China abandons sale of Olympics tickets
CHINA has cancelled plans to sell tickets for the Beijing Winter Olympics as rising omicron cases threaten to bring its zero-covid policy crashing down.
Athletes and officials have already started to arrive in the capital before the games, which start on Feb 4, entering a tightly controlled bubble separating them from the rest of the population.
But the general public will no longer be invited to join, and are being replaced instead by hand-picked spectators.
The move heaps further embarrassment on Beijing after preparations for the games were hit by a widespread diplomatic boycott on human rights grounds.
China has spent an estimated £2.95billion on the games, including on a new high-speed rail link to some of the venues where 1.2million cubic metres of artificial snow has been pumped onto sports tracks. China is facing a major test to its policy of stopping Covid while much of the rest of the world begins to pivot to living with the disease.
It is unclear how the hand-picked spectators will be selected, but under one scenario local sponsors, government officials and possibly soldiers would be present in the stands.
No international spectators will be permitted into the country.