As President Joe Biden cheers on boycotts of states, he shrugs his shoulders at China hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Sure, China caused a global pandemic and is currently committing genocide, but where’s the partisan gain for Democrats in railing against these crimes?
The sad thing is, we briefly thought Biden was finally getting tough on China. Things appeared to be going in the right direction recently, with a State Department spokesman saying the issue was something they wanted to discuss with allies. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki poured cold water on that idea, saying that the White House position on attending the 2022 Olympics hasn’t changed.
We shouldn’t be surprised. It was Biden, recall, who during the Obama administration traveled to China and declared that the United States had no objection to the evil one-child rule.
Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee continues to make a mockery of human rights with its subservience to China. The weak will of the Biden administration continues the decadeslong trend of countries shrugging their shoulders at the IOC’s decision to give hosting duties to authoritarian countries.
Earlier this week, it was reported that the IOC gave a uniform contract for both the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Games to a Chinese company that uses cotton from Xinjiang. But rest assured, the IOC insists that the company promises that it will fill this contract without using forced Uyghur labor. The IOC even has a certificate to prove it, though it won’t show a copy of the certificate or even say who issued it.
Boycotting the Olympics is just as much about changing the behavior of the IOC as it is denying China an opportunity for propaganda. Wealthy IOC members demand that they be treated like royalty, to the point that they are willing to spit on the idea of human rights as long as the host country agrees to pamper them. After all, that is how the Olympics ended up in China, as Norway refused the IOC’s extravagant demands.
There can’t be a “heart-to-heart” with the IOC, as Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney has suggested. The body is fully subservient to China. While defending the idea of letting China host the games, the IOC declares that it is unpolitical. But the body continues to force Taiwan to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei,” going as far as to threaten to ban the country from future games if it didn’t adhere to the IOC’s demands.
We live in a world where the largest population and the fastest growing economy is under communist rule. It’s expected that corrupt and corruptible entities such as the IOC, the National Basketball Association, and the World Health Organization would bow to China. The U.S. is supposed to stand as the moral counterweight.
The U.S. and its allies should not be lending legitimacy to a genocidal regime, in part because doing so will simply encourage the IOC to continue to award its events to the worst regimes the world has to offer. If the IOC is not forced to change its ways, then 2022 might not be the last time we see a “Genocide Games.”
