During last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics, Japanese national broadcaster NHK for the first time referred to the Taiwanese delegation as “Taiwan” during its live coverage of the opening ceremony. At the opening ceremony for the Beijing Winter Olympics on Feb. 4, NHK again introduced Taiwanese athletes as “Taiwan” as they entered the stadium waving the Beijing-sanctioned “Chinese Taipei” flag. It was heartening to see NHK’s announcer ignore coercion from China and inform its audience of the correct national identity of Taiwan’s athletes.
In contrast, state broadcaster China Central Television craftily tweaked the name: The announcer referred to Taiwan’s national team as Zhongguo Taibei (中國台北, China Taipei) as they entered the stadium. A New York Times article picked up on the unfair treatment and humiliation of Taiwan at the world’s premier international sporting event, noting that Taiwanese athletes are unable to use the name “Taiwan” on their national uniforms, are forbidden from singing their national anthem and cannot even wave their national flag.
However, the discriminatory treatment meted out to Taiwan at the Beijing Winter Olympics is just the tip of the iceberg at a Games that has been chock-full of controversy, most of which has been generated by the host nation. China’s atrocious human rights record, its languishing at the bottom of global democracy and freedom rankings, its suppression of minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet, its crushing of Hong Kong’s freedoms and its harassment of neighboring nations have triggered a backlash from the international community.
The behavior of the host nation is antithetical to the Olympics’ lofty ideals of peace and amity. For this reason, more than 60 cities around the world have joined together to demonstrate against the Beijing Winter Olympics. US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has criticized the International Olympics Committee (IOC) for turning a blind eye to the Chinese government’s human rights abuses.
There is also the enormous environmental and social cost of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Located in a region that suffers from severe water shortages, Chinese authorities have supplemented Beijing’s lack of snowfall by using vast quantities of water to create mountains of artificial snow. Almost all of the snow blanketing the ski slopes and other venues is artificially produced. Chinese officials have also forcibly relocated villagers, demolishing their homes to make way for venues and accommodation.
While most nations have adapted their pandemic policies to living with COVID-19, Beijing is doggedly cleaving to its policy of “zero COVID.” This has made it nigh on impossible for foreigners to enter China, while the authorities have established a “closed loop” security bubble with ultrastrict quarantine requirements and round-the-clock surveillance of athletes and support staff. Tickets to the venues are also limited to Chinese nationals and invitation-only.
In the lead-up to the Games, the Chinese authorities cracked down on dissidents, while human rights campaigners have been put under house arrest or placed in custody. The social media accounts of high-profile critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have also been locked and Chinese officials have publicly warned athletes from engaging in any form of protest or face “certain punishment.” Meanwhile, a Dutch television journalist, while reporting live from Beijing, was manhandled by a security apparatchik and was literally dragged away from the camera. Video footage of the incident went viral around the world.
For all of the above reasons, before the curtain lifted on the opening ceremony, the Games was already mired in controversy. Not only have politicians from the US, European nations and many other democracies around the world boycotted the Games, companies sponsoring the Games have avoided their typical ostentatious advertising campaigns and instead adopted a more low-key approach.
Beijing enjoys bragging rights as the first city ever to hold both a summer and winter Games. However, compared with the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics — when the leaders of more than 80 nations, including then-US president George W. Bush, attended the opening extravaganza — this year’s Beijing Winter Olympics feels like a different beast altogether.
Under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), China’s “peaceful rise” has morphed into a mask-off rapacious rise and the CCP no longer seems to care about criticism, either from within China or without.
During the opening ceremony, Xi conspicuously stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Xi used the set piece international sporting event to speak to domestic and foreign audiences. Domestically, Xi used the imagery of the ceremony to burnish his credentials for a third term as president and chairman of the party, ahead of the 20th Party Congress, scheduled to take place in the fall. Xi was also in no uncertain terms telegraphing to a foreign audience that, like Putin, he intends to expand the boundaries of China’s power and influence in the world.
Before the start of the Games, Xi and Putin held talks and issued a joint statement that pledged a partnership of “no limits” between the two nations and declared a redistribution of power in the world in an apparent challenge to Western nations. Xi also met with the leaders of nine nations to discuss cooperation over China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and held a lavish banquet to welcome foreign dignitaries attending the Games.
The guests were made up of mostly strongmen and autocrats, including leaders from the former Soviet Union republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Held at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square, the banquet featured an enormous table decorated with a sprawling vista of forests, flowers, snow and a meandering river, intended to resemble a Chinese scroll painting. The ostentatious nature of the event raised eyebrows and was dubbed an “emperor’s feast” in foreign media, while also ridiculed for its vulgarity and tone-deaf opulence during the middle of a pandemic. Above all, it was a banquet of the dictators — an unambiguous display of Xi’s politics and foreign policy ambitions.
Given the overt politicization of the Games by Xi, IOC president Thomas Bach’s statement that politics should be kept separate from sport, delivered during a speech at the opening ceremony, rang hollow — especially as Beijing made the politically loaded choice of an Uighur athlete as the final torchbearer to light the “Olympic flame.” It was hypocrisy on stilts.
During the opening ceremony, Bach bowed to Xi as if genuflecting to an emperor, in a move that has been dubbed the “IOC kowtow.” The ceremony showed that China and the IOC have taken on a master/slave relationship.
Not only has Bach been criticized in the past for adopting a pro-Beijing stance, investigative reporting by several US media organizations has exposed several IOC directors and committee members, including IOC vice president John Coates, as having close business ties with China.
As has been seen time and again, the CCP uses money and business interests to buy influence around the world, and lure politicians and plutocrats into doing its bidding.
The Beijing Winter Olympics has been a vivid demonstration of a Games with “Chinese characteristics.” Predictably, the four-athlete Taiwanese delegation has become embroiled in controversy. One week before the opening ceremony, the Sports Administration announced that its officials would not attend the ceremony due to the pandemic and the difficulty of scheduling flights.
However, after being leaned on by the IOC, three days later the agency changed its position. This means that while officials from the US and other democratic nations boycotted the Games amid concerns over human rights abuses, Taiwanese officials and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee have effectively sided with China.
If Taiwan’s foreign policy toward China is this inconsistent, fickle and, frankly, deranged, how can Taiwanese expect democratic nations to stand alongside them the next time China bullies and coerces Taiwan?
Even more absurd is the incident involving Taiwanese speedskater Huang Yu-ting (黃郁婷) who posted on Facebook a video of herself wearing a Chinese national team skinsuit while training. After Huang was attacked by angry Taiwanese, she attempted to assuage critics with a series of vacuous bromides such as “sport is sport” and “there is no nationality in the world of sports.”
These sorts of ludicrous incidents are of course not limited to the sporting world. Taiwanese academics, performers, religious figures and even retired members of the military have in the past displayed a reckless disregard for the enemy across the Taiwan Strait.
As China continues to close in on Taiwan using every means at its disposal, Taiwanese, aside from building an international consensus to rename Chinese Taipei as “Taiwan,” need to engage in serious introspection to rediscover their core values and rekindle an iron-clad determination to defend their nation.
Translated by Edward Jones
In an article published in Newsweek on Monday last week, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged China to retake territories it lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. “If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t China take back Russia?” Lai asked, referring to territories lost in 1858 and 1860. The territories once made up the two flanks of northern Manchuria. Once ceded to Russia, they became part of the Russian far east. Claims since then have been made that China and Russia settled the disputes in the 1990s through the 2000s and that “China
Trips to the Kenting Peninsula in Pingtung County have dredged up a lot of public debate and furor, with many complaints about how expensive and unreasonable lodging is. Some people even call it a tourist “butchering ground.” Many local business owners stake claims to beach areas by setting up parasols and driving away people who do not rent them. The managing authority for the area — Kenting National Park — has long ignored the issue. Ultimately, this has affected the willingness of domestic travelers to go there, causing tourist numbers to plummet. In 2008, Taiwan opened the door to Chinese tourists and in
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Thursday was handcuffed and escorted by police to the Taipei Detention Center, after the Taipei District Court ordered that he be detained and held incommunicado for suspected corruption during his tenure as Taipei mayor. The ruling reversed an earlier decision by the same court on Monday last week that ordered Ko’s release without bail. That decision was appealed by prosecutors on Wednesday, leading the High Court to conclude that Ko had been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and it ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Video clips
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) arrest is a significant development. He could have become president or vice president on a shared TPP-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ticket and could have stood again in 2028. If he is found guilty, there would be little chance of that, but what of his party? What about the third force in Taiwanese politics? What does this mean for the disenfranchised young people who he attracted, and what does it mean for his ambitious and ideologically fickle right-hand man, TPP caucus leader Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌)? Ko and Huang have been appealing to that
RSS