Games in China have acquired political importance both domestically and globally.
On the eve of the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing on Friday, India announces diplomatic boycott of Games, The MEA said that no Indian official will be present at the opening or closing ceremony of the Games, which will run from February 4 to 20. Decision to officially boycott the Games – the only Indian athlete to qualify, skier Arif Khan, will still participate with support staff in both the Games and the opening ceremony – followed China’s move this week to choose a PLA commander as one of the participants of the traditional torch relay, the commander was involved Clashes in Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020, He was later given military honors by Beijing. The MEA said the commander’s participation in the torch relay was “regrettable”. As of this week, New Delhi was considering getting its top diplomat in Beijing to attend the Games. Only in November, India joined Russia in expressing support for the Games, following a meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, India and China. If India, to deal with its long list of problems with China and the continuing standoff along the Line of Actual Control, was initially planning not to involve itself in the politics surrounding the Games, Beijing’s torch relay would Changed the calculation. The broader context of the selection of the PLA commander is China’s ongoing campaign to publicize Galvan and highlight the “bravery” of PLA soldiers.
India’s statement of support for the Games in November came amid the US and its allies announcing a diplomatic boycott over rights violations in Xinjiang, where minority Uighurs have been sent to “re-education” camps. China at first denied the existence of the camps, but later said they were for “vocational training”. China denounced diplomatic boycotts by nearly a dozen countries – in which India has now joined for different reasons – for “politicizing” the Games. It is another matter that the Olympic Games, through history, have been inherently political events. For host countries, holding a successful game promises to burn the legitimacy of the government at the time. In the context of the country’s fight against COVID-19, sports within China have certainly taken on political significance, especially at the domestic level. Last month, President Xi Jinping noted that the 2022 Olympics would be “the first international multi-sport event to be held as scheduled since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic”. The underlying message is that the successful holding of the Games amid the pandemic is another example of the superiority of the Chinese political model, which has been highlighted as a sharp contrast to how the US has handled the pandemic in particular. Last year, the IOA added the word “together” to the official Olympic motto of “faster, higher, stronger.” If this is certainly a laudable aspiration, it is clear that politics is never far away as far as the Olympics are concerned. That will certainly be the case in Beijing as the latest sports, both on and off the ski slopes, begin.
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