As the 2022 Winter Olympics take place in Beijing, China, many people are tuning out.
The average viewership of the Olympics opening ceremony was 16 million people this year. But those NBC ratings are disastrous compared to the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, when 28.3 million people watched the opening ceremony. There was a 43% drop in U.S. TV ratings from 2018 to 2022. The 16 million figure includes people watching on television and streaming services, as Yahoo Sports reports.
Fortunately, this is exactly what the Olympics deserve this year.
It’s absurd that communist China can host the Olympics while it commits genocide against Uyghur Muslims. China has more than 1 million people in concentration camps, uses them for slave labor, and is actively trying to reduce the Uyghur population with rape, forced abortions, sterilization, and birth control. NBC knows as much, hence its playing down the Beijing site of these Olympics.
It’s far from China’s only malaise.
Beijing shows unwarranted aggression toward Taiwan and all those who support that democracy. China mistreats the people of Tibet and Hong Kong. China’s social credit score system and sweatshop economy also show how little it values human life.
But genocide cannot be ignored. It’s a major problem that needs to be addressed. Although the average person isn’t going to liberate concentration camps, they can at least diminish China’s global standing by objecting to its Olympics.
We need to be clear-eyed. A diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, where state officials don’t show up to the games, changes little. That said, the average person can mitigate China’s prestige and influence by not watching the Olympics. If these games are a ratings disaster, it’s less likely that sponsors will spend big money on China-related advertising in the future.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
