The Olympic Spirit Isn't Doing So Well in Beijing

February 9, 2022

By Dan Hart

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) describes the "Olympic Spirit" as one of "mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." If the IOC expected China to play along with this spirit when they inexplicably awarded the 2022 Winter Games to a communist autocracy with an unparalleled record of human rights abuses and brazen espionage, they are gravely mistaken and hopelessly naïve.

But as it turns out, China's failure to play fair is just the beginning of their sinister ambitions. Gordon Chang, author of The Great U.S.-China Tech War, joined "Washington Watch" to describe the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using the Winter Games to further their goal of global dominance.

"China is harvesting the DNA of some of the world's most athletic humans ... and they're doing this because they want to develop biological weapons," Chang noted. "Chinese military researchers have been talking about 'specific ethnic genetic attacks'--in other words, pathogens that will leave the Chinese immune but sicken and kill everybody else, and they need foreign DNA to do it. They also need DNA to build super soldiers, so they're taking DNA from the world's best athletes. So this is really a horrific exercise."

As Chang went on to observe, the CCP is also using COVID as a pretext for making life miserable for foreign athletes in order to give themselves a competitive advantage.

"What they have done in China is use a more sensitive COVID-19 test than the IOC wanted. But the IOC caved in on that. So a lot of people have now been thrown into quarantine, where they're in facilities which are so small they can't exercise, they get inadequate food, they get the same food for every single meal. And this really is an attempt, I think, to make sure that China does well in the medal count."

Chang also underscored the absurdity of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) doubling down on her comments that athletes should not "speak out against the Chinese government," and that even fellow liberals are disagreeing with her.

"The one thing we know is that China is not safe for anybody, especially Olympic athletes, and the Games should not have been held in China because of that," Chang said. "We know of the problems with Peng Shuai, the three-time Olympian, who was disappeared on November 30 because she posted an accusation of rape against a former [Chinese Communist Party] senior leader and his wife. So we know that China is just not a safe place for anyone. The Olympics should not have been held there, and that's the main takeaway from Speaker Pelosi's comments. By the way, she has lost the support of Al Sharpton on those comments, who is normally her supporter."

Even from a strictly sporting perspective, it is clear that the Chinese Communist Party is only interested in the Olympics for one reason: to elevate the stature of the CCP. As the New York Post has recently reported, a sprawling state-run athletic system ruthlessly selects children from their 1.4 billion population through highly invasive DNA testing to become Olympians. These children--who are as young as four--are ripped from their homes and shipped off to China's National Training Center, where they are compelled to train full-time and are subjected to brutal practices, often including beatings and other abuse if they do not satisfy the demands of Party officials.

But judging from the CCP's horrendous human rights track record, none of this should come as any surprise, which makes it all the more ludicrous that the IOC selected China to host the Winter Olympics in the first place. So much for the "Olympic Spirit" of "friendship, solidarity and fair play."