In October 2021, the World Uyghur Congress, an international organization of exiled Uyghur groups, urged governments to withdraw from the Games, saying participants would be complicit in China’s “genocide”. On Dec. 6, the Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott of the winter olympics, which was supported by both parties and houses. There will be no official representatives sent to the 2022 winter olympics, but still the American athletes will compete in the game. This diplomatic boycott will not have the same scale or tension as the Cold War boycotts, but it will still have many international relations changing. 

The Winter Olympic boycott is not the first boycott in the history of the United States. In fact, the 1980 Moscow Olympics is the last time the United States decided to start an Olympic boycott. There were forty countries that joined, China was one of them, to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union also started an Olympic boycott of the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles to fight back. 

“This ‘diplomatic boycott’ is mostly symbolic and I don’t see it having much impact on the games or changing the already tense relationship that has developed between China and the United States,” Mitch Miller, international politics teacher, said.

As Miller said, based on past Sino-US relations, it will not change much, but there will still be competition between China and America.  However, as an effect of the massive boycott led by the America and Uyghur human rights movement, there will most likely be more attention than the last one. As a reference, the 2022 Tokyo Summer Olympics have been delayed for almost two years due to COVID-19. Unlike the 2022 Winter Olympics, not many people paid attention.

“It will be interesting to see what the media will focus on…the games, athletes, and athletics, or the politics of it all,” Miller said. “ In the end, I believe that the games will go on, and maybe for a brief time, the spirit of friendly competition will push the political tensions between the US and China to the background.  But, only for a brief time.”

The spirit of friendly competition is always the first rule of the Olympics; however, it may change this winter. Members of the public may wonder if this boycott will progress further than expected.

“The spirit of friendly competition is the first rule, but not the first goal of the athletes,” Lintao Zhang (11) said. “Olympics are never a friendly competition. Gold medals seem to be an efficient way to show a country’s muscle.”

The last Olympic games in China was the 2008 Beijing Olympics. For most of the Chinese it is a real exciting movement, to them the Beijing Summer Olympics have much more meaning than any other games. 

“I still remember, it was 2004, the year I was born,” Hongle Chen (11) said. “They chose Beijing as the next Olympic City. I think all Chinese people know about the Beijing Olympics. It is an unforgettable moment.”

On Jan. 21, Zhao Lijiann, the Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of People’s Republic of China, confirmed that China has been giving out the Winter Olympic-related visa to American athletes and officials. Meanwhile, other countries have joined the United States in diplomatically boycotting the games, and US leaders, like Nancy Pelosi have warned athletes to compete but not to criticize the government. The olympics started on Feb.4. For the latest updates, visit the event website.