November 23, 2021
China Uncovered


We are excited to announce the second season of the China Uncovered podcast is now available on Acast <[link removed]>, Apple Podcasts <[link removed]>, Spotify <[link removed]>, or your favorite podcast app. In this podcast, Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Olivia Enos hosts representatives of world-class data projects to discuss how their projects are shining a spotlight on the Chinese Communist Party’s actions and emerging trends from their data.
**NEW EPISODE**: on November 22, we released our fifth episode: China's Economic
Development: Is China Converging to Open-Market Economic Norms? ft. Nargiza Salidjanova <[link removed]>. Stay tuned for our next episode on December 6!
Peng Shuai: Yet Another Reason Beijing Shouldn't Host The Winter Olympics
(Photo by Fred Lee/Getty Images)
On November 2, famous Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai took to Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, claiming she had been raped by Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China. Two weeks later, she disappeared from public view. Last week, the Biden administration, the United Nations, and civil society organizations like the Women’s Tennis Association called for proof that Peng was alive and safe and pressed for a full investigation into her allegations of sexual misconduct. Faced with this international outcry, a video call was organized between Peng and International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach. While the video confirmed that Peng was alive, it did little to confirm Peng’s safety and long-term well-being. If anything, the video call may have made the IOC complicit in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) targeting of a former Olympian.

Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Olivia Enos writes <[link removed]> that if these “reassurances” have all been staged, it would come as no surprise. Indeed, it’s business as usual for Beijing. Parading around a dissident or targeted individual as proof that they are alive is common practice – exploiting them further to help the Chinese Communist Party save face and cover up their human rights violations.

The IOC claims that its top priority is ensuring the safety of its athletes and yet here we are, three months before the start of the 2022 Games in Beijing, and already an athlete is in peril. Peng’s situation is yet another reminder of the deplorable state of human rights in the country the IOC selected to host the Olympics. The IOC cannot rightfully play dumb. When it chose Beijing, the world already knew about the millions of Uyghurs currently held in political reeducation camps in Xinjiang. The international community bore witness to Beijing overturning freedoms in Hong Kong after the introduction of the National Security Law (NSL) last year. Beyond this, we all endured the consequences of Beijing’s failure to relay critical information about the infectiousness of COVID-19 during the early days of the pandemic.

The Biden administration has, unfortunately, kicked the can down the road for far too long. The international community is looking to the U.S. to make the first move. The best option—for the safety of the athletes and to hold Beijing to account—would be to postpone the Olympics for the purposes of selecting a new, rights-respecting host. The Summer Olympics in Tokyo, originally slated for 2020, were moved just four months prior to the original date in the midst of the pandemic. Given that the Olympics are less than 100 days away, this option is unlikely.

At this point, a more politically feasible option would be for the U.S.—in concert with allies and partners – to announce a diplomatic boycott. This would mean no U.S. government participation – except for the minimum number of officials necessary to ensure the participation and safety of American athletes competing in the Games. A diplomatic boycott would not punish American athletes while still ensuring that the U.S. holds Beijing to account for its myriad abuses.

It shouldn’t take the victimization of a famous citizen for the free world to wake up to the threat that Beijing poses to its values. It shouldn’t take the CCP committing  genocide and crimes against humanity for the IOC to realize that it made a terrible mistake in selecting China to host the world’s most prestigious sporting event. It’s time for the Biden administration to act—for the sake of Peng, for the sake of American athletes, and for the sake of the world.

Related: Click here <[link removed]> to view Heritage's 2021 China Transparency Report.
Unproductive Biden-Xi Summit Sets Stage for Deeper Rift in U.S.-China Relations
Heritage Senior Research Fellow Dean Cheng writes <[link removed]> that given the low expectations each side brought to the virtual summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday, it is not surprising that little appears to have been achieved in the course of the three and a half hour meeting. No agreements were planned or emerged. Indeed, a number of topics that had been hinted at, including an invitation to the 2022 Winter Olympics from Xi to Biden, did not arise. Indeed, at the end of the day, the virtual meeting appears to be the worst form of summitry: a meeting simply for the sake of meeting.  

What remains to be seen is what policies each side will pursue through 2022. For both Biden and Xi, the coming year will be one filled with pressing political challenges. For Biden, the challenge will be to fulfill as much of his agenda as possible as we approach mid-term elections. With rising inflation, exacerbated by supply chain disruptions and rising energy prices, Biden faces significant challenges to maintaining his party’s grip on both houses of Congress. For Xi, the path appears easier, especially as his position within the Chinese Communist Party was recently enshrined. Nonetheless, in his effort to retain his position as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the forthcoming 20th Party Congress, he will have to make political deals. This will be complicated by domestic economic turmoil (including from an imploding real estate bubble), as well as energy shortages and a renewed COVID-19 threat.

Ironically, Biden may have strengthened Xi’s hand. Biden assumed the role of supplicant by asking China for the summit, allowing Xi to posture as the stronger of the two. Xi will be able to argue that it is the U.S. that comes hat in hand to him, whether in person at Anchorage and Tianjin or virtually in this summit. 

Amidst all these challenges, neither the United States nor the People’s Republic of China necessarily want a military confrontation, but both sides clearly remain adamant in defending what each sees as “core interests.” Years of declining relations, including economic distancing and alienation, has meant that a previous underlying foundation—that of economic and trade ties—are now frayed, and even contributing to the tensions between the two nations. It was hoped that this summit might arrest this decline in relations. Yet, there is little evidence that there was any meeting of the minds on any of the key issues. The prospects for 2022 do not appear upbeat.

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