Chinese Censorship and Boycott Beijing Olympics

China’s digital space differs to that of the west with citizens unable to access companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Chiu, Ip and Silverman, 2012). Despite this, China has a growing number of social media users continuously testing governmental control (Xu and Albert, 2014). King, Pan and Roberts (2013) analyse China’s attempts at online censorship from the Great Firewall that narrows international communication to keyword blocking and search filtering that limits the information citizens are able to access. The review suggests that China’s censorship is to limit “state critique” – criticism of the government, state policies and political leaders –  and to limit public dissent also. Habermas’s public sphere is viewed as an aid to government operations yet the review suggests China’s attempt to suppress the sway of a collective public body is due to its potential ability to threaten the stability of a government. King, Pan and Roberts (2013) refer to this collective power of a public body as “collective action potential”.

This collective action potential can indeed be seen in the sports world, Christesen (2012) notes that sport gatherings can encourage democratic participation by cultivating “generalised trust” and a “sense of political efficacy”, the belief in a person or people’s power to enact political change (Kahne and Westheimer, 2006). Sports empowers the individual by enabling participation as part of a collective whole – a public body, informal discussion on an equal playing field can occur as a result. As sport inevitably becomes entangled with politics, it has great value in public and state communication however with China’s cautious view of a free public sphere, it is no surprise that sport and China have a strenuous relationship.

MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong gained public attention by defeating a Tai Chi master who claimed he was able to escape a rear naked choke, a move many fighters agree is unbreakable. By doing so, Xiaodong was accused of undermining traditional Chinese martial arts using foreign style fighting and suffered extensive punishment from the Chinese government (Ye, 2017). This included removing his name from search engine listings, closing his social media accounts, demoting his social credit score to D-level meaning that he had to “travel 36 hours on a slow train” to attend a fight as he was banned from high speed transport, issue a public apology to the Tai Chi master, pay 400,000 yuan in damages and would continue to experience restriction on buying or renting property as well as educational restrictions on any children he may have (Atkin, 2019). The martial artists Xiaodong exposed for their false claims were government backed and by doing so Xiaodong unintentionally began a conversation around the effectiveness of traditional martial arts as well as potential state critique.

Ironically, this backlash from the Chinese government led Xiaodong to avoid Chinese censorship by livestreaming himself on YouTube using a private network, gaining international attention and sharing his experience of the government’s punitive treatment to a global audience (Bissell, 2019). King, Pan and Roberts (2013) concluded in their political review that the Chinese people are “individually free but collectively in chains”, in Xiaodongs case, his live streaming may be an attempt to reach an international public sphere, one which is not impeded by state imposed censorship and can potentially enact national political change by exerting outside pressure on the Chinese government, yet this relies on gaining enough attention from the international public.

As is the case with the recent proposal to boycott China’s 2022 Olympics due to international concern surrounding China’s treatment of Uyghurs, an ethnic minority within Xinjiang, China many of whom are muslims (Human Rights Watch, 2021). China’s “re-education” camps were claimed to be part of China’s stand against terrorism which has no seperation between religious practices and terrorism. Any Islamic practices or sharing of Islamic beliefs were grounds for arrest, homes and mosques were destroyed and entire families detained. The recent whistleblowing from a Chinese officer who worked in the detainment camps spoke of horrific torture detainees endured, this and several accounts of abuse from escapees themselves led to widespread concern and outrage (Cheshire, 2021; Tor, 2020).

In December 2021, the U.S passed a bill to ban imports from Xinjiang, China. Several MP’s in the UK are also urging the British government to ban imports from Xinjiang and to set up a “fast-track asylum system for Uyghurs” (Sengupta, 2021). To add to this international concern, a prominent tennis player, Peng Shuai went missing after posting an essay on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, detailing the sexual abuse she suffered from Zhang Gaoli, a former member of the Chinese Communist Party after which both names were censored from search engine listings. Due to these controversies, many governments including the UK have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Olympics.

 

 

The boycotting of the Beijing Olympics is not just to protest China’s human rights abuses but is also a refusal to partake in ‘sportswashing’, using sports as a distraction from these controversies. Fuchs (2014) notes that one limitation of public spheres today is that a capitalist media promotes entertainment and commercial content over informative news. The use of the hashtag ‘sportswashing’ aims to highlight this use of media for political manipulation. By flooding mainstream media with articles about the Beijing Olympics to distract the public, the media is being utilised as a political tool rather than “ a critical witness of events” and “the standard bearer for those who have no one else to speak up for them” as Leveson (2012) upholds it to be. As deliberation around a sporting event can lead to a public body exercising their collective action potential, governments can also exercise their political agendas using media coverage to steer public discussion.

This public and state interaction largely takes place on social media platforms many of which are made up of user generated content. Individuals may be able to combat a nation’s attempt at sportswashing by citing news sources in posts and ensuring important issues are not ‘drowned out’ by a sporting event. This, and the use of hashtags in tweets can sustain a movement by linking tweets with relevant information about an event. By doing so, users can steer mainstream media away from entertainment content of the Olympics and instead maintain the relevancy of the controversies China may attempt to hide (Burrell, Kahn and Griffin, 2019; Çela, 2015). Fuchs (2014) points out that colonising a public sphere for political manipulation or economic profit is reversible, a public sphere can be decolonised through the reshifting of focus that the hashtag ‘#sportswashing’ is aiming to do. As the Twitter hashtags ‘#BoycottBeijingOlympics’ and ‘#sportswashing’ are being tweeted by political leaders and the public, users are also encouraging others not to tune into the event.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) defends a neutral position as it affirms politics and sport should be kept separate yet the Olympic games have heavily involved politics in the past from the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany to the boycotting of the 1984 Moscow Games due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Field, 2021). Falcous and Silk (2010) note that major sporting events can “inject capital” into a country, resuscitating its “economic and symbolic value”. It allows the host country to promote itself and push its own political ideologies in the process. Given these advantages and the IOC’s business ties with China as pointed out in a tweet below from Chris Fenton, a Media Executive, its position of neutrality is viewed as suspect by many (Yuan, 2021). Moreover, the IOC issued a statement describing recent correspondence with Peng Shuai, reporting she is safe and well, which was met with significant skepticism (International Olympic Committee, 2021).

To combat the political tensions that surround the Beijing Olympic Games, the UN has urged countries to sign the Olympic Truce so that those travelling to, within and from the host country must be ensured safety. This relationship that exists between sport and politics is a volatile one and whilst the UN General Assembly resolved that sport can build “a peaceful and better world” (International Olympic Committee, 2021), it has proven to ignite political tension as it has with the 2022 Beijing Olympics and many other sporting events in the past.