At their best, the Olympics are a celebration of the human spirit. We saw this last year when Japan, a country where I served as U.S. ambassador from 2017 to 2019, demonstrated the strength of its recovery from the devastating 2011 Fukushima disaster by hosting over 15,000 international athletes for the Summer Games despite a yearlong delay caused by the COVID pandemic.
In a jarring contrast, the 2022 Winter Olympics will soon be hosted by China, a country whose Marxist-Leninist dictatorship is perpetrating ongoing genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities, in addition to committing other major human rights violations in Tibet and Hong Kong. The Communist regime there is actively staging international provocations, and aggressively exporting its authoritarian model through its Belt and Road Initiative.
We should regard the fact that Beijing is hosting these Olympics as a warning that the U.S. and our partners must do more to meet the China challenge in the 21st century. There is no moral equivalency between Communist China and democracies that respect human rights. Nations that value such rights must no longer give the CCP a pass on the world stage nor support its hijacking of the IOC as a massive propaganda boon.
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Republican Bill Hagerty represents Tennessee in the U.S. Senate.
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