Do we really have another 43 weeks of boycott talk to go before the Beijing Winter Olympics? As the peerless China watcher Bill Bishop wrote this week, a boycott is “highly unlikely”, but it’s connected to so many other China issues du jour that the column inches just keep flowing. As always, there’s a round-up below, but plenty of other stuff, too, including Ping Pong Diplomacy, which happened exactly 50 years ago today (April 10). If you have any questions or specific topics of interest you’d like to see covered, please feel free to comment or email me at mark@chinasportsinsider.com
Weekly Roundup
- 50th anniversary of Ping Pong Diplomacy
- Canadian heptathlete gains Chinese citizenship in Olympic bid
- How legitimate are the rescheduled Olympic test events?
- US discusses a boycott with allies – then backtracks
- More boycott news from around the world
- Other features and stories in the build-up to Beijing 2022
Ping Pong Diplomacy Turns 50
Today, we have panda diplomacy, vaccine diplomacy, and other forms, too. But it all started with table tennis. If you’re new to the concept of Ping Pong Diplomacy, here’s the shortest summary I can provide:
In 1971, China was closed to much of the world. That spring, the World Table Tennis Championships took place in Nagoya, Japan. On April 6, 18-year-old US player Glenn Cowan (pictured bottom left in the above TIME magazine cover) had gone on the Chinese team bus by mistake on the way to practice. After an awkward 10 minutes of silence, he was approached by star player Zhuang Zedong, who gave him a gift. The players got talking, and the Chinese invited the US to visit straight after the tournament. They accepted and arrived in China on April 10. Kissinger went later that year, Nixon the year after and, by 1979, the US and China had normalized relations – right around the time when China’s modern economy first took off. It hasn’t looked back since.
Ping Pong Diplomacy was a hugely significant event (see the Twitter thread below for more, or read this nice recap and video with some of the protagonists 50 years later). Perhaps the US-China would have eventually figured things out some other way, but this is probably the greatest example of sports and politics mixing in history. It always makes me laugh when people say sports and politics don’t – or shouldn’t – mix. What they mean of course is that sports and politics shouldn’t mix when they don’t approve of the issue involved. The IOC is always quick to claim it is apolitical or say that athletes shouldn’t protest within their sporting arenas. But the speed with which Thomas Bach took credit for his role in the two Koreas marching under a united flag ahead of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics was breathtaking.
See also: Ping Pong Diplomacy resonates a half century later [AP], 50 years on, little hope for a new ping pong diplomacy [European Notebook], What we can learn from Ping-Pong Diplomacy [Global Times]
Schultz Family’s Olympic Dreams Rooted in China
This next story has more to do with Tokyo 2020 than Beijing 2022, but there is a link to the Winter Olympics (as you’ll see), plus it’s just a great story.
Heptathlete Nina Schultz, born in Canada to a German father and a Chinese mother, has recently gained Chinese citizenship in a bid to compete for China at the Tokyo Olympics. However, despite winning a silver for Canada at the 2018 Commonweath Games, she hasn’t competed much recently, so she needs things to fall into place over the next few weeks when she competes in some domestic trials in China in her bid to make the team.
Given the current state of Canada-China relations, her performance could attract some pretty big headlines in Tokyo, but Schultz’s decision to switch actually goes back several years – and, in a sense, several decades. Both grandparents on her mother’s side are former national Chinese high jump champions. Her grandmother, Zheng Fengrong, became the first female Chinese athlete to set a world record when she cleared 1.77m in 1957. According to China Daily, Zheng was later persecuted during the Cultural Revolution for being “too egotistical”. But during the Beijing 2008 opening ceremonies, she was one of eight athletes chosen to carry the Olympic flag and received a letter of recognition from the IOC.
Zheng’s Olympic dreams were dashed because China boycotted all Games from 1956-80 due to the IOC’s official recognition of Taiwan. But those Olympic dreams have lived on in her Canadian-born grandchildren. Her older brother Ty was scouted a couple of years ago by Chinese Olympic ice hockey recruiters looking for North American players of Chinese descent, and he has most recently played for the KRS-BSU Beijing team in Russia’s second-tier VHL. Ty said at the time, “If Canadian players can join the South Korean team [at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics], then as a guy of Chinese descent who can speak Chinese, I want to go to China to play.” Ty’s quest to play for China at the Beijing Winter Olympics – along with other ethnically Chinese North Americans – appears to have stalled (I’ll write more about this another time), but it looks like Zheng may have her Olympic dreams realized one way or another – 64 years later!
Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a nasty side to this story, too. The National Post article, which brought Schultz’s story into the wider English-language realm, focused pretty heavily on the geopolitics angle, including this asinine quote:
The woman’s decision to compete for China at this point is “troubling,” said Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing. Having been brought up in B.C., “she doesn’t seem to have strong and enduring ties to China,” said the Macdonald Laurier Institute fellow.
So someone who is half-Chinese somehow doesn’t have “strong and enduring ties to China”?? OK…
The article has prompted a huge amount of online abuse towards Schultz, to the point where it appears she has deleted her social media accounts. Schultz actually contacted Post author Tom Blackwell to point out the flaws in his narrative, but he was less than sympathetic in exchanges posted online. While Schultz said that her decision to switch nationalities has been years in the making – arguing that there is no need to highlight her story now – I do think it is legitimately newsworthy given that’s she only just become available to compete for China as of this month and is currently attempting to qualify for Tokyo. But some of the other stuff in Blackwell’s piece was unnecessary and undoubtedly contributed to the abuse Schultz received. See also: Olympic gold medalist Chloe Kim shares her experiences with anti-Asian hate [ESPN]
Testing Venues or Ticking Boxes?
Beijing has continued its 10-day initial testing period this month, which has partly replaced the official series of Olympic test events, all of which were canceled last winter. State media, as usual, has been glowing with praise about the work that’s been done, how great the venues are functioning and the technological advancements made.
But one sports industry executive I spoke to this week offered a very different view, saying that the “Experience Beijing” test events are not even considered proper test events by the IOC:
They are really just a test of air conditioners, electric doors and lights in the bathrooms! [State broadcaster] CCTV is also testing the functionality of TV cameras, but it doesn’t matter since the set up, run down and operation has nothing to do with reality.
Given the situation and travel restrictions around the world, there’s not really too much China could have done, but in the absence of a full run-through of the venues and operations – and with no international competitors putting those venues through their paces – how prepared will Beijing really be by next February?
In or Out for the US?
The US State Department made some waves this week, with spokesperson Ned Price quoted as saying:
…an Olympic boycott was one option “on the agenda” as the Biden administration discussed its approach to China and the Beijing Olympics with allies. Asked at a press briefing if the US was discussing a joint boycott, Price said: “It is something that we certainly wish to discuss . . . A coordinated approach will be not only in our interest, but also in the interest of our allies and partners.”
But Price then took to Twitter with the following clarification:
There was then a full-scale retraction with CNBC receiving this emailed statement a senior State Department official: “Our position on the 2022 Olympics has not changed. We have not discussed and are not discussing any joint boycott with allies and partners.”
So that’s clear then.
Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian warned of a “robust Chinese response” to a potential Olympics boycott, adding, “The politicization of sports will damage the spirit of the Olympic Charter and the interests of athletes from all countries. The international community, including the US Olympic Committee, will not accept it.”
Susanne Lyons, chair of the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee, reiterated the group’s position at a media summit for the Tokyo Olympics this week, saying, “We at the USOPC oppose athlete boycotts because they’ve been shown to negatively impact athletes while not effectively addressing global issues in the past.” She also said boycotts also put “unfair pressure” on corporate sponsors who provide the bulk of financial support for athletes and athletic programs over the long term, not just for specific events. See also: The Beijing Games Are Giving the Biden Administration an Olympic-Sized Headache [WSJ], Olympics-Be prepared for Beijing Games boycott talk, warns USOPC chief [Reuters]
Elsewhere, plenty of articles have connected the Biden administration’s stance on the Georgia voting law with the US stance on the Beijing Olympics. The WSJ’s editorial board says the President has put himself in a bind over athletic boycotts in Biden, Georgia and the Beijing Olympics. See also: Baseball takes a stand: Is Beijing next? [The Australian], ‘The View’ derails into awkward silence as McCain clashes with Whoopi over Georgia voting law [Fox News]
Boycott Watch
Risk consultancy Eurasia Group has outlined several kinds of potential boycotts and assigned probabilities to each:
- Diplomatic boycott (60% likelihood), where government leaders do not attend the Games.
- Athletic boycott (30%), where athletes from one or more countries do not attend.
- Economic boycott (unspecified, presumed low), where a country bans its own spectators, broadcasters and sponsors.
- “Boycott lite” (10%), an “outlier scenario” where tensions between the West and China ease, and there are mild political statements, but no formal boycott.
The Washington Post’s editorial board leaves its stance in no doubt in Companies must boycott the Beijing Olympics, concluding:
A simple question must be put to any Western firm affiliating itself with these Games: Why are you sponsoring the Olympics in a country sponsoring a genocide? There is only one good answer: We’ve decided we won’t.
Although, just two days later, Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor, asked “Do companies really want to sponsor the Genocide Olympics?“, so you get the sense that Hiatt has an outsized influence behind the scenes. Looking forward to your next nuanced take, Fred.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof seems somewhat more realistic in Here’s How to Handle the ‘Genocide Olympics’ in Beijing, arguing that:
Athletes should participate and television should broadcast the competition, but government officials and companies should stay out of it. And I hope athletes while in Beijing will use every opportunity to call attention to repression in Xinjiang or elsewhere.
The most likely scenario is that athletes participate, television broadcast, and (some) government officials stay away, but companies are already too invested at this point, and history tells us that only a handful of athletes (if that) will likely do anything that even vaguely approaches “protest” level.
See also: Olympic leaders struggle to deal with China’s history of human rights abuses [LA Times], Allowing China to host the Olympics would be a mistake [Times Union]
Other Stories and Links
- North America won’t host bobsled or skeleton races next season [AP]
- Canadian ice master passes technique torch in China [Xinhua]
- After Covid scare, slim and refreshed US curling skip John Shuster looking ahead to Beijing 2022 Olympics [Olympic Channel]
- Team Canada secures Olympic figure skating entries for Beijing 2022 [Team Canada]
- Canada locks up men’s Olympic curling berth for Beijing 2022 [Team Canada]
See also:
- 44 Weeks To Go: Test Events, Nike Reprieve & Chengdu Postponement
- 45 Weeks To Go: To Watch or Not To Watch?
- 46 Weeks To Go: Romney Speaks Out & Vaccine Spin
- 47 Weeks To Go: Vaccine Diplomacy & Fading Medal Hopes
- 48 Weeks To Go: Counter-Attacks & Paralympic Prep
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