Beijing opening ceremony begins amid COVID-19, boycotts

Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping opened a Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday that mixed sport and global politics as few others have since the era of the Cold War.

The scintillating opening ceremony ended with a member of China’s Uighur minority - whose treatment is the focus of international human rights criticism - helping to light the Olympic cauldron, hours after Xi announced a new strategic alliance with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The two-hour extravaganza, complete with a rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine, was laden with symbolism. The handpicked crowd simultaneously waved red Chinese flags as snowflakes of peace came together to “make a beautiful winter,” a shattered ice cube “broke down barriers” and Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a Uighur nordic skier and a first time Olympian lit the flame alongside cross country skier Zhao Jiawen.

Performers create a flower display with LED lights during the opening ceremony.Credit:

In a firm geopolitical statement, China used the Olympic stage to call for an end to international scrutiny on its actions while recruiting the leaders of non-democratic countries to fill the stands in Beijing.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin sat in the Bird’s Nest only hours after signing a joint statement with China’s President Xi Jinping that condemned the West for using the “advocacy of democracy and human rights” to criticise China’s abuses of Uighurs in Xinjiang, pro-democracy leaders in Hong Kong and Russia’s build up thousands of troops on the Ukrainian border.

Xi and Putin said in a statement - released as Olympic athletes began marching into the stadium - that the West was “interfering in the internal affairs of other states, infringing their legitimate rights and interests, and inciting contradictions, differences and confrontation”.

The United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada announced a diplomatic boycott of the event in December. On Friday, the International Olympic Committee’s President Thomas Bach backed China’s push to bring the world together in “peaceful competition”.

“In our fragile world, where division, conflict and mistrust are on the rise, we show the world: yes, it is possible to be fierce rivals, while at the same time living peacefully and respectfully together,” he said.

Dancers perform as the snowflake is lifted during the ceremony.Credit:

Bach was clapped loudly by the handpicked crowd as he entered the stadium with Xi to begin the ceremony. There were cheers too for António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General who last week rejected calls by the United States not to attend the event.

Hundreds of athletes filled the stadium in a paired back parade that followed warnings from US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi not to risk any protests over human rights that could risk “incurring the anger” of the Chinese government after growing concern about the disappearance from public life of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai.

The Olympic cauldron is lit by China’s athletes Dinigeer Yilamujian and Zhao Jiawen.Credit:

Xi whose personal guidance of the Games was lauded by Liu Qi, the president of the Beijing Organising Committee, looked over a stadium that was almost half full - a sign of China’s containment of the COVID-19 and its determination to see through the second pandemic Olympics in as many years.

The stage and screen ceremony directed Chinese film icon Zhang Yimou was technical marvel that spanned sweeping frozen digital installations the size of the Olympic race track, a firework display that rumbled the stadium, and the goose step of the People’s Liberation Army - marching the Chinese flag to the podium, with all the cheers of a confident nation.

The performance featured no Chinese stars - only university and school students - a move in line with Beijing’s push to clamp down on a celebrity culture that it sees as western, impulsive and reckless.

Xi used the ceremony to cast China as the “credible, loveable, and respectable” leader of a new world order. On Friday that guest list included Putin, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev among a dozen others.

The framing has left the United States and its allies painted with a “Cold War mentality” and accused of “artificially erecting walls that divide humanity”.

“The Beijing Olympics is China’s chance to project this narrative internationally and domestically,” said Wen-ti Sung, a Chinese political expert at the Australian National University based in Taiwan.

“Domestically, the US and its partners’ diplomatic boycott plays into China’s hand in that it helps Beijing tell its domestic audience: the US and the West are deliberately ruining China’s big coming out party – maybe because they do not wish to see China becoming stronger and more respected internationally.

“That domestic narrative in turn helps generate nationalism sentiment and shores up the political capital of Xi as well as indirectly fanning a ‘siege mentality’ mindset.”

Zhang, the opening ceremony director who also led the 2008 performance, said China had changed since it last hosted the Olympics.

“In 2008, the Olympics was a brilliant stage and chance for our country to show ourselves,” he said.

“China’s status in the world, the image of the Chinese, and the rise of our national status, everything is totally different now.”

With AP

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