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Opinion | Two Olympics, one city and a very different China in between
- The 2008 Games were a coming-of-age party while this year’s event has highlighted divisions with the West
- Authorities have also become increasingly intolerant to criticism at home
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When Beijing was awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics seven years ago, it was hailed as the crowning glory for the Chinese capital, making the city the first in the world to stage both the Summer and Winter Games.
In 2008, the Games was seen as a coming-of-age party for the aspiring world power under President Xi Jinping’s predecessor Hu Jintao. This time around the Beijing Olympics was meant to celebrate China’s superpower status and cement Xi’s political standing at home.
Beijing had obviously also hoped to use the event to rebrand its international image and stall the unfolding new cold war with the West, choosing “together for a shared future” as its official motto.
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But with the Covid-19 pandemic and diplomatic boycotts led by the United States, some of the shine has come off the 2022 Games, exposing the gap between what Western countries want China to be and what the Asian powerhouse has become.
Rewind a decade and there were a lot of discussion about how hosting the Olympics could transform China and bring it closer to the rest of the world. But it soon turned out that the opposite was true and now makes more sense to examine how China’s rise has changed the Games and even reshaped the world in many ways.
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