Olympic boycott flawed but necessary

It would be a lot tougher for Beijing to act against a united front of nations that refuse to grant it the respect it seeks by hosting another Olympics

Better late than never, the Canadian government announced Wednesday it would join its allies in staging a “diplomatic boycott” of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics.

The decision is welcome, but overdue. The Biden administration made it official on Monday: none of its diplomats or officials will attend the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. The United Kingdom and Australia will take similar action.

After the ordeal of the “two Michaels,” jailed in China for more than 1,000 days, Canada has more reason than almost any other country to know that it cannot be business as usual these days with Beijing. For that reason alone, Canada should have been ahead of the pack announcing diplomatic sanctions.

The diplomatic boycott is not a perfect response, especially since it is largely symbolic. But Canada’s options were limited once it declared it didn’t want to keep its athletes from participating, which is understandable given the immense sacrifices and training Olympic athletes have been involved in. So this is an imperfect compromise.

It involves letting athletes compete but denies the host country the extra validation that comes with official delegations from participating countries, cheering in the grandstands and lending the respectability of their presence to the proceedings.

Other countries should also join in. China threatens to take what it calls “resolute countermeasures” against the U.S. boycott, but it would be a lot tougher for Beijing to act against a united front of nations that refuse to grant it the respect it seeks by hosting another Olympics.

And make no mistake, a diplomatic boycott will sting the Chinese government. When Beijing hosted its first Games, the Summer Olympics of 2008, it was regarded as a kind of “coming out” party for a country that was seeking full recognition as a major global player after decades of conflict and isolation.

The Olympics are always intertwined with politics and power displays and these Winter Games are no exception. The government of President Xi Jinping has been flexing its muscles, challenging its neighbours, and will definitely not appreciate the dissing implied by an absence of foreign leaders and officials in Beijing next February.

You can sense this in Beijing’s ridiculous attempts to dismiss possible boycotts as meaningless. Its line goes something like this: we weren’t planning to invite you anyway, so you can’t boycott us.

Others argue that a diplomatic boycott, especially one led by Washington, is just part of a “new Cold War” waged by the U.S. against China.

The problem with that is that it ignores the Xi government’s turn in recent years to a much more aggressive posture toward anyone who challenges it, whether internal or external. That includes the repression of its Muslim Uyghur minority, the murky fate of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, threats against Taiwan, political kidnapping of foreign citizens, violations of trade agreements, and so on.

The West, on the whole, would have been happy to continue with “business as usual” with Beijing. It’s the Xi government that’s making that increasingly impossible.

With the benefit of hindsight, it would be better if the 2022 Winter Games were being held almost anywhere else but Beijing. But that’s done, and punishing athletes by withdrawing entirely from the Games would be terribly unfair.

At the same time, it’s impossible to imagine a Canadian minister or even lower level official smiling and waving as the Maple Leaf flag is paraded around a stadium in Beijing. So instead they will stay home, and watch the athletes compete on TV. Yes, it’s symbolic, but it beats doing nothing and it will send a clear and public message to China, especially if many more countries join in.