Biden Made the Right Decision

The United States’ diplomatic boycott of the Olympics is not an act of hostility; it is a justified reaction to the aggressive power politics of the regime in Beijing.

The U.S. government will not send any official representatives to this February’s Winter Olympics in China. With a diplomatic boycott, the United States will allow its athletes to compete while sending a clear message to China. The decision was overdue – and absolutely correct.

Yes, the boycott will worsen relations between the U.S. and China. Beijing has been enraged and issuing threats for months; now, it wants want to strike back. It probably also helped the decision-making process in Washington that the possibility of foreign representatives participating in the games is already extremely restricted. China has still not even invited most of them.

But one should not be confused about the propaganda from Beijing. The U.S. and other nations considering a boycott are not aggressors. The decision is a necessary consequence of a decade under Communist leader Xi Jinping that has fundamentally changed China: the brutal treatment of Muslim minorities, the repression of the protests in Hong Kong, the threats against Taiwan. While Beijing was getting riled up about the boycott, the regime in nearly the same breath published a white paper that reportedly presents its new model of “democracy,” which really means autocracy—a direct attack on liberal systems worldwide.

The Fate of Peng Shuai

It is a simple but necessary acknowledgment, one that the incoming German government still needs to make. We need a new strategy for dealing with China because the world is now dealing with a different China. In this context, it is almost macabre that the debate about the boycott first gained traction due to the fate of a famous tennis player, while millions of people have been persecuted and forcibly relocated for years in Xinjiang. The outrage over the disappearance of Peng Shuai may give the victims a face, but her case is, above all, part of a systemic repression.

That makes China’s demand to refrain from “politicizing” the games and focus on the sports all the more absurd. For Beijing, the athletes are nothing more than useful pawns. The games exclusively serve to burnish the country’s image in an effort to strengthen support for the regime at home as well as abroad. Government offices are already doing everything they can to maintain control over the images. Journalists are being systematically monitored and hindered.

America’s rejection of China’s situation may not change China. In the short term, Joe Biden’s decision actually plays into the hands of the Communist Party and its propaganda. The boycott, so it goes, is not actually a reaction to the human rights situation; it is foul play by a sore loser in the battle over progress and power.

The West’s Errors

But one of the greatest mistakes the West has made in dealing with the Chinese Communist Party was believing that exchange with political leaders in China would automatically lead to more freedom for the Chinese people. The free world has barely any influence over what happens in China. But every foreign diplomat who travels to Beijing in February will bolster the regime. For that reason, Germany should join the U.S. in its decision.