Beijing becomes the first city to host both winter and
summer Olympic Games. And while some are staying away from the second pandemic
Olympics in six months, many other world leaders planned to attend the opening
ceremony. Most notable: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met privately
with China’s Xi Jinping earlier in the day as a dangerous standoff unfolds at
Russia’s border with Ukraine.
The Olympics — and the opening ceremony — are always an
exercise in performance for the host nation, a chance to showcase its culture,
define its place in the world, flaunt its best side. That’s something China in
particular has been consumed with for decades. But at this year’s Beijing
Games, the gulf between performance and reality will be particularly jarring.
Fourteen years ago, a Beijing opening ceremony that featured
massive pyrotechnic displays and thousands of card-flipping performers set a
new standard of extravagance to start an Olympics that no host since has
matched. It was a fitting start to an event often billed as China’s “coming
out.”
Now, no matter how you view it, China has arrived — and the
opening ceremony returns to the same now-familiar, lattice-encased National
Stadium known as the Bird’s Nest, built in consultation with Chinese dissident
artist Ai Weiwei.
But the hope for a more open China that accompanied those
first Games has faded.
For Beijing, these Olympics are a confirmation of its status
as world player and power. But for many outside China, particularly in the
West, they have become a confirmation of the country’s increasingly authoritarian
turn.
Chinese authorities are crushing pro-democracy activism,
tightening their control over Hong Kong, becoming more confrontational with
Taiwan and interning Muslim Uyghurs in the far west — a crackdown the U.S.
government and others have called genocide.
The pandemic also weighs heavily on this year’s Games, just
as it did last summer in Tokyo. More than two years after the first COVID-19
cases were identified in China’s Hubei province, nearly 6 million human beings
have died and hundreds of millions more around the world have been sickened.
The host country itself claims some of the lowest rates of
death and illness from the virus, in part because of sweeping lockdowns imposed
by the government that were instantly apparent to anyone arriving to compete in
or attend the Winter Games.
In the lead-up to the Olympics, China’s suppression of
dissent was also on display in the controversy surrounding Chinese tennis star
Peng Shuai. She disappeared from public view last year after accusing a former
Communist Party official of sexual assault. Her accusation was quickly scrubbed
from the internet, and discussion of it remains heavily censored.
Concerned for her safety, tennis greats and others outside
China demanded on social media to know, “Where is Peng Shuai?” A surreal
cat-and-mouse game has since unfolded, with Peng making a brief appearance at a
youth tennis event and speaking by video link with International Olympic
Committee President Thomas Bach as part of efforts to allay concerns about her.
While the political issues have overshadowed the run-up, as
with any Olympics, attention will shift Saturday — at least partially — from
the geopolitical issues of the day to the athletes themselves.
All eyes turn now to whether Alpine skiing superstar Mikaela
Shiffrin, who already owns three Olympic medals, can exceed sky-high
expectations. How snowboard sensation Shaun White will cap off his Olympic
career — and if the sport’s current standard-bearer, Chloe Kim, will wow us
again. And whether Russia’s women will sweep the medals in figure skating.
And China is pinning its hopes on Eileen Gu, the
18-year-old, American-born freestyle skier who has chosen to compete for her
mother’s native country and could win three gold medals.
As they compete, the conditions imposed by Chinese
authorities offer a stark contrast to the party atmosphere of the 2008 Games.
Some flight attendants, immigration officials and hotel staff have been covered
head-to-toe in hazmat gear, masks and goggles. There is a daily testing regimen
for all attendees, followed by lengthy quarantines for all those testing
positive.
Even so, there is no passing from the Olympic venues through
the ever-present cordons of chain-link fence — covered in cheery messages of a
“shared future together” — into the city itself, another point of divergence
with the 2008 Games.
China itself has also transformed in the years since. Then,
it was an emerging global economic force making its biggest leap yet onto the
global stage by hosting those Games. Now it is a fully realized superpower
hosting these. Xi, who was the head of the 2008 Olympics, now runs the entire
country and has encouraged a personality-driven campaign of adulation.
Gone are the hopeful statements from organizers and Western
governments that hosting the Olympics would pressure the ruling Communist Party
to clean up what they called its problematic human rights record and to become
a more responsible international citizen.
Today, three decades after its troops crushed massive
democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds and perhaps
thousands of Chinese, the government has locked up more than 1 million members
of minority groups, mostly Muslim Uyghurs from its far-western Xinjiang region,
in mass internment camps. The situation has led human rights groups to dub
these the “Genocide Games.”
China says the camps are “vocational training and education
centers” that are part of an anti-terror campaign. It denies any human rights
violations and says it has restored stability to Xinjiang, a region it insisted
in the months after the 9/11 attacks was rife with extremism, often with little
evidence.
Such behavior was what led leaders of the United States,
Britain, Australia and Canada, among others, to impose a diplomatic boycott on
these Games, shunning appearances alongside Chinese leadership while allowing
their athletes to compete.
Outside the Olympic “bubble” that separates regular
Beijingers from Olympians and their entourages, some expressed enthusiasm and
pride at the world coming to their doorstep. Zhang Wenquan, a collector of
Olympic memorabilia, showed off his wares Friday while standing next to a 2008
mascot. He was excited, but the excitement was tempered by the virus that has
changed so much for so many.
“I think the effect of the fireworks is going to be much
better than it in 2008,” he said. “I really look forward to the opening
ceremony. I actually wanted to go to the venue to watch it. I have been trying
so hard to watch it at the scene. But because of the epidemic, there may be no
chance.”
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