President Joe Biden, 79, through his 43-year-old Press Secretary Jen Psaki, announced Monday, Dec. 6, that the U.S. would not send an official delegation to the Beijing Winter Olympics in protest to China’s human rights abuses. Biden picks an odd time to antagonize 68-year-old Chinese President Xi Jinping, already threatening Taiwan with warplanes over the Taiwan Strait. Psaki delivered the brutal news to the Chinese Communist Party. “The Biden administration will not send and diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics games given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang,” Psaki said. Beijing heard all the U.S. complaints at a get-to-know-you summit in Anchorage, Alaska March 18 when 59-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken and 45-year-old National Security read Bejing the riot act.
Since taking office Jan. 20, Biden and Blinken have antagonized Xi and 69-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing both of egregious human rights abuses in their countries. Blinken and Sullivan opened up both barrels at the summit, accusing Beijing of genocide against Muslim, Uyghurs. Biden and Blinken demanded that Putin release dissident Alexi Navalny from prison, another encroachment into Russia’s internal and sovereign affairs. U.S. and European Officials applauded Navalny’s efforts to work behind the scenes to topple Putin. So Biden hit U.S. national security with a double-whammy, attacking the Kremlin then going after Beijing. When it comes to making a case against China, the U.S. is on flimsy ground. While there’s plenty of evidence of China putting Uyghurs in re-education camps, there’s zero evidence of an ongoing genocide or systematic extermination.
Biden’s decision of a diplomatic boycott allows athletes to compete but allows U.S. officials to send a message to Beijing. But the message sent to Xi is not what Biden and Psaki think, driving a bigger wedge into U.S.-China relations. Instead of dealing with the big issues, Biden chose of grandstand at a time of increase geopolitical tensions. Beijing has been menacing Taiwan with military flyovers in the Taiwan Strait, telling Taipei that Beijing reserves the right to take over the island nation at any time of its choosing. Biden knows that the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, signed into law by former President Jimmy Carter, ended the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, agreeing to recognize only one China. Boycotting the Winter Olympics is a slap in the face to Beijing, offering nothing but humiliation to the Peoples Republic of China [PRC], something that harms U.S.-China relations.
When Blinken and Sullivan met in Alaska with senior Chinese diplomats, former Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told them both that no country that practuces “systemic racism” has a right to lecture any country about human rights. Biden, while campaigning for President, called the country “systemically racist,” meaning that institutional racism prohibits African Americans from pursuing “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” all guaranteed in the Constitution. U.S. officials have branded Beijing as engaged in “genocide” against Muslim Uyghurs in Western China, offering no proof, only third-party accounts largely from Muslim rights groups like London-based Human Rights Watch and Washington-based Amnesty International. Unlike other genocides, like the WW II Nazi Holocaust, there’s no documentation or proof of China’s systematic extermination.
Biden thinks he can raise the banner of human rights to champion American democracy, something that’s been under scrutiny since he admitted the U.S. was “systemically racist.” Of course Biden pandered at the time for the African American vote, not realizing that his words would come back to bite him. Jiechi had a touché moment, getting back at American hypocrisy. U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC’s egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang and we simply can’t do that,” said Psak, hitting China below the belt. Psaki knows that the No. 1 principle of the Olympic Games forbids countries or athletes from playing politics. Diplomatic boycotts do nothing other than expose the Olympic Games to more disgraceful politics. U.S. has a history of boycotting the Olympic Games.
Joining the U.S. diplomatic boycott, the U.K., Canada and Australia, also decided to make political statements at the wrong time. Whatever beef the Transatlantic Alliance has with China, the Olympics are not the place to raise controversial issues. “There will be effectively a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, no ministers are expected to attend and no officials,” 57-year-old U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. Johnson knows that politics must be kept out of the Olympics because it’s not fair to the athletes that have sacrificed so much for the moment of glory. When former President Jimmy Carter boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, he turned the Olympics into political farce. “Making an issue out of the presence of government officials at the Beijing Winter Olympics is in essence a political smearing campaign,” said a spokesman for the Chinese embassy.
