New Cold War: Boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics grows

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Why is the IOC so closely related to the CCP dictatorship? Especially after Peng Shuai disappeared, more and more people raised this issue. This has also become the background of the current global debate about boycotting the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.

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Why is the IOC so closely related to the CCP dictatorship? In particular, tennis player Peng Shuai disappeared after he posted an article on Weibo on November 2, accusing Zhang Gaoli, a high-ranking CCP leader, of sexual assault. More and more people have raised this issue.

The related Weibo was deleted in less than 30 minutes. Peng Shuai was unable to contact friends or answer calls from related groups such as the International Women's Tennis Association (WTA). On November 21, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said he conducted a video interview with Peng Shuai, claiming she was "alright". The IOC released neither the video nor the transcript. Bach's interview drew widespread condemnation, and he was accused of collaborating with the Chinese regime to defraud in order to defuse a growing crisis of international legitimacy at the Beijing Winter Olympics, which opened on February 4.

The IOC has a history of working with right-wing, racist authoritarian regimes, from Hitler's Germany in the 1930s to the military dictatorship of South Korea in the 1980s. The same is true in China today, where trade unions and strikes are banned, and the working class is severely repressed without the right to organize independently. The world is concerned about the CCP regime’s police repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, but these areas are not unique in China. As the ISA's Chinese website warns, Xinjiang is a testing ground for repressive tactics that are increasingly being used across the country.

Behind the slogan "Keep Politics Out of Sport", the IOC operates in a secretive, undemocratic, and notoriously corrupt way, and it has always followed a clear political line of making super profits for its bourgeois sponsors and Ignore concerns about democracy and human rights.

This is the background of the current global debate over the boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. The boycott movement was initiated by separate and contradictory forces. Some of the calls came from activists and human rights groups protesting the crackdown on Uighurs in Xinjiang and the crackdown on democratic rights in Hong Kong. There are also bourgeois governments like the Biden administration, whose motives for boycotting have nothing to do with defending democratic rights, but to serve their imperialist interests, build a global coalition to contain Chinese capitalism, and prevent China from challenging or replacing it. American hegemony.

"Diplomatic boycott"

Biden and some of his allies are now calling for a "diplomatic boycott" of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Most observers are baffled by this. What's the point of this "non-boycott" boycott? As even Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in the United States, commented: "No one cares if they (diplomats from Western countries) come or not". Such an empty gesture, then why not a musical boycott (no singing) or a joke boycott (no jokes allowed)?

At the time of writing, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, members of the Five Eyes alliance, have announced that they will join the "diplomatic boycott". This extremely limited gesture is designed to give the concerned governments the appearance of taking a stand, without undermining the huge profits the event generates for their multinational corporations and media outlets. They also chose this tactic to avoid a PR disaster and the risk of a genuine boycott failing to win enough national government support.

With mounting evidence of the horrific repression of the local Muslim population in Xinjiang and a blow to unions, opposition parties and freedom of assembly in Hong Kong, many would sympathize with the call for a boycott - not the twisted "diplomatic" boycott , but to withdraw all support for the Olympics.

According to a Toronto Star poll, 56 per cent of Canadians support a full boycott. This is apparently influenced by the fact that the Chinese government has imprisoned Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Spavor for nearly three years in retaliation for Canada for placing Huawei Princess Meng Wanzhou under house arrest at her mansion in Vancouver. The duo were released in September 2021. Polls in Canada show widespread dissatisfaction with the Biden-led "diplomatic boycott" as an empty and inadequate gesture. A U.S. poll by Morning Consult found 24 percent favor a full-scale boycott, 31 percent favor a diplomatic boycott, and just 12 percent oppose it.

The question reflects conflicting currents of thought. Western capitalist governments are exploiting this issue, but at the same time worrying about the economic toll of a real boycott, they just want to glorify themselves in the guise of “democracy” to advance the Cold War agenda of putting pressure on Beijing. But there are also many ordinary people, especially victims of CCP repression, who support the boycott for sincere reasons, believing that it can put pressure on the CCP regime to change the state of repression. Unfortunately, this view underestimates what kind of pressure and struggle is required - to build solidarity with Chinese workers and help them organize to fight for their rights.

It is no coincidence that the first governments to commit to a diplomatic boycott came from the Five Eyes alliance. Three of these countries, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, recently formed the United Kingdom-United States-Australia Alliance (AUKUS) to provide military capabilities to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. However, the Japanese government is still considering whether to support a diplomatic boycott, while other governments, especially the French government, have expressed opposition. This reflects tensions and divergent considerations among the Western powers - the French government is still haunted by the loss of AUKUS, which cost Paris a $66 billion submarine contract. If we look closely, for all these governments, "democracy" and the "Xinjiang issue" are nothing but naked financial and great power interests.

None of the governments that advocate boycotts are innocent, and they themselves have repressed minorities and intervened militarily in other countries - the historic crimes of Canada and Australia against Aboriginal people, the oppression of refugees in Britain and Australia, the racist police brutality in the United States, And the wars waged by Western imperialism in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere mean that these governments have also long been human rights abusers. Any real movement against the CCP's oppression needs to completely cut off from these hypocritical governments and their actions.

IOC opposes boycott

Not surprisingly, IOC President Bach opposed any boycott. At a meeting of the IOC Executive Board, he argued: "If we start to take any political stance, we will never be able to get all 206 NOCs together for the Olympics...it will be the politicization of the Olympics, And I think that could further lead to the end of the Olympics, like the Olympics of old."

Leaving aside Bach's claims about the politicization of the ancient Olympics (recent research suggests that the ancient Olympics ended either because they were too expensive to hold), the entire history of the modern Olympics has been politicized and done at the expense of working people. Support the interests of right-wing dictatorships and big business.

This was highlighted in the political positions of IOC presidents, including Baron Coubertin (1896-1925), who opposed women's sports as "impractical, uninteresting and unattractive, and we do not shy away from : Incorrect"; Count de Valle-Latour (1925-1942) stood between Nazi leaders Hitler and Hess at the opening of the 1936 Games; anti-Semitic Swedish industrialist Edstrom (1942 -52) wrote: "In America one day you will have to stop the Jews". Avery Brundage (1952-72) was also an anti-Semitic who admired Hitler. Although he once said that "communism is a sin before which all other sins are trivial", he appreciated Stalin's authoritarianism; and, of course, Samaranch (1980-2001), a member of the Spanish Fascist Party (1980-2001), who held many key positions in Franco's government. Bach's predecessor was also a nobleman, Count Jacques Rogue (2001-2013), who dominated secret deals with the Chinese government and censored news reports.

Continuing the right-wing and misogynistic tradition of previous presidents, Bach, the current president of the International Olympic Committee, is also unsurprisingly in sympathy with the CCP, helping the CCP cover up Peng Shuai’s allegations of sexual assault against Zhang Gaoli. Athlete advocacy group Global Athlete accused the IOC of "heinous indifference to sexual violence and the well-being of female athletes" after he participated in the infamous "Proof of Safety" video.

While the IOC says the Olympics should not be "politicized", they are not opposed to the use of the Olympics by right-wing and authoritarian regimes to bolster their authority.

From the beginning of the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics, so did the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, which opened just days after the Mexican army massacred left-wing students. One of the slogans of the students was "We don't want the Olympics, we want the revolution!". Separately, two American athletes and supporters of the Black Rights movement, Tommy Smith and John Carlos, were expelled from the Olympics after performing a "Black Power" salute.

A year later, in 1981, South Korea was awarded the right to host the 1988 Olympics as a platform to improve its image globally, after the military junta massacred more than 2,000 pro-democracy protesters in the Gwangju pro-democracy movement in 1980.

Of course, the 1980 Moscow Olympics after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, despite the boycott, were used by the Stalinist bureaucracy to bolster domestic support. And the U.S.-led boycott of 1980 was not really about protecting the rights of the Afghan people, but about showcasing U.S. strength, as is evident in U.S. behavior on the ground over the next four decades, including the chaotic withdrawal of troops in 2021 , and led to a comeback of the Taliban.

The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics helped strengthen the increasingly authoritarian Russian reactionary regime. Two days before the closing ceremony of the most expensive games in history, which helped the regime boost its prestige, Putin secretly ordered the start of the capture of Crimea.

The Olympics represent the worst side of modern sports

The International Olympic Committee describes the Olympics as an equal opportunity for all. But everything is corrupted by money. Most athletes come from elite schools - for example, around a third of the athletes in the UK team in 2012, 2016 and 2021 came from private schools, yet 93% of UK children attend public schools. The situation is made worse by public sports facilities hit by spending cuts and sport's increasing reliance on commercial sponsorships.

The host country really depends on who gets the most bribes. After Salt Lake City was chosen to host the 2002 Winter Olympics, allegations of corruption at the top of the International Olympic Committee became a public scandal. Despite the new rules, further allegations emerged after London won the race to host the 2012 race. The criterion for making the decision is not what is in the sport's development interest, but what commercial, sponsorship and broadcasting facilities are provided by the winner.

After the host site is selected, it is often revealed that the use of child labor and the super-exploitation of slave labor for the construction of the venue are reported. Related reports include the construction of venues in Russia, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Japan and China.

Governments claim that the games themselves will benefit their economies. But experience has shown that the opposite is true - large numbers of people were forced to relocate to build stadiums - and it is estimated that 1.25 million people were forcibly relocated for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 720,000 for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The aftermath of the Athens and Rio Olympics included huge debts, the Great White Elephant Project Stadium, and worsening social inequalities. As one commentator remarked after the Rio Olympics: "In a city already notorious for inequality, inequality has grown worse".

sports sponsorship

Businesses also claim they are immune to politics! The Coca-Cola Company used this excuse to disregard the US boycott and sponsored the Moscow Olympics. Today, we see the same with the official sponsors of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Sponsors include Alibaba, which develops and sells facial recognition and surveillance software to detect the faces of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in China, according to The New York Times. AirBnB is accused of cooperating with the Chinese Armed Police Force.

Sponsors also include Samsung Group, which has a record of using child labor, destroying unions, corruption, prostitution and supporting far-right groups. There is also Atos (ATOS), a manufacturer of "battle management" systems and surveillance systems. ATOS' sponsorship of the Paralympic Games has particularly angered athletes with disabilities, whose management system they provide to the UK government's "ability to work" programme has deprived thousands of people with disabilities of their benefits. Not surprisingly, none of the companies sponsoring the Beijing Winter Olympics supported the boycott. Because they will lose too much profit.

Have past boycotts worked?

Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, there was a brutal crackdown in Tibet. However, despite widespread sympathy for the boycott call, the so-called international community has not heeded the call to boycott. US President George W. Bush and national leaders of Australia, France and Japan are also among the world leaders attending the Beijing Olympics. This shows a significant change in global relations in recent years. At the time, the CCP dictatorship was receiving a red-carpet welcome in the Western world, and “human rights” was a taboo topic at a time when Western capitalism just wanted to sign more deals with Beijing.

In the decades following the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks did not participate in the Olympics - they preferred a cooperative sports culture to capitalist and elitist forms of sports. After the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy was fully consolidated, participation did not begin until 1952 - the Olympics became the stage of the Cold War. In 1936, in order to protest the Nazi Berlin Olympics, it was proposed to hold another "People's Olympics" in Barcelona. But due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the "People's Olympics" failed to become a reality.

The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics did nothing to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but instead allowed the Soviet bureaucracy to successfully publicize the Games at home as a major victory, and it was because of the Western boycott that Soviet athletes won a record number of medals.

With the advent of the neoliberal period of the 1980s, the Olympics were also neoliberalized - becoming more commercialized and elitist.

Today, when discussing the boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, socialists are sympathetic to the idea because the boycott is being raised by workers and youth around the world who are sincerely looking for ways to resist the CCP’s repression. But we also warn against any illusions about the IOC, which should be the primary target of any boycott movement, and we especially warn against any illusions about any capitalist government, because they will only take advantage of this Disputes to serve their own great power interests. Likewise, when different social movement groups raise this question, we have to distinguish between those that are truly independent popular spontaneous movements, and those that are funded or sponsored by the interests of a certain country's government in the new Cold War.

Can boycotts work?

In 1959 an international boycott was launched against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. The boycott spans sporting events and academics and is supported by the United Nations and governments. But big business continues to trade with South Africa. What changed the course of events was when the South African working class heroically organized, 1.5 million people took part in the 1986 May Day strike, new unions emerged and formed a powerful force that won solidarity with workers in other countries. This marked the beginning of the collapse of the apartheid regime.

And more recently, when football's giants tried to create another "European Premier League", solidarity protests from fans shattered the proposal within days.

What do socialists stand for?

• Socialists denounce the massive repression by the Chinese regime and support the immediate and full realization of democratic rights that can only be won by the struggle of the working class and the poor.
• We warn against believing in boycotts organized by capitalist governments and their institutions, which are used to deceive the public, or are just hypocritical and empty "diplomatic boycott" gestures, or whose real intentions are closely linked to the Sino-US Cold War .
• We oppose the commercialization of sports, and the use of sports to smear right-wing authoritarian regimes – just like this year’s World Cup in Qatar. Big business should be kicked out of sports and replaced by a massive expansion of publicly owned sports facilities and programs available to all, under the democratic control of athletes and fans.
• Working class solidarity, international solidarity, revolutionary democratic and socialist policies are the keys to overthrowing dictatorships. Capitalism as a worldwide system threatens all of our democratic rights and can only be successfully fought by a labor movement independent of all capitalist governments and their institutions.