insidethegames], Olympic chief pleads for no boycott of Beijing 2022 [AFP]
Boycott Watch
Romney’s op-ed, discussed above, and the reaction to it have drawn the bulk of the headlines this week. But there have been a few other pieces. European politicians in Brussels have called for the EU and international community to boycott the next Winter Olympic Games. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby argues to Move the Beijing Olympics — or Shun Them, while Canada’s National Post brings news of a poll that says the Majority of Canadians think Canada should boycott Beijing Olympics, further complicated by the situation of the two Michaels, whose trials are taking place in China at the moment.
Meanwhile, Mike Eruzione, the captain of the 1980 US Olympic ice hockey team that won the gold medal in Lake Placid in 1980, famously beating the Russians in the Miracle on Ice along the way, argues: Don’t boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics — dominate them. See also: Rights groups and Olympic leaders in Beijing Games stalemate [AP], Why a Full U.S. Boycott of China’s 2022 Olympics Could Be A Mistake [National Interest]
Other Stories and Links
- Beijing 2022 and Paris 2024 outline important year ahead [Olympic.org]
- Eileen Gu Ailing clinches big air bronze to close world championships with three medals [Xinhua]
- Participation in winter activities snowballing as Beijing Games near [China Daily]
- Zhangjiakou “ready to go” in Winter Olympics preparation [Xinhua]
See also:
- 47 Weeks To Go: Vaccine Diplomacy & Fading Medal Hopes
- 48 Weeks To Go: Counter-Attacks & Paralympic Prep
- 49 Weeks To Go: Testing, Testing, Testing
- 50 Weeks To Go: Corporate Conundrums & Olympic Agendas
- 51 Weeks To Go: Boycotts & Hockey Fights
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