Jules Boykoff

In 2015, Beijing beat out Almaty, Kazakhstan, for the honor of hosting the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Before the International Olympic Committee announced Beijing’s selection, activists warned against offering China a “second chance,” arguing that the rights situation had in fact worsened since China hosted the Summer Games in 2008. In a 2015 open letter, rights advocates warned that the country was facing “a human rights crisis with a scale of violations that is unprecedented since 2008.” In the ensuing years, as China’s human rights record has continued to worsen – particularly as news broke of mass internment camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang – calls echoed for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Games.

As attention shifts to Beijing, following the opening of the postponed Tokyo 2020 Games last month, The Diplomat spoke to Jules Boykoff, a professor of politics and government at Pacific University, about boycotting the Olympics, “sportswashing,” and the politics of sport.

There have been increasing calls for a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, largely on the back of criticism of China’s policies toward Xinjiang and the Uyghurs. How likely do you think a full-fledged boycott of the Olympics is? If not a boycott, what alternative approaches are available?

If by “a full-fledged boycott” you mean an athlete boycott combined with a diplomatic boycott, then I do not view that path as very likely. However, a diplomatic boycott combined with an economic boycott seems more plausible, meaning countries around the world would refuse to send official emissaries to the Beijing Games while rights advocates and others would encourage tourists to skip these Olympics.

Let’s be clear: something needs to be done. China is no place for the Olympics, given that extreme human rights abuses in the country clash with principles enshrined in the Olympic Charter. Take the Chinese government’s treatment of the ethnic Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang. Take the brutal crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong. Take China’s ongoing mistreatment of Tibetans. It’s impossible to square these actions with the “fundamental principle of Olympism,” that trumpets “the harmonious development of humankind…[and] the preservation of human dignity.”

To be sure, pretty much every country commits human rights abuses, including the United States, which is slated to host the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, where homelessness is a humanitarian crisis in plain sight. However, China is in a small subset of countries that is actively pursuing crimes against humanity. This is no secret.

In my view, it is too much to expect an athlete-led boycott of the Olympics. First off, many Olympians are relatively apolitical, which makes sense since they need to devote so much time to their sport. Second, for many of them, Beijing will be their one and only chance at Olympic glory. Sacrificing this chance on the altar of human rights policy is a big ask. Finally, an athlete-led boycott shifts the responsibility on to athletes’ shoulders rather than the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the entity actually responsible for handing these Olympics to Beijing even though they most certainly knew that China is a brazen human rights violator. In doing so, the IOC has turned Olympians into a human shield of sorts.

What are the possibilities for athletes themselves to use the Olympics platform to draw attention to the Uyghurs, given the IOC's strict stance on political advocacy?

There is a rule in the Olympic Charter that states, “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” Athletes and their allies have long railed against this rule. After all, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference.” This rule in the Olympic Charter clearly qualifies as “interference.”

In July, the IOC slightly loosened its restrictions on athlete expression at the Olympics. The IOC’s new guidelines make space for athletes to talk politics when speaking to the media during press conferences and at team meetings as well as “on the field of play prior to the start of competition” as long as their act is “not disruptive” and doesn’t target specific individuals, countries, organizations, or “their dignity.” However, athletes are still barred from expressing their views during medal ceremonies, at the opening and closing ceremonies, in the Olympic Village (where athletes reside during the Games), and on the field of play during competition.

The thing is, we’re living in what might rightly be called the Athlete Empowerment Era, whereby athletes have become emboldened to speak out on the important issues of our moment. Vibrant social movements in the streets have created space for athletes to become athlete activists. With the human rights violations in China, and the injustices that are roiling the wider world, Beijing presents a particularly propitious moment for athlete activism. It will be fascinating to see what happens.

The IOC only had two options for the 2022 Games to begin with: China and Kazakhstan, which has its own serious human rights problems. What does it say about the Olympics that two authoritarian governments were the only ones interested in hosting the 2022 Games?

There’s no question that fewer and fewer cities are keen to host the Olympic Games. The word is out on the global street that the Olympics, regardless of where they are staged, bring with them serious downsides. Social scientists have identified four negative externalities that plague all Olympics to various degrees: (1) overspending; (2) the militarization of public space; (3) gentrification and displacement; and (4) greenwashing: talking a big environmental game, but with little to no meaningful follow-through. Because these problems have become so well known, securing serious bidders is an ever more complicated task for the IOC.

In terms of the 2022 Winter Games, originally numerous cities were interested. Then Lviv, Ukraine; Krakow, Poland; and Stockholm, Sweden all pulled out. Potential bids from Munich, Germany and St. Moritz/Davos, Switzerland failed to materialize after losing public referenda. Oslo pulled out of the running after the Norwegian parliament refused to fiscally back the endeavor. This left Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, neither of which, as you pointed out, is exactly a bastion of democracy. The IOC went with the entity it knew, having worked previously with Beijing on the 2008 Summer Games.

History has shown that the Olympics create a prime opportunity for hosts to engage in sportswashing: using sports events to launder their stained reputations and to distract domestic publics from chronic social problems. With authoritarian hosts, the Games can deflect global attention from their horrific human rights records. In recent years, exhibit A is the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Exhibit B is the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. In reality, some sport barons have shown a preference for authoritarian hosts. As longtime IOC member Gian-Franco Kaspar once put it, “Dictators can perhaps carry out such events; they do not have to ask the people.”

The International Olympic Committee’s active complicity in sportswashing reveals a problematic penchant for selective ethics. They seem are all too happy to look the other way when it comes to human rights violations so long as their money spigot continues to gush cash.

More broadly, how has the interplay between politics and the Olympics changed over the years? 

The Olympics have always been political. Anyone who tells you otherwise is quite likely milking the Olympic cow with both hands, meaning they’re benefiting economically from the Games in some way. From the very beginning, the Olympics have thrummed with politics. Take the very first Olympics of the modern era, the Athens Games of 1896. The Hungarians were not willing to participate on the Austro-Hungarian imperial team so they covered their own costs and wore their own white and green colors. In 1906, Irish athletes who were forced to compete for Great Britain, because Ireland was ruled by Westminster at the time, wore bright green jackets and caps emblazoned with shamrocks to the opening ceremony, lagging far behind their British counterparts to make it clear they were not keen to be on the British squad. At the 1908 Olympics U.S. athletes refused to dip their flag as they passed by the British king and queen, with one athlete reportedly asserting “This flag dips to no earthly king.” You get the picture. The Olympics have always been political.

When it comes to Beijing, there’s a political history there, too, and it’s not pretty. When going for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing’s bid team explicitly claimed that the Games would create a groundswell of democracy and human rights in China. But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the government used the Olympics as a pretext to retool its repressive apparatus. China not only used the 2008 Olympics to intensify its domestic surveillance of targeted groups, but also to market its surveillance systems to the world. Media and the internet were censored during the Games. Activists were rounded up and detained. Journalists were arbitrarily arrested. Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, has argued the Games were actually “a catalyst for abuses.”

Since 2008, the human rights situation in China has only worsened. And yet, this didn’t stop the IOC from choosing Beijing to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. That says a lot about the interplay between politics and the Olympics today.