The Olympic Games with roots in ancient time 776 B.C. The international Olympic Committee(IOC) was founded in 1894 with first Summer Olympics started in 1896. Figure skating was added in 1908 Summer Olympics and it and Ice Hockey were added in 1920. The first Winter Olympics was held in 1924 with Summer Olympics in the same year continued every four years till 1992. Starting 1994, the Winter Olympics became two years apart from Summer Olympic also held every four years. Paralympic Games were added in 1948 Summer Olympics with first Summer Paralympics in 2008. and winter Paralympics in 2010 Winter Olympics. From 2012 onward Paralympics were combined with Summer and Winter Olympics. Therefore, the 2022 Beijing Olympic is the Winter Olympics and Paralympics.
The world can recall that the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics was an extravaganza event. It created not only many sports records but also many advances in its operation from organization, technology, entertainment to culture, despite of the world was in financial crisis. Hence, this year while the coronavirus still rampant, the world is looking forward to another success of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Beijing is the only city with a record of holding both Summer and Winter Olympics with Paralympics. The world is under siege by the pandemic with quarantines, social distancing and travel bans for over two years, the Beijing Olympic is the only large world event of positive energy to lift the human spirit. (the world has seen a number of negative events including the storming of the American Capital Building of Congress) We are looking forward to seeing the positive energy from the Olympics.
China, with her track record of a successful 2008 Summer Olympics, is setting herself up to challenge the nation to bring the world a successful Winter Olympics in 2022. However, not like northern American and northern European, China is not known for Winter sports which are generally luxurious sports for middle and upper class citizens. From what the author observed so far, it appears that the Chinese government has designed to use the Olympic opportunity not only just a prestige lifting world event but also an economy uplifting event with long term planning, meticulous execution and far reaching post-Olympic impact to China and the world. First, China seems to destined to promote winter sports nationwide by investing many winter sports facilities throughout the nation (mountains resorts for winter sports) and educating the coming generations (winter sports academies throughout the country). The author can picture that China will become the principal winter sports equipment and faculty manufacturer making winter sports affordable to ordinary citizens. This will create a tremendous economic opportunity for China spilling over to tourism and service industry. This plan is obviously in line with China’s goal of lifting her citizens to middle class and increasing service oriented domestic economy.
There are a number of promotional videos about the Beijing 2022 Olympic. First, a 350km per hour high speed rail was built from Beijing to the mountains that can transport athletes within 46 minutes. The AI train used is equipped not only with advanced 5G communication technology but also with on-board studio and news broadcasting facilities beaming sceneries and athletes interviews to the world about the Olympic from Feb 4 - 20. The author anticipates that this technology not only will raise the quality of Olympic reporting to the world in nearly real time but with rich information and entertainment value. No doubt, this technology can easily propagate to China’s tens of thousands of miles high speed trains promoting traveling, tourism and commerce. For readers’s info, there is a 24 hour TV daily coverage about the Beijing Winter Olympics available on YouTube, named Together to the Future (一起向未來). You sure will enjoy that news coverage since the U.S. journalism is biased against China.
Speaking about journalistic bias, one can not help but notice that the U.S. has adopted an anti-China policy driven not by rational competitive analysis but by jealousy and desperation. Announcing diplomatic boycotting the Beijing 2022 Olympics is a shameful U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. is urging its Five Eye Alliance and other allies to practice diplomatic boycott against China, but the following was minimal and certainly not endorsing Pompeo’s Xinjiang genocide claim. So far, it appears that many world leaders including Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, … and UN officials are attending the Beijing 2022 Olympics. Despite of the pandemic scare, as of a week ago the 2022 Winter Olympics has 91 countries and 2861 athletes participating compared to 92 nations and 2922 athletes in 2018 Winter Olympic. This record speaks volume about the world’s trust in China’s efficacy in managing pandemic and her ability in organizing world events. The pandemic prevented the audience participation which is regrettable, thank goodness, China is putting quite a bit of investment in media communication, do watch the above YouTube links and China’s CGTN global tv.
“Together to the Future” is a very positive and timely slogan for the world. The Olympic spirit is much needed in our artificially competitive world. The U.S. certainly has the right to compete on the world stage and try to maintain her leadership, however, she must recognize Olympic Spirit both in Olympic Games and international relations. As a citizen, we must speak out openly when the government does something wrong. Politicizing Olympic Games is certainly a bad policy, it not only diminishes sportsmanship we used to teach our kids in school, but also hurts our athletes’ reputation in the international arena. Please do tell our politicians, Congressman and government officials the above message when we welcome our gold medal winning athletes back from Beijing.
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