There are not even 5000 days between the closing ceremony in 2008 and the opening ceremony in Beijing in 2022.

The China Games are also increasing because democratically governed countries have canceled.

Christopher Becker

sports editor.

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1. Why again Olympics in China?

The Olympics have never been back so quickly: When Beijing officially starts with the opening ceremony on February 4th, the closing ceremony of the 2008 Summer Games will be less than 5000 days ago. Beijing takes the record from Paris, there were 24 years between the Summer Games (1900 and 1924). You can get excited: "Beijing is preparing to make history," said Thomas Bach back in October, when he congratulated Chinese state television in a three-minute video on the start of its Olympic channel.

There have never been summer and winter games in the same city.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation and the Bavarian state capital Munich also had the idea, but neither there nor in Garmisch-Partenkirchen nor in the districts of Traunstein and Berchtesgaden did a majority of citizens want to warm to it in the survey in November 2013.

At the end of the application period, the democratically governed cities of Kraków, Lemberg, Oslo, Stockholm and Sankt Moritz also canceled Bach's IOC, who finally had the choice between the dictatorships of Kazakhstan (Almaty) and China in July 2015.

Beijing was chosen – in the second ballot, after Bach had instructed the ballot to be repeated with pen and paper after the first due to alleged technical weaknesses in the voting tablets from Olympic sponsor Samsung and too many votes cast.

In the second attempt, the number of votes matched.

The Chinese were happy and so were the European ski manufacturers, snow gun manufacturers and cable car manufacturers.

So much market potential.

Or as Thomas Bach says: "The 2022 Winter Olympics will bring to life China's vision of employing 300 million people in winter sports."

2. Who doesn't come to Beijing?

For example, those Tibetans and Uyghurs who fled the Chinese Communist Party's persecution abroad. The treatment of the Olympic hosts with the Muslim minorities, especially in the province of Xinjiang, where according to international law experts China is committing crimes against humanity, some lawyers also see the offense of genocide, is also led by the governments of those Western countries that have declared a "diplomatic boycott" against the Winter Games: the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Japan.

Lithuania sees itself exposed to massive economic pressure from China because of its Taiwan policy and has therefore declared that it will not send any politicians to the games.

The Baltic neighbors Estonia and Latvia joined.

Sweden cited the corona pandemic as the reason.

A uniform EU line failed above all due to resistance from the upcoming Olympic host France, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) does not sound as if he wants to make it explicitly clear to the hosts why no German government member is traveling to the games.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) said they would stay away.

Baerbock pointed out that foreign ministers usually do not go to the games, Faeser is staying away “for reasons of the pandemic”.

Who comes?

Wladimir Putin.

The Russian President was invited by Xi Jinping and thus circumvents the Olympic ban imposed by the IOC because of Russian state doping.

3. Are athletes allowed to say what they think?

Of course!

At least when they get back from China.

For the time in China, the sports representative Global Athlete strongly advises against and denounces that there are no explicit safety guarantees from the International Olympic Committee.

The statements of the Chinese Olympic organizer Yang Shu, deputy director for international relations in the organizing committee, can certainly be read as a threat: "Every behavior or every statement that contradicts the Olympic spirit is subject to a specific punishment, especially if it violating Chinese laws and regulations.”