The mascots for the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games are seen on a street in Beijing on January 11, 2022. Photo: VCG

Since weeks before the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, many Western media outlets had started to hype that the Beijing Olympics bubble is too restrictive to guarantee human rights. 

But there is now a distinct internal contradiction within the West about China's virus-fight because it is really nice to see the Winter Olympic Games be held on time in this special period of pandemic. After all, complaints from athletes are normal - there have been various levels of dissatisfaction in almost every Olympic Games. 

Bloomberg stated "the world needs China's COVID-zero Policy," otherwise "the alternative is a massive surge in infections and deaths that could bring global supply chains to a halt, sending inflation higher." 

China's dynamic zero-case policy not only ensures the smooth flow of the world's industrial chain, supplies many countries with various goods, but also ensures the smooth convening of the Winter Olympic Games.

The world has seen China's confidence and development through the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. This puts the West, which is struggling to adapt to China's constant rise, on tenterhooks. Hence, as always, they are trying to smear China's overall image by overgeneralizing some minor details. However, more and more people around the world have got to know the real situation within the Olympics bubble and the reality of China's COVID-19 prevention policies through athletes' cameras. 

The athletes' feelings are the most important in this regard. If those media outlets engage in only distorted reports which go against their countries' athletes' feelings, it will be a big impact to their credibility. 

Those reporters know that China's anti-virus measures are not suppressive and don't violate human rights as they used to describe, and many of them acknowledge that if their own countries had learned from China in the virus fight, the pandemic wouldn't be as lethal as it is today. Nevertheless, because of their employers' preference, they are still insisting on amplifying the mood of some athletes in quarantine. But this does no good. 

No one likes quarantine. It is normal and understandable to see people with emotions in isolation. And it is predictable that athletes in quarantine complain because they are anxious to compete in the Games. But it is meaningless to exaggerate these complaints. Also, it makes no sense to amplify the emotions of a small number of people in a given situation to represent all stakeholders. 

It is hypocritical to emphasize too much the human rights of that small group. Only when the epidemic is under control can the smooth process of the Games be guaranteed, and only then can the athletes have the most basic possibility to strive to be faster, higher, and stronger. Maybe what those Western reporters want is the virus will break the bubble and then spread across the country. 

However, if China really loosens its measures after those complaints and media's slanders, not just the Winter Olympics itself will be impacted - even the pandemic fight around the world will be affected. 

In other words, using such a small number of cases to obscure the much larger effort is disrespectful to the entire organization of the Games, to all the athletes, workers, and volunteers involved, and to all the healthcare workers who are fighting the ongoing battle around the world.

In any circumstance, the responsible Chinese government will not be influenced by the pressure piled on by the Western media, because once it does, it will make a huge mistake and thus cause a disaster for China as well as an even bigger catastrophe for the world. The US has registered more than 900,000 COVID-19 deaths. Isn't this a reminder serious enough to the West?

The article was compiled based on an interview with Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn