Starting one week from today on February 4, the Beijing Winter Olympics begins another chapter of the world’s engagement with an unstoppably ascendant China.
It is going to be an exceptionally fraught event -- even leaving aside the pandemic circumstances -- that previews the functioning of an unprecedented new world order. This is because, via ruthless machinations of president Xi Jinping, the communist party has managed to make itself unassailable at home, while maintaining almost equal dominance overseas as well.
Make no mistake, we have never seen anything like this before. The sheer power in Xi’s hands makes the Cold War look like child’s play. At this point, China wields extraordinary financial muscle that reaches deep into global treasuries, with even ostensible opponents dangling on a string.
Just how far does that writ extend? We’re about to find out in Beijing.
Here, what happened this week at the Australian Open is illustrative, after the tennis Grand Slam tournament’s organizers banned t-shirts and banners asking “Where is Peng Shuai?” only partly backing off following widespread complaints.
This controversy is about the superb tennis player -- she was the first Chinese contender to be ranked number one in the international rankings, for doubles -- who wrote a sensational public post on Weibo last November accusing the former Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli of forcing her into a sexual relationship.
“Even if it's just striking a stone with a pebble, or a moth attacking a flame and courting self-destruction, I will tell the truth about you,” wrote Peng. “I didn't give my consent and couldn't stop crying. You brought me to your house and forced me and you to have relations.”
Within minutes, Peng’s post was removed (although screenshots began to circulate) and the athlete disappeared from the public eye. Then, she was extensively scrubbed by “The Great Firewall of China” so that even internet searches didn’t reveal her name, despite representing the country three times in the Olympics.
In the intervening weeks, Peng has made some obviously stage-managed media appearances -- each time carefully disavowing her previous claims -- but no one has been able to meet her.
Despite this, like in so many previous cases, the world would have happily forgotten this one too, if it were not for the Women’s Tennis Association. Always activist-minded, thanks to great pioneers like Billie Jean King, the global body made the highly creditable decision -- especially since at least one-third of its revenue comes from that country -- to suspend its tournaments in China.
The bravery of the WTA in pursuing principle provides stark contrast to what is effectively everyone else.
In the past two years alone, China has successfully had its way with every possible global mega-corporation -- Tesla, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Disney -- while also strong-arming governments and international bodies to keep silent about its rampant authoritarianism, especially in Xinjiang, where Xi’s administration is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity.
In The Times earlier this month, Roger Boyes editorialized that “the western tide, alert to what happened in Europe in the 1930s, has been turning against Beijing’s treatment of the more than a million Uighurs who have been pushed into “re-education” camps in Xinjiang, farmed out to factories in other parts of China and restricted in their practice of Islam. That may not be strictly speaking “genocide,” as many Uighur activists claim, but there have been plenty of reliable witness accounts suggesting they are a severely repressed minority -- muzzled, surveilled by intrusive high-tech policing, manoeuvred like cattle, forcibly sterilized.
Yet, look at the details, and this “turning tide” amounts to very little. A paltry nine countries have signed on to Joe Biden’s pointless “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Winter Olympics, where they will still send athletes, but abstain from official delegations.
Meanwhile, left largely unsaid by everyone is the glaring fact it was Vice Premier Zhang -- the same official accused of sexual coercion by Peng Shuai -- who headed China’s preparations for these games, working directly under president Xi.
Are any of these complicated tensions going to show up on our television screens on February 4, or in any part of the media coverage until the closing ceremony on February 20?
Don’t bet on it.
There’s far too much at stake, for China as well as all the intertwined entities involved. We are very distant from previous eras and Olympics like 1968 in Mexico, where Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised their fists on the podium to salute the politics of Black Power.
Thus, this time around, you can expect precisely what president Xi promised the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach earlier this week: A “safe, streamlined, splendid” spectacle that keeps us all glued to the television screens.
There will be lots of bronze, silver, and gold medals to keep everyone distracted, but in actuality there will be only one winner.
Vivek Menezes is a writer based in Goa, India.
