President Biden is “listening to the concerns” about China’s scheduled hosting of the 2022 Olympics that arise from the communist regime’s repression of Uyghur Muslims, according to America’s top diplomat.
“We will continue to talk to other countries around the world to hear what they’re thinking, and at the appropriate time, we’ll decide what to do,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a Japanese media outlet while traveling in Tokyo. “But for now, we’re just listening to the concerns we’ve heard expressed from many countries around the world.”
China has established mass reeducation centers for Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, camps that function as ground zero for a program of “modern-day slavery” and “mass rape” of Uyghur women, according to survivors. Blinken has labeled those abuses a genocide, but State Department officials have hesitated to say the genocide is “ongoing” in recent weeks. Some Republican lawmakers and China hawks in other governments have stoked public debates about boycotting the games.
“The U.S. has said that the Chinese is engaged in genocide,” an Indo-Pacific official said. “How do you participate in an event that’s hosted by genocidal regime?”
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Some China hawks want to move the games out of Beijing but support sending the national team if that change in venue can’t take place.
“Our athletes should go to Beijing next year proudly, bring home medal after medal, and show the world what it means to compete on behalf of a free society,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, argued this week. “We shouldn’t give China an easy way to run up its medal count by preventing Americans from going to the Olympics.”
Blinken adopted a noncommittal posture, but he expanded on the controversies that could undermine China’s hosting of the Olympics by linking the location of the games to a series of other disputes as well.
“We’ve heard the many concerns around the world about the prospect of those Olympics, given the actions that China has taken both at home in terms of its abuse of human rights when it comes to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, other minorities, or, of course, what’s happening in Hong Kong, the increasing tensions as a result of its actions on — with regard to Taiwan,” Blinken said.
Biden’s national security team has forecast a tense meeting with Chinese officials later this week in Alaska, where Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan have signaled that they will not water down their criticisms of Beijing in private.
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“And we think it’s really important that we dispel that idea very early and that we’re very clear with delivering the same messages in private that you have heard from us in public,” a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. “That includes making very clear our deep concerns about a range of issues, whether it’s Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Chinese economic coercion of our allies and partners, China’s increasingly aggressive activities across the Taiwan Strait. We will absolutely make those points very clear.”
