Diplomatic boycott of Beijing Games only draws attention to US' failings: China Daily editorial

The Olympics are grand gatherings of global athletes and fans. The Beijing Winter Olympics are no exception. Yet some countries are trying to turn the event into a political publicity stunt.

It is perfidious of Washington to declare a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games while professing to want improved relations with Beijing. The announcement on Monday only reinforces how supercilious US politicians are. The boycott is nothing but a grand gesture that indulges their pompous belief that being American they have carte blanche to calumniate other countries.

To politicize the world sports event with a view to portraying the United States as the "guardian of human rights" is risible. The whole world knows that human rights are a movable feast for Washington. They are nothing but an easy label Washington pins on any political maneuver that ignores the US' self-proclaimed right to pursue its own agenda. There is no need and it is harmful in many ways to politicize an international sports event such as the Olympic Games.

Yet for the Joe Biden administration, it is an opportunity that is too good to miss. It is a prime occasion for badmouthing China. A diplomatic boycott gives a veneer of substance to its fabricated allegations of human rights abuses by China. By distorting China's success in cracking down on terrorism in its Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region as "genocide" and an "abuse of human rights", the US is doing a disservice to the global war against terrorism.

By ignoring what China has achieved in improving the livelihoods of people of different ethnic groups in Xinjiang, the US is denying the progress of human rights in the region. The diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games simply reinforces the fact that Washington is not qualified to talk about human rights.

The US should look in the mirror before talking about human rights elsewhere. Gun violence that claims thousands of innocent lives a year, racism and the ever widening wealth gap, have made the human rights situation deplorable in the United States. Turning a blind eye to their own country's human rights conditions, US politicians take it for granted that they have the moral high ground to point an accusing finger at others when it comes to human rights. But from the perspective of others their words are just base hypocrisy.

Consider the wars the US has launched in the past couple of decades, to say nothing of the color revolutions it has supported. None of the wars, its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq included, has brought peace and democracy to local residents. Instead, these wars and the color revolutions it has instigated have only plunged people in these countries into misery and poverty.

A senseless boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics will only worsen bilateral relations, which will cast a shadow on the recovery of the global economy. That points to the inconvenient truth that Washington has become a hindrance to global governance and development.