Beijing (AFP)
The Chinese capital, where the Olympic flame arrived last week, will become from February 4 to 20, 2022 the first city in the history of the Olympic Games to have hosted the Summer (in 2008) and Winter Games.
The organizers of the Olympics-2022 will also reuse some of the sites built for 2008, such as the emblematic athletics stadium of the "Bird's Nest", where the opening and closing ceremonies will be held.
If no sign of opposition is seen in China, the lighting ceremony of the Olympic flame last week in Greece recalled that the attribution of these Winter Games in Beijing continued to tense up rights groups. of Man.
The ceremony was disrupted by a few activists waving a Tibetan flag and a banner accusing Beijing of "genocide".
A few days later, Turkish basketball player Enes Kanter, who plays in the NBA, on Twitter accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of being a "brutal dictator" and blamed him for China's policy in Tibet.
Controversies
Beijing regularly affirms its opposition to any "politicization" of sport and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stresses that it is not in its remit "to go to a country to tell it what to do".
But for the Washington-based "International Campaign for Tibet" association, the controversy in China after Enes Kanter's remarks is further proof that "the country was the wrong choice to host the next Winter Olympics" .
Like other NGOs, she is campaigning for governments not to send political representatives to Beijing without demanding a total boycott.
Dutch skater Suzanne Schulting competes at a test event in Beijing WANG Zhao AFP
Other subjects crystallize criticism, such as the repression of the opposition in the semi-autonomous territory of Hong Kong or the Chinese security policy in Xinjiang (north-west).
The Uyghurs, mainly Muslims, constitute the first ethnic group in this region.
Long hit by bloody attacks attributed to separatists or Uyghur Islamists, it has been the subject of draconian surveillance for several years, Washington accusing Beijing of committing "genocide" there.
Sanitary bubble
If the 2008 Olympics enshrined the country's return to the forefront of the world, the 2022 edition is an opportunity for the Chinese authorities to promote winter sports, which they want to see practiced by 300 million people - i.e. 20 % of the population -, whereas China is not, unlike the Summer Games (634 medals, including 262 gold), a major nation of the Winter Olympics (62 medals, including 13 gold).
Few details have leaked out on how Beijing plans to mark the 100 days before the event on Wednesday.
But the festivities are likely to be sober, due to the health restrictions linked to the coronavirus.
China, where the virus was discovered at the end of 2019, has virtually eradicated the epidemic on its soil since the spring of 2020.
But a recent epidemic resurgence in northern China has worried the authorities in recent days.
The Beijing marathon, scheduled for next Sunday, has been postponed indefinitely, and tens of thousands of residents have been confined to their homes, including in the capital.
And on Tuesday, the authorities even imposed the confinement of a city of four million inhabitants, Lanzhou, in the northwest of the country.
As since the start of the epidemic, Chinese officials are relying on an arsenal of radical measures: massive screening, tracking of movements via mobile applications, compulsory confinements and quarantines, drastic filtering of international arrivals.
The Beijing Olympics, organized only six months after those in Tokyo, will be held in a health bubble that will isolate athletes from the rest of the population in order to avoid any contamination.
To participate in the Games, the approximately 2,900 athletes expected will either have to be fully vaccinated or undergo a 21-day quarantine upon their arrival.
Unlike Tokyo, there will be spectators to watch these Games, but tickets will only be sold to people who live in China and can get excited about the few Chinese medal chances, such as Eileen Gu (ski halfpipe), Liu Jiayu and Cai Xuetong (snowboard) or even the short-track specialists.
© 2021 AFP