China will deliver a \u201cstreamlined, safe and splendid\u201d Winter Olympics, President Xi Jinping said with the Games set to begin on Friday.
\n Zhangjiakou
\nChina will deliver a \u201cstreamlined, safe and splendid\u201d Winter Olympics, President Xi Jinping said on Thursday with the Games set to begin on Friday amid a rising number of Covid-19 cases among athletes and staff and diplomatic boycott by several western countries.
\nIt\u2019s not the diplomatic boycott alone that\u2019s injected a dose of international politics to the Games.
\nRussian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s arrival on Friday for the opening ceremony – along with several other heads of states from authoritarian countries – amid the crisis in Ukraine is being seen as a joint show of strength by Beijing and Moscow.
\nThe presence of a Chinese soldier wounded in a border clash with India at Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020, in the Olympics torch relay was widely covered in Chinese media, adding to the Chinese narrative on the ongoing border tension.
\nOn Thursday, addressing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in the capital via a brief video message, Xi said China had played an active part in the Olympic movement since staging the 2008 summer Olympics.
\nXi said \u201cChina is ready\u201d to host an event that lives up to the Olympic slogan, \u201cfaster, higher, stronger – together\u201d.
\n\u201cWe will do our best to deliver to the world a streamlined, safe and splendid Games,\u201d he said.
\nFor these winter Games, the country had engaged 300 million Chinese in winter sports as promised, he said. \u201cFrom \u2018One World-One Dream\u2019 in 2008 to \u2018Together for a Shared Future\u2019 in 2022, China has taken an active part in the Olympic movement and consistently championed the Olympic spirit,\u201d he said.
\nIOC president Thomas Bach, who has repeatedly defended his organisation\u2019s choice for the 2022 Olympics despite criticism from western countries and rights groups on China\u2019s human rights record, saying the IOC was not a political body nor was its mandate to influence laws in sovereign states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China will deliver a \u201cstreamlined, safe and splendid\u201d Winter Olympics, President Xi Jinping said with the Games set to begin on Friday. Zhangjiakou China will deliver a \u201cstreamlined, safe and splendid\u201d Winter Olympics, President Xi Jinping said on Thursday with the Games set to begin on Friday amid a rising number of Covid-19 cases among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-242449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n