Coronavirus
The Beijing Games will take place just six months after the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, postponed for a year due to a pandemic. China, where the virus first appeared at the end of 2019, has largely controlled the contagion, but remains faced with the appearance of sporadic outbreaks, which it is trying to eliminate by resorting to radical measures: containment, screening mass and vaccination from the age of 3. While the Chinese borders have been practically closed since March 2020, the Beijing Games will take place in a bubble, from which the some 2,900 expected athletes will not be able to emerge. They must either be vaccinated or undergo a 21-day quarantine upon arrival. All will be screened daily. Only spectators residing in China will be able to attend the events.
To discover
The results of the 2020 Olympics
The Olympic medal table
Peng shuai
The tennis player, who has represented her country three times at the Olympics, accused a former senior Chinese leader in early November of forcing her to have sex three years ago.
Her message, posted on a social network, was promptly censored and the 35-year-old disappeared from radar screens for three weeks, causing concern in the tennis world.
The WTA, the body that oversees the women's professional circuit, has threatened to withdraw China from its circuit if President Xi Jinping's regime does not shed light on the affair.
The former world number 1 in doubles, crowned in doubles at Roland Garros in 2014, finally reappeared on Sunday during a video conference with the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, ensuring that all was well.
But the question raised by his accusations remains unresolved.
On Tuesday, China called for an end to “
blowing up
” the Peng Shuai affair, during an exceptional official reaction.
"
I think some should stop deliberately blaming this issue for hostile purposes, and especially turning it into a political issue
," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
Xinjiang
Human rights organizations accuse China of having locked up more than a million Muslims in political re-education camps in Xinjiang (pronounced: "
Sine-dziangue
"), a vast region in the northwest of the country.
The Uyghurs, the main ethnic group in the region, are particularly in the sights after a series of attacks attributed to Islamists and separatists.
Beijing says the camps are in fact vocational training centers meant to keep them away from radicalization.
Washington spoke of a "
genocide
In Xinjiang following reports of forced sterilizations.
President Joe Biden said he was considering a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics: American athletes would participate in the events, but without any official delegation.
Tibet
Human rights groups contest the Chinese presence in Tibet, accusing Beijing of repressing religious freedom there.
The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, accuses the communist regime of carrying out "
a cultural genocide
" there.
In mid-October, the lighting of the Olympic flame in Greece was disrupted by a demonstration by pro-Tibet activists.