The Joe Biden Administration has decided to transfer its pressure against the rights abuses of the Xi Jinping regime to the great global showcase of an Olympic event. The White House announced this Monday that no US official will attend the Winter Olympics to be held next February in Beijing, a diplomatic boycott that does not include athletes, but whose mere announcement makes a dent and will open another front with the giant Asian.
The escalation in the Xi government’s crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong or against Uighurs and other minorities in the Xinjiang region forced the US president to take some action, vowing to make human rights a pillar of his foreign policy. The retaliation, however, falls short of the precedent of President Jimmy Carter, who in 1980 vetoed the participation of both US authorities and athletes in the Moscow Summer Olympics, in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
“The athletes of the United States team have our full support, and we will be cheering them on from home, but we will not contribute to the fanfare of the Games,” said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki at her press conference this Monday. daily.
Biden has not dared this time to a measure as forceful as Carter’s, which deprived his own athletes of the opportunity to compete, something that some Republican parliamentarians like Senator Tom Cotton, who advocated for a total boycott, claimed. “The Biden Government will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the 2022 Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games,” said Psaki, although they have not considered it appropriate, he added, “to penalize athletes who have been training and preparing for this moment”.
The spokeswoman has justified the decision with references to “genocide and crimes against humanity that persist in Xinjiang, as well as other human rights abuses.” The move, according to Psaki, “sends a clear message” to Beijing that its policy cannot be normalized. President Biden himself had already advanced weeks ago that he was considering this measure. Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez backed the diplomatic boycott and called on “other countries that share the values of the United States to join” the measure.
This Monday, after the White House announcement, the Chinese regime has already warned that it will retaliate. “If the United States continues with its position, China will undoubtedly take strong countermeasures,” said the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, at a press conference, according to statements collected by Reuters.
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For the regime, the appointment that begins on February 4 is a golden opportunity to sell the world a positive image of the country and counter international criticism for the authoritarian drift. The latest events, however, complicate this endeavor. The WTA, the body that governs the professional women’s tennis circuit, decided a few days ago to cancel all its competitions in China as a result of the scandal related to tennis player Peng Shuai, who denounced former Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli for sexual abuse.
Biden and Xi held a meeting by videoconference in mid-November in order to explore ways to improve communication and prevent disagreements between the two powers that could end up causing, in the words of the American, “a conflict, intentional or not.” Even so, the president who has convened an international conference for democracies this week could not afford to do nothing before the Olympic event.
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