Chinese athlete Dinigeer Yilamujiang (left) and Zhao Jiawen put the torch in the center of a giant snowflake during the grand opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on February 4, 2022, making it an innovative and low-carbon Olympic cauldron. Photo: VCG

The splendid opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games amazed the world on Friday. The Winter Olympic Games now are going smoothly, and as previously scheduled. This is a huge slap in the face of some forces in the West that planned to sabotage the Games. This includes some "human rights experts" who have been making all efforts to persuade athletes to "boycott" the Beijing Winter Olympics.

However, even after the successful start of the Games, they would not stop putting on a show about China's "human rights issues." According to Fox News, some of these "experts" now are concerned about "Olympic athletes' self-censoring." They believe that even after the Beijing Games are over, some athletes funded by major US companies with close ties to the Chinese market may be forced not to speak out against "human rights abuses" in China "in the interest of money."

Even US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't miss the chance to bash China. Before the opening ceremony, she warned US athletes not to anger the "ruthless" Chinese government by staging political protests.

However, Pelosi is right about this one thing in her speech: The athletes are in Beijing to compete. In fact, even though Rule 50 in the Olympic Charter has offered more freedom of expression to athletes, it stipulates that "No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas." 

And to the disappointment of those anti-China forces in the West, most of the athletes expressed positive emotions such as joy and surprise on social media platforms after they arrived in Beijing. Obviously, the "best" wishes from those forces to the Beijing Winter Olympics failed to come true.

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times he believes that some people in the US, especially some media people and lawmakers, have been trying to use the Beijing Olympics to create political conflicts and even social unrest on a certain scale. These forces cannot stand any of China's achievements, therefore, they always try to nitpick over Beijing's success. This actually demonstrates the US is declining.

Yet, Washington still focuses on how to smear its rivals and bring down their competitiveness instead of worrying about how to enhance its own.

"It's like the US, already in the gutter, tries to pull China down into the gutter as well, making China equally dirty," Lü said.

It seems that the US and some other Western countries are keen on undermining the Olympic Games in China. In 2008, they used the Tibet affairs as an excuse to obstruct the torch relay, with efforts greater than this time. Nevertheless, they still failed to block the Summer Olympics in Beijing. In Lü's opinion, the attempts of these forces have also fallen flat this year, and the so-called diplomatic boycott or efforts to instigate athletes to stir up trouble turn out to be futile.

Despite that, these people refuse to stop attacking China, which is why they are now turning to speculation about China's interference with US athletes' "freedom of expression" after the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. It is ridiculous that they hype the idea of "blaming it all on China," even if the athletes themselves choose to remain silent on China-related affairs.

The attacks on China are just another example that the US has premeditated a plan to crack down on its opponents. According to Lü, the West, especially the US, has been preparing to smear China over the Winter Olympic Games since 2018, starting with the hyping of "human rights abuses" in China's Xinjiang region. But now it seems they have gained little effect.
 
"We should not expect Washington to give up such practices, as it always uses human rights issues as a stick to beat their competitors and it will not stop wielding it any time sooner. But the power of this weapon will get weaker and weaker. It is clear that it will become, as former US president Richard Nixon wrote in his last book, 'irrelevant,' and eventually, 'laughable,'" commented Lü the Chinese expert.