Andrew Bolt: Where’s the western outrage at Beijing over Olympics threat?

The IOC is letting the greatest dictatorship in history use its Games to give itself a gloss — and the West is easily giving in.

China whitewashed the apparent detention of Peng Shuai, a Wimbledon doubles champion and former Olympian. Picture: AFP

It’s nearly a week since China threatened to punish athletes at next month’s Beijing Winter Olympics if they said something political.

So where’s the outrage? Where are the protests from those political athletes so quick to abuse Donald Trump, demand “climate action” or bend a knee to Black Lives Matter?

Where are the protests from woke sponsors like Coca-Cola and Allianz, whose websites declare they’re fighting for “justice” and “a healthy planet”?

Instead, we’ve had near total silence since Yang Shu, a deputy director-general of the Beijing organising committee, warned athletes that “any behaviour or speech that is … against the Chinese laws and regulations are also subject to certain punishment”.

These are laws that the Chinese dictatorship has already used to imprison human rights lawyers, Hong Kong democracy protesters, up to one million Muslim Uighurs plus Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who criticised Chinese officials over the coronavirus and is still locked up 17 months later.

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics are set to open on February 4. Picture: Getty Images

No wonder speakers at a Human Rights Watch seminar last week warned athletes going to Beijing to shut up.

But hang on. Why are we giving in this easily to China’s totalitarianism, now being imposed on the rest of the world? Is the West so pathetically weak?

True, there have been a few voices of protest. Our federal sports minister, for one, did complain. What’s more, Australia last year joined the US, Britain and Canada in a diplomatic boycott of the Games, refusing to send politicians.

But for the rest … well, China has even more reason to believe there’s no value the decaying West won’t sell if the price is right.

Start with the International Olympic Committee, which is letting the greatest dictatorship in history use its Games to give itself a gloss.

Just a week ago, IOC vice president John Coates went on Chinese state media to praise China for its “amazing” and “wonderful” preparations for the Games. Does that include its preparations to silence athletes?

Actually, Coates last year insisted China’s humanitarian issues were “not within our remit”: “We are not a world government.” The IOC will shut up.

China whitewashed the apparent detention of Peng Shuai, a Wimbledon doubles champion and former Olympian. Picture: AFP

OK, the IOC’s silence is one contemptible thing, but worse is that it last year helped China whitewash the apparent detention of Peng Shuai, a Wimbledon doubles champion and former Olympian.

Peng accused former Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli in a post of sexually assaulting her. Peng and her post then vanished, until some tennis stars, notably Novak Djokovic, demanded answers.

This scandal threatened to spoil the Games, but what luck for China!

In November, IOC boss Thomas Bach, who once shook Zhang’s hand, back when Zhang led a group overseeing the games preparations, now announced he’d had a video catch-up with Peng, too, and she’d told him she was “safe and well”.

He even released a picture of Peng smiling – but did not release a transcript or tape of their conversation or even mention the alleged assault.

If the IOC is craven, its biggest sponsors are worse. These businesses would rather grovel for cash than stand for freedom against China’s dictatorship.

Intel, one of the 12 non-Chinese Worldwide Olympic Partners sponsoring these games, was last year forced by a new US law to tell its suppliers to avoid sourcing goods or services from the Xinjiang region, where China uses Uighur Muslims as slave labour in its campaign to destroy Uighur culture.

Fireworks during a rehearsal for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Games opening ceremony. Picture: AFP

Furious, China’s state media savaged Intel, which gets 26 per cent of its cash from China, so Intel ate dirt. It actually apologised for its letter – “We deeply apologise for the confusion” – and deleted all mention of Xinjiang from the copy it had posted online.

So Chinese censorship comes to the West, this time via a US multinational that boasts that its mission is to “shape technology as a force for good”. Hypocrites.

Or take Coca-Cola, another of those Worldwide Olympic Partners. It, too, talks a big social justice game, claiming it is “dedicated to using our voice and position to support equality, justice and universal values across various diverse groups”. Next to that fine talk on its website is a picture of a Muslim woman in a hijab.

Yet Coca-Cola last year lobbied to weaken a bill aimed at banning US firms from relying on Chinese forced labour, especially in the mostly Muslim province of Xinjiang. Coca-Cola is expanding in China, you see.

So we already know who’ll win the medals in Beijing. Gold goes to China’s power, silver goes to Western corporate sellouts, and freedom runs dead last.