The limited effect of Olympic boycotts

Will anybody notice when President Biden and other high-ranking U.S. officials don’t show up for February’s Winter Olympics in Beijing? The Biden Administration’s declaration of a diplomatic boycott of the Games expressly allows athletes to compete in China, so the quadrennial shushing, sliding and skating will proceed with great fanfare.

So: Does such a high-level snub accomplish anything?

The White House has declared its action an objection to the Chinese government’s "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity" and other abuses, including a crackdown of freedoms in Hong Kong and Tibet and the recent disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai after she accused a high-ranking Communist official of sexual assault.

It’s clear that China doesn’t much worry about criticism from the West. And Olympic boycotts historically have not been effective tools in reforming nefarious behavior. The 1980 U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Summer Games, called by President Jimmy Carter and joined by 64 other nations protesting the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, outraged athletes who felt they were pawns and had no impact on the Soviet occupation, which lasted another nine years. About all it accomplished was the Soviets’ revenge boycott of the Los Angeles Games four years later.

The argument here is that Biden’s essentially symbolic declaration is nevertheless generating an abundance of commentary and likely some discomfort for the corporate giants bolstering Beijing and the International Olympic Committee. And, in doing so, it highlights the feeble stance on human rights by the IOC, which promotes global goodwill through a sort of United Nations in Sneakers.

The IOC awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics to Beijing, in spite of China being one of the world’s most repressive governments, amid global protests that included pleas for a full boycott. When that threat passed and the competition began, all the focus went to the athletes and China’s spectacularly run events. Then the IOC favored Russia with the 2014 Winter Games amid complaints about Moscow’s anti-gay legislation. And Beijing was chosen again for 2022.

Each instance violated language in the IOC charter requiring Olympic hosts to ensure that "rights and freedoms … shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, color, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, birth or other status."

Both Beijing and the IOC predictably are invoking the old sports-and-politics-shouldn’t-mix cliché — when, in fact, sports and politics always are mixed. Every Olympics site has served as a political statement by the host, whether it was Nazi Germany’s 1936 Games as propaganda for Hitler’s criminal agenda, Japan’s 1964 Olympics to demonstrate its post-World War II revival, South Korea’s 1988 Games to showcase a turn to democracy, even L.A.’s 1984 celebration of capitalist might. China wants to telegraph its technological and economic power and, not least, athletic prowess in the familiar, if illogical, assumption that gold medals suggest a nation’s moral superiority.

Naturally, athletes prioritize competition but, increasingly, they may not just shut up and play. Several U.S. Olympians, including figure skaters Evan Bates and Nathan Chen, have confirmed their participation while condemning China’s human rights violations as "abysmal," and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee declared last year that it would not punish its jocks for reasonable demonstrations during the Games. (The IOC, citing its old rule limiting "athlete expression," said it will.)

So neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris nor any department secretaries will join the hullabaloo in February. And China won’t change its spots. But we’ve been forced to think about the issue now.

This guest essay reflects the views for former Newsday sports reporter John Jeansonne.

Correction: A previous version of this essay had the wrong year for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.