The Paris Olympics are due to open in July 2024. That’s 17, 18 months from now. Already, though, it seems to be all about Russia.
For the past 10 years, it seems like it has been about Russia: Sochi 2014 and the matter of the country’s laws. The seemingly endless doping controversies. Then, of course, the invasion of Ukraine just days after the close of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.
The International Olympic Committee’s overarching mission is to try to “unite the entire world in peaceful competition.” The entire world means everyone, no exceptions, and this is why already, 17, 18 months away, there’s so much discussion, to and fro, about the notion of getting the Russians to Paris as neutrals.
Except, the focus on the Russians, 17, 18 months away entirely misses the point.
IOC Executive Board meeting in December 2022 // IOC / Flickr
This is about the Russians, yes.
But it’s so not.
Big picture, everything in our world in the 21st century is about China.
The bleating in virtually all quarters of the western press about the Russians is entirely shortsighted. These elements of the western press do not understand. Or do not want to. Because the max freakout is about the war, and what it might mean for what might be described in the west as the collective us.
This, though, is bias talking if not outright racism. As one commentator on a French news program said in the early days of the war, “We’re not talking about Syrians fleeing bombs of the Syrian regime backed by Putin. We’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.”
Wake up, people.
What is being done, now, 17, 18 months away in regard to the Russians — and how the IOC tries to thread the needle for Paris and, beyond, for Los Angeles in 2028 — is about the Olympic movement positioning itself for what happens when, inevitably, the question presents itself, let’s say, forcefully, of Taiwan.
Or, if you prefer, in the language of the Olympic movement, Chinese Taipei.
China has played, is now playing, a very clever game in the short chapter — when compared to the lengthy book of Chinese history — that is the modern Olympic story. The Chinese came back to the Games in LA in 1984. Now Beijing is the first city to have staged the Summer, 2008, and Winter, 2022, Games. China has three IOC members; Russia, two. The U.S. has two — one, David Haggerty is on only by virtue of his presidency of the international tennis federation — but is widely expected to add a third soon in new U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee chair Gene Sykes.
The IOC is 100% right in trying to get the Russians to Paris as neutrals. To reiterate: 100% right.
It’s not only right.
It’s precedent for what is to come.
Perhaps sooner than later.
As an aside, it’s absurd that there is this level of keening and moaning about this issue when a Belarussian woman playing as a “neutral” wins the Australian Open tennis tournament, defeating a native Russian now playing for Kazakhstan, and tennis is an Olympic sport, and no one in the west goes berserk; and more than 50 NHL players are Russian, and hockey is due back in the Games, and people cheer like crazy for the likes of Alex Ovechkin in Washington; and on and on. But we digress.
The IOC has been beyond clumsy in its messaging, its communication, in trying to explain why the Russians must be in Paris but as neutrals. By Russians, that includes Belarussians, too.
Here’s why:
You simply cannot invite to this party those guests that only everyone likes. Or only those that some people like. Or only those the self-professed cool kids like. Or, especially, the most moralistic and most judgmental want there. (Hey, Nordic friends.) That’s not advancing the mission of trying to make things peaceful via the athletes of the world.
The IOC has traditionally been incredibly Eurocentric. But the world is increasingly moving toward the influence of the Global South. China (and India) have hardly been anti-Russia in this war. Same, Brazil. And others, especially in Africa.
You are naive or an idiot or both not to understand the considerable Chinese influence in Africa.
The Chinese Belt and Road initiative has built any number of sports stadiums all over the continent, from Kenya to Senegal. What, Senegal, where the 2026 Youth Games are due to take place?
Here, from Xinhua, last June, the nation’s sports minister, Matar Ba, thanking China for “invaluable support” in the rehab of four stadiums “entrusted to China State Construction Engineering Construction Ltd.”, calling it “another manifestation of the quality, dynamism, depth and effectiveness of the relations of friendship and brotherhood between Senegal and China.”
For his part, the Chinese ambassador, Xiao Han, said China “has always regarded sports cooperation as a key area of cooperation with Senegal, and the fruitful results of cooperation have benefitted generations of Senegalese people.”
It’s hardly just Africa.
China’s cumulative investment in Jamaica exceeds $2 billion. That is the largest foreign source of investment in the country. Nearly 20 Chinese enterprises operate there. They have collectively created 10,000 jobs. The North-South Highway is a key link. Huawei, which the U.S. government sees with extreme skepticism, is a leading player in the Jamaican digital scene.
An op-ed published about six weeks ago in the Gleaner, Jamaica’s leading newspaper, from a “Beijing-based current affairs commentator,” Yi Fan, on the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two nations, could not have sketched out what’s what more directly.
Noting that Usain Bolt’s run to fame began in significant measure at the Bird’s Nest in 2008, the column noted that China’s long-term development vision was spelled out at its party congress in October — to “build China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by the middle of this century.”
Note, please, that time frame. The middle of this century.
If not sooner.
This is why — among other matters, though the election is two years away — the next IOC president must, repeat must, be someone who comes to the position with a rich portfolio, indeed a lifetime, of hard-won experience in all phases of diplomacy, politics, sport and more. The IOC cannot afford to take a risk. The stakes are far too significant. Our world is “fragile,” as the current IOC president, Thomas Bach, often says, and watch Bach wrestle now with the Russians with an eye toward more. When it comes to the presidency, virtue signaling cannot be a solution to hard problems.
The Gleaner column continues, and whether or not you’re on board with the rhetoric or hyperbole just take it at face value because it is what it is:
“Development is real only when all countries continue together. Prosperity and stability cannot be possible in a world where the rich become rich and the poor are made poorer.
“This is the conviction of Chinese President Xi Jinping. China’s relentless pursuit of development for all is well captured at the [October congress, China striving] to create new opportunities for the world with its own development and to contribute its share to building an open global economy that delivers greater benefit to all peoples and that it is prepared to invest more resources in global development cooperation and is committed to narrowing the North-South gap and supporting and assisting other developing countries in accelerating development.
“That is why China has put forward the Global Development Initiative, prioritizing development cooperation in such areas as poverty eradication, food security, financing for development, climate action, industrialization, digital economy and connectivity. The very purpose of the GDI is to address imbalance in development. Now over 100 countries and international organizations are working with China on the initiative, all in a bid to build a global community of development.
“Every nation aspires for a better life. Building a community with a shared future for mankind is a vision offered by China to the world. This vision embraces the simple — yet common — aspiration of all people, that is, to make global development beneficial to all.”
Wake up, people. There’s a big world out there, way beyond the west. The war in Ukraine is awful. Not here to dispute that. Meanwhile, China is playing the long game. It’s why the IOC has to, too.