How would it be if there were no viewers at the Winter Olympics?
This seems to be the biggest question for the Chinese Communist Party, and the feckless enablers of the International Olympic Committee. This was supposed to be a reassuring PR coup for the CCP, a chance to prove everything is hunky dory in a nation that’s fast reverting to the militarism and mass crime that is the natural state of communist states. But Viewership of the Opening Ceremony Friday in Beijing was down 43% across all platforms.
Normally you’d need to have approximately my level of cynicism and misanthropy to ignore the pap and pageantry, the creepy choreography and the counterfeit one-worldism of an Opening Ceremony. After all, the delighted thrill of finding out who’s carrying the Norwegian flag is second only to the testosterone rush of the Men’s Ice Dancing quarter finals.
So either the world is coming around to my jaded, troll-beneath-the-bridge perspective, or the Chinese government is having trouble putting this one over on a world that’s long been content playing Mr. Magoo to the regime’s crimes.
Let’s stroll – skate – through a list of said crimes:
-
Genocide of Uyghur. This genocide includes genocide value adds such as rape, forced sterilization and forced abortion. Nobody does forced abortion quite like the CCP.), slave labor, executions, etc.
-
Persisting occupation and repression in Tibet
-
Threatening Taiwan.
-
It’s thuggish oppression of Hong Kong.
-
It’s various moves to erase the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre from history.
-
Perhaps through cowardice and incompetence, the Covid19 pandemic spread to an unprepared world. Then it was lied about and covered up its responsibility.
-
Maintaining an Orwellian “social credit” system that’s really just a higher tech, lower key update of Maou’s Cultural Revolution.
-
Massive industrial-scale theft of Western intellectual property.
-
Draconian censorship imposed on imported Western entertainment products, including Hollywood Movies, NBA games and social media platforms.
-
Jacki Chan
Western media are pretty understanding and, in some cases, sympathetic to these little Chi-Com foibles, and don’t like talking about them much (nor do the new generations of useful idiots, right King James?). However, the word is spreading. According to Axios, “Including viewership across digital platforms — like NBC’s streaming service Peacock and the NBC sports app — NBC Sports says the event drew 16 million viewers total.” Back in 2018, 23.8 million people watched the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Perhaps viewership may increase with the game’s progress? Let’s hope not. I would like to believe that the IOC might think twice about granting a PR stage to a regime of genocidal intent.
About Post Author
