The politicization of Olympia
The end of the mummery
By Marcel Grzanna
02/20/2022, 11:45 am
For years, the IOC and the hosts tried to sell the Beijing Winter Games as a non-political event. Shortly before the closing ceremony, however, the masks fall and it becomes clear what benefits China’s autocrats want to draw from domestic and foreign policy.
China had doggedly defended the tale of the apolitical Winter Olympics for years. Last Thursday – only three days before the end of the Mummerschanz – the covers fell on the home straight. A spokeswoman for the organizing committee BOCOG used the stage in front of the international crowd of press to bluntly declare the island state of Taiwan an “inseparable part” of the People’s Republic in the glow of the five rings and to describe evidence of the systematic forced labor of Uyghurs in Xinjiang as a “lie”.
The statements contradicted the idea of the Olympic Charter, which requires political neutrality. And they were a slap in the face for the International Olympic Committee. For so long, the association, with its German President Thomas Bach, had stood in front of the host country to protect it, parroted Beijing’s propaganda and even refrained from asking China’s leadership for clarification in the disturbing case of abuse of tennis player Peng Shuai.
Hosts expose the IOC
The moment the BOCOG lost its temper taught the IOC a bitter lesson: it was reminded that after years of standing shoulder to shoulder with the Beijing autocrats, it had finally done its due. Twice in the past 14 years, the IOC has used the Olympic Games as a tool for the authoritarian government to assert national interests both internally and externally. And yet the hosts did not spare their stirrup holders this exposure.
On Friday, Bach reminded the organizers for the first time during his tenure that they should remain neutral. But the riposte of the former world-class fencer came years too late to give a credible impression that the IOC actually takes its established principles seriously.
Meanwhile, the statements by the BOCOG spokeswoman did not come as a surprise. The People’s Republic is in the midst of an ideological and political confrontation with many democratic states, above all the USA, and faces massive allegations for its dramatically poor human rights record. Under such circumstances, it is important for a dictatorship to ban accusations from abroad into the realm of lies and to exhaust every source of representation to legitimize its own rule.
The past two and a half weeks have been packed with political messages from the hosts to the world. The only difference from Thursday was that the news was delivered between the lines and not as frontally as the Olympic Charter actually prohibits.
Opening ceremony with political messages
Even at the opening ceremony, the sole governing Communist Party had visually staged the fact that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic and will sooner or later be incorporated. And when the Taiwanese athletes arrived, the director faded in China’s head of state Xi Jinping. Or think of the last torchbearer, Dinigeer Yilamujian. The cross-country skier with no sporting chances received the honor of lighting the Olympic flame – a moment that went around the world. The fact that the young woman is of Uyghur descent was of course no coincidence.
Because millions of Uyghurs are being persecuted in China, locked up in re-education camps and branded as potential terrorists by the Chinese government. Various governments, parliaments and politicians in democratic states call the human rights crimes there “genocide”. Yilamujian’s performance should refute all of these allegations. As a reminder, one of the 2008 Uyghur torchbearers is now in prison for watching “counter-revolutionary videos.” Another has fled China while his father is imprisoned in Xinjiang.
“The main concern of the Chinese government is to cover up points of criticism. Because if other countries can hardly find any sources to show the countless downsides of a dictatorship, then many people around the world could get the idea that it’s not like that at all It’s bad to be governed in an authoritarian manner. After all, China’s economy is promising. That would give the rule of the Communist Party in China much more legitimacy,” says Berlin journalist Qin Liwen, who was in charge of the English-language website of the BOCOG organizing committee for the 2008 Summer Games.
Beijing “organizes majorities”
The attempt to generate positive connotations abroad is by no means only aimed at large industrial nations, but also at all the obviously less influential states in Africa, Asia or South America. Any country, no matter how small, can become a trump card for China when it comes to international conflicts that are dealt with, for example, in the bodies of the United Nations. It is also about access to markets or raw materials. “Beijing has organized majorities around the world in a wide variety of constellations in this way for years,” says Qin.
However, the Communist Party is also using the Winter Games as an instrument to strengthen support at home. While domestic media have been giving the impression for two years that societies all over the world are breaking up due to the corona pandemic, the hosting of the games by the local population symbolized an unprecedented ability to deal with crises.
The image was underlined with the march to the opening of heads of state and government from all over the world and the head of the World Health Organization (WHO). While China’s party leader has not left his own country for more than two years, signaling that he can only feel safe in China, the other states and the WHO are saying that they can fully trust Beijing’s corona policy.
“Olympia’s status will change”
Jutta Braun, a historian at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, believes that the controversy over China’s orientation will further damage the perception of the Olympics as a world meeting that brings people together. “The importance of the Olympic Games will change. The dispute over the political constitution of the organizing country is one thing – in addition, open societies in particular are increasingly asking critical questions about economic and ecological sustainability. The IOC now has to explain more precisely why it is holding the Games certain places,” says Braun.
The marketing strategist Markus Oelsner also sees the hopes of the advertising partners of the games affected. In 2008, Oelsner worked in Beijing for a PR agency that, on behalf of the organizing committee, was trying to position the host country as “cosmopolitan, colorful and hypermodern” as the center of the world. He suspects that “the alarm bells are ringing” among those responsible for marketing at today’s IOC partners. “Too quickly, the bitter aftertaste of the games is transferred to the brands that officially demand and promote them,” he says.
Compared to 14 years ago, Oelsner recognizes “an explosive mixture of nationalistic calculation with the aim of opening up new winter sports markets worth billions.” These games, he says, “do not do justice to the wonderful country and its proud people in any way.”