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A giant Olympic rings monument at dusk in Odaiba Marine Park, Tokyo. Photo: EPA

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.

At a time when Japan is under mounting pressure to cancel or further postpone the Tokyo Games, support for the event has come from what might have once seemed a surprising direction.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach last week to pledge his support in ensuring the success of one of the biggest sporting events ever to be held in Japan. Xi offered to provide the IOC with Chinese developed Covid-19 vaccines and to help “build an effective barrier to protect athletes’ safety”, the state news agency Xinhua reported.

Why Tokyo thinks the 2020 Olympics show must go on – even as Covid-19 booms

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.

Indeed, Xi’s pledge of support comes at a testing time in China’s complex relations with its neighbour. Things have taken a turn for the worse since the inauguration of US President Joe Biden in January.
With Tokyo inching closer to Washington in what Beijing views as an anti-China alliance, the Games presents China with an opportunity for a reset in relations. Observers suggest there is also a quid pro quo at work: amid growing calls in the United States for a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, China hopes that if it can win Japanese hearts, Japan will return the favour by supporting next year’s event.
But prising Tokyo from its diplomatic new best friend is unlikely to be easy, they say. Tokyo has lent strong support to the Biden administration’s alliance-based, multilateral approach to confronting China. This has included its presence in the Quad, the US-led security grouping that includes India and Australia and is widely seen as being aimed at containing China’s rising clout in the Asia-Pacific.
Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga became not only the first foreign leader to meet Biden in person at the White House, but also the first Japanese leader in more than five decades to openly voice concerns about “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait. Beijing reacted angrily to the Suga-Biden summit, calling it an attempt to “stoke division” and encircle China.
Xi had hoped for his own summit with Japan’s prime minister. He had planned to go to Japan early last year, in what would have been the first visit by a Chinese leader since 2008, but the trip has been shelved due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the souring of ties in recent months.

Tokyo Olympics: Japanese cities left in limbo over ‘host town’ deals as coronavirus concerns persist

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. 

02:10

No singing and chanting, Covid-19 rules unveiled for delayed Tokyo Olympics

No singing and chanting, Covid-19 rules unveiled for delayed Tokyo Olympics

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.

It was against this background that Beijing made its offer in March to provide Chinese vaccines to competitors at both the Tokyo Olympics and the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. On that occasion the IOC welcomed the move, saying it was “in the true Olympic spirit of solidarity”. However, Japan’s Olympic Minister Tamayo Marukawa turned the offer down saying the Chinese vaccines had not been approved for use in Japan.
The World Health Organization approved the first Chinese Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use on May 7, yet it remains unclear whether Chinese jabs will find their way into athletes’ arms. The endorsement gives the vaccine, developed by China’s state-owned Sinopharm, a globally recognised stamp of approval and clears the way for its inclusion in the UN body’s global distribution programme.

Hong Kong buys 2020 Summer Olympics broadcast rights, will grant five local stations licences to carry Games for free

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.

A worker at the under-construction ski jumping venue for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, in Zhangjiakou. Photo: AFP

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.

Xi has said the preparations are a high priority for the Communist Party and that the event needs moral and material support from the Chinese state and public. China’s official budget for the Games is US$3.1 billion. It has spent a further 58 billion yuan (US$8.2 billion) on a 174km high-speed rail line linking Beijing, where the ice skating and hockey events will take place, to Zhangjiakou, which will host most of the skiing events.
But its plans have been hit by growing calls from overseas to boycott the event in protest over China’s treatment of ethnic Uygurs in the far western region of Xinjiang.
Human rights groups and the United Nations have alleged that as many as 1 million Uygurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang, and subjected to indoctrination, torture, or forced labour. Various politicians in the US, Canada and Britain have described the treatment of the Uygurs as genocide. The US, EU, Britain and Canada have passed a range of punitive Xinjiang-related resolutions, sanctions and measures that have been met with Chinese retaliation.
Beijing has repeatedly denied the allegations and said its policies in Xinjiang are meant to fight terrorism and religious extremism and reduce poverty. China’s foreign ministry has said the boycott calls violate the Olympic spirit and are “doomed to fail”.

03:09

China turns iconic aquatics centre Water Cube into ‘Ice Cube’ for Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

China turns iconic aquatics centre Water Cube into ‘Ice Cube’ for Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

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. 

Tokyo Olympics: as Japan struggles to contain coronavirus, pressure builds on athletes to withdraw

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.”

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