Only China still courts him
The booming silence of Thomas Bach
2/1/2022 at 12:23 p.m
When China’s party leadership receives the German IOC President Thomas Bach, the IOC is silent. Only state television broadcasts pictures. Dissatisfaction with the Olympic Games is growing in the western world. Even sponsors hold back. Can Bach sit out the problem?
Thomas Bach recently visited China’s party leadership. The Lord of the Rings was seated at the magnificent Duaoyutai State Guest House at a table with the country’s most powerful men: directly across from President Xi Jinping, at eye level with Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Only a bouquet of flowers separated the company. Bach likes to present himself in the circle of world leaders.
But the IOC was silent. At least it held back conspicuously. Otherwise every diplomatic appearance by the president is exploited by the media, but in Beijing there was nothing. Bach’s trip ten days before the opening ceremony of the Winter Games was not worth reporting to the PR department. Instead, China’s Xinhua news agency broadcast the news exclusively around the world.
The state broadcaster CGTN showed moving pictures of the meeting, alternating with panorama shots of the sports venues, accompanied by gentle sounds, while Bach said to Xi: “You have not only achieved your goal of getting 300 million Chinese to do winter sports, you have surpassed it.” A perfect staging – but a bit too transparent for Western tastes.
“A shame for Germany”
Admittedly, these are difficult games for the IOC and its Lower Franconian leader. Parts of the world are critical of China’s zero-Covid strategy and appalled at human rights violations against Muslim Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians. For Qelbinur Sidik, a survivor of torture in Xinjiang province, the pictures from the guest house are “humiliating. As if Bach were Xi’s accomplice in his atrocities,” she told ARD.
Politically, a storm has brewed that Bach can no longer control. Sitting out seems to be the motto. Wait until it’s all over. Hoping that the product will no longer be damaged – and pretending to be a benefactor. “Why not be generous?” asked IOC Executive Director Christoph Dubi: “It’s great that we’re going to China, because it’s going to be a new winter sports destination.” The IOC also thoroughly ruined its image before the second Corona Games with such market-oriented statements. These days even the elite sponsors are holding back on campaigns, the Olympics in China are only a sales argument in China.
This also applies to Bach outside of his group, he was not particularly welcome in Tokyo in 2021, in his home country many people consider the idea of a value-based sports movement under Bach’s leadership to have failed. Human rights activists like Hanno Schedler from the Society for Threatened Peoples express themselves more drastically. Bach is a disgrace for Germany “because he never took the opportunity to campaign for human rights in China”.
Silence until 2024?
Even some “allies” bound to the IOC by the power of the rings are expressing concerns. “I think that you have to comment on human rights,” said DOSB President Thomas Weikert in the ZDF sports studio. He hopes “that Thomas Bach or the IOC will make a statement. You can also express your protest diplomatically. I think you can expect that.”
Bach emphasizes the “political neutrality” of the IOC. The former ski racer and today’s ARD expert Felix Neureuther says: “Those who remain silent are complicit.” The same applies to trivialization, which Bach is accused of in the Peng Shuai case. In Beijing, he wants to meet the tennis player, who disappeared from the scene for weeks after public allegations of sexual abuse against a high-ranking politician.
Will Bach’s PR department go on the air this time? Or will the IOC remain silent until the Games head towards Paris 2024? Redemption beckons under the Eiffel Tower: summer games with spectators, freedom of expression and freedom of movement. A spectacle without complaints about genocide or environmental sins. Opportunity lies in the home of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the Olympic Games. For Thomas Bach, the Olympic movement and the image department of the IOC.