As Xi offers vaccines to Tokyo Olympics, China hopes to avoid a boycott of Beijing’s 2022 Winter Games
- Is there more to China’s offers to jab athletes than simply showing solidarity to a fellow Olympics host?
- As Japan cuddles up to Team USA, Beijing’s move is likely aimed at resetting ties and ensuring its neighbour does not join moves to spoil China’s big moment next year, analysts say
In the second instalment of our Tokyo Trail series on key issues surrounding the Olympics, we look at at why China is pledging its support for the Games to go ahead.
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Given the long history of rivalry between China and Japan, the phone call has raised some eyebrows – not least because it came just two months after Japan turned down a similar offer from Beijing.
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Supporting the Tokyo Games may go some way to making up for the lost opportunity, experts said.
“In spite of the tensions, China has adopted a supportive stance and is expected to send a large delegation of athletes and coaches to the Tokyo Games,” said Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.
He said China’s support was not because it feared any further postponement might have a knock-on effect on Beijing 2022’s schedule. Rather, “the support underscores China’s concerns about the Beijing Winter Olympics being politicised” and “the attitude of Japan will mean a lot to China as it is beleaguered by the US and the EU”.
With a little more than two months to go before the Tokyo Games are scheduled to begin on July 23, it is still far from certain the event will take place.
A poll by the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper between May 7 and May 9 found nearly 60 per cent of people in Japan wanted them to be cancelled. Opposition to the Games has swollen amid a surge in Covid-19 cases that are thought to have been fuelled by new, more contagious variants of the virus. At the same time only about 2 per cent of Japan’s 126 million people have received one or more vaccine doses since its inoculation programme began in mid-February.
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However, as far as this summer’s Games go, it may have been pipped to the post. The IOC on May 6 announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Pfizer and BioNTech, under which the American and German companies will donate doses for competitors in Tokyo.
In his phone conversation with Xi, Bach said the IOC opposed politicising the Olympic movement, welcomed close cooperation with China and fully supported it in hosting the Winter Olympics as scheduled.
“No matter whether Japan accepts Chinese vaccines or not, the offer is a friendly gesture and provides China with an opportunity to improve bilateral relations,” said Pang Zhongying, a specialist in international relations at Ocean University of China.
“If Japan boycotts the Winter Games next year, it would be a big blow to China,” Pang added.
The other Olympics
While the media’s glare shines on the controversies engulfing the Tokyo Games, China’s attention is firmly focused on the Beijing Winter Olympics due to take place from February 4 to February 20, 2022.
Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, said calls for a boycott were reaching a crescendo in Europe and North America.
“In this febrile environment, Japan is one of the few advanced countries which, while decrying human rights violations in Xinjiang, has not taken any materially significant anti-China measures or lent support to a boycott of the Winter Games,” Gupta said.
He said Tokyo’s difficulties with the Summer Games meant it would be ill-placed to join the calls for a boycott as it would seem contrary to the Olympic spirit.
“It is this feature of Tokyo’s dilemma that Beijing has latched onto in order to ensure that Japan does not defect to the side of the boycotters … and thereby lend momentum to what could turn out to be a heavily-compromised Winter Games, and a political black eye for the Chinese Communist Party on the 100th anniversary of its founding,” he said.
Mark Dreyer, a sports commentator based in Beijing and founder of the China Sports Insider website, was more optimistic about the prospects for the Winter Olympics.
“Right now, it looks unlikely that any countries will have a proper boycott, in other words, not send athletes,” Dreyer said, referring to reports that some countries may instead bar their officials from attending.
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The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee said in March it would not boycott the Winter Games. While there was “a steady drumbeat” of support for a boycott, it would hurt athletes who had been training for competition, the committee’s president Susanne Lyons said.
Canadian Olympic Committee president and Olympic medallist Tricia Smith said last month that the team planned to go to the Winter Games because if a boycott took place “only athletes would pay the price”.
Dreyer doubted any country would go through with a full boycott. He also doubted that Beijing’s support of the Tokyo Games was linked to the boycott calls.
Said Dreyer: “I think it is a way of offering words of positive encouragement as much as anything else.”