Winter Olympics spotlight reality of China’s communism. It’s grim, but don’t look away
The 2022 Winter Olympics are underway, and Texans are getting a look at more than just their favorite figure skating pair — they’re getting a front-row seat to the horrors of communism.
It’s tempting to turn a blind eye and only look at the glitz and glamour of the Games, but don’t look away.
Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc, who train in Euless, are America’s favorite skating duo. This is the pair’s first Olympics. Katie Uhlaender, daughter of former Baylor baseball star Ted Uhlaender, is a skeleton racer. This is her fifth Olympics.
But as Texans cheer them on, they should take a close look at how things are going in China from the lips of the athletes themselves.
Olympians, world-class athletes who have trained for years for this moment, arrived to find poor living conditions, scarce food, and forced isolation for days even if they have a negative COVID test.
German skiing coach Christian Schwaiger said: “The catering is extremely questionable because really it’s not catering at all. I’d have expected that the Olympic Committee would be capable of providing hot meals. There are no hot meals. There are crisps, some nuts and chocolate and nothing else. This shows a lack of focus on high-performance sport.”
Russian biathlon competitor Valeria Vasnetsova posted on Instagram from one of the city’s so-called quarantine hotels, saying that her “stomach hurts” from the lack of high-quality food being delivered. “I’m very pale and I have huge black circles under my eyes,” she said. “I want this to end. I cry every day. I’m very tired.”
Vasnetsova posted a photo of the food she’d eaten claiming it was “breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five days already.” A small portion of pasta, meat, and red sauce sat on her tray. She bemoaned her sudden weight loss.
Belgian skeleton racer Kim Meylemans posted a video to Instagram in which she cries as she explains that despite testing negative for COVID-19 (after initially testing positive), she was told she had to quarantine in isolation for nearly a week. Such protocol seems nonsensical and cruel.
Isolating excellent athletes who have tested negative for COVID and offering world-class competitors scraps for food are exactly what I’d expect from a communist country run by a dictator who treats his own people with the same cruelty.
The Chinese Communist party has detained more than one million Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority group, and forced them to live in concentration camps while subjecting them to psychological indoctrination, labor, rape, waterboarding, and other human rights abuses.
Under the guise of equality, communism suppresses the most basic human rights like speaking or worshiping freely. Apple voluntarily removed the Bible and Quran apps on its iPhones, going along with the state’s anti-religious regime.
Still, studies show more than one third of young people approve of communism. When it’s taught in high school or college, communism is sometimes suggested as a form of government that encourages equality. This is false.
There is no equality in communism, only suppression of ideas and oppression of freedom. There is no religion but the state, there is no god but the dictator, and there is no press but regime propaganda.
A close look at what our athletes are enduring at the Winter Olympics in China shows just a glimpse of what real life under communism looks like.
Editor’s note: A version of this column originally appeared in our opinion newsletter, Worth Discussion. It’s delivered every Wednesday with a fresh take on the news and a roundup of our best editorials, columns and other opinion content. Sign up here.
