Six massive reasons why Biden should boycott Beijing Olympics

President Biden says he’s “considering” a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing. In fact, that’s the least that’s called for.

The Chinese Communist Party aims to make the Games a propaganda triumph to put Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” to shame. In reality, it deserves the world’s scorn, far beyond simply not sending an official US government delegation.

One: The CCP has violated every provision in the UN Genocide Convention in its horrific, horrific abuse of the Uighurs in the far-west region of Xinjiang. It’s holding roughly 2 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in some 260 secretly built, high-security concentration camps and other detention centers. The handful who’ve gotten out say they were subjected to indoctrination, sexual abuse and even forced sterilization.

Two: Beijing utterly refuses to cooperate in any real investigation into the origins of the pandemic that’s taken more than 5 million lives. In fact, as David Asher noted, “the scientific and circumstantial evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is close to dispositive.”

The CCP has done everything in its power to muddy the waters from the pandemic’s first days. From scrubbing whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang’s name from the Internet to blaming the US for bringing it to China’s shores via frozen-food packaging to muscling the World Health Organization into supporting its lies.

Three: China harvests the organs of prisoners of conscience, a nearly two-decades-long practice, mainly from Falun Gong practitioners and Uighur Muslims. Beijing insists all organs are from “voluntary” donors after death, but the raw numbers render that an impossibility.

Four: The crackdown on freedom in Hong Kong, contrary to Beijing’s promises in the accord handing over the island city. Not only has the CCP squashed any semblance of democracy, it’s now arresting anyone and anything that stands in its way.

Five: Beijing’s war on churches. President Xi Jinping wants no other gods before him: He has been cracking down on China’s Christians for years, refusing to allow children to attend worship, tearing down churches, replacing images of Jesus with his mug, imprisoning pastors and editing the Bible so that it adheres to the CCP line.

Six: In its latest bit of rank tyranny, the regime has “disappeared” a three-time Olympian of its own, tennis star Peng Shuai, after she accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier, of sexual assault. That’s how the CCP rolls, but it’s reason enough for a boycott by the athletes themselves if the world’s governments and the International Olympic Committee turn a blind eye.

China Furious With Joe Biden As He Mulls Diplomatic Boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics

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China’s Foreign Ministry has lashed out at President Joe Biden after he said the U.S. is mulling a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics over the ruling communist regime’s human rights record.

“It’s something we’re considering,” Biden confirmed when pressed on the issue during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office on Thursday.

A diplomatic boycott from the U.S. would mean that the Biden administration would not send dignitaries to the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in February 2022, but American athletes would still be allowed to compete.

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Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian hit back at Biden’s remarks on Friday, saying that it is wrong to politicize the Games.

“The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the Paralympics are the stage for athletes from all over the world,” he said. “Politicizing sports is against the Olympic spirit and harms the interests of athletes from all countries.”

Biden’s remarks came amid growing calls by several lawmakers and human rights groups for the U.S. to boycott the Beijing Olympics over its human rights abuses, including against its Uyghur population in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where it is estimated that at least one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are being held in a sprawling network of detention camps.

At a press conference on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the Biden administration was considering a diplomatic boycott of Beijing’s 2022 Olympics due to concerns over human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

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“There are areas that we do have concerns: human rights abuses. We have serious concerns,” Psaki told reporters.

“Certainly there are a range of factors as we look at what our presence would be,” she said, adding that there is currently no timeline for a decision by Biden on the potential diplomatic boycott.

Traditionally, high-level delegations from the U.S., as well as other major nations, attend the Olympic Games. This year’s Tokyo Olympic Games were attended by first lady Jill Biden, while second gentleman Doug Emhoff led a delegation to the Paralympic Games.

Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping engaged in their first virtual summit on Monday, but the White House said the pair did not discuss the Games.

On Thursday, Republic Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas urged the Biden administration to commit to a complete boycott of the Beijing Olympics, with “no athletes, no administration officials, no corporate sponsors.”

Cotton cited the Chinese regime’s “crimes against the United States, and the civilized world, and its own people.”

“China runs a totalitarian slave state in which they keep hundreds of thousands, if not millions of religious and ethnic minorities in gulags,” he said, referring to the detention of Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang.

Blinken says US can benefit Africa amid rising Chinese influence

Blinken says US can benefit Africa amid rising Chinese influence

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Blinken says US can benefit Africa amid rising Chinese influence

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on his first visit in the post to sub Saharan Africa (AFP/Andrew Harnik)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that the United States considers Africa a “major geopolitical power” where it can deliver tangible benefits, seeking to boost US influence as rival China invests heavily.

Days before China holds a major meeting on Africa in Senegal, where Blinken heads later Friday, the top US diplomat said President Joe Biden plans to convene a summit of African leaders.

In an address at the headquarters of the West African bloc ECOWAS in Abuja, Blinken made no explicit mention of China but said he knew Africans have been “wary of the strings” that often come with foreign engagement.

“I want to be clear — the United States doesn’t want to limit your partnerships with other countries,” Blinken said.

“We don’t want to make you choose. We want to give you choices.

“Our approach will be sustainable, transparent and values-driven,” he said.

He said that other nations’ infrastructure deals can be “opaque, coercive, burden countries with unmanageable debt, are environmentally destructive and don’t always benefit the people who actually live there.”

“We will do things differently,” he said.

He said the Biden administration “firmly believes that it’s time to stop treating Africa as a subject of geopolitics –- and start treating it as the major geopolitical player it has become.”

He acknowledged reasons for cynicism, saying that Africans too often “have been treated as junior partners — or worse — rather than equal ones”.

“And we’re sensitive to centuries of colonialism, slavery, and exploitation that lead to painful legacies that endure today.”

Blinken, whose three-nation trip also included Kenya, promised cooperation on areas including fighting Covid-19 and climate change.

– Threats to democracy –

Biden — who next month holds a virtual summit of democracies — has vowed a new commitment not only to Africa but to democracy after perceptions that his predecessor Donald Trump was not focused on either.

A day after meeting Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Blinken met with religious and civil society leaders as part of an effort to move beyond dealings just with governments in Africa.

He praised grassroots efforts to defuse religious tensions, two days after he reversed the Trump administration’s decision, encouraged by evangelical Christians, to put Nigeria on a blacklist on religious freedom.

“Your leadership is one that we hope all will follow on, not just in Nigeria but beyond,” Blinken said, calling the diversity of Africa’s most populous country a “very wonderful and powerful thing”.

In a tone he has struck throughout the administration, Blinken in his speech acknowledged that the United States was not a perfect model on democracy in the wake of the January 6 mob attack by Trump supporters on the US Capitol.

“Democratic backsliding is not just an African problem -– it’s a global problem. My own country is struggling with threats to our democracy. And the solutions to those threats will come as much from Africa as from anywhere.”

“We need to show how democracies can deliver what citizens want, quickly and effectively,” he said.

Biden has identified China as the paramount US challenge of the 21st century with Beijing’s rapid growth and rising assertiveness at home and abroad.

China has ramped up involvement in Africa in its search for resources and an infrastructure-building blitz — and makes little fuss about democracy.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama, speaking Thursday at a news conference with Blinken, dismissed concerns about China, saying that Beijing provided needed funding.

“We would have gone with anybody else that was providing something at a competitive rate for us,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s a good thing for you if you’re the attractive bride and everybody is offering you wonderful things.”

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The suspicious disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai is straight out of China’s playbook for forcing rogue celebrities into submission

The suspicious disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai is straight out of China’s playbook for forcing rogue celebrities into submission

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Bill BostockFri, November 19, 2021, 9:19 AM·6 min read 

• Peng Shuai seemingly vanished after accusing a former Chinese official of sexual assault on Nov. 2.
• It’s common for China’s elites to disappear after displeasing or criticizing the government.
• This ruthlessness shows that in China, no one is above the law or — more importantly — the Communist Party.

The tennis star Peng Shuai, “X-Men” actress Fan Bingbing, and Alibaba founder Jack Ma were darlings of the Chinese state, symbols that Beijing’s reach extended to Hollywood and Wall Street.

What the trio also have in common is that they vanished without notice after defying Beijing or embarrassing the nation.

This tactic — which comes alongside a mass, unopposed crackdown on lawyers, activists, and state critics — appears to be Beijing’s go-to strategy to tackle disloyalty and prevent rebellion.

Fan vanished for three months in 2018 following revelations that she dodged millions of dollars in tax, only to return with a grovelling apology. Ma vanished for the same period in late 2020 after he criticized China’s reluctance to innovate, coming back to say he had been “studying and thinking.”

Peng, meanwhile, has not been heard from since she accused the former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her on November 2.

 

These cases, and many others like it, follow the same arc: A high-profile individual brings China into disrepute, then vanish. They then either reemerge to repent or never return.

“They keep these people and they try to find some sort of arrangement,” Konstantinos Tsimonis, a lecturer in Chinese society at the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, told Insider.

“I think that’s what we had with Jack Ma and I think that’s what we’re going to get with Peng Shuai,” he said, adding that the Chinese government is likely thinking: “We want to make sure you don’t talk anymore, so we don’t have a reemergence of the #MeToo movement in the public sphere.”

Tsimonis also cited the 2011 disappearance of the dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who was detained for 81 days without charge.

“They made up some charges. The message was clear, and they only let him go when he agreed to stop talking,” Tsimonis said. “This [trend] is worrying.” (Ai left China in 2015 and has since openly criticized the Chinese government.)

 

‘This is the norm, not the exception’

China can get away with doing this to celebrities, and countless others, thanks to the vagaries of its legal system, and its power to suppress information on the internet.

“Proximity to the top levels of power — fame, money, power, a Nobel peace prize — do not buy you any added protection,” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, told Insider.

“This case has laid bare for yet another large global audience the truly arbitrary nature of power the Chinese government and party wield,” she said, referring to Peng. “This happens all the time, this is the norm, not the exception.”

 

In a way, Peng and Ma’s disappearances weren’t surprising, as criticism of the country and its officials are effectively attacks on the Communist Party.

“The state protects its own at the end of the day,” Roderic Wye, a former British Embassy official in Beijing, told Insider. “Accusing a senior state official is verging on, or is actually seen as, a serious crime against state security.”

Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies, agreed in his remarks.

“For a young female celebrity accusing a former PBSC of a sexual crime is just unacceptable, as it could set a precedent for others to be so challenged,” he said, referring to the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee.

How it ends

Peng is well known internationally, so, like with Ma and Fan, it is possible she will reemerge.

“It makes it more difficult for her to be completely disappeared or dealt with. There will be people asking questions” Wye said.

“She would have to make some sort of fulsome retraction” to return to public life, he said.

One of those who apologized to win back their freedom is Fan.

After China made Fan repay 479 million yuan ($70 million) in 2019, she issued a groveling apology on the microblogging site Weibo in which she said she was “deeply ashamed.” Then, in an interview with The New York Times, she practically thanked Beijing for vanishing her.

Since then, her social media posts have carried a nationalist tinge.

 

That said, some disappearances in China remain a mystery.

In August, the actress Zhao Wei vanished abruptly, and Chinese streaming sites pulled down her TV shows and films. Though no reason was given for her disappearance, Chinese state media — which can be considered an extension of the state — said she was “surrounded with lawsuits” and noted she was banned in 2017 from trading in China’s securities markets for unspecified “market violations.”

Another member of China’s elite who vanished is Ren Zhiqiang, the former chairman of the property behemoth Huayuan.

In a March 2020 essay, Ren launched a thinly-veiled attack on Chinese President Xi Jinping, comparing him to “a clown who stripped naked and insisted on continuing being emperor.” The Chinese Communist Party expelled Ren as a member in June and he was subsequently sentenced to 18 years in prison over corruption charges.

On Wednesday, the Chinese state broadcaster CGTN published an English-language email claiming to be from Peng, which retracted the allegation against Zhang and said she was safe.

The email has not been verified and, instead of alleviating people’s fears, it only increased concerns for Peng’s safety.

Steve Simon, the chairman of the Women’s Tennis Association, said in a statement on Thursday: “Her allegation of sexual assault must be respected, investigated with full transparency and without censorship.”

“The voices of women need to be heard and respected, not censored nor dictated to.”

Read the original article on Business Insider