The west’s boycott of the Beijing Olympics is not really about human rights

A few weeks ago, the Beijing Olympics were being discussed as the next big flashpoint in the new “cold war” with China. The self-adulation generated by the Chinese government’s prestige project would be drowned out by massive global protests over human rights. The modicum of excitement generated by a few niche sports would be lost in the outrage over the “genocide games”.

I may be missing something, but all I see in my daily paper and on television is some dispassionate and entertaining coverage of insanely courageous snowboarders, the cross-country masochists who ski uphill and Russian teenagers who do remarkable things on skates. I heard a leading, respected political commentator on the Today programme conducting a serious analysis of the finer points of curling. We might just as well be discussing a winter Games in Switzerland.

Politics is, however, not far from the surface. The Chinese leadership has several clear objectives. The first is to show, for domestic consumption and foreign neutrals, that China is rather good at managing the complex logistics of a global sporting event. A second is to show that China is not only an economic superpower but a sporting superpower. A particular boast is the Chinese American skier, Eileen Gu, who chose to compete for China rather than the US. And third, there is the domestic challenge of reconciling a big influx of foreigners with China’s (excessively) draconian quarantine rules for Covid. There is a reasonable prospect of these aims being met.

The response of some western countries has been to impose a “diplomatic boycott”. Led by the United States, the group includes the UK, Canada and Australia (but not New Zealand); Denmark, Holland and the Baltic states (but not the rest of the EU); India (but not Pakistan whose prime minister attended); Japan (who are not attending but not calling it a boycott).

The roll call of boycotters corresponds closely to the embryonic alliance supporting the US in its confrontation with China. The Biden administration and its allies are clearly determined to cast human rights as the political dividing line in that confrontation, but it really stems from China’s economic and technological challenge to long-standing American dominance.

The rest of the world is hedging its bets. The UN secretary general will be at the Olympics. Mr Putin has, ostentatiously, appeared to show solidarity with a vital ally.

It is yet to be seen whether any athletes will stage their own protest. In other sports, on other issues – like Black Lives Matter – political protests have been very effective. In this case, the paranoid Chinese authorities are prepared for protest by introducing a time-lapse into TV coverage, so that whatever happens will not be seen in China and perhaps beyond. Protesting athletes have also been promised fast-track deportation if they try.

There is no shortage of human rights issues: the suppression of dissent in China, and specifically Hong Kong; the lack of workers’ rights; the Great Firewall censoring information; the harassment of non-political groups pursuing issues like contaminated blood. This would have been an ideal time to expose afresh the plight of Peng Shui, the tennis star who (despite her public retraction) has seemingly been punished for calling out a powerful sexual predator and highlighting the sexual harassment faced by many Chinese women.

Nonetheless, protests continue to centre on the abuse of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. I have addressed the issue in these columns before, and in so doing attracted the kind of intolerant vilification, from human rights’ campaigners, that I would normally associate with Chinese “wolf warriors”.

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There are some serious human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including internment. The Chinese, like some other countries faced with terrorism and secessionist movements, have undoubtedly reacted harshly and disproportionately. Their behaviour may well be counter-productive and has provided powerful ammunition for China’s overseas critics. Yet campaigners conflate what is happening with the mass exterminations of the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. To point that out is not to excuse evil, but to demand accurate definition.

There is a good reason to be precise. Having adult and honest engagement with China means winning the hearts and minds of the Chinese people, most of whom are very patriotic. It doesn’t help to feed the Communist Party narrative that the west is trying to divide and split China. Promoting the cause of East Turkestan is as incendiary as promoting Kashmiri secession in India or Hamas in Israel. What started as a clever political ploy by Mike Pompeo in the dying days of the Trump administration has become a political cul-de-sac.

Despite western boycotts, the Olympics – like China – are set to be a success. It should be a salutary lesson: in the battle with China for power and influence in the world, unquestioning compliance with United States foreign policy will not get us off on the right foot (or ski).

Sir Vince Cable is the former leader of the Liberal Democrats and served as secretary of state for business, innovation and skills from 2010 to 2015