"Is China ready to host the Winter Olympics?" asks Lily Kuo of The Washington Post

The Opening Ceremony for this year’s Winter Olympics will be held on February 4 in the National Stadium in Beijing, China, and will run through February 20. The city of Beijing has not hosted an Olympics since fourteen years ago when it hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics. However, Beijing is facing a number of unprecedented challenges due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the Uyghur Genocide.

Lily Kuo of The Washington Post wrote in her article “Is China ready to host the Winter Olympics?” that “China has reported only a handful of omicron cases” because of its “zero-covid strategy,” which involves strict quarantines, lockdowns, border control, and contract tracing.

China, however, is set to receive over 3,000 athletes, thousands of trainers and staff, members of the media, and spectators - only spectators from China will be allowed to attend - for the Olympics. 

Kuo writes that the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics have “tighter restrictions than those seen at the Tokyo Summer Olympics.” The participants of the Beijing Winter Olympics will be placed in a “‘closed loop’” that will be separated from the local population. The members of the “‘closed loop’” have a number of rules in place to protect the athletes such as being fully vaccinated 14 days before arriving in China, testing every day, and wearing masks every day. Athletes who break any of the rules set in place will be disqualified. 

China further faces the implications of the current Uyghur Genocide taking place in the Xinjiang region, where millions of Uyghur Muslims are facing internment and death. Kuo shared that The United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, and other countries have announced that they are not sending government representatives to the games in protest of China’s human rights violations. Japan has also said that it will not be sending any cabinet members.

Because these countries will still be sending athletes to the games, their decisions to not send government representatives will not directly affect the games. However, the boycott has shown China that governments around the world are not going to accept China’s actions against the Uyghur people. 

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/01/07/china-winter-olympics-beijing-omicron/ 

https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/pictures/beijing-winter-olympics-2022-everything-we-know/