Mission accomplished. The fireworks have already finished with one last message written in the sky: “We are all one family”. The torch has already gone out in the National Stadium, popularly known as El Nido. With the Beijing Winter Olympics over after Sunday’s closing ceremony, the divisions that politicized the event on the world stage remain unchanged, but Chinese President Xi Jinping can boast of having met all his goals on the ground. What mattered to him: the intern.
In his closing speech, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, assured before Xi himself at the National Stadium that Beijing has organized the event in an “extraordinary” way, in “magnificent” facilities.
The sports macro-event has represented a moment of national unity and has served to reinforce the country’s prestige in the eyes of its citizens, with blows such as Xi’s proposal for a new world order together with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the day inaugural. The competitions have been carried out with hardly any incidents – the great exception, the controversy surrounding the doping of the Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva –, the covid has been kept at bay and foreign athletes have refrained from taking advantage of the event to make political statements.
Even in the external field —where the Games arrived marked by the diplomatic boycott of the United States and part of its allies, in protest at the human rights abuses of the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang region— attention has been focused on the sports results. Or in the increasingly tense crisis in Ukraine.
Shining days for Xi
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For Xi, the two weeks of the Games have presented an opportunity to polish his credentials as head of state and the highest international representative of his country. After a two-year hiatus in his personal meetings with other leaders, as part of China’s precautions against covid, he received the leaders of some thirty countries, especially Putin. The meeting between the two made it clear to what extent both countries have opted for their de facto alliance to respond to the United States, their common enemy. Both “perceive an enormous synergy”, points out Jakub Jakóbowski, from the Polish Center for Oriental Studies.
But it not only deepened the relationship with Russia. Also, among others, with governments of the new Latin American left, such as the one headed by the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, or that of the Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso. In the case of the Peronist, he agreed with his Chinese counterpart to initiate the process for a future free trade agreement, add Argentina to the New Silk Road and sealed agreements for issues such as the use of Chinese Hualong technology in the construction of the Atucha III nuclear plant. Fernández declared his support for the principle of “one China” that Beijing defends and that accepts that Taiwan is part of China. Beijing, for its part, expressed support for Argentina’s claims over the Falklands. Lasso left with the commitment that China will study an extension for the repayment terms of credits worth 5,200 million dollars (4,600 million euros).
600 million viewers
Enthusiasm on the streets — initially inconspicuous, not least due to the airtight COVID-19 bubble separating contestants from Chinese residents — grew as the Chinese team garnered its biggest medal haul in history. in a Winter Games, with nine golds. Two teenagers, Chinese-American Eileen Gu and young actor and snowboarder Su Yiming, have become sports megastars and the faces of the Games with three golds and two silvers between them, to cheers from an enthusiastic populace. Even the event’s mascot, the skiing panda Bing Dwen Dwen, has become an object of desire thanks to a clever campaign of marketing on social networks. More than 600 million viewers, 40% of the Chinese population, have watched one of the competitions, according to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The enthusiasm has, in turn, triggered consumption in the winter sports sector. Depending on the trading platform jd.com, purchases of ski products grew by 322% during these two weeks, those of ice skating, by 430%. The more affluent middle classes – who have money to spend, desire to travel and no way to do it abroad, given that the borders continue to be almost completely closed due to the fight against covid – have found an alternative in expensive winter sports. of leisure.
But, as much as what happened, success is also measured by what did not happen. China has been able to show off its control system against covid and prevent new outbreaks from emerging. The hermetic bubble, which was imposed even more rigidly than in Tokyo at the Summer Games to isolate the population from cases among international visitors, has worked perfectly. No jump was detected from the more than 400 cases of infection among delegations and facility workers to Beijing residents. Tickets were not sold to the public; in-person spectators were by invitation, after undergoing at least four PCR tests to guarantee that they were free of coronavirus. Although the reverse of the coin meant that athletes who tested positive in daily PCR tests had to give up competing and be confined, seeing their Olympic dream slip away.
If China managed to prevent new outbreaks of covid from emerging, it also dodged another problem, the scandal surrounding the tennis player Peng Shuai, who in November accused a former senior Chinese official of sexual abuse. Peng gave an interview to the French sports newspaper L’Equipe in which, although he did not dispel fears abroad that he is being watched by the authorities, he maintained that he was completely free. The 36-year-old athlete also attended several competitions throughout the two weeks of the Games.
No athletes made any public statements embarrassing to China about Xinjiang or the human rights situation in the host country during their stay, following earlier warnings from the Chinese government that making political statements could have consequences. The complaints of some athletes about the rigid measures against covid or about the quality of the food were silenced within the country. The Chinese media, however, echoed abundantly the praise of other participants, especially the American skier Aaron Blunk, who assured that Beijing had done a “stellar job” with the Games and denounced that Twitter had closed his account for having been complimentary to China.
All these compliments contrast with what was happening in the West at the same time. In a press conference on the eve of the closing, Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced the censorship in the sports event. “The 2022 Winter Olympics have helped cement the human rights violations that the Chinese government first introduced during the Games. [de Verano] 2008″, denounced Yaqiu Wang, HRW researcher for China. “It should be the last time [se permiten] abusive Olympic hosts,” he added. In the United States, the numbers of television viewers of the Games have been much lower than those of the Games in Pyeongchang (South Korea) four years ago: this week the audience was reduced by half compared to then.
With the Olympic flag already delivered to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the organizers of the 2026 Games, China – and Xi – now turn the page on a busy political calendar, which will focus on the annual legislative session, in early March. He also awaits the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China in the fall, in which the almighty president will see his mandate renewed for at least five more years. And, 6,500 kilometers away, what can happen in the Ukraine.
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