A general view of the Olympic Cauldron during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics closing ceremony on day 16 at Beijing National Stadium in Beijing, China, on Feb. 20, 2022. (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
Mercifully, the Winter Olympic Games have come to an end after a “very communist closing ceremony,” which featured a carefully choreographed parade of 365 “ordinary Chinese people” showcasing the supposedly harmonious Chinese society that Beijing has manufactured using “Chinese methods.”
The event was almost a reminder of the image of uniformed Chinese youth marching through the streets, playing their accordions, during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.
And with that dreary closing ceremony ended the farce that will forever be referred to as the “Genocide Games.”
Isn’t that a bit harsh, you ask? Well, no, it isn’t, as the glitter and faux civility and hospitality that were part of the carefully constructed Potemkin village masked the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) decades of genocide, persecution, and suppression of minority populations and others who refused to conform to arbitrary communist diktats.
Here is a short list of the victims of the CCP over the years, a number of whom remain persecuted and deprived of basic human rights to this very day:
How would the CCP have reacted if a couple of Olympic athletes had practiced Falun Gong meditation exercises outside the Olympic Village during the Games?
Certainly not with the plastic welcoming smiles exhibited by CCP leader Xi Jinping and other officials during the opening ceremony!
Plainclothes policemen watch as a female practitioner of the Falun Gong spiritual system is being forcefully taken away by Chinese police toward a police van in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, on May 11, 2000. (Stephen Shaver/AFP via Getty Images)
How could the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have awarded the Games to a brutal dictatorship that continues to persecute its own people? The doublespeak from the IOC warning countries “not to politicize the Games” while kowtowing to Xi and his underlings was difficult to swallow.
This is what Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, said the day before the Olympics opened, as trumpeted by state-run China Daily: “We can say Beijing is ready. The amazing venues are ready. The Olympic villages are ready.”
His most craven statement was this one: “We can feel very safe in the closed loop despite challenges of the global pandemic. This closed loop so far is highly efficient, but it depends, of course, on understanding and respect for the rules.”
Yes, yes, the CCP is apparently big on “rules.” The “closed loop” must have given the athletes just a tiny taste of living under China’s “zero COVID” fascism, with the faint hint of life in an internment camp, and a fear of possible retribution if cyber-snooping by Chinese security services intercepted any private communications arbitrarily deemed to be “anti-China.”
Some of the athletes must have made that connection, as a few complained about the faulty test-driven COVID quarantine procedures, while some were doubtless red-pilled after Chinese officials warned before the Games that athletes who “speak out on political issues” would be “subject to certain punishment,” according to ABC News.
Hearteningly, a few athletes dared to act, according to Rolling Stone, as “a band of Olympians across multiple nations privately boycotted [the] Opening Ceremony.”
With the preceding discussion and also ghosts of the CCP’s many victims as context, there are two completely different schools of thought on whether the Games were “successful” or not.
The Games Were a Resounding Success
This camp includes the following:
Xi and the CCP: The Olympics cost the CCP a pretty penny. According to Financial Times, “China has spent at least Rmb56bn ($8.8bn) to host the Winter Olympics, with the cost to retrofit or build a dozen new venues almost double the original budget.” But money is no object when spent on a good communist propaganda cause, don’t ya know?
State-run Chinese media did their best to put lipstick on a pig with an endless stream of laudatory articles before, during, and after the Games. A key message was that Beijing is the first city to have ever hosted both Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Sufficient foreign diplomats showed up to undercut the diplomatic boycott by several countries led by the United States. There were no embarrassing political protests in Beijing during the Games. The CCP crowed about American-born Eileen Gu’s gold medal successes as a member of China’s team.
Here are a few headlines from the state-run Chinese media:
• From the Global Times: “Winter Olympics injected the world with unity, infused Chinese people with confidence about its system.”
• From China Daily: “Beijing Winter Olympics has memorably showcased the spirit of togetherness”; “Games break domestic viewership records”; and “CPC Central Committee, State Council congratulate Chinese delegation on best medal results in Chinese team history.”
From People’s Daily: “Overseas athletes in food frenzy at Beijing Winter Olympics”; “Athletes are all smiling and praising quality of Beijing 2022”; and “China’s Olympic COVID-19 bubble works.”
Xi must have loved those headlines! Hold those thoughts and read on.
The IOC: As noted above, the IOC was wrong to have allowed the Winter Games to be held in the Chinese police state from the beginning. The praise lavished on China by Bach throughout was cringeworthy: not one acknowledgement of the massive human rights violations being committed daily by the CCP.
Here are a couple of excerpts from his speech at the closing ceremony: “The Olympic spirit could only shine so brightly, because the Chinese people set the stage in such an excellent way—and in a safe way. The Olympic Villages were outstanding. The venues—magnificent. The organisation—extraordinary. … This unforgettable experience was only possible because of our gracious hosts, the Chinese people.”
The “Chinese people,” not the Chinese regime which ran the whole show? Did Xi write his speech?
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach addresses journalists during a press conference at the Main Media Center on Feb. 18, 2022. (Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images)
Countries beholden to communist China: The state-run Chinese media searched high and low for compliments from foreigners about the Winter Games. Officials in the United States, the European Union, and elsewhere were silent, for the most part.
Thus, China Daily Hong Kong quoted the chairman of the Pakistan Senate Defense Committee, a professor of diplomacy and disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi (India), a professor of Asian Studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia, executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Pakistan, a former Bangladesh ambassador to China, and Thailand’s tourism and sports minister.
Not exactly presidents, premiers, and prime ministers of major countries, but at least some foreigners pitched in to advance the CCP’s narrative.
Comcast and NBCUniversal, LLC:As reported by The Guardian, NBCUniversal paid $7.75 billion in 2014 “for the rights to broadcast the Olympics in the US until 2032.” Naturally, their commentators, led by Mike Tirico, tried to “accentuate the positive and minimize the negative” during NBC’s coverage of the Games.
Except for a few remarks during the opening ceremony, NBC commentators steered clear of any real criticism of China during their daily broadcasts to the point of tiptoeing around the Uyghur genocide, in particular, by obliquely referring to “human rights abuses.”
NBC’s hosts for the closing ceremonies voiced nary a critical word to remind viewers that the host country is a police state while gushing over the spectacle in real time.
Then, Fox News reported that Pete Bevacqua, the NBC Sports chairman, claimed that the 2022 Olympics “was probably the most difficult Olympics ever”—conveniently forgetting the massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics. A few CCP members undoubtedly toasted their success in “encouraging” NBC’s tepid and uncritical coverage of the Games.
The Games Were a Complete Failure
This camp includes virtually the rest of the world, including human rights activists and organizations, objective international media, some celebrities, long-time China watchers, and honest observers everywhere. Their commentary is virtually the opposite of that conveyed by the state-run Chinese media.
Voice of America News highlighted the travails of two Uyghur skiers, each torchbearers, for show purposes. The first, Adil Abdurehim, was a torchbearer during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, while the second, Dilnigar Ilhamjan (also known as Dinigeer Yilamujiang), lit the Olympic torch during the 2022 Winter Games. Abdurehim is now serving a 14-year sentence “for watching counter-revolutionary videos,” while Ilhamjan was “disappeared” from public view after finishing 43rd in her cross-country skiing event on Feb. 5.
The China watchers at Vision Times reported that the Olympics was a “propaganda fest marred by controversy,” including diplomatic boycotts, censorship, surveillance, and thuggery.
Newsweek highlighted that while the world was watching the Olympic competition, “China is inflicting systematic suffering and abuse on thousands held against their will—crimes against humanity—behind the scenes.”
Three-time Olympian Gus Kenworthy spoke out bravely against “human rights atrocities” while still in China at the Winter Games, as reported by U.S. News.
Some athletes complained of the “inedible food” served while in COVID quarantine. According to the UK’s The Sun, “Russian Valeria Vasnetsova posted a picture of the same inedible meal she was served it three times a day for five days in a row. The meal consisted of a few lumps of pasta, a strange looking sauce, half a dozen potatoes and chunks of meat on the bone along with what appears to be chicken.”
A general of the Olympic Village of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games at the National Sliding Center in Yanqing district, Beijing, China, on Feb. 3, 2022. (Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images)
NBC was roundly condemned by many for its obsequious coverage. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a Fox News opinion article that NBC should be renamed the “National Beijing Corporation,” since it “has dutifully recited Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points at every turn.” He further condemned NBC for taking “a ‘both sides’ approach that makes the CCP out to be as trustworthy as our own government.”
Even The Associated Press joined in bashing NBC’s coverage. “These Olympics were a disaster for the network: a buzz-free, hermetically-sealed event in an authoritarian country a half-day’s time zone away, where the enduring images will be the emotional meltdown of Russian teenagers after a drug-tainted figure skating competition and a bereft Mikaela Shiffrin, sitting on a ski slope wondering what went wrong.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board weighed in with these zingers on Feb. 18: “[T]he world should mark the [Closing Ceremony] by agreeing never to do this again. … Not in a police state. … Whatever that was in Beijing this month, it wasn’t what used to be known as the Olympic spirit.”
Perhaps the best analysis of the Games comes from long-time Tibetan activist Maura Moynihan, who performed yeoman’s work in comparing and contrasting NBC’s nightly coverage with the reality that is the Chinese communist police state.
This single sentence from her multiple blog posts found here says it all: “I forgot to go to the liquor store before tonight’s Closing Ceremonies, the bourbon jar is empty, my eyes hurt, and I can’t decide if I deserve a medal for stamina or need counselling to manage my morbid obsession with the CCP’s Stalinoid dementia, which permeates US corporate media’s coverage of Beijing 2022.”
In the final analysis, “the customer is always right” (in this case, the viewers). NBC suffered a ratings disaster, particularly in the United States. The opening ceremony averaged just 16 million U.S. viewers, which beat the previous low of 20.1 million for the 1988 Calgary Olympics.
According to the Journal, “NBC’s primetime coverage … drew the smallest audience since NBCUniversal began airing the event, an average of 11.4 million primetime viewers over more than two weeks.”
This was down a whopping 42 percent from the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Americans—and a lot of other people around the world—fully understood the implications of an Olympics being hosted by a communist police state. Rightly so!
Conclusion
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And that applies to opinions about the 2022 Beijing Games. The Chinese communists and their sycophants loved it while claiming a propaganda victory in its aftermath.
The rest of us know the real score about the ongoing genocide, persecution, and violence being perpetrated by the CCP on “disfavored” ethnic and religious minorities in China. We also know that the communists lie incessantly. It will truly be remembered as the “Genocide Games.” Epic fail!
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.
