With the Beijing Winter Games 2022 set to start in a week’s time, ties between China and the USA have heated up to the extent that Games host nation have warned the latter to resist from any kind of interference.
USA is boycotting the Games over China’s human rights record. USA is joined by five Western countries to protest the Beijing policy towards Uyghur Muslim minority. They have termed it as “genocide”.
Fearing more diplomatic backlash China has warned the USA “to stop interfering in the Beijing Winter Olympics”, state media reports.
According to Chinese foreign ministry statement, country’s top diplomat Wang Yi has talked to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday.
“The most urgent priority right now is that the US should stop interfering in the Beijing Winter Olympics,” Wang told his US counterpart.
The US Government and lawmakers in five Western countries have declared China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in its Xinjiang region a “genocide”, with France’s National Assembly the latest to do so this month.
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Rights campaigners have accused the International Olympic Committee of turning a blind eye to “litany of abuses in China”, including in Tibet and its on-going clampdown on free expression in Hong Kong.
Activists unfurled a Tibetan flag and a banner that read “no genocide” at the lighting ceremony in Greece.
Beijing has repeatedly railed against what it has dubbed the “politicisation” of sport and the International Olympic Committee has made similar calls to separate sport and world affairs.
China’s President Xi Jinping had a rare pandemic-era encounter with Olympic chief Thomas Bach this week.
Tensions between Beijing and Washington have soared in recent years on several fronts, including trade and technology.
According to AFP, in the call, the officials also discussed the growing tensions in Europe over Ukraine, with Wang telling Blinken that Russia’s security concerns “should be taken seriously”.
“All parties should completely abandon the Cold War mentality and form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism through negotiation,” Wang said.
The State Department’s readout of the call made no mention of the Olympics and instead focused on Ukraine.
Beijing will become the first city ever to host both the Summer and the Winter Olympic Games.
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