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Is it time for a new rapprochement between China and the West?

EXPERT COMMENT

Civic cooperation will be crucial to keeping the doors open for diplomatic dialogue beyond the Winter Olympics in a post-pandemic world.

In times of rising geopolitical tension around the world, this year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing could have been seen as an opportunity to improve diplomatic dialogue and people-to-people engagement between China and the West. Instead, deteriorating relations between both sides in recent months, have contributed to a widening ideological rift, while at the same time, consolidation of the China-Russia alliance.

Though the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has maintained its position that the Olympics are not about politics, in the build-up to the tournament in China this year, national boycotts as a result of the country’s worsening human rights record in Xinjiang, began to increase in number.

The situation is reminiscent of 2008, when China last hosted the Olympics and, this year, the dynamics are similar although there are also some differences. Most important of these differences is, in 2008, China and the West were engaged in a process of coming closer together diplomatically, economically and socially, guided by China’s national policy of reform and the West’s expectations that China would continue to liberalize politically.

In comparison, today, both China and the West are in a period of intensifying strategic competition and a process of economic and technological decoupling, both areas which have become deeply intertwined over the last three decades.  

Coincidentally, the Winter Olympics have taken place exactly during the 50th anniversary of former US president Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in February 1972 which brought Beijing out of international isolation and opened up relations between China and the rest of the world.

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Original article link: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/02/is-it-time-for-a-new-rapprochement-between-china-and-the-west

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