China's Ambitions And The Call To Boycott The 2022 Winter Olympics

"I know how hard our athletes are  training for Beijing. But we are approaching a point where it won't be safe for Canadians, including Olympic athletes, to travel to China."

"The denial of Robert Schellenberg's appeals must be seen for what it is: a foreign government planning to take the life of a Canadian for political reasons. The use of the death penalty is abhorrent. But to impose it for political reasons is inexcusable."

"We're proud of our athletes we're celebrating. But we also have to recognize the actions of a country that wants to host the Games to bring people together. And we will have to think long and hard on whether we reward a country like that with the Games."

Federal Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole

 

Since the arrest by RCMP at the Vancouver airport in December of 2018 of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei Communications on a U.S. extradition warrant, relations between Canada and the People's Republic of China have deteriorated beyond redemption. Beijing's savage reaction to the arrest of Ms.Meng under international law is seen by the Chinese Communist Politburo as a criminal offence against China which accuses Canada of racism, of defying the norms of international law, and of a conspiracy with the U.S. to hobble and harm China's technological future.

Penalties for offending China were swift and harsh, from its diplomats scathingly accusing Canada of human rights abuses, to the shocker of two Canadians being arrested in China and charged with espionage, and another Canadian charged with smuggling drugs into China suddenly seeing a new trial where his original 15 years' imprisonment sentence was changed to the death penalty. China halted grains and hog exports from Canada as another punishing tool. And more recently denied the appeal sought by Robert Schellenberg of his death sentence.

On its part, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tread warily and on relations with China, continuing to invest in China, seeking to placate Beijing, and Canadian corporations continue their joint ventures with China. Appallingly, the Canadian government sought a joint venture with CanSino, a Chinese pharmaceutical, on a COVID vaccine, and the Public Health Agency of Canada continued to pursue research collaboration with Chinese scientists. While all other members of the Five Eyes intelligence community have shut China's communication giant Huawei out of their 5G upgrades, Canada still has failed to do so.

That Canadian athletes are prepared to present themselves at the 2022 Winter Olympics to compete in their categories as though there was nothing amiss with China, its abysmal human rights record, its threats to Hong Kong and Taiwan, its occupation of Tibet, its vicious campaign against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and its persecution of Canadian citizens on trumped-up charges to avenge the arrest of a Chinese citizen, is unthinkable.

"We condemn the verdict in the strongest possible terms and call on China to grant Robert (Schellenberg) clemency" declared Canada's ambassador to China, Dominic Barton from the appeals hearing in Shenyang. As to whether the arrest of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, both charged with espionage, and Mr. Kovrig now sentenced to 11 years in prison, with Mr. Spavor's trial and sentence to come at a later date, Beijing holds them as human ransom for the release of Meng Wanzhou.

The trial of Canadian Michael Kovrig, who has been held in China since December 2018 on espionage charges, occurred in a closed Beijing courtroom on Monday, March 22, 2021, with the verdict to be announced at an unspecified later date. Here, the Canadian Embassy's chargé d'affaires Jim Nickel, centre, and U.S. Embassy Acting Deputy Chief of Mission William Klein, left, arrive with other diplomats and journalists at No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in Beijing to request entry to the trial. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Beijing, and above all Xi Jinping, is anxious to have the world community look favourably on China. The Summer Olympics that took place in Beijing in 2008 pleased the Chinese Communist Party very much, allowing it to demonstrate to the world just how friendly, how technologically advanced, how capable and  how caring China is. And the world flocked to Beijing, admiring it for the splendid spectacle it put on for television audiences in a full display of Chinese artistic talents and penchant for pageantry.

Much has happened on the world stage since then. China consolidating its position as a trade behemoth, advancing its technological prowess, partially on the stealth project of purloining other states' secret advances. Since then the world has become familiar with slave labour in Xinjiang province, of Beijing cracking down on Hong Kong democracy, and threatening Taiwan militarily. But it didn't stop there; India has been warned over its disputed Himalayan border, Australia for its impudence in striving for more information about the Wuhan virus, and the Philippines and Japan for contesting China's sovereignty claims on land and sea.

And the world rewards the People's Republic by preparing to send their athletes once again to China, to add to its prestige in recognizing it as an emergent world power that may soon surpass the status of the United States in that and any other realm of influence and power. Because it is such an outstanding world citizen of a nation. While China runs amok in taking political prisoners to force other countries to its will, and it gathers rare world resources for its singular use and development, the Olympics is a slate-cleaning device to awe and influence the world, alerting it to the grandeur that is China; from its Imperial past to its Communist present.