The Economist January 29th 2022 49
ChinaTheWinterOlympicsFaster, higher, bossier
C
hinese officialslike to call Beijing
the “doubleOlympic city”. No other
can boast having staged both the summer
games and its winter equivalent, the 24th
iteration of which will open in the Chinese
capital on February 4th. The winter games
will arouse less enthusiasm, in China and
globally, than the summer ones in Beijing
in 2008. But for Xi Jinping, China’s leader,
they are of great symbolic importance.
They are also fraught with risk. Overshad
owed by diplomatic boycotts, a potential
war in Europe involving China’s close
friend, Russia, and by Omicron’s advance,
the event will fray nerves.
These are the first games on Mr Xi’s
watch. State media point out how much he
has been involved with them from the ear
liest stage, when China was preparing to
submit a bid to the International Olympic
Committee (ioc) to host them. Beijing won
its bid in 2015 by a thin margin, gaining
four more votes from iocdelegates than its
rival, Almaty in Kazakhstan. That may be a
huge relief in retrospect for the ioc: more
than 200 people died this month in Kaz
akhstan, many of them in Almaty, in unrest that was triggered by rising fuel prices.
But Mr Xi may now be wishing that Beijing
had not been successful.
The games are taking place nearly a de
cade into Mr Xi’s rule. By convention it
should be the year he steps down from his
Communist Party roles. But it is expected
that he will ignore that unwritten require
ment. He will want a wellmanaged games,
praised by the public, which will set the
tone for a year that will celebrate his lead
ership—culminating this autumn in a par
ty congress at which he will be declared, in
effect, ruler for as long as he wants.
sarsCoV2 poses the biggest challenge.
China is doggedly adhering to a “zeroco
vid” policy aimed at eliminating the virus
entirely. But on January 15th the capital re
ported its first locally transmitted case in
volving the highly infectious Omicron var
iant. The city is on edge. Officials have or
ganised mass testing in some areas, including of all the roughly 2m residents of
Fengtai district.
Only a handful of Omicron cases have
been found in the capital and just a few
dozen of the Delta variant. But officials are
taking no chances. On January 17th the gov
ernment said tickets to the games would
not be sold. These would have been avail
able only to people in China—spectators
from abroad having already been banned.
Now the government says it will “organise”
people to watch the events. Social media in
China have swelled with objections.
The government’s botched handling of
the coronavirus during the early days of
the outbreak in the central city of Wuhan
in late 2019 and early 2020 caused panic
and widespread resentment. But the zero
covid approach soon proved effective at
stopping transmission. Public confidence
in the party soared. It probably remains
high (there are no reliable polls). Yet there
are signs that discontent is spreading as
lockdowns become more common, along
with tough quarantine measures in some
places that are making travel difficult for
many Chinese. The lunar new year begins
on February 1st. Many people would nor
mally journey great distances to celebrate
the holiday with relatives.
Grumbling has been particularly loud
in Xi’an, a western city of 13m people where
stayathome controls were imposed on
December 23rd after the discovery of a few
hundred Delta cases. People were not even
allowed out to buy food. Officials organ
ised deliveries, but some residents comChina is determined that the games will go smoothly→Alsointhissection
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