China often expresses the wish that not everything should be overly politicized. However, it is difficult to satisfy this wish. Because the Communist Party, for its part, turns everything it touches into an object of systemic competition. This also applies to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which begins today at 1 PM (CET). That is why China.Table is particularly interested in what impact the Olympics will have on international relations, and especially on Germany.
Although the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is now in parliamentary opposition, it ruled continuously for 16 years until recently. We asked the human rights spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group for his opinion on the 2022 Olympics in China. Michael Brand does not mince matters in today’s interview: The IOC is prostituting itself for money and is thus betraying the Olympic idea, Brand says. Even now, he is calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics because awarding the Olympic Games to China was a mistake in the first place. If values no longer play a role, the Olympics will be “run into the ground,” Brand believes. Germany must not look the other way in the face of genocide.
In an exclusive survey, we commissioned the opinion research institute Civey to poll the German population on this topic. The results confirm Brands’ position. Three-quarters of respondents think it is wrong that a country is allowed to host the Olympics while serious human rights violations are being committed there. The Olympics are also facing criticism from citizens’ groups and other organizations, writes Marcel Grzanna. The heads of state who attend the Olympics are mostly from authoritarian-ruled nations.
Meanwhile, the winter sports industry is getting into the Olympic spirit. Although not quite as many Chinese have become active skiers as is sometimes claimed, sports schools and equipment suppliers are reporting a significant increase in sales in the Middle Kingdom this year. At least the commercial promise of the Olympics is partially fulfilled, report our Beijing correspondents. If it only weren’t for Covid. The pandemic is holding back business.
Today, Johnny Erling writes about the enigma that is China’s youth. True, the propaganda machine has successfully instilled patriotism in those born after the year 2000, but this generation is also very self-conscious and urbane. We will see if they will always follow Xi as obediently as he hopes.
Mr. Brand, do you watch the broadcasts of the Winter Olympics?
I am a sports enthusiast and I like to watch the Olympic Games. But with the decision to award the Olympics to Beijing, the Games have lost their innocence. The IOC is betraying the Olympic idea. I, for one, will not be watching the Chinese regime’s display at the opening ceremony; there is really no need to put yourself through that. All the more reason for me to keep my fingers crossed for everyone, especially the German athletes, and hope that they will have a lot of fun and success.
What specifically do you criticize about the International Olympic Committee?
The mistakes were not only made in Beijing 2022. The IOC knows very well that major sporting events are abused by authoritarian states to boost their image. And that these regimes are willing to pay enormous sums for this. The IOC has become a prostitute of regimes that pay enough. The fact that a German president, of all people, is charting this path for the IOC is hard to stomach. The 2022 Winter Olympics will take place at a time when Beijing is simultaneously acting with extreme brutality both internally and externally, strangling democracy in Hong Kong, openly threatening Taiwan with war, pursuing an unprecedented military buildup, and placing over a million innocent Uighurs in internment camps in Xinjiang.
The IOC and its current president Thomas Bach already said in 2008: The games are a good opportunity to talk about human rights violations and to bring change in this way.
The terrible thing is: Bach knows that this is utter nonsense; he knows his friend and dictator Xi all too well. Nothing has improved since 2008. On the contrary, the brutality is absolute. The Olympic Games once stood for values like peace and understanding. Xi Jinping stands for the exact opposite, for repression at home and aggression abroad. And Thomas Bach has become his accomplice. Those who remain silent about genocide are complicit. The IOC has degenerated into a multi-billion dollar money machine, and human rights have become irrelevant.
At the Games 14 years ago, the impression still was that the IOC was insisting on adhering to the Olympic Charter. That no longer seems to be true. Has China also become too powerful for the IOC?
The IOC stopped caring about the Olympic Charter many years ago. It only cares about billions in revenue and nothing else. In 2015, the IOC already stopped setting requirements during the awarding process, since Thomas Bach and the others knew that regimes would then stop paying. Since 2017 at the latest, the world has learned about the internment camps in Xinjiang. The IOC should have drawn consequences and intervened in support of the detainees. This room for decision exists, but only if you have any interest in human rights. At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, people also harbored the illusion that they could tame National Socialism, which was brutal on the inside and aggressive on the outside. We all know the outcome. The IOC once again makes itself an accomplice to a brutal dictatorship.
Doesn’t German politics have any contact with Thomas Bach?
People like Thomas Bach no longer have much to do with Germany and our fundamental values. They live in a different world, where money counts for a lot and people count for little. As parliamentarians in the German Bundestag, we have repeatedly pointed out the enormous problems to the sports associations. They only do the absolute minimum to not completely look bad, they put their interest before human rights.
An example: A Tibetan documentary filmmaker was jailed for four years for a 2008 documentary about the repression in Tibet. He was tortured, and his family was collectively punished. The man now lives in the United States. He was recently in Berlin and spoke to the German Olympic Committee. Afterward, he told me that, in essence, he felt he was not taken seriously, that the sports officials were not interested in his information and experiences. To the outside world, the federation shows interest but actually looks the other way, accepting the brutal oppression in China. Aside from competition, they are also interested in financial profit.
What does such behavior mean for the sport?
I believe that this will run the Olympic Games into the ground in the long term. Naturally, more and more athletes are growing disgusted with the fact that the IOC is allowing the Olympics to degenerate into a mere instrument of commerce and power. Issues such as sustainability, environmental and climate protection and, of course, human rights, play a big role for athletes. And the public also feels that it is being lied to. The IOC must finally change course.
Are you in favor of a boycott of this year’s Olympics?
China’s power structure poses a greater threat today than the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. In this respect, I think it is necessary to send a clear signal. The fact that the new German government could not even convince itself to declare a diplomatic boycott is, in my opinion, a big mistake. The athletes should still be able to participate. But a diplomatic boycott would have been the very least that they could have done.
Isn’t that pure symbolic politics?
That’s what it’s all about, symbols. A diplomatic boycott is a powerful symbol. It is precisely such symbols that are enormously important to an authoritarian regime like Xi Jinping’s. We are seeing how the Chinese regime is now trying to suppress even small symbols of solidarity with minorities, be it flags or public rallies, even here in Germany. Symbols are not the sole answer to a brutal and aggressive regime. But they remain critical. In the meantime, positions on human rights have changed, even within the business community, such as the BDI. Companies are witnessing how employees are being put under massive pressure in China. And when Foreign Minister Baerbock then talks about a values-oriented foreign policy and Chancellor Scholz retracts these statements, this is not a stance, but cowardly kowtowing. So, what is the stance of the new German chancellor? Does he even have one, is he strong enough to defend our country and our democracy effectively?
The same question could be asked to the previous government in which your party was involved.
My stance on human rights has not changed, regardless of whether we are in government or the opposition. Angela Merkel was one of the last European leaders to address human rights abuses in China. Even then, both others and I called for a new approach in light of the increasingly brutal internal repression under Xi Jinping and growing external aggression.
However, pointing to the past will not help the future. The strategic confrontation with an increasingly aggressive China makes a repositioning inevitable. Unfortunately, Chancellor Scholz does not provide the promised leadership here either; there is not a word from him about the internment camps and human rights violations. This has to change: We must appear self-confident and should not allow ourselves to be pushed around.
Is this approach really surprising? After all, the SPD’s home state of Lower Saxony is home to Volkswagen, which now sells almost half of its vehicles in China. The state of Lower Saxony even has a stake in VW.
Naturally, Germany has an interest in good economic relations with China as well. But the question is whether we should subordinate all other interests of our country to the economy alone. China is still exporting more to Germany than vice versa, and in its relationship to the EU, China is even more dependent on us. We can no longer refrain from asserting our own interests and values. Xi Jinping is acting highly aggressively towards EU member states and others, and has been doing so for a long time. We must no longer make ourselves smaller than we are.
However, this could cost the German economy dearly.
If we are not prepared to pay a price for our independence, we will end up paying a much higher price. Under pressure from the Chinese leadership, Volkswagen has built a plant in the provincial capital of Xinjiang, virtually in the immediate vicinity of internment camps where hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens are imprisoned under brutal conditions. In the country of VW and Siemens, human rights are part of the national interest, democracy and the rule of law are core values. These values and fundamental rights are not for sale; we cannot toss them aside just because some companies are afraid of losing exports.
But what are you calling for specifically?
VW and Siemens and others must finally practice transparency. Which strategic cooperation has been arranged between VW and China? How exactly will VW rule out the involvement of forced laborers in Xinjiang and its supply chains? What are the specific agreements Siemens has made with the Chinese state in its contracts to support digital surveillance? One thing stands above all: Turning a blind eye to genocide is a disgrace, and they become complicit. German companies bear a particular responsibility when genocide is committed around them.
Michael Brand, 48, has been a member of the Bundestag since 2005. He is a member of the parliamentary leadership of the CDU/CSU and chairman of the working group on human rights and humanitarian aid. For his commitment to human rights, among others for Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Christians, Brand was denied entry during a delegation visit of the Bundestag Committee for Human Rights to the People’s Republic in May 2016.
More than a dozen of the world’s leading industrialized and democratic governments have decided not to send government officials or diplomats to Beijing. Some of them are officially calling it a boycott. Others, including the Federal Republic of Germany, avoid the term but will still be absent from the Olympics. More than 250 international non-governmental organizations have signed a declaration calling on other countries to join a political boycott. It also calls on athletes “not to legitimize the government’s human rights violations.”
The disapproval that the host country is experiencing is unprecedented in the history of the Winter Olympics. At most, the 1936 Berlin Summer Games were once similarly controversial. With its dramatically poor human rights track record for the treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the political cleansing in Hong Kong, the oppression of Tibet, or individual fates such as that of tennis player Peng Shuai, the Chinese government is angering large parts of the democratic world. Some parts are backing Beijing and defending the country against any criticism.
In Germany, too, the host country China is met with widespread discontent. In an exclusive survey by China.Table, conducted by Civey, three out of four respondents felt that the decision to award the Olympic Games to the People’s Republic was wrong or clearly wrong. Only ten percent believe the IOC made the right decision. Fifteen percent of the respondents were undecided.
Even the opening ceremony of the Olympics (February 4-20) is already under special scrutiny. For months, activists have been encouraging athletes to abstain from the opening ceremony as a signal. On several occasions, representatives of various organizations met with Olympic participants to inform them about the human rights situation in the People’s Republic. Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) had organized trips of exiled Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hong Kongers to World Cup events of the winter sports calendar for this purpose.
Because US activists are primarily involved in the initiative, the Chinese state press is lashing out at Washington. China accuses the US government of a “malicious and dirty” plot. It is rewarding athletes from various countries handsomely for expressing their disapproval of the People’s Republic’s hosting of the Olympics, the China Daily claims, citing “anonymous sources.”
China received support from Russia. The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service claimed he had “extensive information about a large-scale campaign by the US and its most odious, obedient allies to aggressively and maliciously interfere in the preparation process for the Beijing Olympics.” IOC President Thomas Bach, meanwhile, washed his hands of the matter once again on Thursday. He said the Olympics are about integrating the whole world. The Olympics could not solve the world’s problems.
At the very least, however, by saying “no” to Beijing, the IOC could have had the foresight to not further add to its division. The wave that Bach and the committee triggered with this predictable controversy is now beyond the control of the sports officials. Bach even laments that “the boycott ghosts are rearing their ugly heads again.”
For the Chinese government, the participation of high-ranking politicians and officials is of tremendous domestic political relevance. Head of state Xi Jinping has not left his country for more than two years since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. In doing so, he sent the signal that he felt safe only in China during this time. The fact that heads of state from countries with a significantly higher Covid death toll are now heading to China is supposed to give the Chinese population the impression that foreign countries also have great trust in China’s crisis management.
The IOC itself is partly to blame for the extreme politicization of this year’s Olympics. A broad alliance had already criticized Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Games. Since then, its human rights track record has deteriorated dramatically. As a result, the volume of its critics has also increased dramatically. Nevertheless, the 2015 bid was once again awarded to China. “The last Beijing Olympics led to a major escalation of China’s brutality in Tibet, as the Chinese government acted with impunity,” the International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement.
With their joint statement, which has now been signed by more than 250 non-governmental organizations, the critics of the awarding also display unity in civil society beyond the political sphere. Renee Xia, Director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, warns about the consequences of China’s hosting. “That the Winter Olympics is held in Beijing sends a signal to the world that Xi Jinping’s government is normal.”
Despite all this, many governments still attend the opening ceremony for a variety of reasons. Among them are numerous states of the European Union. France is sending its Minister of Sport, Roxana Mărăcineanu. Probably also out of concern for potential reactions to its own hosting of the 2024 Summer Games.
Poland is sending its head of government Andrzej Duda. Greece’s ambassador Georgios Iliopoulos even took part in the torch relay. He received the Olympic flame on Wednesday from China’s basketball icon Yao Ming, which was likely no coincidence. This helped the organizers increase the media exposure of his participation even further. The German government explained its decision against an official announcement of a diplomatic boycott with a lack of consensus in the EU.
European proponents of the Chinese Communist Party, such as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin or Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, whose government had plastered the capital Belgrade with posters thanking Xi Jinping for his help during the Pandemic, are also expected to attend. The United Nations, whose sub-organizations are now chaired by numerous Chinese, has a notably strong presence.
In addition to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the President of the General Assembly Abdulla Shahid from the Maldives and the Head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from Ethiopia, as well as the Chinese Director-General of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization, Deng Hongsen, will take their seats in the gallery. Tedro’s participation is also a success for the Chinese government because his presence stands testament to the Covid management of the People’s Republic.
Then there are Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as the Emir of Qatar and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, all of whom are known for their authoritarian governance. Last but not least, Kassym-Shomart Tokayev is also showing his face. The Kazakh president made headlines just a few weeks ago after he had insurgents in his country shot by the thousands. However, he is likely to feel a bit of Olympic melancholy. As the only other candidate, Kazakhstan lost the bid for the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing.
The Winter Games have already paid off for snow sports fans in Beijing. Whereas it used to take them up to four hours to reach the popular ski resort of Chongli, which is part of Beijing’s northern neighbor Zhangjiakou, the travel time has drastically decreased since last year.
Thanks to the new high-speed train line built for the Winter Olympics between Beijing and the co-host city, it now usually takes no more than an hour and a half to get from the comfort of home to one of the slopes in Chongli. Not only are there significantly more slopes to choose from in Chongli than before, but the surrounding area has also been significantly upgraded with new catering and accommodation facilities.
However, the government’s plans go far beyond merely doing a favor to skiing enthusiasts in and around the capital. When Beijing won the bid for the Winter Games in 2015, the government presented a broad development plan for the country’s winter sports industry. The plan aims to encourage around 300 million people to take up ice and snow sports by 2025. The industry is expected to generate ¥1 trillion (about €140 billion) annually by then.
Of course, this can’t just be achieved with some more slopes around Beijing. According to an analysis by consulting firm Daxue, the number of new ski resorts and ice skating facilities has skyrocketed across the country in recent years. While China was home to 568 ski resorts in 2015, it was 770 by the end of 2019. The quality of the facilities, however, varies widely. According to Daxue, only 155 were equipped with ski lifts in 2019, while the number of visitors to ski resorts has doubled to around 20 million in the same period.
The government’s plan not only focuses on infrastructure. It also includes an extensive education program to familiarize younger generations with winter sports in China. Elementary and middle schools in the northern provinces have to include various winter sports disciplines in the PE curriculum, and the number of schools offering winter sports is expected to reach 5,000 by 2025.
In addition to skiing, ice skating, in particular, has boomed in recent years following the introduction of the government’s development plan. For example, the municipal government of Beijing ordered the construction of an indoor ice rink of at least 1,800 square meters by 2022 in every city district. Numerous other cities followed suit, resulting in the number of rinks more than quadrupling to 650 nationwide since 2015.
But the operators of many new ice and ski facilities have had a bumpy start. China has indeed emerged from the Covid pandemic more unscathed than other regions of the world. Nevertheless, the 2019/2020 winter season, when the virus was first detected in Wuhan, completely fell victim to the country’s harsh lockdowns. The industry came to a virtual standstill and took some time to recover.
China’s retailers are now feeling the winter sports boom, with sales of skiing equipment multiplying lately. “People are becoming more and more interested in winter sports, which can give a boost to ice and snow sports,” says Beijing economist Huang Weiping. According to Huang, the Covid pandemic did slow the industry down a bit at first. Nevertheless, business for ski resort operators and winter sports schools has recently been better than ever.
With more young people taking an interest in skiing and ice skating, China hopes to move ever closer to the top in international winter sports tournaments in the future. In contrast, the search for a team for the Winter Games in China still proved to be a slow process. In some cases, athletes from other disciplines first had to be retrained for winter sports due to a lack of young talents. Many young athletes were sent overseas to train alongside professionals. Joern Petring/Gregor Koppenburg
China’s youth call themselves the “post-2000 born” generation (Lingling-Hou – 00后). Once spoiled as only children, they grew up privileged in times of double-digit growth and tourist travel, they were the Internet generation, and at the same time, they were mindlessly grinded through the mills of rigorous school education. While Millennials have been studied abroad for years, China’s Generation Z, now coming of age, is still a blank slate. Are they dependent little emperors, savvy high-tech nerds, cosmopolitan globetrotters, rebels – or internationally courted consumer freaks? Has the pandemic led them to be squeezed into Xi Jinping’s corset of narrow-minded patriotism and Leninist party doctrines? China is also puzzled by this question.
Beijing’s opening ceremony for the 2022 Winter Olympics will draw all eyes on Friday. This also goes for state director Zhang Yimou, who has the PR project staged in the Bird’s Nest Stadium, where he already staged the opening ceremony for the 2008 Summer Games. China’s propaganda praises Zhang in advance. Its social media, however, also reminds us that he once fell out of favor for dodging the one-child family policy. Zhang already had a daughter when he brought three more children into the world in 2001, 2004, and 2008. In 2013, he was fined ¥7.48 million (just over €900,000 at the time).
The scandal of times past has been largely forgotten, especially since Beijing is pushing its population to have children again. Bloggers are jokingly calling for the star artist’s fine to be repaid with interest and with a medal to boot. After all, Beijing had stopped its own birth planning and allowed all families to have two children again in 2015 and three children since May 2021. Zhang would have been just a little ahead of his time.
That’s the taunt of China’s millennials, the young people born between 2000 and today. They are reacting to Beijing’s abrupt stop of its 35-year one-child policy. There were good reasons for this. In 2021, with a drop to 0.75 percent, the nation of 1.4 billion recorded its lowest birth rate since its founding. With a death rate of 0.72 percent, the population increased by only 480,000 people. At the same time, the number of people aged over 65 rose to more than 14 percent of all Chinese. The “Middle Kingdom” will soon have to rename itself the new “Kingdom of Old Age.”
To iron out the mistakes of its birth planning, Beijing is calling on its youngest generation for assistance. News agency Xinhua urges: Starting in 2022, the “Lingling-Hou” will enter the legal marriage age of 20 for women and 22 for men. They should finally get married and have babies. But the post-2000 generation has no desire to do so. Beijing wants to force them. It’s time to “fit them into society and hammer them into place,” ( 现在，轮到00后进入社会 “受锤 “了) Shanghai’s online news “Thepaper” urged.
After all, statistically, we are talking about 146 million Chinese, most of whom were born as only children between 2000 and 2010 and are now coming of age. Together with their parents’ generations of the “post-80s” (born 1980 – 89) and the “post-90s” youth (born 1999 to 2000), that’s more than half a billion people. They were deeply influenced by China’s reform and opening-up period. After Mao’s death in 1976, the terms “post-80s” and “post-90s” generation came into vogue as the transformation of the economy, society, Internet, and first-ever freedom of movement shaped the lives of each individual in ten-year leaps.
China’s CP under party leader Xi Jinping is struggling to influence their souls. In his Spring Festival speech to young CP successors, published by the theory magazine “Qiushi,” he calls for obedience. “Do everything the Party asks of you and go where the Party sends you.”
What the polyglot-raised “Lingling-Hou” think, feel, and will do in the future is also a mystery outside China. China’s Generation Z is “faster and deeper immersed in the digital age than young people elsewhere, even by international standards. They are no longer creatures of their country’s past, but shapers of its future,” writes one of the United States’ leading China experts and Brookings Institute Director Cheng Li in his introduction to a collection of essays by Beijing Academy of Social Sciences youth researcher Li Chunling (Li Chunling: China’s Youth Increasing Diversity amid Persistent Inequality).
Li analyzes a generation that, as part of China’s new middle class, is full of inner contradictions – between old and new, modern and traditional values, rebellion, and adaptation. It would remain to be seen whether the change in their lifestyles will also be reflected in their views on politics. Cheng Li also writes: The question is open whether China’s youth will be as or less nationalistic today than previous generations.
Since the pandemic and Beijing’s heightened ideological indoctrination of society, this has been on the minds of many. Surprisingly, the left-wing patriotic and well-known dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Studies, Yan Xuetong, now worries that China’s “post-2000s” generation has become overconfident. His observation among freshmen is that China’s role as the world’s second most powerful economy has gone to their heads. “[They] look at international affairs with a make-believe mindset, thinking it’s very easy for China to achieve its foreign policy goals,” are prone to conspiracy theories and agitational rhetoric on the Internet. Yan took issue with their “narrow-minded nationalism (狭隘民族主义), which must be countered through education.”
This issue is also haunting the China Youth Daily, which has printed more than 180 surveys on the behavior of Generation Z since 2015 and recently published its most comprehensive survey. Eighty percent of the college students surveyed called on the People’s Congress (China’s socialist parliament) convening in March to put their personal and social problems on the agenda. They also fear for their jobs after China’s rigid education system and the consequences of the one-child policy led to an unprecedented flood of graduates. The Ministry of Education projects a record 10.76 million college graduates in 2022, up from 9.09 million in 2021, and sees academic unemployment as a potential source of social unrest. The stronger patriotic tone is also interesting. Nearly 80 percent of respondents intend to buy domestic products over foreign ones, partly guided by their feelings.
It was different before the pandemic and re-ideologization. The “Lingling-Hou” became the darling of advertising agencies as a new generation of consumers. Although they make up only 15 percent of the Chinese population, they account for 25 percent of the consumption of mainly Western brand products. Their demands of today will become a mass trend tomorrow, as e-commerce giant Alibaba and its B2C marketplaces Tmall and Taobao have learned.
But that is about to change. The biggest change in the lifestyle and thinking of Generation Z was brought about by the abrupt end of foreign tourism, something in which they were once world champions. That’s what the first systematic survey of 15,000 “Lingling-Hou” by China’s internet company Tencent revealed in mid-2019.
Other certainties are also being put to the test. More than 35 years of strict birth planning had shaped a youth in China that was described as coddled “little emperors” and incapable of surviving. Canton psychologist Wu Zhihong critically detailed this in 2016 in his sensational book, The Nation of Giant Babies. “At home, they had to listen to their parents; at school, to their teachers; in society, to their leaders, party and government.” But Wu also recognized how the new generation was trying to emancipate itself from that. His 480-page book was quickly banned by censors, as he argued for the expansion of legal systems and freedom in China to break the “vicious cycle” of a youth stuck in immaturity and a childlike mind.
Today, such demands are not allowed to be discussed anymore. Beijing is trying to patriotically assimilate the “Lingling-Hou”, to tie them into ideological corsets. But only time will tell whether they comply, adapt, or even outright refuse.
Is it the Great Wall of China? Or a snowboard track? If the Games are being held in Beijing, then the sports facilities should also look like its landmarks – especially since foreign visitors are not allowed to leave the Olympic bubble to see the real wall anyway.
China often expresses the wish that not everything should be overly politicized. However, it is difficult to satisfy this wish. Because the Communist Party, for its part, turns everything it touches into an object of systemic competition. This also applies to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which begins today at 1 PM (CET). That is why China.Table is particularly interested in what impact the Olympics will have on international relations, and especially on Germany.
Although the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is now in parliamentary opposition, it ruled continuously for 16 years until recently. We asked the human rights spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group for his opinion on the 2022 Olympics in China. Michael Brand does not mince matters in today’s interview: The IOC is prostituting itself for money and is thus betraying the Olympic idea, Brand says. Even now, he is calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics because awarding the Olympic Games to China was a mistake in the first place. If values no longer play a role, the Olympics will be “run into the ground,” Brand believes. Germany must not look the other way in the face of genocide.
In an exclusive survey, we commissioned the opinion research institute Civey to poll the German population on this topic. The results confirm Brands’ position. Three-quarters of respondents think it is wrong that a country is allowed to host the Olympics while serious human rights violations are being committed there. The Olympics are also facing criticism from citizens’ groups and other organizations, writes Marcel Grzanna. The heads of state who attend the Olympics are mostly from authoritarian-ruled nations.
Meanwhile, the winter sports industry is getting into the Olympic spirit. Although not quite as many Chinese have become active skiers as is sometimes claimed, sports schools and equipment suppliers are reporting a significant increase in sales in the Middle Kingdom this year. At least the commercial promise of the Olympics is partially fulfilled, report our Beijing correspondents. If it only weren’t for Covid. The pandemic is holding back business.
Today, Johnny Erling writes about the enigma that is China’s youth. True, the propaganda machine has successfully instilled patriotism in those born after the year 2000, but this generation is also very self-conscious and urbane. We will see if they will always follow Xi as obediently as he hopes.
Mr. Brand, do you watch the broadcasts of the Winter Olympics?
I am a sports enthusiast and I like to watch the Olympic Games. But with the decision to award the Olympics to Beijing, the Games have lost their innocence. The IOC is betraying the Olympic idea. I, for one, will not be watching the Chinese regime’s display at the opening ceremony; there is really no need to put yourself through that. All the more reason for me to keep my fingers crossed for everyone, especially the German athletes, and hope that they will have a lot of fun and success.
What specifically do you criticize about the International Olympic Committee?
The mistakes were not only made in Beijing 2022. The IOC knows very well that major sporting events are abused by authoritarian states to boost their image. And that these regimes are willing to pay enormous sums for this. The IOC has become a prostitute of regimes that pay enough. The fact that a German president, of all people, is charting this path for the IOC is hard to stomach. The 2022 Winter Olympics will take place at a time when Beijing is simultaneously acting with extreme brutality both internally and externally, strangling democracy in Hong Kong, openly threatening Taiwan with war, pursuing an unprecedented military buildup, and placing over a million innocent Uighurs in internment camps in Xinjiang.
The IOC and its current president Thomas Bach already said in 2008: The games are a good opportunity to talk about human rights violations and to bring change in this way.
The terrible thing is: Bach knows that this is utter nonsense; he knows his friend and dictator Xi all too well. Nothing has improved since 2008. On the contrary, the brutality is absolute. The Olympic Games once stood for values like peace and understanding. Xi Jinping stands for the exact opposite, for repression at home and aggression abroad. And Thomas Bach has become his accomplice. Those who remain silent about genocide are complicit. The IOC has degenerated into a multi-billion dollar money machine, and human rights have become irrelevant.
At the Games 14 years ago, the impression still was that the IOC was insisting on adhering to the Olympic Charter. That no longer seems to be true. Has China also become too powerful for the IOC?
The IOC stopped caring about the Olympic Charter many years ago. It only cares about billions in revenue and nothing else. In 2015, the IOC already stopped setting requirements during the awarding process, since Thomas Bach and the others knew that regimes would then stop paying. Since 2017 at the latest, the world has learned about the internment camps in Xinjiang. The IOC should have drawn consequences and intervened in support of the detainees. This room for decision exists, but only if you have any interest in human rights. At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, people also harbored the illusion that they could tame National Socialism, which was brutal on the inside and aggressive on the outside. We all know the outcome. The IOC once again makes itself an accomplice to a brutal dictatorship.
Doesn’t German politics have any contact with Thomas Bach?
People like Thomas Bach no longer have much to do with Germany and our fundamental values. They live in a different world, where money counts for a lot and people count for little. As parliamentarians in the German Bundestag, we have repeatedly pointed out the enormous problems to the sports associations. They only do the absolute minimum to not completely look bad, they put their interest before human rights.
An example: A Tibetan documentary filmmaker was jailed for four years for a 2008 documentary about the repression in Tibet. He was tortured, and his family was collectively punished. The man now lives in the United States. He was recently in Berlin and spoke to the German Olympic Committee. Afterward, he told me that, in essence, he felt he was not taken seriously, that the sports officials were not interested in his information and experiences. To the outside world, the federation shows interest but actually looks the other way, accepting the brutal oppression in China. Aside from competition, they are also interested in financial profit.
What does such behavior mean for the sport?
I believe that this will run the Olympic Games into the ground in the long term. Naturally, more and more athletes are growing disgusted with the fact that the IOC is allowing the Olympics to degenerate into a mere instrument of commerce and power. Issues such as sustainability, environmental and climate protection and, of course, human rights, play a big role for athletes. And the public also feels that it is being lied to. The IOC must finally change course.
Are you in favor of a boycott of this year’s Olympics?
China’s power structure poses a greater threat today than the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. In this respect, I think it is necessary to send a clear signal. The fact that the new German government could not even convince itself to declare a diplomatic boycott is, in my opinion, a big mistake. The athletes should still be able to participate. But a diplomatic boycott would have been the very least that they could have done.
Isn’t that pure symbolic politics?
That’s what it’s all about, symbols. A diplomatic boycott is a powerful symbol. It is precisely such symbols that are enormously important to an authoritarian regime like Xi Jinping’s. We are seeing how the Chinese regime is now trying to suppress even small symbols of solidarity with minorities, be it flags or public rallies, even here in Germany. Symbols are not the sole answer to a brutal and aggressive regime. But they remain critical. In the meantime, positions on human rights have changed, even within the business community, such as the BDI. Companies are witnessing how employees are being put under massive pressure in China. And when Foreign Minister Baerbock then talks about a values-oriented foreign policy and Chancellor Scholz retracts these statements, this is not a stance, but cowardly kowtowing. So, what is the stance of the new German chancellor? Does he even have one, is he strong enough to defend our country and our democracy effectively?
The same question could be asked to the previous government in which your party was involved.
My stance on human rights has not changed, regardless of whether we are in government or the opposition. Angela Merkel was one of the last European leaders to address human rights abuses in China. Even then, both others and I called for a new approach in light of the increasingly brutal internal repression under Xi Jinping and growing external aggression.
However, pointing to the past will not help the future. The strategic confrontation with an increasingly aggressive China makes a repositioning inevitable. Unfortunately, Chancellor Scholz does not provide the promised leadership here either; there is not a word from him about the internment camps and human rights violations. This has to change: We must appear self-confident and should not allow ourselves to be pushed around.
Is this approach really surprising? After all, the SPD’s home state of Lower Saxony is home to Volkswagen, which now sells almost half of its vehicles in China. The state of Lower Saxony even has a stake in VW.
Naturally, Germany has an interest in good economic relations with China as well. But the question is whether we should subordinate all other interests of our country to the economy alone. China is still exporting more to Germany than vice versa, and in its relationship to the EU, China is even more dependent on us. We can no longer refrain from asserting our own interests and values. Xi Jinping is acting highly aggressively towards EU member states and others, and has been doing so for a long time. We must no longer make ourselves smaller than we are.
However, this could cost the German economy dearly.
If we are not prepared to pay a price for our independence, we will end up paying a much higher price. Under pressure from the Chinese leadership, Volkswagen has built a plant in the provincial capital of Xinjiang, virtually in the immediate vicinity of internment camps where hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens are imprisoned under brutal conditions. In the country of VW and Siemens, human rights are part of the national interest, democracy and the rule of law are core values. These values and fundamental rights are not for sale; we cannot toss them aside just because some companies are afraid of losing exports.
But what are you calling for specifically?
VW and Siemens and others must finally practice transparency. Which strategic cooperation has been arranged between VW and China? How exactly will VW rule out the involvement of forced laborers in Xinjiang and its supply chains? What are the specific agreements Siemens has made with the Chinese state in its contracts to support digital surveillance? One thing stands above all: Turning a blind eye to genocide is a disgrace, and they become complicit. German companies bear a particular responsibility when genocide is committed around them.
Michael Brand, 48, has been a member of the Bundestag since 2005. He is a member of the parliamentary leadership of the CDU/CSU and chairman of the working group on human rights and humanitarian aid. For his commitment to human rights, among others for Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Christians, Brand was denied entry during a delegation visit of the Bundestag Committee for Human Rights to the People’s Republic in May 2016.
More than a dozen of the world’s leading industrialized and democratic governments have decided not to send government officials or diplomats to Beijing. Some of them are officially calling it a boycott. Others, including the Federal Republic of Germany, avoid the term but will still be absent from the Olympics. More than 250 international non-governmental organizations have signed a declaration calling on other countries to join a political boycott. It also calls on athletes “not to legitimize the government’s human rights violations.”
The disapproval that the host country is experiencing is unprecedented in the history of the Winter Olympics. At most, the 1936 Berlin Summer Games were once similarly controversial. With its dramatically poor human rights track record for the treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the political cleansing in Hong Kong, the oppression of Tibet, or individual fates such as that of tennis player Peng Shuai, the Chinese government is angering large parts of the democratic world. Some parts are backing Beijing and defending the country against any criticism.
In Germany, too, the host country China is met with widespread discontent. In an exclusive survey by China.Table, conducted by Civey, three out of four respondents felt that the decision to award the Olympic Games to the People’s Republic was wrong or clearly wrong. Only ten percent believe the IOC made the right decision. Fifteen percent of the respondents were undecided.
Even the opening ceremony of the Olympics (February 4-20) is already under special scrutiny. For months, activists have been encouraging athletes to abstain from the opening ceremony as a signal. On several occasions, representatives of various organizations met with Olympic participants to inform them about the human rights situation in the People’s Republic. Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) had organized trips of exiled Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hong Kongers to World Cup events of the winter sports calendar for this purpose.
Because US activists are primarily involved in the initiative, the Chinese state press is lashing out at Washington. China accuses the US government of a “malicious and dirty” plot. It is rewarding athletes from various countries handsomely for expressing their disapproval of the People’s Republic’s hosting of the Olympics, the China Daily claims, citing “anonymous sources.”
China received support from Russia. The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service claimed he had “extensive information about a large-scale campaign by the US and its most odious, obedient allies to aggressively and maliciously interfere in the preparation process for the Beijing Olympics.” IOC President Thomas Bach, meanwhile, washed his hands of the matter once again on Thursday. He said the Olympics are about integrating the whole world. The Olympics could not solve the world’s problems.
At the very least, however, by saying “no” to Beijing, the IOC could have had the foresight to not further add to its division. The wave that Bach and the committee triggered with this predictable controversy is now beyond the control of the sports officials. Bach even laments that “the boycott ghosts are rearing their ugly heads again.”
For the Chinese government, the participation of high-ranking politicians and officials is of tremendous domestic political relevance. Head of state Xi Jinping has not left his country for more than two years since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. In doing so, he sent the signal that he felt safe only in China during this time. The fact that heads of state from countries with a significantly higher Covid death toll are now heading to China is supposed to give the Chinese population the impression that foreign countries also have great trust in China’s crisis management.
The IOC itself is partly to blame for the extreme politicization of this year’s Olympics. A broad alliance had already criticized Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Games. Since then, its human rights track record has deteriorated dramatically. As a result, the volume of its critics has also increased dramatically. Nevertheless, the 2015 bid was once again awarded to China. “The last Beijing Olympics led to a major escalation of China’s brutality in Tibet, as the Chinese government acted with impunity,” the International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement.
With their joint statement, which has now been signed by more than 250 non-governmental organizations, the critics of the awarding also display unity in civil society beyond the political sphere. Renee Xia, Director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, warns about the consequences of China’s hosting. “That the Winter Olympics is held in Beijing sends a signal to the world that Xi Jinping’s government is normal.”
Despite all this, many governments still attend the opening ceremony for a variety of reasons. Among them are numerous states of the European Union. France is sending its Minister of Sport, Roxana Mărăcineanu. Probably also out of concern for potential reactions to its own hosting of the 2024 Summer Games.
Poland is sending its head of government Andrzej Duda. Greece’s ambassador Georgios Iliopoulos even took part in the torch relay. He received the Olympic flame on Wednesday from China’s basketball icon Yao Ming, which was likely no coincidence. This helped the organizers increase the media exposure of his participation even further. The German government explained its decision against an official announcement of a diplomatic boycott with a lack of consensus in the EU.
European proponents of the Chinese Communist Party, such as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin or Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, whose government had plastered the capital Belgrade with posters thanking Xi Jinping for his help during the Pandemic, are also expected to attend. The United Nations, whose sub-organizations are now chaired by numerous Chinese, has a notably strong presence.
In addition to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the President of the General Assembly Abdulla Shahid from the Maldives and the Head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from Ethiopia, as well as the Chinese Director-General of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization, Deng Hongsen, will take their seats in the gallery. Tedro’s participation is also a success for the Chinese government because his presence stands testament to the Covid management of the People’s Republic.
Then there are Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as the Emir of Qatar and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, all of whom are known for their authoritarian governance. Last but not least, Kassym-Shomart Tokayev is also showing his face. The Kazakh president made headlines just a few weeks ago after he had insurgents in his country shot by the thousands. However, he is likely to feel a bit of Olympic melancholy. As the only other candidate, Kazakhstan lost the bid for the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing.
The Winter Games have already paid off for snow sports fans in Beijing. Whereas it used to take them up to four hours to reach the popular ski resort of Chongli, which is part of Beijing’s northern neighbor Zhangjiakou, the travel time has drastically decreased since last year.
Thanks to the new high-speed train line built for the Winter Olympics between Beijing and the co-host city, it now usually takes no more than an hour and a half to get from the comfort of home to one of the slopes in Chongli. Not only are there significantly more slopes to choose from in Chongli than before, but the surrounding area has also been significantly upgraded with new catering and accommodation facilities.
However, the government’s plans go far beyond merely doing a favor to skiing enthusiasts in and around the capital. When Beijing won the bid for the Winter Games in 2015, the government presented a broad development plan for the country’s winter sports industry. The plan aims to encourage around 300 million people to take up ice and snow sports by 2025. The industry is expected to generate ¥1 trillion (about €140 billion) annually by then.
Of course, this can’t just be achieved with some more slopes around Beijing. According to an analysis by consulting firm Daxue, the number of new ski resorts and ice skating facilities has skyrocketed across the country in recent years. While China was home to 568 ski resorts in 2015, it was 770 by the end of 2019. The quality of the facilities, however, varies widely. According to Daxue, only 155 were equipped with ski lifts in 2019, while the number of visitors to ski resorts has doubled to around 20 million in the same period.
The government’s plan not only focuses on infrastructure. It also includes an extensive education program to familiarize younger generations with winter sports in China. Elementary and middle schools in the northern provinces have to include various winter sports disciplines in the PE curriculum, and the number of schools offering winter sports is expected to reach 5,000 by 2025.
In addition to skiing, ice skating, in particular, has boomed in recent years following the introduction of the government’s development plan. For example, the municipal government of Beijing ordered the construction of an indoor ice rink of at least 1,800 square meters by 2022 in every city district. Numerous other cities followed suit, resulting in the number of rinks more than quadrupling to 650 nationwide since 2015.
But the operators of many new ice and ski facilities have had a bumpy start. China has indeed emerged from the Covid pandemic more unscathed than other regions of the world. Nevertheless, the 2019/2020 winter season, when the virus was first detected in Wuhan, completely fell victim to the country’s harsh lockdowns. The industry came to a virtual standstill and took some time to recover.
China’s retailers are now feeling the winter sports boom, with sales of skiing equipment multiplying lately. “People are becoming more and more interested in winter sports, which can give a boost to ice and snow sports,” says Beijing economist Huang Weiping. According to Huang, the Covid pandemic did slow the industry down a bit at first. Nevertheless, business for ski resort operators and winter sports schools has recently been better than ever.
With more young people taking an interest in skiing and ice skating, China hopes to move ever closer to the top in international winter sports tournaments in the future. In contrast, the search for a team for the Winter Games in China still proved to be a slow process. In some cases, athletes from other disciplines first had to be retrained for winter sports due to a lack of young talents. Many young athletes were sent overseas to train alongside professionals. Joern Petring/Gregor Koppenburg
China’s youth call themselves the “post-2000 born” generation (Lingling-Hou – 00后). Once spoiled as only children, they grew up privileged in times of double-digit growth and tourist travel, they were the Internet generation, and at the same time, they were mindlessly grinded through the mills of rigorous school education. While Millennials have been studied abroad for years, China’s Generation Z, now coming of age, is still a blank slate. Are they dependent little emperors, savvy high-tech nerds, cosmopolitan globetrotters, rebels – or internationally courted consumer freaks? Has the pandemic led them to be squeezed into Xi Jinping’s corset of narrow-minded patriotism and Leninist party doctrines? China is also puzzled by this question.
Beijing’s opening ceremony for the 2022 Winter Olympics will draw all eyes on Friday. This also goes for state director Zhang Yimou, who has the PR project staged in the Bird’s Nest Stadium, where he already staged the opening ceremony for the 2008 Summer Games. China’s propaganda praises Zhang in advance. Its social media, however, also reminds us that he once fell out of favor for dodging the one-child family policy. Zhang already had a daughter when he brought three more children into the world in 2001, 2004, and 2008. In 2013, he was fined ¥7.48 million (just over €900,000 at the time).
The scandal of times past has been largely forgotten, especially since Beijing is pushing its population to have children again. Bloggers are jokingly calling for the star artist’s fine to be repaid with interest and with a medal to boot. After all, Beijing had stopped its own birth planning and allowed all families to have two children again in 2015 and three children since May 2021. Zhang would have been just a little ahead of his time.
That’s the taunt of China’s millennials, the young people born between 2000 and today. They are reacting to Beijing’s abrupt stop of its 35-year one-child policy. There were good reasons for this. In 2021, with a drop to 0.75 percent, the nation of 1.4 billion recorded its lowest birth rate since its founding. With a death rate of 0.72 percent, the population increased by only 480,000 people. At the same time, the number of people aged over 65 rose to more than 14 percent of all Chinese. The “Middle Kingdom” will soon have to rename itself the new “Kingdom of Old Age.”
To iron out the mistakes of its birth planning, Beijing is calling on its youngest generation for assistance. News agency Xinhua urges: Starting in 2022, the “Lingling-Hou” will enter the legal marriage age of 20 for women and 22 for men. They should finally get married and have babies. But the post-2000 generation has no desire to do so. Beijing wants to force them. It’s time to “fit them into society and hammer them into place,” ( 现在，轮到00后进入社会 “受锤 “了) Shanghai’s online news “Thepaper” urged.
After all, statistically, we are talking about 146 million Chinese, most of whom were born as only children between 2000 and 2010 and are now coming of age. Together with their parents’ generations of the “post-80s” (born 1980 – 89) and the “post-90s” youth (born 1999 to 2000), that’s more than half a billion people. They were deeply influenced by China’s reform and opening-up period. After Mao’s death in 1976, the terms “post-80s” and “post-90s” generation came into vogue as the transformation of the economy, society, Internet, and first-ever freedom of movement shaped the lives of each individual in ten-year leaps.
China’s CP under party leader Xi Jinping is struggling to influence their souls. In his Spring Festival speech to young CP successors, published by the theory magazine “Qiushi,” he calls for obedience. “Do everything the Party asks of you and go where the Party sends you.”
What the polyglot-raised “Lingling-Hou” think, feel, and will do in the future is also a mystery outside China. China’s Generation Z is “faster and deeper immersed in the digital age than young people elsewhere, even by international standards. They are no longer creatures of their country’s past, but shapers of its future,” writes one of the United States’ leading China experts and Brookings Institute Director Cheng Li in his introduction to a collection of essays by Beijing Academy of Social Sciences youth researcher Li Chunling (Li Chunling: China’s Youth Increasing Diversity amid Persistent Inequality).
Li analyzes a generation that, as part of China’s new middle class, is full of inner contradictions – between old and new, modern and traditional values, rebellion, and adaptation. It would remain to be seen whether the change in their lifestyles will also be reflected in their views on politics. Cheng Li also writes: The question is open whether China’s youth will be as or less nationalistic today than previous generations.
Since the pandemic and Beijing’s heightened ideological indoctrination of society, this has been on the minds of many. Surprisingly, the left-wing patriotic and well-known dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Studies, Yan Xuetong, now worries that China’s “post-2000s” generation has become overconfident. His observation among freshmen is that China’s role as the world’s second most powerful economy has gone to their heads. “[They] look at international affairs with a make-believe mindset, thinking it’s very easy for China to achieve its foreign policy goals,” are prone to conspiracy theories and agitational rhetoric on the Internet. Yan took issue with their “narrow-minded nationalism (狭隘民族主义), which must be countered through education.”
This issue is also haunting the China Youth Daily, which has printed more than 180 surveys on the behavior of Generation Z since 2015 and recently published its most comprehensive survey. Eighty percent of the college students surveyed called on the People’s Congress (China’s socialist parliament) convening in March to put their personal and social problems on the agenda. They also fear for their jobs after China’s rigid education system and the consequences of the one-child policy led to an unprecedented flood of graduates. The Ministry of Education projects a record 10.76 million college graduates in 2022, up from 9.09 million in 2021, and sees academic unemployment as a potential source of social unrest. The stronger patriotic tone is also interesting. Nearly 80 percent of respondents intend to buy domestic products over foreign ones, partly guided by their feelings.
It was different before the pandemic and re-ideologization. The “Lingling-Hou” became the darling of advertising agencies as a new generation of consumers. Although they make up only 15 percent of the Chinese population, they account for 25 percent of the consumption of mainly Western brand products. Their demands of today will become a mass trend tomorrow, as e-commerce giant Alibaba and its B2C marketplaces Tmall and Taobao have learned.
But that is about to change. The biggest change in the lifestyle and thinking of Generation Z was brought about by the abrupt end of foreign tourism, something in which they were once world champions. That’s what the first systematic survey of 15,000 “Lingling-Hou” by China’s internet company Tencent revealed in mid-2019.
Other certainties are also being put to the test. More than 35 years of strict birth planning had shaped a youth in China that was described as coddled “little emperors” and incapable of surviving. Canton psychologist Wu Zhihong critically detailed this in 2016 in his sensational book, The Nation of Giant Babies. “At home, they had to listen to their parents; at school, to their teachers; in society, to their leaders, party and government.” But Wu also recognized how the new generation was trying to emancipate itself from that. His 480-page book was quickly banned by censors, as he argued for the expansion of legal systems and freedom in China to break the “vicious cycle” of a youth stuck in immaturity and a childlike mind.
Today, such demands are not allowed to be discussed anymore. Beijing is trying to patriotically assimilate the “Lingling-Hou”, to tie them into ideological corsets. But only time will tell whether they comply, adapt, or even outright refuse.
Is it the Great Wall of China? Or a snowboard track? If the Games are being held in Beijing, then the sports facilities should also look like its landmarks – especially since foreign visitors are not allowed to leave the Olympic bubble to see the real wall anyway.
