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The Biden administration will soon announce a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Washington Post reports
Citing multiple sources familiar with the planned boycott, the Post wrote that while the decision has not been finalized, the White House is expected to announce that neither Biden nor any US government official will attend the games, with Biden expected to approve the plan before the end of the month.
The timing of this process was not linked to the Biden-Xi virtual meeting Monday evening, which was billed as a way for the two leaders to demonstrate their ability to manage complex U.S.-China relations in an era of rising tensions. Various reports this week have said that Xi Jinping intended to bring up the Olympics issue with Biden, perhaps even inviting him to personally attend. But the issue didn’t come up at all during the 3½-hour meeting, according to initial reports.
“President Biden raised concerns about the [People’s Republic of China’s] practices in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, as well as human rights more broadly,” the White House readout of the Biden-Xi meeting stated.
China has labelled the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, “full of lies and disinformation” after her calls for a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics on human rights grounds.
“Some US individuals’ remarks are full of lies and disinformation,” a foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said on Wednesday. “US politicians should stop using the Olympic movement to play despicable political games” or using “the so-called human rights issue as a pretext to smear and slander China”, he added.
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