By Jack Chan

2022.2.8

When the world has turned their eyes to China over the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games earlier on Friday, the foreign media reports badmouthing the sports competition began piling up.

A Dutch media outlet accused Chinese guards of disrupting foreign media’s report while the smear collapsed by itself in a few minutes. A post on their social media account admitted that the reporter was able to finish his work without any “interference”.

The video footage exposed by another media outlet also proved that the security guards reminded the reporters to follow the rules and led them to a more appropriate location for reporting.

Here was not the only biased report among the news stories of the Dutch Media surrounding the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics from a negative perspective.

The attacks and smears have laid bare the foreign press’s “sour grapes” mentality toward the Games. While the fact gave a heavy slap on their face.

Moreover, some foreign media kept targeting China’s “closed loop management system” that enables athletes and spectators in the safety of a coronavirus bubble as a “limited freedom”.

While they ignored the nation’s anti-virus efforts with the successful zero-Covid strategy and tried every means to smear it.

According to the official figures in November last year, the infection rate of China was less than 0.01 per cent which ranked the first in the world.

While the infection rate of Germany was around 4.4 per cent.

And Chef de Mission Dirk Schimmelpfennig said the German Olympic athletes can feel “very safe” in Beijing despite the coronavirus pandemic.

China has to take every possible means to deliver “a streamlined, safe and splendid” Games to the world under the shadow of the global ravaging pandemic, which also shows its capacity of tackling global challenges and difficulties.

Not to mention China’s great economic success over the past several decades, but its economy is ever more isolated from the west.

China did seem to have weathered the pandemic better than many major economies.

Official data released earlier this month showed that China’s Gross domestic product (GDP) has surpassed that of the European Union for the first time in history in 2021.

While in the US, the world’s largest economy, the Covid-19 death toll is soaring toward a staggering one million, which led to both a public health crisis and an economic crisis to the nation.

However, some foreign press argued that many western countries were still trying to politicize the Winter Games, with carrying out a US-led “diplomatic boycott”.

Those biased reports interpreted China’s original intention to host the Games through a single lens.

For example, the foreign media escalated the controversy caused by China’s choice of Uyghur torchbearer at the opening ceremony of the Games.

They accused China of “distracting from its alleged rights abuses against Muslim minorities”.

But the fact was that quite a few leaders of Muslim-majority countries attended the open ceremony of the Games. And in the China Team, there are 20 athletes from 9 ethnic minorities, including Uygur and Tibetan.

Those 2,900 athletes from 91 countries and regions with no concern to politics, Hong Kong among them, who will be competing.

This shows the wide support of the international community for the Games indeed.

While the foreign media had kept on “politicising” the Olympic Games, overshadowed by issues including human rights violations, Covid, and the fear of the badmouthing from the athletes.

For instance, the foreign media reported on the complaints of the athletes on the “nightmarish situations” in the quarantine hotels. And a UK media even used the “Hunger Games” to smear full of jealousy toward China.

There always are complaints from athletes in almost every Olympics. Facing various complaints, the Beijing Organizing Committee has promised to “solve issues that bring dissatisfaction as soon as possible.”

In fact, German, Belgian and Russian athletes who had previously made complaints later said the conditions had improved.

It is clear that China welcomes media from all countries to cover the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, but firmly rejects politicization of sports and the fake information.

China hosted two Olympic Games, from “One World, One Dream” in 2008 to “Together for a Shared Future” in 2022, both at the critical moments that the world faces major challenges.

Although since 2008, China had become more economically powerful, more technologically advanced, and decidedly more repressive, the country has never changed to be committed to the Olympic spirit despite the political commotion.

The theme of the Games, Together for a Shared Future, indicated that China has realized that no country alone can cope with the grave challenges.

It is obvious that whether in dealing with the global financial crisis in 2008 or in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic now, China plays an important role as a major global power.

After the Games, two major tasks before the world – the fight against the pandemic and the recovery of the global economy – need to be tackled by the global peace and unity.

The Olympic Games are one of the most powerful symbols for unity in the world. Boycotts in sports and diplomacy have never given the desired results.

All in all, let the Games continue to go on, even as we hope western media bias over the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games might end soon.

The hard work for the Chinese in February 2022 to guarantee the Games as special and as safe as possible for athletes, officials and the journalists should be appreciated.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own