The NPR Politics Podcast - What To Know About The U.S. Olympics Boycott

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

In response to China's human rights abuses, the United States will not send any government representatives to the 2022 Winter Olympics in the country. U.S. athletes will still compete. The move is expected to increase tensions between the two world powers. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and international correspondent John Ruwitch.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Tracy in Richmond, Virginia, and I'm about to watch my daughter, who is a senior in high school, perform in her school's play, the first live theater we've seen since March 2020. You are listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded at... Very exciting. 2.34 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, December 8th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will be holding back tears as I see my daughter perform. Enjoy the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And today we are joined by NPR's very own John Rewich. He covers China and the U.S. relationship with China. We are glad to have you back on the show, John. Hey, very happy to be here. Thanks. So we have you here because no U.S. officials will be attending the Winter Olympics in China this coming February. Earlier this week, the Biden administration announced that it will not send any official or diplomatic representatives to the Beijing 2022 Olympics because of China's, quote, ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity. Samara, let's start with that. You know, put this in plain terms.

What exactly is the White House saying? The White House is saying it wants to express its disapproval for China's human rights record without disadvantaging athletes that have spent years and years preparing for these games. So to be very clear, U.S. athletes are still going to games. Like there is no ban on that. And this is just means that, say, the president or the first lady or any other U.S. official will not be there in the stands. That's exactly right. So, John, I think that some of this gets a bit glossed over maybe here in the stands. That's exactly right. So, John, I think that some of this, you know, gets a bit glossed over maybe here in the United States in terms of what we mean when

we're talking about human rights abuses in China. My understanding, at least from what the press secretary said the other day, is that this is focused on a largely Muslim region of the country that U.S. officials are particularly concerned about in China. Yeah, that's right. Most of this is focused on Xinjiang, which is this vast mountain and desert region out in far western China. It's home to the ethnic Uyghurs, which is a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim group. And Xinjiang has traditionally had these strong links to Central Asia. And China's hold over the region has been tenuous, which is sort of the backdrop to all this. So over the years, there's been some chafing under Beijing's rule by the Uyghurs, occasional violence, and there's this tiny independence movement. The Chinese government has sought to create unity out there to assimilate minorities, but concerns really started to grow about extremism and separatism taking root around the time that, you know, there was heavy fighting in Iraq and Syria, and there were some Uyghurs who turned up fighting on the side of ISIS. And so,

you know, around 2017, Chinese policy really shifted there. They built this extensive network of re-education centers for Uyghurs, all in the name of combating extremism. And the estimates are that, you know, on the low end, hundreds of thousands of people, and on the high end, as many as a couple million Uyghurs and other Muslims out there, have been detained at some point or another without due process. So, you know, in addition to detentions, there's allegations of torture, forced labor, forced sterilizations, and basically an attempt to erase Uyghur culture and identity. Now, Beijing, of course, denies all this pretty vehemently. They say the camps are for vocational training. And

that and they've said at times, kind of confusingly, that everybody who went through them has graduated already. It's really hard to assess this, though. Xinjiang is hard to get to, and it's hard to act freely there as a journalist. So John, how has the Chinese government responded to what the United States has announced? And now it looks like other countries have also joined on in terms of this diplomatic boycott. Yeah, Beijing's had a really interesting reaction. It's anger and indignation mixed with kind of almost a sense of smugness and condescension. You know, they say the U.S. in sort of leading the charge on this is undermining the foundation and atmosphere of U.S.-China exchanges and the spirit of Olympic cooperation.

They call it a mistaken act, and they've threatened quote-unquote grave consequences. You know, they say the U.S. will pay the price. At the same time, though, you know, they've also said you weren't invited anyway, and nobody really cares if you show up or not. I mean, clearly Beijing cares if they show up or not, but that's what they're saying. The question of consequences and the price that's going to be paid, it's really unsure. They haven't made clear what the retaliation is going to look like.

To me, what's been interesting has been the Republican reaction to this. Usually there's a chorus of Republican voices accusing Joe Biden of being too soft on China. And of course, those same voices were pretty loud this week. However, none of them were saying that he should have gone all the way to a full boycott, pulling athletes out. I think that he found the sweet spot politically. You know, refusing to send your athletes to the Olympics is something that's extremely unpopular. Jimmy Carter tried it, and he got a lot of blowback. You know, before we take a break, John, I want to ask you about

another Chinese sports controversy. As a tennis fan, I have seen a lot of social media chatter about this tennis star who has gone missing in China. Yes, Peng Shuai, over a month already, it's been over a month, she posted on social media in China allegations of forced sex with a former top leader, somebody who was among the top seven officials in China in the previous administration, she has showed up in public only through official channels. Chinese media personalities and Chinese media have put pictures and videos of her up online. The IOC has had a couple of, that's the International Olympic Committee, the International Olympic Committee has had a couple of video chats with her.

They're not saying a ton about what they learned about her situation, and they're trying to follow quiet diplomacy. I mean, we're just a few weeks away from the Olympics, right? They don't want to rock the boat. But yeah, it's been a big deal. The Women's Tennis Association, which is based in Florida, has taken a really hard stance on this. They said they're not going to do tournaments in China because of this until there's some sort of resolution. So they have clarity on where this woman is, whether or not she's free to act and, you know, whether or not these allegations are going to be followed up on. the Women's Tennis Association is doing something in stark contrast to other sports associations like the NBA, who generally knuckles under to Chinese criticism. Or not. I mean, it goes beyond sports.

It's the rare company. It's the rare entity with economic interests in China that'll stand up like this, right? Right. All right. Well, it is time for a quick break. And when we get back in a minute, we'll have more to talk about around the U.S.-China dynamic. And we're back. And John, I am curious about the timing of the United States' decision around this diplomatic boycott of the Olympics.

I mean, you were just on our podcast fairly recently talking about a summit between the leaders of the United States and China to reduce tensions. I mean, why wasn't this decision made earlier? Is the timing of it? Should we read anything into the timing of this? Well, a couple of days after this, the virtual summit last month between President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Biden did flag that this was something they were considering. I mean, my guess is that they were considering it long before the meeting with Xi Jinping and that in order to not rock the boat, they announced it afterwards. You know, pressure has been building from Congress and from elsewhere. The Olympics are only two months away, so there's not a lot of time left for them to pull the trigger on something like this. And I think the bottom line is that, you know, once you

start pointing fingers at a regime and calling them genocidal, you kind of have to do something, right? John, I understand what you're saying about the need to do something, though there are certainly critics who feel that the United States hasn't necessarily gone far enough, or that to some degree, like this isn't a very difficult move for the administration to make because we are in a pandemic. I mean, so how many U.S. officials would have realistically, logistically been sent over anyhow to participate in the Olympic ceremonies? And that this doesn't seem like a particularly big lift for the U.S. government to make. I mean, does it give the U.S. any kind of leverage, do you think? I don't think it gives the US a ton of leverage. I think it's

purely symbolic. It does project some toughness. Perhaps the audience for that is more at home. I guess one thing that it does is cast a spotlight on human rights issues in Xinjiang in a way that kind of ups the ante in terms of the government response to that, if that makes sense. And I suspect some US companies are taking note of this. I do also suspect it'll take more for sponsors of the Olympics, for instance, to start to pull out. Yeah, I don't think that anyone in the administration thinks that by doing this, they're going to change Chinese behavior. But just imagine if they hadn't done anything and they'd sent high ranking officials over to sit there in the stands in what would seem to be an endorsement of China. It means also that a lot of the coverage in the United States, of course, not in China, is going to have to mention, you know, we're watching these

Olympics, American athletes are competing, but American diplomats are nowhere to be found out of protest. I mean, what do you both feel this signifies, though, in terms of the broader U.S.-China relationship and the potential to at all change that relationship? Does it do anything on that front? Probably not. I mean, look, it's a different dynamic, right? Last time Beijing hosted the Olympics in 2008, President Bush was there in the stands waving a U.S. flag. And clearly, the China-U.S. relationship is different.

I mean, in China, from a Chinese perspective, there's this narrative, right, that the Communist Party of China has been pushing and no doubt believes that the U.S.'s overarching policy objective with regard to China is to hobble China, to impede China's rise, and that Washington is always looking for fresh opportunities to do so. And the narrative informs Chinese diplomacy. It figures very prominently in state media at home. It's a household notion now. I mean, the Olympics boycott, the diplomatic boycott of the Olympics fits perfectly into it, and it feeds this sort of victimhood narrative, as does this summit for democracy that President Biden is hosting on Thursday and Friday. Right. And you know that what's interesting about that is the other, the corollary to that,

China not only feels victimized, but it feels that America is in decline and that democracy globally is in decline because we know that authoritarianism is on the rise and autocracy is on the rise. And that's one of the reasons that Biden is convening this democracy summit this week, because he says that one of the purposes of his presidency is to prove to the world that democracies can still deliver because he knows the trend lines. The trend lines are democracies are shrinking, the number of them around the world, and autocracies are growing. And, you know, that's one of the main reasons he's having this big meeting. I'm glad you brought that up because so often you hear the president refer to a kind of modern clash of civilizations between democracies and autocracies. And it's not just China, really,

that has been a major foreign policy challenge for him. Just this week, he had a conversation virtually again with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And there are concerns that Russia will invade Ukraine. And that has been a huge challenge for him on that front, completely, you know, unrelated to what we've been talking about in this podcast, but a similar, you know, a similar challenge from an autocratic state. Right. And that story is very much TBD, because the president told Vladimir Putin that if he further invaded Ukraine, of course, Russian troops are already in a region called the Donbass there. If he further invaded Ukraine, the United States would not just send military aid to Ukraine and surrounding neighbors, but it would use economic measures that it hadn't used in the past.

Remember, the U.S. sanctioned Russia after Russia annexed Crimea, grabbed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. But now the administration says the sanctions they're considering would be much tougher, but they're not willing to say what they are yet because they're still in consultations with U.S. allies. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. John Rewich, thank you, as always, for joining us. Hey, happy to do it. Thank you. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.