The disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai this month has led many around the world to question Beijing’s hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics, which are scheduled to begin on Feb. 4.
Now, only the morally bankrupt could think it’s a good idea to allow the hostage-taking, rapist-protecting, genocide-committing Chinese regime to host this competition. It’s time for the world to face the reality of the Communist Party of China and the horrific system it has constructed. There is only one correct choice: Move the Games.
For decades, people have overlooked the great crimes of Chinese communism because they had hoped that it would, over time, evolve and become benign. When “reformer” Deng Xiaoping shoved aside Hua Guofeng, Mao Zedong’s chosen successor, and engineered the historic Third Plenum at the end of 1978, outsiders thought they were seeing a new—and far superior—“New China.”
In fact, as the Communist Party embarked on gaige kaifang—the policy of “reform and opening up”—the regime both moderated its foreign policy and relaxed or eliminated totalitarian social controls. Then, optimism ruled.
But not now. The current ruler, Xi Jinping, has reversed trends that many outsiders—as well as the Chinese people themselves—had welcomed. The ruling group, never benevolent, has become even more monstrous under Xi.
The charge was unprecedented in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Zhang was once a senior leader, a vice premier who also served on the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the highest ruling body in the country, from 2012 to 2017.
Peng’s post was removed within a half-hour, and the two-time Grand Slam doubles champion—Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014—herself disappeared.
Peng isn’t the only high-profile figure detained in recent months. Businessman Jack Ma, citizen journalists Zhang Zhan and Chen Qiushi, and celebrity Zhao Wei were all disappeared. Consider it a pattern.
Xi’s China is far more coercive and secretive than the China of the preceding three decades, suggesting that the regime is returning to its old ways. Mao and Mao-admirer Xi reflect the true nature of Chinese communism.
That regime, now dominated by Xi, is a threat to athletes coming to China to compete, as the Peng incident has demonstrated.
“Athletes are useful to the Communist Party as long as they are tools of the state,” Cleo Paskal, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Gatestone. “If they try to be individuals, they become a liability. The state will destroy the individual if that person is any risk to the Party.”
As Paskal, who’s also associated with Chatham House, noted, Peng now poses a risk to the regime.
That’s why the regime will either make Peng publicly retract the accusations or destroy her. The individual means nothing in China’s current system. Too many times, state television has aired ghastly confessions of obviously worn-down individuals.
There are many reasons to boycott or move the Winter Olympics from Beijing. Thus far, advocates of such actions have focused on the Communist Party’s genocidal policies against Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, as well as its other crimes against humanity. Of course, no ruling group that organizes rape, slavery, mass detention, torture, killings, and organ harvesting should be permitted to, among other things, host international sporting events.
Paskal points out that holding the Games in China goes against the whole concept of Olympic competition.
“The Olympics are about individuals striving to be their best,” she said. “That is antithetical to the Communist Party, which is about subservience of the individual to the goals of the state.”
Even at this late date in relation to the event itself, it’s time to boycott or move the Games from China.
