Guest: No virtue in China’s Olympics

The International Olympic Committee has granted China the 2022 Winter Olympic games, which are soon to be underway. The same IOC espouses on its website the values of excellence, friendship, and respect as being the three values of Olympism. Collectively, these values denote independence and freedom. The IOC concluded, by allowing China to host the games, that communist China is endowed by all the virtues of Olympism and is best suited to showcase them in Beijing.

But for all the evidence.

Everything from genocide to COVID cover-ups to economic espionage, China is truly what the world does not want in a preferred host of the Winter Games.

Perhaps the most obvious of China’s transgressions is China’s deliberate, systematic and concerted policy to reduce the Uyghur population, doing so through genocide, sterilization, forced abortion, detention and other putrid human rights abuses. When captured, Uyghurs are put into “re-education” camps and often put on trial for their crimes of not assimilating to mainstream Chinese culture (aka, having their own). The guilty verdicts are shocking! It is important to understand that the Uyghur is religious, speaks their own language and even have the audacity to have their own culture. They make up less than 2% of the Chinese population and live primarily in an isolated region of the country. The respect China shows such independence is what current U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described as “genocide and crimes against humanity.” China denies all of this, of course. The Communist Chinese Party is, after all, endowed with the virtues of Olympism.

Not convinced? Well, what about COVID?

The world has shut down for two years now due to COVID-19. Was it bat soup? Was it the lab in Wuhan? Was it just a convolution of horrible luck for the entire planet that somehow inexplicably benefited the origin nation financially and politically? Was it just a regrettable misstep that China failed to inform the world for costly, critical weeks and months about the coronavirus? President Biden recently stated that China “was not being transparent” about the origins of COVID-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci says he’s now more open to the lab-leak theory and, despite several previous statements to the contrary, that he is “not convinced” COVID-19 came about naturally. The World Health Organization, to whom China gives tens of millions of dollars annually, is unable to draw conclusions as to the origin of COVID-19 because they are waiting on China to “provide more information and access.” And wait they shall. Communist China is focused on the ice dancing event.

Still think China and Olympics go together like peas and carrots? Chinese spies do, too.

FBI Director Christopher Wray recently testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the Bureau is opening counterintelligence investigations into China every 12 hours. He continued by stating emphatically that “the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. It’s a threat to our…national security.” Over $540 billion in losses of intellectual property and trade secrets is attributed to China annually, which is a conservative number. Around 80% of all economic espionage cases allege conduct that benefitted China and 60% have a direct nexus to China. The previous and current administrations have imposed harsh sanctions on China for their unfair trade practices and economic espionage activities that span our entire economy, not just defense.

Having heard all this before, and caring less and less each time, China’s warm embrace of Olympism demands that every Olympic athlete download an application to their phones which has already been proven to pose significant cybersecurity and surveillance risks. As a result of this big red welcome mat, Team USA has been told to leave all their devices home and take “burner phones” to Beijing. Respect for our competitive friends preserved!

OK, maybe not peas and carrots. There aren’t any on the shelves anyway.

During COVID, the world noticed that the goods and products we were able to buy quickly for pennies were now ten times the price and unavailable. Price gouging was so prevalent for needed personal protection equipment in the early stages of the pandemic that President Trump had to use the Defense Production Act and other federal tools to ward off the price gouging that was coming from our economic partners in Shenzhen. But that is just a front-of-mind example of China’s disruptive control of global supply chains.

The Department of Defense assesses that there are 35 strategic materials necessary to produce armaments for our national defense. China leads the world in 16 of those 35 strategic materials. The U.S. has virtually no production, or is import reliant, on 32 of the 35 materials needed by the defense industrial base. Gallium (think microchips), graphite (think drone batteries), and aluminum (think everything else) are almost entirely sourced from China. And China has used its Belt and Road Initiative to buy up ports and mineral rights all over the world so they can further control and abuse global supply chains. Vulnerabilities to our supply chains, especially as they regard strategic materials, is a gap in national security…a gap in which China intends to exploit. But can’t you just feel the independence and freedom oozing out of the bottom of the Amazon box just delivered?

In communist China, nothing says freedom or respect like the provocation of war.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing span decades, but they are currently at their highest point. China continues their constant naval and air presence around Taiwan. Recently, 39 Chinese military warplanes flew dangerously close to where the U.S. Navy was conducting exercises in the Philippine Sea. China’s Navy is constantly engaged in military exercises that the intelligence community concludes unveils China’s strategy to cut off allies from Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack on the island of 23 million people (roughly the population of Florida). This sort of prelude to war by a nation of 1.5 billion people is exactly what we would expect out of the host of the 24th Winter Olympiad. Charm the world with beautiful pageantry…and then attack!

China is the enemy of freedom, devoid of the virtues that endow the Olympic games. Of course, we need to stand up for the oppressed. Yes, we need to reshore and diversify our supply chains. Sanctions must remain in place. Our cyber hygiene must improve. Investigations need to persist into those engaged in economic espionage and the theft of trade secrets.

But by all means, tune in to watch the curling and luge events. After all, the Olympic virtues of excellence, friendship, and respect will be on full display…by their absence.

Jay Town is the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, served in the Marine Corps for 12 years, and is currently the Vice President & General Counsel at Gray Analytics.