Inside Xi’s Beijing Olympics bubble

The Winter Olympics opening ceremony is on Friday. Picture: Getty Images

This is a strange time to be in Beijing.

Hours before the 2022 Winter Games begin, athletes are posting videos on TikTok about their electric beds.

The head of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach says he is looking forward to catching up with Peng Shui, the tennis player who disappeared after saying she was assaulted by a Chinese leader.

And President Xi Jinping’s favourite world leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has just arrived as the guest of honour.

Xi and Putin are meeting on Friday as the Russian leader decides what to do with his more than 100,000 troops gathered on the Ukrainian border, a situation the Kremlin euphemistically calls “topical international and regional matters”, and Beijing describes as an “unharmonious” challenge.

The two will then watch the Olympic opening ceremony at Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium with their shared friend Bach.

No mind that Russian athletes are not allowed to compete under their country’s flag because of the brazen state-backed doping program Putin oversaw at Sochi 2014.

No mind that Russia is – for the third time during Putin’s reign – poised to start war during the Olympics.

Bach says it is not his place to get involved in political matters.

“This is up to the [United Nations] Security Council,” he said on Thursday night at a press conference within Beijing’s bubble.

The Olympic boss – sounding like the German business lobbyist he used to be – earlier declared the legacy of these Games would be the addition of more than 300 million Chinese winter sports consumers.

“It also opens [an] enormous… new fan base for the athletes,” he said.

Asked about the detention of more than a million Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang, he again said the Olympics must not get involved in politics.

And the plight of Peng, a three time Olympian who said she had been raped by Zhang Gaoli, one of Xi’s former political colleagues?

Bach, after repeating that he will not get involved in politics, said he plans to meet her in the Olympic bubble.

It is not clear what that will achieve beyond underlining his credulousness.

Xi doesn’t seem to be fussed. Last week, he personally wished comrade Zhang “good health and long life” in his Chinese new year greetings.

As with so many controversies, Xi’s response is: never apologise, never explain.

It is not all war and controversy in Beijing.

The sky is a gorgeous blue thanks to favourable winds and the shuttering of heavy industry in the weeks leading up to the Games.

I could see stars when I looked up at the Thursday night sky, something I don’t ever remember seeing when I was this paper’s Beijing correspondent in the first half of 2020.

Inside the Olympics bubble – where the visiting foreigners are sealed away from the greater Chinese population – the volunteers are polite, helpful and a credit to their host country.

The venues are magnificent, if eerily absent of audience members. The Olympic village rooms have fancy, adjustable beds.

The coronavirus controls are formidable but effective.

And outside the bubble in the real Beijing, the city’s locals are taking advantage of the beautiful crisp winter weather.

The frozen lakes at the Summer Palace have been packed this week as locals enjoy China’s favourite winter sport: ice skating on sleighs.

One was Zhao Linlin, who said her family was looking forward to watching the Olympics opening ceremony on television.

“It’s the first time for Beijing to host the winter Olympics, and the first time for our sons to watch the Olympic Games,” she said.

Still, you don’t need to have a PhD in Sinology to be aware that these Games are taking place in a China profoundly different to those in 2008.

The evidence is in every cinema in China, which are currently packed with audiences watching a record-breaking red blockbuster, Watergate Bridge, a production guided by Beijing’s propaganda department.

Its subject: fighting Americans.

Its history: completely bogus.

The Chinese internet is now flooded with reviews by men saying they were moved to tears by the patriotic portrayal of Chinese bravely fighting wicked Americans in the Korean war.

“Long live the new China!” said one reviewer on Maoyan, a popular movie website .

It is one of two jingoistic box office giants currently in cinemas about the Korean war, a subject that has become increasingly popular wit

The other film about shooting Americans – Sniper – is directed by Zhang Yimou.

On Friday night, Zhang will oversee an artistic project that will present a vision of China more palatable for an international audience: the Olympics opening ceremony.

It will no doubt be spectacular, as was Zhang’s first Olympics effort in 2008.

That took place under Beijing’s then banner phrase: “One World, One Dream”. US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were in an audience swelled with leaders from around the world.

Beijing’s banner phrase for the sequel reads like an in-joke between Xi and Putin: “Together for a Shared Future”.

What are the rest of us to make of it?