Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle (center) competes in the men's 100-meter freestyle final of the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar, on February 15, 2024. Photo: VCG

The recent threat by US lawmakers to cut funding for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) over its investigation into alleged doping cases involving Chinese swimmers is a blatant attempt to hijack international organizations. This politicization of sports not only exposes the arrogance and prejudice of US politicians but also underscores their hegemonic mindset, analysts said. 

On Tuesday, US Republican and Democratic lawmakers introduced the "Restoring Confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency Act of 2024," which would grant the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) permanent authority to reduce or revoke US funding for WADA, Reuters reported. 

This is the US' latest move to intensify its hype and accusations against Chinese swimmers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and WADA.

The US and WADA have been locked in a fight over how to handle doping cases after the US was unhappy with how WADA handled the Russian doping case. In 2020, the US passed a law giving federal authorities power to investigate sports doping. IOC recently awarded the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City but inserted language in the contract demanding its leaders pressure the US government to lobby against the 2020 law, media reported. 

The farce made by the US around the cases of Chinese swimmers fully exposes its long-arm jurisdiction which not only violates international law but also attempts to hijack international organizations and such move fully exposed its hegemony and politicization of sports events, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

Since April, the US began sensationalizing the incident of 23 Chinese athletes testing positive in a 2021 contamination case. Moreover, earlier this month, the US Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the 2021 contamination case. 

Li said that the US is now using every possible issue for geopolitical competition with China and what they are doing is using sports as a weapon and a tool, which reveals a loss of basic rationality among American political elites in their China policies. 

WADA on Tuesday also released a statement regarding the contamination cases in China, saying that it and the relevant International Federations had all had the opportunity to review the cases. And it "thoroughly reviewed" the cases with all due skepticism, and concluded that there was no evidence to challenge contaminated meat as the source of the positive tests.

WADA also highlighted the recurring issue of contamination, particularly food contamination. Numerous cases worldwide, including several intricate scenarios in the US recently, indicate a significant contamination problem.

"The politicization of anti-doping continues with this latest attempt by the media in the United States to imply wrongdoing on the part of WADA and the broader anti-doping community. As we have seen over recent months, WADA has been unfairly caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that," said the statement. 

According to statistics from World Aquatics on July 23, Chinese swimmers are now the most tested Olympians ahead of the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics. Analysts said that it is in stark contrast between the Chinese athletes' cooperation with doping tests to prove their innocence and the US' politicization of international sports events for selfish reasons.