{"id":6963,"date":"2022-01-07T12:48:25","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T12:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6963"},"modified":"2022-01-07T12:48:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T12:48:25","slug":"what-the-uss-diplomatic-boycott-of-the-2022-beijing-olympics-does-and-doesnt-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6963","title":{"rendered":"What the US\u2019s diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics does \u2014 and doesn\u2019t \u2014 mean"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“President Joe Biden\u2019s administration said this week<\/a> that it would not send US government officialsto the Beijing Games in protest of China\u2019s human rights violations, including its abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang<\/a> and anti-democratic crackdown in Hong Kong<\/a>. The United Kingdom,<\/a>Australia<\/a>, and Canada<\/a> also said this week that they will keep their delegations home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This diplomatic boycott isn\u2019t a full-on protest of the games<\/a>, and won\u2019t prevent athletes from participating in the 2022 Olympics. It won\u2019t affect the spectacle of the event all that much, although lots of skiers will probably be asked about it<\/a>. And despite some pressure from <\/a>activists<\/a> and human rights advocates<\/a>, corporate sponsors \u2014 a.k.a. the money behind it all \u2014 have been largely silent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this makes the US diplomatic boycott \u201cmore symbolic than substantial,\u201d Zhiqun Zhu, a professor of political science and international relations at Bucknell University, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That symbolism can still needle the Chinese government, especially now that countries beyond the US have joined, and even more soif others follow suit. The Olympics matter to Beijing \u2014 maybe not as much as its coming-out party in the 2008 Summer Games, but President Xi Jinping still wants to signal international prestige to the world and to his domestic audience, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chinese government has pushed back pretty hard against the boycotts. Before they became real, China warned of \u201cresolute countermeasures,\u201d<\/a> without specifying what those might be. Since the boycott announcements, Chinese officials basically said that\u2019s cool, but you actually weren\u2019t even invited anyway<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2021\/12\/10\/22826798\/beijing-olympics-2022-diplomatic-boycott-us-china-canada<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“President Joe Biden\u2019s administration said this week that it would not send US government officials to the Beijing Games in protest of China\u2019s human rights violations, including its abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and anti-democratic crackdown in Hong Kong. The United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada also said this week that they will keep their delegations home.<\/p>\n

This diplomatic boycott isn\u2019t a full-on protest of the games, and won\u2019t prevent athletes from participating in the 2022 Olympics. It won\u2019t affect the spectacle of the event all that much, although lots of skiers will probably be asked about it. And despite some pressure from activists and human rights advocates, corporate sponsors \u2014 a.k.a. the money behind it all \u2014 have been largely silent.<\/p>\n

All of this makes the US diplomatic boycott \u201cmore symbolic than substantial,\u201d Zhiqun Zhu, a professor of political science and international relations at Bucknell University, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

That symbolism can still needle the Chinese government, especially now that countries beyond the US have joined, and even more so if others follow suit. The Olympics matter to Beijing \u2014 maybe not as much as its coming-out party in the 2008 Summer Games, but President Xi Jinping still wants to signal international prestige to the world and to his domestic audience, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

The Chinese government has pushed back pretty hard against the boycotts. Before they became real, China warned of \u201cresolute countermeasures,\u201d without specifying what those might be. Since the boycott announcements, Chinese officials basically said that\u2019s cool, but you actually weren\u2019t even invited anyway.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1416,89,660,390,272,355,1042,314,1506,619],"class_list":["post-6963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-atrocity","tag-china","tag-dictatorship","tag-diplomacy","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-human-rights","tag-international-relations","tag-olympics","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6964,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6963\/revisions\/6964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}