As the Beijing Olympics wrap up and we reward our Canadian athletes with the pride and patriotic fervour they deserve, can we now say definitively that China should never be allowed to host this event again?
I had hoped this Olympics would be boycotted. As much as I like the Olympics – as much as I love to see our country defeat monoliths like the U.S., Russia and China; as much as I love to watch our women’s hockey team embarrass team after team after team – I don’t want to give China any more positive recognition than they deserve on the world stage.
And they deserve very little.
As Canadians, we’re all too aware of the lengths China will go to retaliate, whether it be through trade tariffs or imprisoning our citizens. But that’s just scratching the surface.
For the last ten years, China has been involved in the widescale persecution of an ethnic/religious minority called the Uyghurs (pronounced wee-gurs). This has involved over a million people detained in internment or “re-education” camps, the destruction of mosques and religious sites, and oppression of citizens at home and abroad.
Rape and torture have been widely reported. Communication has been restricted to the point where some Canadian and American Uyghurs haven’t heard from their families since 2017, when the internment camps were established. Last year, the Canadian Parliament overwhelmingly voted to declare China’s treatment of Uyghurs as genocide.
Other religious minorities are also under attack. Christian churches used to exercise some freedom in China, so long as the proper relationships were maintained. That, too, appears to be changing.
Hong Kong is losing its autonomy. China is squelching what remains of Hong Kong's independent voice and may overtake other disputed territories like Taiwan in the future. Nations and companies that dispute China’s right to control these territories are already paying a price.
It was never supposed to be this way. China was supposed to remain quiet and obedient; to gradually democratize as it joined the world economy. Bill Clinton once joked about China trying to censor the internet: “Good luck! That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall.” Twenty years ago, it was believed the free flow of ideas would overcome even the most authoritarian regimes.
Instead, just the opposite. Technology has provided a new tool for authoritarian regimes. Big Brother is alive and well in China, like in North Korea, and he doesn’t like to be criticized.
Just ask Chinese tennis player, Peng Shuai, who dared accuse a prominent Chinese Communist Party official of sexual assault on social media last year. She has now retracted her story and suggested she may retire from the sport. She made brief public appearances at the Olympics, then disappeared again into “quarantine.”
It’s hard for us to grasp in a free country, but this is what authoritarian regimes thrive on: blind loyalty and fear. One can choose to oppose the regime, like Jimmy Lai, owner of one of the last free newspapers in Hong Kong (now shut down), or like Russian political opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, but your days will be numbered. Lai and Navalny have both recently been imprisoned.
China’s surveillance terror network extends past its country’s borders. Gulbahar Haitiwaji writes in The Guardian about how she was falsely lured back into her home country of China ten years after immigrating to France. It turns out that the authorities had discovered a picture on the internet of her daughter protesting Uyghur oppression while in Paris. Unaware that her teenaged daughter had even been involved in a protest, she spent two years in an internment camp for her daughter’s transgressions.
Even Canadians of Chinese descent are being targeted for what they post on social media. The mayor of Coquitlam, BC has said that dozens of his constituents have complained to him about threatening phone calls and Chinese officials showing up in-person after posting something critical of China. Yes, in Canada.
After reading China Unbound: A New World Disorder by journalist Joanna Chiu, I’ve lost all reason to give China the benefit of the doubt. When a Uyghur athlete is chosen to light the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremonies, we must see it for what it is: propaganda.
Until the human rights issues are addressed, China should never be given the opportunity to put itself in a positive light on the world stage again.
It’s the very least we can do.
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