The 2022 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXIV Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Beijing 2022, was an international winter multi-sport event held between 4 and 20 February 2022 in Beijing, China, and surrounding areas with competition in selected events beginning 2 February 2022. The Beijing Olympics was marred with political controversies and doping scandals. In this article, we bring to you the key details that’d be helpful for your MBA Admissions interviews. Read on!
How Much Has The Chinese Government Spent On The Winter Olympics 2022?
A Financial Times analysis has estimated the true cost of the Beijing Winter Olympics is about $8.8 billion. That’s more than twice China’s original projected number of about $3.9 billion.
Construction projects related to the Games, including venues and the Olympic Village, were originally planned to cost about $1.5 billion. China ended up spending twice that.
Transportation ended up costing about $4 billion, though the IOC claimed those costs weren’t necessarily counted as specific Olympics projects, but rather as general infrastructure.
Additional costs included making artificial snow and preparing COVID-19 preventions.
The FT’s number vastly differs from a Business Insider investigation, which estimated a whopping $38.5 billion.
Why Have Countries Coordinated Diplomatic Boycotts Of The Winter Olympics 2022
China’s largest administrative region is called Xinjiang and much of the region’s population is Uighur, a Turkish ethnic group native to the region. Xinjiang officially became part of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and tried many times to separate from it in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Chinese government, however, made sure to suppress this activism. Conflicts between the Uyghurs and the Chinese state have deepened over time due to ethnic tensions. With an increasing number of non-Uyghurs moving into Xinjiang, the Uyghurs feel that they are becoming increasingly marginalized in an area where they lived first. China, on the other hand, wants to keep this region for its economic importance, as well as for its political sensitivity — Xinjiang borders eight other countries.In an effort to make Xinjiang more culturally cohesive with the rest of China, the Chinese government has been driving the Uyghur culture out of Xinjiang in every way it can — including by targeting their religion. The Uyghurs in Xinjiang are Sunni Muslims, so the Chinese state has placed severe restrictions on Islam by allowing fewer mosques, strictly controlling religious schools and banning fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Other efforts to suppress the Uyghurs include forced contraception. Those who do not comply with taking birth control or getting an abortion are forced to attend “re-education” centers to “learn job skills.” In reality, the centers are internment camps. These camps constitute the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II. Because of these human rights abuses, which are further detailed in the leaked China Cables documents, the fact that the 2022 Olympics are being held in China is very problematic to some people. Many feel that the IOC is being compliant with these abuses by allowing Beijing to host.
India had announced that its officials will not attend the opening or closing ceremonies of the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, after Beijing chose as a torchbearer for the event a military commander who was involved in the bloody face-off between the Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Galwan Valley in June 2020.The violent clash on the night of June 14-15, 2020, in Galwan Valley in Ladakh, which saw hand-to-hand combat between soldiers of the two sides, was the first time in 45 years that lives were lost along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between India and China.While both sides hurled rocks at each other that night, a Chinese assault team reportedly “hunted down and slaughtered” Indian soldiers “with iron rods as well as batons wrapped in barbed wire.”Qi Fabao, a PLA regiment commander who participated in this violence, was among the 1,200 torchbearers in the Games. He has been feted in the Chinese media as a hero.India’s Ministry of External Affairs announced that the charge d’affaires of its embassy in Beijing will not be attending the opening or the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. “It is indeed regrettable that the Chinese side has chosen to politicise an event like the Olympics,” the MEA said. Shortly after the MEA’s announcement, national broadcaster Doordarshan said it will not telecast live the opening or closing ceremonies.
Has The Peng Shuai Issue Also Contributed To The Boycotts?
The US and Australia cited it as one of the reasons, while German ministers, too, said they won’t attend the Games in response to the alleged treatment meted out towards Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai.Peng Shuai had accused a high-ranking communist party member, Zhang Gaoli, of sexually assaulting her. However, moments after Peng Shuai made her allegations on Chinese social media, the posts were taken down and she disappeared from public view for days, sparking concerns about her safety.
Which Countries Have BoyCotted The Winter Olympics 2022
The US, UK and Canada declared a diplomatic boycott, along with India, Australia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia.
How Has China Responded?
China has tried to quell the controversy as much as it can. They are keeping athletes silent by threatening to subject them to an unspecified punishment under Chinese law if they participate in any protests that violate “the Olympic spirit” — an ultimately vague concept. This has created fear for the rest of the world’s athletes. China has also discouraged “politicization of sports” in an effort to further curb the protests and controversy. This is a fair statement to consider as, time and time again, the United States has tried to act as the policemen of the world even when it is not necessarily our place. The United States is not unfamiliar with using the Olympics as a political platform, either. The 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow were famously boycotted by a U.S.-led coalition in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Kamila Valieva’s Doping Scandal
Valieva tested positive for trimetazidine, a drug banned at all times. The report from the Stockholm laboratory, which was approved by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), dropped on the same day as the athlete’s starring role in the ROC’s gold-medal performance. The panel’s commentary was scathing regarding the 44 days it had taken for the Stockholm laboratory to provide the results, noting that Valieva had tested negative twice since then — on Jan. 13 and Feb. 7 — with those results having arrived in a more timely manner. The Swedish laboratory blamed the delays on staffing shortages related to the coronavirus pandemic.“None of this is the fault of the athlete, and it has put her in a remarkably difficult position where she faces a lifetime of work being taken from her within days of the biggest event of her short career,” the panel wrote in its 41-page judgment.Still, the panel’s decision was not a verdict on whether the banned drug trimetazidine, known as TMZ, had entered her system by mistake, as she contends, or was part of a doping scheme.The court’s report said that Valieva had failed to provide evidence to support a claim by her mother, and her legal team, that the positive test might have been the result of contamination through sharing of dishes or drinking from the same glass as her grandfather, who reportedly took TMZ after heart replacement surgery. The court panel, the report said, was provided with no proof of purchase, medical records or prescriptions.The doping case upended the figure skating event, with the I.O.C. scrapping the medal ceremony for the team competition and declaring that there would not be a podium ceremony for the women’s event should Valieva finish in a medal position. By the time Valieva took the ice for the women’s free skate on Thursday, in a contest she was favored to win, the stress of the past week appeared to have taken its toll.She faltered badly, slipping to the ice several times, in an error-strewn performance that ended with her dissolving into tears and crashing down to fourth place.The court panel said Valieva, as well as the other athletes who were affected by the case, were the victims of a failed system.Sources: Michigan Daily | BBC | The Times | Front Office Sports