The Chinese Regime Treats Disabled People Abysmally—So Why Is It Hosting the Paralympic Games?

Fireworks are seen as the Olympic cauldron is lit during the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics at the Beijing National Stadium in Beijing, China, on March 4, 2022. Wang He/Getty Images for International Paralympic Committee

Commentary

The 2022 Winter Paralympic Games are currently underway. This multi-sport event, currently taking place in Beijing, is scheduled to last from March 4 to March 13.

A whole host of athletes with a range of physical and mental impairments are competing, including paraplegics, quadriplegics, and amputees. In short, the Games cater to people with a range of disabilities.

It’s odd, then, that China should host such an event. After all, this is a country where people with disabilities are treated abysmally.

China is home to at least 85 million disabled people. That’s more than the population of California, Texas, and Illinois combined. The types of disabilities include visual and auditory impairments, as well as mental and speech impairments. Many of these people are maligned, mocked, and mistreated. Some are treated like caged animals.

As someone who lived in China up until very recently and witnessed many horrors firsthand, the horrific treatment of people with disabilities is not surprising. China’s human rights record is, for lack of a better word, appalling.

In a rather sobering essay for Aeon, James Palmer discussed the injustices faced by those with disabilities in China. Raised pathways for the visually impaired, he wrote, “often lead into dead ends, bollards, trees or open pits, or else spiral decoratively but misleadingly.” As for wheelchair access ramps? Well, they are “non-existent, especially outside Beijing or Shanghai.” What about guide dogs? They “are effectively forbidden from most public spaces.”

Palmer also criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), whose many pledges often “go unfulfilled across the country.” Although laws state “that children with special needs are entitled to proper schooling,” no provisions for funding actually exist. Outside of the major cities, local authorities “regularly turn away children, telling them to go to ‘special facilities’ elsewhere.” But such facilities are few and far between, and tend to be “far out of their parents’ financial or geographical reach.”

In China, even the Paralympians that win medals for their country are mistreated. The author Emily Feng recently wrote a piece on Ping Yali, China’s first ever Paralympic gold medalist. After winning a gold medal at the 1984 Paralympic Games, which took place in Los Angeles, Ping fell on extremely hard times, both psychologically and financially.

According to Feng, the athlete “was paid just a fraction of what Olympic athletes were paid.” In a desperate attempt to make a living, Ping, who suffers from a rare birth defect of the eye that results in blindness, opened a massage parlor. That’s right—a blind woman who brought glory to China was left with no option but to open a massage parlor.

Disabled people often find themselves segregated, sidelined, and prevented from interacting with those without disabilities. According to Feng, only about 400,000 of China’s 80-plus million people with disabilities, “or, less than half a percent,” attend “public schools with non-disabled people.”

Children who suffer from cerebral palsy wait for an extra meal after noon break at the Xining Orphan and Disabled Children Welfare Center in Xining of Qinghai Province, China, on Feb. 24, 2009. China Photos/Getty Images

Which begs the question (yet again), why is China allowed to host the Paralympic Games?

Well, with corruption, it seems, the Paralympic apple doesn’t fall far from the Olympic tree. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC), just like the International Olympic Committee (IOC), appears to be inherently corrupt.

As the journalist Nick Butler has noted, the IPC is largely dependent on the IOC, “their big brother,” for “choosing, preparing for and—to a large extent—financing the Summer and Winter Games.”

As corrupt as the IOC is, at least its members recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes should be prevented from participating in the Games (due to the invasion of Ukraine). The IPC, however, went against the recommendation, instead allowing both countries to send their athletes to Beijing. On March 3, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine, that decision was reversed. What took so long?

Is there any major organization that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hasn’t corrupted? From the United Nations to the World Bank Group, the NBA to the IOC, the CCP appears to have considerable global influence.

More worryingly, the CCP appears to have global appeal, especially to major organizations that value money over morals. These organizations, either unwittingly or otherwise, are helping Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his colleagues to paper over considerable cracks, the type of cracks that people like the above-mentioned Ping slip through.

Although Xi recently claimed “that persons with disabilities are equal members of society” and serve as an “important force for the development of human civilization and for upholding and developing Chinese socialism,” his words ring hollow. Talk is cheap, especially in communist China.

Xi claimed that no disabled individual “should be left behind in China’s drive to build itself into a moderately prosperous society.”

Sadly, for the tens of millions of disabled people across the country, including those of whom have won gold medals for their country, Xi’s promises of inclusion are little more than a cheap, painful lie. Propaganda masquerading as fact. Empty words masquerading as solemn declarations.

In a perfect world, no one deserving of help would be left behind. But we live in imperfect times. That’s why China, a country where disabled people are treated in the most shocking ways imaginable, was awarded the Paralympics. Nevertheless, no one should be fooled by the charade currently taking place in Beijing.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.