Beijing Winter Olympics:
The people who are calling for the protest are “grandstanding” and should stop “so as not to affect the dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in important areas,” Zhao Lijian, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said earlier.
On Monday, the Biden administration announced that US officials would not be attending the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing after China committed to unspecified “countermeasures” against any such diplomatic boycott.
People who call for boycotts are calling for a boycott “grandstanding” and should stop “so as not to affect the dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in important areas,” Zhao Lijian, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, had earlier stated.
“If the US insists on wilfully clinging to its course, China will take resolute countermeasures,” Zhao said in a news conference.
US The US president Joe Biden said last month that he was thinking about an international boycott in protest of Chinese human rights records, including the alleged genocide Washington claims is genocide of minority Muslims.
The US boycott won’t stop athletes from participating in the Olympics. The US is scheduled to stage another Olympics in 2028 and will be in Los Angeles, raising the issue of what China could react to during the interim.
Beijing declares that it is against the politicization of sports; however, it has penalized American leagues for sports previously, such as that of the National Basketball Association, for breaking its red lines of political repression.
