“Galwan Valley border conflict hero carries 2022 Olympic Games torch,” reported the Global Times, a newspaper linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
Colonel Qi Fabao is just one of 1,200 Chinese who will carry the symbol of the Olympics until the opening of the Beijing Winter Games, this Friday (4). But the choice of a military man who commanded troops in the bloodiest confrontation in decades on the border with India, in 2020, was enough for the neighboring country to join the diplomatic boycott of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and allies.
“It is indeed regrettable that the Chinese side chose to politicize an event like the Olympics,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, announcing that the top diplomat in Beijing would not attend the opening ceremony.
The episode is representative of how the China that hosts the Winter Games in 2022 is different from the country that hosted the Summer Games in 2008, celebrated at the time as the culmination of an opening process begun three decades earlier. Fourteen years later, the country receives another major event in the role of the world’s second economy and closed as it has not been seen for over 40 years, because of the pandemic.
“Celebrating a military man involved in a violent incident with a big neighbor like India is politically complicated. And it is symbolic of the diplomatic difficulties of now and of a kind of Chinese arrogance”, says MaurÃcio Santoro, professor of international relations at UERJ (University of Rio de Janeiro state).
For University of São Paulo professor Felipe Loureiro, two main factors separate the China of 2008 from that of 2022: the country at the time did not represent a threat to the condition of the main global power of the USA and did not have the international projection that it has today over Africa, Latin America, neighbors in Asia and even over Europe.
This is what explains the increase in pressures on the country, in the assessment of Li Xing, professor of international relations at Aalborg University in Denmark. “The national understanding of China’s strength is different”, he summarizes, pointing out that 14 years ago the country was still developing its industry, and today it is the main commercial power in the world, the biggest exporter of high-tech products, the biggest creditor and owner of the largest foreign currency reserves.
“Today, China is the biggest investor and biggest trading partner in many parts of the world, especially in the Global South. And Europe and the US have reacted to the rapidity of Chinese growth by using internal problems as a way to demonize the country.”
If in 2008 China was already questioned by repression in regions such as Tibet, distrust grew exponentially after the rise of the current leader, Xi Jinping, in 2012, with increased repression in regions such as Hong Kong and Xinjiang – cradle of the ethnic minority. Uighur, in the far west of the country.
While studying in Wuhan, in central China, Rayhan Asat remembers waking up early to “genuinely cheer” for the country’s good performance in Beijing-2008. “Fourteen years later, I am protesting the fact that China is hosting the Games [de Inverno], because the country kidnapped my brother and subjected him to torture, along with my family”, she tells leaf.
Born in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, Asat, a Chinese of Uighur descent, moved to the US shortly after the 2008 Games to finish her studies at Harvard University, but she really got involved in the Uighur cause six years ago, after your brother was arrested. Today, she is a human rights lawyer and researcher at Yale University.
“My family can never visit him. My brother is being tortured in solitary confinement in the city of Aksu, far from home. Due to my activism, he was allowed to video chat with my family on a call made at a police base. highly monitored, and forced to speak Chinese.”
In addition to Xinjiang and Hong Kong, Beijing has been criticized for plans to reattach Taiwan, which the Communist Party considers a rebellious province but which in practice is an independent country, with elections, its own economy and external allies – the US among them. In Chinese politics, the re-annexation of the island is a kind of final challenge for the country’s reconstruction after the so-called century of humiliation, between the mid-19th and 20th centuries, when it was invaded and razed by different countries, such as the United Kingdom and Japan.
Loureiro recalls that it is a relationship similar to the one Russia has with Crimea, the peninsula annexed from Ukraine in 2014. No wonder, China has been following the unfolding of tensions in Ukraine, and Xi is due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. , this Friday.
“Xi is not found [pessoalmente] with a foreign state leader two years ago, this is quite significant,” says Loureiro. According to him, Beijing sees trends in Washington’s performance in Ukraine that could disrupt alliances that China has been trying to build in Asia, not to mention internal issues — The case of Taiwan is evident, however, it emphasizes that an alliance between China and Russia should not be automatic if Moscow does invade Ukraine.
Xi has not left the country since the beginning of the pandemic, which broke out in China and is controlled internally so far with the Covid zero strategy of not tolerating contamination and isolating entire cities to contain the spread of the virus.
The policy’s sustainability has been criticized — it was named this year’s No. 1 political risk by consultancy Eurasia, for example. But, once again, China has not cared and has numbers to show: less than 5,000 have died from the disease in two years, compared to 894,000 in the US.
To prevent further outbreaks, especially with the advancement of the more transmissible, omnipresent variant, the Games organization doubled down and isolated delegations in bubbles — very different from the Beijing party 14 years ago. Once again, the China of 2022 does not resemble the one of 2008.
Source: Folha
