A Winter Olympics beset by rights concerns and COVID will officially begin in Beijing on Friday with an opening ceremony at the “Bird’s Nest” stadium. The distinctive lattice-shaped arena took center stage at the 2008 Games – seen as China’s coming-of-age party. The world – and will do so again as Beijing becomes the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Friday’s opening ceremony will begin at 8:00 pm (1200 GMT) and will be attended by President Xi Jinping, under whose rule China has become a much more belligerent proposition in global affairs than it was 14 years ago.
Xi, who will officially announce the Games, will be joined by leaders including his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, but the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia are among the countries with diplomatic boycotts over China’s human rights record, notably Destiny luck. Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang.
Other countries cited the coronavirus pandemic for not sending officials.
His athletes will still compete in the Games, which run until February 20 and are taking place inside a giant “closed loop” bubble designed to thwart the virus.
Some spectators will be present at the opening ceremony but it is not clear how many because of the pandemic and tickets were not sold to the general public like many other sporting events.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres are among the leaders of global institutions attending the ceremony.
The ceremony is the mastermind of acclaimed Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, who was behind the 2008 extravaganza.
Zhang promised an “absolutely innovative” show, but acknowledged that the pandemic and cold weather would limit its scale compared to the Summer Games, when 15,000 performers staged a grand gala of opera singers, acrobats and drummers. had participated in.
This time around there will be about 3,000 artists and the theme will include “environmental protection and low carbon emissions,” Zhang previously told state media.
But China’s claim that these will be “green games” has been challenged by some experts because they will take place in one of the driest places in the country and almost entirely on man-made ice.
covid bubble
There are other concerns about these Olympics, including warnings from some Western countries about surveillance of their athletes and what will happen if they make anti-China remarks or other displays of protest against local officials.
IOC President Thomas Bach said in an upbeat tone on Thursday that the Games would “change the scale of winter sports forever”.
China has little tradition of winter sports, but has consistently stated that hosting the Olympics is part of a campaign to inspire 300 million people in the world’s most populous country to “engage” in ski and snow activities. .
Bach said that the goal has already been exceeded.
There is concern about Kovid. About 3,000 athletes and thousands of support staff, volunteers and the media have been cut off from Beijing’s general population.
China, where the virus emerged in late 2019, has adopted a nationwide no-nonsense zero-Covid policy and a similar approach to sports, requiring everyone to test daily inside a bubble and wearing a mask at all times .
They cannot leave the “closed loop” until the game is over.
About 290 COVID cases have been reported in the bubble, an unknown number of them being athletes.
Germany said on Thursday six members of its team had tested positive upon arrival in Beijing, without saying they were concerned athletes or support staff.
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