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BEIJING (AP) — China, which used its first Olympics to amplify its worldwide aspirations, invited the world again Friday — type of — for the pandemic period’s second Video games, this time as an emboldened and extra highly effective nation whose authorities’s authoritarian flip provoked some international locations’ leaders into staying dwelling.
Chinese language President Xi Jinping declared the Video games open throughout a ceremony heavy on ice-blue tones and winter imagery, held in the identical lattice-encased Chook’s Nest stadium that hosted the inaugural occasion of the 2008 Summer time Olympics.
Athletes Zhao Jiawen and Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a member of the nation’s Uyghur Muslim minority, delivered the ultimate Olympic flame. The selection of Yilamujiang was steeped in symbolism: Critics say the Beijing authorities has abused and oppressed Uyghurs on a large scale.
With the flame lit, Beijing turned the primary metropolis to host each winter and summer time Video games. And whereas some are staying away from the second pandemic Olympics in six months, many different world leaders attended the opening ceremony. Most notable: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met privately with Xi earlier within the day as a harmful standoff unfolded at Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Worldwide Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach addressed assembled athletes: “Pricey fellow Olympians: Your Olympic stage is ready.”
The pandemic additionally weighs closely on this yr’s Video games, simply because it did final summer time in Tokyo. Greater than two years after the primary COVID-19 circumstances had been recognized in China’s Hubei province, some 700 miles (1,100 km) south of Beijing, practically 6 million human beings have died and lots of of thousands and thousands extra world wide have been sickened.
The host nation itself claims a number of the lowest charges of demise and sickness from the virus, partly due to strict lockdowns imposed by the federal government geared toward shortly stamping out outbreaks. Such measures immediately greeted anybody arriving to compete in or attend the Winter Video games.
An Olympic opening ceremony sometimes supplies the host nation an opportunity to showcase its tradition, outline its place on this planet, flaunt its finest facet. That’s one thing China specifically has been consumed with for many years. However at this yr’s Beijing Video games, the gulf between efficiency and actuality is shaping as much as be significantly jarring.
Fourteen years in the past, a Beijing opening ceremony that featured huge pyrotechnic shows and hundreds of card-flipping performers set a brand new normal of extravagance to start out an Olympics that no host since has matched. It was a becoming begin to an occasion typically billed as China’s “popping out.”
Now, regardless of the way you view it, China has arrived — however the hope for a extra open nation that accompanied these first Video games has pale.
For Beijing, these Olympics are a affirmation of its standing as world participant and energy. But for a lot of exterior China, significantly within the West, they’ve change into a affirmation of the nation’s embrace of extra oppressive insurance policies.
Chinese language authorities are crushing pro-democracy activism and tightening their management over Hong Kong, changing into extra confrontational with Taiwan, and interning Uyghurs within the far west — a crackdown the US authorities and others have referred to as genocide.
In protest of these actions, leaders of the US, Britain, Australia and Canada, amongst others, imposed a diplomatic boycott on these Video games, shunning appearances alongside Chinese language management whereas nonetheless permitting their athletes to compete. However China got here again with its personal symbolic finger within the eye Friday, placing Yilamujiang within the opening night time’s most anticipated position.
Within the runup to the Olympics, China’s suppression of dissent was additionally on show within the controversy surrounding Chinese language tennis star Peng Shuai. She disappeared from public view final yr after accusing a former Communist Celebration official of sexual assault. Her accusation was shortly scrubbed from the web, and dialogue of it stays closely censored.
Within the shadow of these political points, China placed on its present. As Xi took his seat, the performers turned towards him and repeatedly bowed. A simultaneous cheer went up as they raised their pom-poms towards their president — China’s strongest chief since Mao Zedong, who established the Individuals’s Republic in 1949. A barrage of fireworks, together with some that spelled out “Spring,” introduced that the festivities had been at hand.
A line of individuals wearing costumes representing China’s different ethnicities handed the nationwide flag to the pole the place it was raised — a present of unity the nation typically places on as a part of its narrative that its big selection of ethnic teams dwell collectively in peace and prosperity.
However politics nonetheless elbowed its means into the proceedings. The parade of athletes from Taiwan — the island democracy that China says belongs to it however that competes individually as “Chinese language Taipei” — was greeted with a cheer from the group, as had been the Russian opponents. An overcoated Putin stood and waved on the delegation, nodding crisply as they marched.
The stadium was comparatively full, although not at all at capability, after authorities determined to permit a choose group to attend occasions.
As with all Olympics, consideration will shift Saturday — a minimum of partially — from the geopolitical problems with the day to the athletes themselves.
All eyes flip now as to if Alpine snowboarding celebrity Mikaela Shiffrin, who already owns three Olympic medals, can exceed sky-high expectations. How snowboard sensation Shaun White will cap off his Olympic profession — and if the sport’s present standard-bearer, Chloe Kim, will wow us once more. And whether or not Russia’s girls will sweep the medals in determine skating.
And China is pinning its hopes on Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old, American-born freestyle skier who has chosen to compete for her mom’s native nation and will win three gold medals.
As they compete, the circumstances imposed by Chinese language authorities provide a stark distinction to the social gathering ambiance of the 2008 Video games. Some flight attendants, immigration officers and resort workers have been coated head to toe in hazmat gear, masks and goggles. There’s a each day testing routine for all attendees, adopted by prolonged quarantines for all these testing optimistic. And there’s no passing from the Olympic venues via the ever-present cordons of chain-link fence — coated in cheery messages of a “shared future collectively” — into the town itself.
China itself has additionally reworked within the years since its first Video games. Then, it was an rising world financial drive making its greatest leap but onto the worldwide stage. Now it’s a burgeoning superpower. Xi, who was the pinnacle of the 2008 Olympics, now runs all the nation and has inspired a personality-driven marketing campaign of adulation.
Three a long time after its troops crushed huge democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Sq., killing lots of and maybe hundreds of Chinese language, the federal government locked up an estimated 1 million members of minority teams, principally Uyghurs, in mass internment camps. The state of affairs has led human rights teams to dub these the “Genocide Video games.”
China says the camps are “vocational coaching and training facilities” which are a part of an anti-terror marketing campaign and have closed. It denies any human rights violations.
Outdoors the Olympic “bubble” that separates common Beijingers from Olympians and their entourages, hundreds of individuals, bundled in winter jackets, gathered west of the stadium hoping for a distant glimpse of the fireworks, however they had been pushed again by police.
Elsewhere within the metropolis, others expressed enthusiasm and satisfaction on the world coming to their doorstep. Zhang Wenquan, a collector of Olympic memorabilia, stated Friday that he was excited, however that was tempered by the virus that has modified a lot for thus many.
“I feel the impact of the fireworks goes to be a lot better than it in 2008,” Zhang stated. “I truly needed to go to the venue to observe it. … However due to the epidemic, there could also be no probability.”
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