Beijing officials have sealed off several residential communities north of the city centre after two cases of Covid-19 were found as the Chinese capital prepares to host the Winter Olympics opening ceremony on Friday. Another 34 cases were confirmed among athletes and others who have come for the Games, the organising committee said. In all, 211 people have tested positive among more than 8,000 who had arrived by the end of Saturday. They include a Swedish cross-country skier and a snowboarder from Slovenia. Everyone coming for the Olympics is being…
Tag: Winter Olympics 2022
Sport, politics and Covid collide at the Beijing Winter Olympics
Hosting the Winter Olympics during a pandemic was always going to test the Chinese government, by putting its ever-growing ability to exercise political control and virus containment on a collision course with its enthusiasm for international prestige and status. The 2022 Winter Games, which open on Friday, are being held at a time of particularly intense western criticism of China over human rights abuses, from the mass persecution of Uyghurs in far western Xinjiang – labelled a genocide by the United States – and other groups including Tibetans, to the…
Beijing Winter Olympics reports jump in daily Covid cases
China has reported a jump in Covid cases among athletes and team officials at the Beijing Winter Olympics. The number of daily Covid infections rose to 19 on Friday from two a day earlier, and Games organisers said more cases could be expected in the coming days. Thirty-six Games-related personnel, including the athletes and officials, have been found to be infected, 29 when they arrived at the airport in Beijing and seven already in the “closed loop” bubble that separates event personnel from the public, the organising committee said in…
China hires western TikTokers to polish its image during 2022 Winter Olympics
An army of western social media influencers, each with hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, Instagram or Twitch, is set to spread positive stories about China throughout next month’s Winter Olympics. Concerned about the international backlash against the Beijing Games amid a wave of diplomatic boycotts, the government has hired western PR professionals to spread an alternative narrative through social media. In November, as Joe Biden contemplated a diplomatic boycott, Vipinder Jaswal, a US-based Newsweek contributor and former Fox News and HSBC executive, signed a $300,000 contract with China’s…
Protesting Winter Olympics athletes ‘face punishment’, suggests Beijing official
Any athlete behaviour that is against the Olympic spirit or Chinese rules or laws will be subject to “certain punishment”, a Beijing 2022 official has said in response to a question about the possibility of athlete protests at next month’s Winter Games. Sign up to our Winter Olympics daily briefing, starting in February. It comes shortly after human rights advocates told athletes they were better off staying silent for the duration of the Games and amid concerns over the online security of attendees’ data contained in a mandatory phone app.…
Beijing reports its first locally transmitted Omicron variant case
The Chinese capital, Beijing, has reported its first locally transmitted case of Omicron coronavirus variant, state media reported on Saturday, less than three weeks before the Beijing Olympic Winter Games. An official at the city’s disease control authority said at a press conference that laboratory testing found “mutations specific to the Omicron variant” in the person. The authorities have since published a detailed account of the patient’s activity that dates back to 31 December. Haidian district officials in Beijing said they had sealed up the infected person’s residential compound and…
China battles Omicron outbreak weeks before Winter Olympics
China is battling to stamp out its first outbreak of the Omicron variant, only weeks before the Chinese new year and the Beijing Winter Olympics, with cases recorded in at least two distant provinces. On Monday, health authorities reported 97 new locally transmitted cases for the preceding 24 hours, across several cities. At least 30 cases were in Henan province, while at least 31 new cases were reported in the Tianjin, including 15 children aged five to 15. At least two of the cases detected in the city’s Jinnan district…
Mind Games: how China’s confidence soared between two Olympics
Spectacular fireworks lit up the summer sky and the air filled with the smell of sulphur as trails of smoke descended on the crowds in Tiananmen Square. The throng cheered enthusiastically. “Go Beijing, go China, go Olympics,” they chanted. The collective pride was palpable. It was shortly after the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics, which began at 8.08pm local time on 8 August 2008; the Chinese believe eight is an auspicious number. That evening, Chinese-American Kaiser Kuo was watching from the balcony of his apartment in eastern Beijing.…