How Xi Jinping Is Staging The Olympics On His Terms
The Straits Times|January 24, 2022
Ahead of next month’s Winter Games, a look at how the idea took root in the 1990s with a Malaysian looking for a decent ski resort and is now a showcase of Chinese tenacity and a reflection of Xi’s leadership style
Steven Lee Myers, Keith Bradsher and Tariq Panja
How Xi Jinping Is Staging The Olympics On His Terms

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) met seven years ago to choose a host for the 2022 Winter Games, Chinese leader Xi Jinping sent a short video message that helped tip the scale in a close, controversial vote.

China had limited experience with winter sports. Little snow falls in the distant hills where outdoor events would take place. Pollution was so dense at times that it was known as the “Airpocalypse”. Mr Xi pledged to resolve all of this, putting his personal prestige on what seemed then like an audacious bid.

“We will deliver every promise we made,” he told the Olympic delegates meeting in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. Now, with the Games only days away, China has delivered.

It has ploughed through the obstacles that once made Beijing’s bid seem a long shot and faced down new ones, including an unending coronavirus pandemic and mounting international concern over its authoritarian behaviour.

As in 2008, when Beijing was host of the Summer Olympics, the Winter Games have become a showcase of the country’s achievements. Only now, it is a very different country. China no longer needs to prove its standing on the world stage; instead, it wants to proclaim the sweeping vision of a more prosperous, more confident nation under Mr Xi, the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

Where the government once sought to mollify its critics to make the Games a success, today it defies them.

This story is from the January 24, 2022 edition of The Straits Times.

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This story is from the January 24, 2022 edition of The Straits Times.

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