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. 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. Ten months before the International Olympic Committee 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. 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.