Australia has decided to join the United States in a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which will take place in February of next year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday (7), in a decision that should worsen even more the bilateral relations between China and the country of Oceania. The UK and Japan are also considering boycotting, according to local newspapers.
On Monday (6), the White House announced that the Joe Biden government will not send any American officials to the Chinese capital to protest human rights violations committed by the Xi Jinping regime. The decision does not involve the athletes, who will be able to compete in the Games normally.
China reacted and even claimed that the US will “pay the price” for the decision. Despite the threat, Australia decided to join the protest. Morrison said, however, that the 40 Australian athletes accredited for the event could go to Beijing.
The decision was taken, according to the prime minister, due to Australia dificuldadess difficulties in reopening diplomatic channels with China to discuss allegations of human rights abuses in the Muslim minority region of Xinjiang and Beijing medidass measures to slow down and block imports of Australian products. Australian government officials haven’t been able to speak to Chinese counterparts for months.
The formal boycott risks further damaging Australia’s relations with China, its biggest trading partner, which soured after Canberra banned Huawei from participating in Australia’s 5G network in 2018. In September of this year, the situation worsened even more so after the country closed a pact with the US and the UK to arm itself with nuclear-powered submarines.
Beijing has responded to the escalation of the crisis in recent years by imposing tariffs on various Australian commodities, such as coal, meat, barley and wine. On Tuesday, Morrison said any further commercial disruptions would be “completely and utterly unacceptable”.
After Australia, the UK could also join the queue to boycott the Beijing Games, British newspaper The Telegraph said on Tuesday. The British government is considering sending only the country’s ambassador to China, Caroline Wilson. To the Reuters news agency, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the country has not yet taken this decision.
The Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun also published this Tuesday (already Wednesday at local time) that Japan is also considering not sending authorities to the Chinese capital.
The last measure of boycotts of this type was taken by the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Washington boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 in retaliation for the invasion of Afghanistan. On that occasion, the boycott was also sporting, with the ban on athletes from competing. The USSR retaliated four years later by boycotting the Los Angeles Games in 1984.
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, on Monday called the US decision “a blemish on the spirit of the Olympic Charter” and a “sensational and manipulative action” by Americans. to stop politicizing sports and organize the ‘diplomatic boycott’ so as not to affect China-US dialogue and cooperation in important areas,” he said.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it respects the US diplomatic boycott and is satisfied that it has not impacted the participation of US athletes. “The presence of governmental and diplomatic representatives is a purely political decision of each government, which the IOC, in its political neutrality, fully respects,” the organization said through a spokesman.
New Zealand also announced on Tuesday that it will not send diplomatic representatives, but attributed the justification to Covid-19, according to Vice Premier Grant Robertson. He added that Beijing was informed of the decision in October.
The Chinese government said it had received more than 1,500 applications by the United States Olympic Committee to participate in the Games. So far, Russian President Vladimir Putin is the only leader of a populous and economically important country to accept China’s invitation to attend the Games.
China has been under pressure worldwide in sports after the case of tennis player Peng Shuai, former number 1 in the world doubles ranking, who last month accused Zhang Gaoli, former vice-premier of the country, of sexual harassment. The complaint was made on a Chinese social network, but the publication was subsequently deleted.
The tennis player left the spotlight for nearly three weeks, sparking speculation about her whereabouts, with the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), the UN and several athletes demanding responses from Beijing. On the 21st, a 30-minute conversation between Peng and the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, put an end to doubts, but the case continued to reverberate.
The WTA has suspended tennis tournaments in China. In a statement, the association’s president said he did not see how he could ask “athletes to compete there, when Peng Shuai is not allowed to communicate freely and has apparently been pressured to contradict his allegation of sexual assault.”
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the men’s tennis regulator (ATP) have said they will not join the boycott. This Sunday, the president of the ITF defended the position of the organization, saying he does not want to “punish billions of people”.
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