Beijing’s Olympic Redux

The Cold War is long over, but one might not realize it from the media coverage of the calls to boycott the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, which will take place from February 4 to 20. In December, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a “diplomatic boycott” of the 2022 Olympics in protest against the suppression of the Uyghur minority in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, which Washington has officially labeled a “genocide.” The use of the word “boycott” in the context of the Olympics conjures up the twin boycotts that became a memorable symbol of the Cold War, when the United States led a boycott by more than 60 nations of the Moscow 1980 Olympics and the USSR retaliated by leading a 14-nation boycott of the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics. (China and Romania actually broke the Soviet boycott and attended the Los Angeles Olympics.)

Leading up to the 2022 Winter Olympics, the call for boycotts gives the false impression that nothing has changed since the Cold War ended – not the Olympic Games, not China, and not the U.S.-led global order. But, in fact, all three have changed a great deal. To see the difference, it is only necessary to compare China’s first Olympics in 2008 with its second in 2022.

The Bids: 2008 and 2022

East Asian interest in hosting Olympic Games is often viewed with surprise in the West owing to the perception that these countries lack a sporting heritage like that of the West. But sports mega-events have long played a role in regional rivalries in East Asia, going back to the early 20th century, when East Asia became the first world region to have its own regional, multi-sport games, the Far Eastern Championship Games. Established in 1913, they continued every four years until the Japanese occupation of northeast China ended the games after 1934.

Arguably, Japan and China, and later Korea, have invested inter-state sports events and exchanges with more political importance than the West has, in part because of the importance of official pomp and ceremony in East Asian political culture. China’s Ping Pong Diplomacy in the 1970s was another example. Japan and South Korea utilized the hosting of Summer Olympics in 1964 and 1988, respectively, to mark their emergence on the world stage and their peaceful reintegration into the global community after war. Based on this precedent, China sought to do the same.

When China hosted its first Olympic Games, the Summer Olympics in 2008, the significance of the mega-event was clear to audiences both inside and outside China. It was widely seen as a “coming-out party” marking China’s emergence as an economic superpower. In China, it was considered the fulfillment of China’s “100-year dream,” because the first published call to host the Olympic Games, thus demonstrating that China had taken its place as an equal among the strong nations of the world, had been issued by YMCA-trained patriots in 1907.

The situation was very different when China bid for its first Winter Olympics in 2015. China had already had its coming-out party. Its economic stability during the global financial crisis that erupted soon after the 2008 games had helped to establish China as a worthy global partner.

Why Host the 2022 Winter Olympics?

So, for the Chinese leadership, what were the objectives of hosting these Olympic Games?

For one thing, the bid was a product of East Asian rivalries and the region’s distinctive emphasis on the pursuit of “soft power” in international relations. In 2004, Joseph Nye’s book “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics” argued that “soft power” – co-option and attraction – was becoming increasingly important in international relations, while “hard power” – the use of military coercion, economic incentives and sanctions – was becoming less important. Nye lent a name and a theory to the government focus on developing the “culture industry” that had already been going on in Japan and South Korea since the 1980s.

It makes sense that governments in both Japan and South Korea would compete with each other in what later came to be called soft power, because neither controls its own fate with respect to hard power. A big reason that the Tokyo 1964 and Seoul 1988 Olympics are today remembered as marking Japan’s and South Korea’s peaceful emergence as strong nations is that they were no threat to the West, since the U.S. held control over their military affairs. China controls its own military affairs, and that inevitably creates a sense of threat.

The rivalry over soft power between Japan, South Korea, and China is an important factor contributing to the bidding for mega-events, which have also included international expositions (the Shanghai World Expo 2010; Expo 2012 Yeosu, Korea; the Osaka World Expo 2025). In 2011, South Korea had won the bid for its first Winter Olympics, breaking the tie between China and South Korea in the number of Olympics hosted, then set at one Summer Olympics apiece. In 2013, Tokyo was awarded its second Summer Olympics, and it had also hosted two Winter Olympics (Sapporo 1974 and Nagano 1998).

There might also have been a domestic political calculation on the part of the Chinese Communist Party leaders who went through the experience of the Beijing games. Liu Qi was said to be one of the main figures pushing for the bid behind the scenes; he had been the Communist Party secretary of Beijing from 2002 to 2012, and president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. Although he was retired when the bid was launched, he must have believed there would be benefits based on what he saw in 2008. In 2008, Xi Jinping had been identified as the next general secretary of the Communist Party, and was named as the chief of the Leadership Small Group that had ultimate authority over the 2008 games once they were underway. Perhaps when he took up the office of party chairman in 2012, Xi considered that an Olympic Games under his leadership would play a role in how he is remembered in history. As perhaps further evidence that party high officials had a positive assessment of the impact of the 2008 games, it is also worth pointing out that Zhu Shanlu, a high-ranking official in Beijing, was appointed as the party secretary of Nanjing in 2008 and two years later led a successful bid for Nanjing to host the 2014 Youth Olympic Games.

In addition to serving international objectives, Olympic Games may well serve domestic and personal political objectives. In 2008, a staff member at the U.S. Embassy told me that 400,000 local government officials were expected to come to Beijing for the games, a figure I could not confirm. Presumably the visitors received VIP treatment from local government and corporate hosts, who utilized the games to strengthen their relationship networks. This time, the COVID-19 restrictions will severely limit the number of VIPs, and so this objective will not be fully realized.

A third objective for the 2022 Winter Games is to stimulate economic development and tourism in the mountain areas of Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, where the snow events are located. As in the West, skiing in China is associated with an elite, leisured lifestyle practiced by a well-to-do cosmopolitan class. By providing access to ski resorts, via high-speed trains, for the members of the upwardly mobile middle class residing in Beijing, the party can keep them happy and demonstrate that it cares about their quality of life – thus responding to escalating public criticism of the single-minded emphasis on economic development, often to the detriment of quality of life, that characterized the first three decades of the reform era. Furthermore, the presence of this kind of lifestyle in China signals to the outside world that Chinese elites are now prosperous enough to link up with the global elites who travel the circuit of scenic, luxurious mountain resorts.

Control of COVID-19 Outbreaks and the Pursuit of Soft Power

Of course, the Chinese leadership could not have anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic when they were bidding for the 2022 games, but they had gained relevant experience in 2008. A little-known fact about the Olympic Games is that they always involve a huge domestic and international effort to identify infectious disease outbreaks as quickly as possible in order to prevent the worldwide spread of an infectious disease by athletes and spectators returning back home. This is known as “infectious disease surveillance.”

When SARS broke out in China in 2003, Beijing did not have an up-to-date national disease surveillance system. The prospect of a SARS-like epidemic breaking out at the 2008 Olympic Games and being taken back to the 205 participating countries and territories mobilized a new level of collaboration between China and the World Health Organization (WHO). China revamped its public health law and, for the first time, set up a complete public health surveillance network conforming with WHO technical guidelines. No major health incidents were reported during the 2008 Olympic Games.

The Chinese leadership already understood the importance of disease surveillance and control at Olympic Games back in the early 2000s. Now, as the games are unexpectedly being held in the midst of a pandemic, controlling COVID-19 outbreaks is very important for the state’s soft power strategy. Demonstrating that China is a responsible member of the world community, and that it has an effective disease control system, can help restore the damage done to China’s reputation by the unfortunate fact that the pandemic started there.

The Olympics and the Changing World Order

Starting in 2018, three consecutive Olympic Games will be held in East Asia (PyeongChang 2018, Tokyo 2020, and Beijing 2022). This is the first time in Olympic history that such a series will be hosted outside the developed West.

In the 118 years ending with the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, 45 of 50 Olympic Games had rotated among Europe, North and Central America, and Australia. The remaining five were held in East Asia. South America hosted its first Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, followed by the three East Asian Olympics. So altogether the Olympics will have skipped over the traditional Western powers for 12 years, 2012 to 2024.

Ten months before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decision on the hosting rights for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Oslo, Norway, withdrew its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games as a result of domestic political wrangling, leaving as the remaining contenders Almaty, Kazakhstan and the joint bid between Beijing and Zhangjiakou. For the first time in the history of the modern Olympics there was no Western contender. Furthermore, the two remaining bid countries, Kazakhstan and China, were both in Asia. Beijing was selected as the host at the IOC Session in July 2015.

Within the sports world there was a backlash to the bid process because it left only two so-called “dictatorships,” as they were labeled in the Western press, bidding for the 2022 Winter Games. The national Olympic committees of Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden – the last three of which had discontinued bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics on account of public opposition – presented a report on “The Bid Experience” to the IOC. They argued that “democracies” are at a disadvantage in bidding for Olympics because governments accountable to public opinion are reluctant to take on the financial and political risks. They proposed that the IOC should establish a monitoring agency with power to sanction host cities that do not meet social responsibility standards, including human rights.

The IOC modified the host city candidature procedures in successive steps starting with the first post-Tokyo Olympics bid contest, eliminating the open bid process and the vote by the Session, and giving the Executive Board more control. The result was that the four of the next five Olympics will all take place in conventional Western powers that have hosted multiple Olympics: France (Paris 2024), Italy (Milano Cortina 2026), the U.S. (Los Angeles 2028), and Australia (Brisbane 2032). The 2030 Winter Olympics have yet to be awarded. In 2017, the IOC added a clause about human rights to the Host City Contract for Paris 2024. The contract with Beijing pre-dates the new clause.

The bigger picture is that a tectonic shift in the global order is taking place, and it is reflected in the world of international sports. The Olympic system is still Western-dominated, but the West is losing its preeminence. In private conversations, some sports officials from outside the West will say that it knows it, and that the bid process was revised in order to maintain control.

The Cold War Era of National Boycotts Is Gone – But You Might Not Have Noticed

The emblematic twin boycotts of the Cold War era were kicked off when President Jimmy Carter coordinated the U.S.-led boycott to protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The complete failure of the U.S.-led boycott in achieving any political objective, not to mention the irony that the United States invaded Afghanistan 20 years later, contributed to the emergence of a consensus among national Olympic committees and heads of state: namely, that boycotts do not accomplish political goals and only harm the athletes. Recently leaders of the sports world, including IOC President Thomas Bach and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, have reiterated this position.

Starting with the Winter Olympics in Albertville in 1992, the first post-Cold War Olympics, there have been no national boycotts. Since then, it has been ever-increasing numbers of non-governmental organizations, particularly human rights organizations, that have called for the IOC to move the games to another host city, or for nations to keep athletes home. You might not have realized this from the media coverage. Despite – or perhaps because of – the growing number of NGOs that link their causes with the Olympic Games to attract media attention, the consensus against national boycotts among governments and sport authorities may be even stronger today than it was in 2008.

As we head into the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games, there are similarities and differences with the situation in 2008. Then and now, no national government, Olympic committee, or famous active athlete called for a national boycott of the Games. In the leadup to both the previous and present Chinese Olympics, a U.S. House resolution calling for a complete national boycott didn’t pass.

Diplomatic Protest, 2008 vs. 2022

In 2008, the main controversy was the suppression of the separatist movement in Tibet, which had sparked widespread protests inside Tibet, as well as protests organized by NGOs surrounding the international torch relay (the IOC eliminated the international legs of torch relays after that). In 2008, the main form of diplomatic protest by nations was for a head of state to stay away from the Opening Ceremony, or not come to Beijing at all, even though those countries did send other government representatives, in some cases very large delegations. Some heads of state went even further in the months before the games, defying Beijing to receive the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism who lives in exile in India. U.S. President George W. Bush awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor 10 months before the Olympics, while simultaneously assuring the Chinese leadership that he would attend the Opening Ceremony.

In short, there was an incipient diplomatic protest action in 2008 that did not fully materialize because the U.S. did not support it, and there was no label for it. “Diplomatic boycott” is a new label in the context of the Olympic Games, so the Biden administration gets credit for inventing a new diplomatic tool. It refers to a ban on the presence of all “official government representatives” at the games. Shortly after announcing the boycott, the U.S. State Department requested 30 visas for support staff to go to China for the Olympics, a source of satirical commentary from Chinese spokespeople. It appears that low-level functionaries do not count as “official government representatives.”

Most of the countries that have now announced support for the diplomatic boycott did not send a head of state to the Opening Ceremony in 2008, including Britain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, and Lithuania. Australia and the U.S. are the only two nations that sent heads of state in 2008 but have declared a diplomatic boycott in 2022. In 2008, Bush was the first and only U.S. president to attend an Olympic Opening Ceremony outside the U.S., and was accompanied by a huge entourage that included his wife and daughter; it was a major diplomatic effort.

The situation in 2008 was as muddled as it is in 2022, since nations offered other excuses and claimed they were not engaging in a political protest when it appeared that, indeed, they were. New Zealand’s prime minister did not attend the 2008 Opening Ceremony, but, technically speaking, New Zealand is not following the current diplomatic boycott because its official explanation is that it will not send a VIP delegation on account of the pandemic – an explanation also given by Austria, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Sweden, who have equivocated on whether their decisions are a political protest.

Perhaps most indicative of China’s changing status in the global economy in the last 14 years is that many of the no-shows at the Opening Ceremony in 2008 have refused to join the diplomatic boycott in 2022. The heads of state of Czechia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain did not attend the 2008 Opening Ceremony. They have not joined the diplomatic boycott this time around, although Germany and Spain are still undecided. The secretary-general of the United Nations did not attend the 2008 ceremony but has accepted the invitation to attend the 2022 ceremony.

This precedent has not been mentioned in current commentaries, and it seems to be largely forgotten – although probably not by the Chinese leadership, which tracked it carefully. There was never any specific Chinese retaliation to the no-shows in 2008, since the non-appearances were part of a larger pattern in relationships. The same may be true this time around, despite threats from Chinese spokespeople. The fact that the no-shows at the 2008 Opening Ceremony seem long-forgotten may provide a lesson for Biden’s endeavor. Perhaps Zhao Lijian, the sharp-tongued spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, was correct when he said in a December press conference, “Those politicians calling for a boycott are putting on a show for their own political self-interest and hype; no one cares whether they come or not, and it will have no influence whatsoever on Beijing’s successfully hosting of the Winter Olympics.”

China Is Joining the Transnational World of Sports

In the Cold War era, sports fields were one of the only venues in which Americans could meet Soviets and people from the socialist bloc face to face. The athletes from socialist countries spoke little or no English, however, and they were in any case prevented from speaking with athletes from capitalist countries by their ever-present chaperones. It was a truly divided world: divided by ideology, culture, boycotts, embargoes, and the absence of official diplomatic relations.

That is simply not the case today. Sports are now one of the most transnational realms of global society. Citizenship-switching by top athletes is an everyday occurrence and top coaches move freely around the globe. China, although it lagged for years, is finally abandoning its xenophobia of the last half century and assimilating into the transnational culture of sports.

There will most likely be Canadians and Americans on the Chinese men’s hockey team (the official roster is not yet posted), and there will be U.S. born-and-raised Chinese Americans representing China in figure skating and snowboarding. Chinese law does not allow dual citizenship, but the athletes and their spokespeople have refused to answer the question of whether they gave up their Canadian and U.S. passports, suggesting that Chinese citizenship law is being bent to accommodate them.

One of these athletes, snowboarder Eileen Gu, is a defending world champion and gold medal threat in three events – halfpipe, big air, and slopestyle. The child of a U.S.-born father and Chinese immigrant mother, she grew up in the Bay Area, but began representing China in 2019. Now 18 years old, she is also an elite model and has multiple major corporate sponsors that include U.S.-based Red Bull energy drink, Victoria’s Secret lingerie, and Tiffany Jewelry as well as China-based Anta Sporting Products, among others. These companies do not seem to consider her move to China as a negative – it might have even increased her commercial appeal.

As China’s integration into the transnational sports world signals, the Cold War is long gone. The “diplomatic boycott” is misleading in the way that it partly resurrects the deep divisions of that era. After all is said and done, we are only talking about a sports event here, not a trade agreement or military treaty with concrete consequences. International sports should serve as an experimental realm for international relations, a realm that presents possibilities for peaceful relations that do not (yet) exist in the real world. If Western politicians and sports leaders can’t even allow emerging non-Western nations to host sports events because they don’t like their political systems, then there is little prospect for a more egalitarian and inclusive world order in the future. That does not give hope for a more stable and peaceful global society.

Boycotts are an outmoded Cold War tactic that never worked. In the 21st century, what we need now is more engagement.