Martin Jacques: This Winter Olympics has taught the world a lesson

Source: Global Times

2022 is not 2008. In 2008, the West was friendly to China, and people's expectations for relations between them were getting higher and higher. Since then, this warmth has gradually been replaced by cold. China has not westernized in the manner expected and demanded by the United States. Worse still, China has become stronger as the United States has become relatively weaker. By 2016, the United States was disappointed that its hopes had not been realized. It turned against China and tried to exclude China. The atmosphere of the Winter Olympics is very different from that of the 2008 Summer Olympics. There is no doubt that the United States hopes that the Winter Olympics will not be held at all. However, it could not do anything about it, so it resorted to "diplomatic boycott". But it was a damp squib. Who really cares if U.S. diplomats are present; of course, it would be better if they were present, but if they weren't, the impact of their absence was also minimal. This is a weak gesture, which is even weaker due to the very small number of supporters of the boycott action.

Image source Visual China

The countries involved in the boycott are as alarming as the regional lists and the pitifully small numbers. Only two EU member states have explicitly expressed a "diplomatic boycott". Both Germany and France refused to join. New Zealand and Japan gave half-hearted support, announcing that they would not send government ministers but refusing to endorse the boycott. The U.S. boycott was almost insignificant: without the English-speaking nation, the boycott would have been almost invisible. If the 2008 Summer Olympics marked China's dramatic rise on the global stage, the 2022 Winter Olympics saw a significant decline in U.S. influence in the 14 years between the two Games. If further evidence of America's decline is needed in this context, recall the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War, when the United States launched a full-scale boycott (including athletes) involving more than 60 countries.

All of this tells us that the world beyond 2017 has a broader meaning. Exactly, there are three things. First, the estrangement between the United States and China will be long-term. It's been 5 years now, and it's continuing; it's not expected to be less than 10 years, more likely 20 years, and 30 years won't surprise me. Growing divisions between China and the United States are increasingly embedded in the global landscape. Second, america's decline is taking place, and it seems highly likely to continue, and it is likely to accelerate. As the failed boycott demonstrates, the United States is struggling. Third, when this era is over, it will eventually end, and no matter when that time comes, the world will not return to its original state, or, as you like, back to 2016. The world will become very different. It will still be one world, but more loosely, dominated by two sectors, one in China and one in the United States, with the former increasingly dominant.

The 2022 Winter Olympics are very different from the 2008 Summer Olympics for another reason. I'm not trying to say the pandemic here, although this certainly fundamentally changed the big event. The truth is that the Winter Olympics are far smaller in scale than the Summer Olympics: there are far fewer athletes, far fewer sports, and less global appeal. Interestingly, China's position is also different. China has far less experience at the Winter Olympics and far fewer traditions of participating in winter sports. China cannot compare with the traditional North American and Nordic powers of the Winter Olympics such as the United States, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Norway. For the grand unveiling party of 2008, not only is China likely to win more gold medals than any other country, it has actually achieved that goal as well. In 2022, this is not possible. But for countries and individuals, life is not always about reaching the top, but more about moving forward. China is very familiar with this. After all, this has been The story of China since 1978.

In fact, China has done a great job hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, and its starting point is quite intimidating. Not only does China face the challenge of building the necessary infrastructure for the Olympics from more or less scratch, but the pandemic has made this task more difficult. However, in a typical Chinese "never give up on doing things halfway", they see the Winter Olympics as an opportunity to transform some remote mountainous areas into winter sports resorts. 400 were built between 2014 and 2017, with a target of 800 this year. If the story of the 2008 Summer Olympics is all about Beijing and its new modernity, the story of this Winter Olympics is about China's urban-rural divide and the challenge of transforming some of China's poorest and most remote regions, providing them with state-of-the-art transportation infrastructure and ensuring their connection to the rest of China. Now a lesson has been taught to the world. (The author is a senior researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK)