So the 2022 Olympic Games are happening, right? Well, COVID-19 is trending in the right direction globally and Beijing will also have to fend off the threat of a boycott (more of that later), but we should have a pretty good sense of where things stand by the summer.

I don’t actually think the Tokyo Olympics have much bearing on Beijing, although if Tokyo progresses as (currently) planned, it would be staggering to see Beijing subsequently called off. I’ve heard talk that if Tokyo is scrapped, then Beijing will be too, but personally I think a Tokyo cancellation would only make China even more determined to host their Games. So while Tokyo in August is a marker, I would look instead to what happens just a few days later with the Summer World University Games in Chengdu, scheduled to start on August 18. The last version in Naples, Italy, was a slightly scaled down affair, but Chengdu is due to be back at the level of 2017 (Taipei) and Gwangju (2015), which each hosted more than 11,000 athletes. So that should provide a solid indication of how China plans to cope with hosting thousands of athletes, international travel restrictions, quarantine, testing, vaccination requirements and all the other lovely things we now have to deal with.