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As Xi offers vaccines to Tokyo Olympics, China hopes to avoid a boycott of Beijing’s 2022 Winter Games
- Is there more to China’s offers to jab athletes than simply showing solidarity to a fellow Olympics host?
- As Japan cuddles up to Team USA, Beijing’s move is likely aimed at resetting ties and ensuring its neighbour does not join moves to spoil China’s big moment next year, analysts say
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In the second instalment of our Tokyo Trail series on key issues surrounding the Olympics, we look at at why China is pledging its support for the Games to go ahead.
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At a time when Japan is under mounting pressure to cancel or further postpone the Tokyo Games, support for the event has come from what might have once seemed a surprising direction.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach last week to pledge his support in ensuring the success of one of the biggest sporting events ever to be held in Japan. Xi offered to provide the IOC with Chinese developed Covid-19 vaccines and to help “build an effective barrier to protect athletes’ safety”, the state news agency Xinhua reported.
Given the long history of rivalry between China and Japan, the phone call has raised some eyebrows – not least because it came just two months after Japan turned down a similar offer from Beijing.
Indeed, Xi’s pledge of support comes at a testing time in China’s complex relations with its neighbour. Things have taken a turn for the worse since the inauguration of US President Joe Biden in January.
With Tokyo inching closer to Washington in what Beijing views as an anti-China alliance, the Games presents China with an opportunity for a reset in relations. Observers suggest there is also a quid pro quo at work: amid growing calls in the United States for a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, China hopes that if it can win Japanese hearts, Japan will return the favour by supporting next year’s event.
But prising Tokyo from its diplomatic new best friend is unlikely to be easy, they say. Tokyo has lent strong support to the Biden administration’s alliance-based, multilateral approach to confronting China. This has included its presence in the Quad, the US-led security grouping that includes India and Australia and is widely seen as being aimed at containing China’s rising clout in the Asia-Pacific.
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