Earlier this month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration wasn’t considering a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. This announcement came on the heels of a turbulent month of United States-China relations that included a heated summit in Alaska, sanctions on Chinese nationals for human rights abuses, and seven Chinese supercomputing entities being blacklisted by the Commerce Department.
The public is almost evenly split on the announcement. In a recent survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 49% of respondents said they support boycotting the Olympics in response to China’s human rights abuses, while 46% opposed such a boycott.
But this is the right move. Though the Chinese Communist Party’s active genocide of China’s Uyghur Muslims surely deserves protest, a symbolic Olympic boycott wouldn’t really help anything. Instead, a multilateral effort by the U.S. and European Union to change the way we buy and produce goods could turn the economic pressure up high enough on China to force it to change.
And a perfect complement to this effort would be to beat the CCP on its home ground in Beijing next winter.
We’ve tried Olympic boycotts before, and they don’t work. In 1980, when the Soviet Union hosted the Summer Olympics in Moscow, the U.S. led a boycott of 65 nations in protest of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The protest was a failure, and the Soviets didn’t leave Afghanistan until 1989. Just four years later, at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the Soviet Union lead a boycott of 14 nations as revenge for the 1980 Moscow Games.
Boycotting the 1980 Summer Games didn’t make a difference. But do you know what did? Beating the Soviets head to head at their own game, hockey, in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Ever seen Miracle? It’s a story every American should know. The underdog U.S. hockey team, composed of college students, took on the mighty Russians, who had dominated the game on the world stage. When these two teams met in the semifinals, it was far more than a hockey game: It was East versus West, democracy versus communism. Showing up and winning that game made a statement that was far louder than a boycott.
That’s something we should try to replicate in 2022. The stage is set for a matchup that could bring attention to the crimes being committed by the CCP while reinvigorating the national spirit and pride that will be necessary to win this fight.
Success in the games, however, is not enough. It must be mirrored by strong diplomacy and a combined effort by the U.S. and its democratic allies to apply the economic and political pressure necessary to force China to cease its crimes against humanity.
The most effective way to punish the CCP is a coordinated effort by the U.S. and EU to change the way they buy and produce goods. Former President Donald Trump’s trade war with China was a disaster. The former president’s haughty, in-your-face attitude was ineffective. Still, he was right about one thing: Hard sanctions on Chinese goods and increased national production are key to holding China accountable.
Even more important than sanctions would be efforts from the U.S. and its allies to stop spending so much money on Chinese exports and start producing their own goods. The U.S. alone accounts for 16.8% of China’s exports, making it China’s biggest trade partner. What type of example does that set for other nations if we expect them to unite with us on this front? South Korea, Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom also combine to make up another 10.6% of China’s total exports. This is a sizable amount of trade from nations that one would expect to want to put an end to the ethnic cleansing taking place in Xinjiang.
Taking away the opportunity for our athletes to compete would do far more harm than good. It would send a message that would only fall on deaf ears or, worse, be mistaken for cowardice. Now, we can all look forward to seeing some of our nation’s finest represented on the snow and ice of Beijing. Cheering on our athletes together is something that all Americans could use. Paired with the right economic policies, it would be a great way to make a statement to the rest of the world that we won’t be pushed around on any stage.
Patrick Kennedy is a Young Voices contributor and a senior at Trinity College in Connecticut studying political science and American law.
