issuing time:
The German-language media at the closing of the Beijing Winter Olympics said “it’s finally over”. “China is a political nightmare,” Markus Othmer, a sports host on German TV, wrote on LinkedIn.
Germany’s “Focus” weekly believes that China has blinded us with huge illusions. Happily, the Winter Olympics are finally over. This is an almost unanimous conclusion. In the Olympics, there are always winners and losers. Every time. But one thing has changed: the instrumentalization of the Olympic rings and the huge social and political momentum. There are no universally binding answers to the question of whether to participate in sports under authoritarian regimes. Everyone has to make their own choices. The Beijing Winter Olympics provided the illusion of a better world. But the human rights situation in China did not improve during the Winter Olympics. And the public image of the International Olympic Committee is like an ugly face. “China is a political nightmare,” Markus Othmer, a sports host on German TV 1, wrote on LinkedIn. “I’m stunned by the omnipresence of state surveillance I’ve been experiencing and human rights violations.” Germany’s two Olympic champions said, Don’t come to China. What is left of the Beijing Winter Olympics? It’s an unanswered question of faith, a huge fantasy and massive Chinese propaganda.
The evaluation of the German magazine Der Spiegel is: The International Olympic Committee urgently needs to invest in its credibility, because the Olympic concept will not be able to deal with the lies like Beijing’s for a long time.
Deutsche 1 launched host Markus Othmer’s concluding remarks: Sporting great, politically problematic.
Austria’s “Wiener Zeitung” expressed concern for the audience of the Winter Olympics. The paper wrote: “The Summer Olympics in Tokyo almost have to be played without sports fans. Beijing hopes to boost attendance to at least 50 percent at several venues. Exactly who is eligible to enter the venue has been a lot of secrecy, as licensed journalists rarely get the chance to talk to people inside the venue because they enter the venue through different entrances and exits. Foreign journalists in Beijing are also barred from working in other ways. They might hardly hear any comment from the stadium crowd. But the Wall Street Journal is now reporting on the audience, confirming some assumptions that the audience was mainly VIPs with a lot of goodwill towards the Chinese Communist Party. For example, the place for young people is crowded with young Communist Party cadres, and the place for international friends is crowded with representatives of foreign business associations. But this phenomenon is not unique to China. It is common for special VIPs to get extra treatment at various sporting events around the world. And the social credit system in a one-party state constantly rewards and punishes people for doing good or bad in the eyes of the government. But the audience diversity promised by Beijing’s organizers seems to be at best achieved in terms of age, gender and occupation. When it comes to the political stance of the audience, that diversity is almost non-existent.
