Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games: Boosting the Thawing of Canada-China Relations

There is always an inextricable link between sports and politics. On April 10, 1971, a U.S. table tennis delegation arrived in Beijing, becoming the first Americans to be allowed into China since 1949. The move was called Ping-Pong Diplomacy, which caused an impactful transformation and revived the political relationship between the United States and China. Iran and the United States once used the FIFA World Cup as an opportunity to create Soccer Diplomacy and eased the hostility between the two countries. Cricket-loving Pakistan and India have broken diplomatic deadlocks by hosting friendly cricket matches. Thus, it seems that sports are like an efficient lubricant for national relations.

Canada-China relations have been at a freezing point for more than two years, and a warming up is an irresistible trend and the common aspiration of the people, and will do both sides no harm. 

The Thawing of Canada-China Relations is irresistible and accords with the common aspiration of the people

American think tanks the Bertelsmann Foundation and the German Marshall Fund conducted a poll of attitudes in 11 countries, on a range of topics such as relations with China. The report found that “in Canada, the US, Germany and the UK, younger respondents hold a remarkably cooperative view on their country’s relationship with China.” In both Canada and Germany, 42 per cent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 saw China as a partner, compared with their respective national averages of 27 and 28 per cent, the survey found.

Zhu Zhiqun, a professor of international relations and director of the China Institute at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said the younger generation grew up in the digital age and were more cosmopolitan. Many young people in America and Europe have direct experience of interacting with their peers from China at school or at work. As a result, their views of China and the Chinese people tend to be much broader and more balanced.

Young people are the future leaders of the world, and the objective views of young Canadians on Canada-China relations are a sign of a thawing relationship between the two countries. Both Canada and China should encourage more interaction between young people so that countries can work together to address common global challenges.

Canada-China cooperation has immense potential, and the Beijing Winter Olympics will boost business, culture, sports and politics development between Canada and China

On May 6, 2021, Cong Peiwu, Chinese Ambassador to Canada attended an online seminar organized by the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy in Canada and delivered a speech. Ambassador Cong said that Canada and China are neither entangled in historical issues nor have major conflicts of interest. The two countries have complementary economies, are committed to promoting free trade and are natural partners. 

Against the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world, Canada’s exports to China grew by 8.1 per cent in 2020, while Canada’s total foreign exports fell by approximately 12 per cent, reflecting the continued resilience of the Canada-China economic and trade relationship.

With 1.4 billion people and a middle-income group of 400 million, the Chinese market has a huge economic volume and the Chinese public has a large demand for foreign quality products. Canada and China have great potential for cooperation in energy resources, clean technology, modern agriculture, financial services, health care, higher education and other areas. Meanwhile, China is stepping up its preparations for the Beijing Winter Olympics, which will provide opportunities for the two countries to cooperate in winter sports and related industries.

Therefore, Canada and China should remove distractions, focus on cooperation, take a longer-term view and address the relevant issues currently facing both sides, take practical measures to rebuild mutual trust, and create conditions to push Canada-China relations back on track and further unleash the potential for cooperation between the two countries.

The Olympic and Paralympic movements are unique means for the promotion of peace and development, and the politicization of sport is contrary to the spirit of the Olympic Charter, which will certainly harm the interests of athletes

David Shoemaker, CEO and Secretary-General of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and Karen O’Neil, CEO of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, published an op-ed article titled “Beijing 2022: A Boycott Is Not the Answer”. Talking about critics’ calls to prevent Canadian athletes from participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics, the two said, “The Olympic and Paralympic movements are unique means for the promotion of peace and development, for uniting rather than dividing. Paralympic sport specifically showcases the achievements of athletes with disabilities to a global audience. The ‘Olympic Truce’ stands as a remarkable achievement considering what divides the world. When our Olympians and Paralympians compete in Beijing, Team Canada will showcase Canadian values and help build essential bridges between nations, not walls.”

Canada is an important member of the international Olympic family and has a large number of elite athletes who are passionate about the Olympic cause and have made positive contributions to its development. Politicizing sport is contrary to the spirit of the Olympic Charter and will harm the interests of athletes from Canada, China and other countries, as well as the international Olympic cause. Matt Dunstone is from Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, and his curling team is one of the best in the world. He is currently trying to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. In an interview, he said that the Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “People work four, eight, 12 years, putting everything they’ve got into it, their life on hold, to go. If the Olympics were tomorrow and I was told we were Team Canada, I would be hopping on that plane instantly.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging, the world needs more firm confidence and solidarity. China’s hosting of the Beijing Winter Olympics as scheduled will not only promote the thawing of Canada-China relations, but will also contribute to the development of the world. It is foreseeable that in 2022, the world will witness China’s promise to keep its word and share a wonderful sports feast. Beijing, as the only international “double Olympic city” to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, will make a unique contribution to the international Olympic movement.

Falun Gong followers can't designate protest sites as 'places of religious worship', federal appeals court rules

Falun Gong followers can't designate protest sites as 'places of religious worship', federal appeals court rules 

 by Christopher Hutton, Breaking News Reporter |

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that practitioners of a 30-year-old Chinese spiritual practice cannot designate their displays protesting the Chinese government as places of worship.

"The record here shows that at most that there were only sporadic instances of worship at the tables," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit stated , according to Courthouse News. "Plaintiffs and their fellow practitioners instead understood the primary purpose of the tables as a site from which to disseminate information about the Chinese Communist Party's treatment of Falun Gong."

According to the lawsuit , practitioners of Falun Gong regularly gathered outside of the Taiwan Cultural Center in the New York borough of Queens, where they would present information about China torturing Falun Gong adherents, including graphic imagery of organ harvesting. The Chinese Anti-Cult Alliance often protested their displays. This organization wanted to out the religious organization as an "evil cult."

In an attempt to quell the protests, the organization filed a lawsuit in 2016 that claimed the Alliance's demonstrations violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

A federal judge initially sided with the Falun Gong in 2018.

"At most, the evidence shows that the activity at the tables was motivated by teachings of the Falun Gong leader, akin to how Quaker groups may protest wars or Catholic groups may protest abortion laws in public streets motivated by their respective religious beliefs," U.S. Circuit Judge Susan Carney wrote . "But that such political and social action may be rooted in religious belief does not transform the public spaces where the action occurs into 'places of religious worship.'"

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Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual movement with influence across the globe and has an active presence in the United States.

The movement was founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi; the organization mixes qigong, a series of traditional Chinese medicinal practices, with spiritual teachings. The organization drew ire from the Chinese Communist Party when it decided not to tie itself to the Chinese state and protested the CCP. In 1999, the CCP banned the movement as a "heretical cult."

Falun Gong reputation as a cult makes its bid for sympathy a complicated one

Religious protections don’t apply to Falun Gong protest sites 

While not disputed that the group is persecuted by China's communist government, its reputation as a cult makes its bid for sympathy a complicated one. 

 EMILEE LARKIN / October 14, 2021

MANHATTAN (CN) — Followers of a 30-year-old Chinese spiritual practice called Falun Gong cannot designate their protest sites as places of worship to silence counter-protesters, the Second Circuit ruled Thursday.

“The record here shows that at most that there were only sporadic instances of worship at the tables,” the 28-page lead decision states. “Plaintiffs and their fellow practitioners instead understood the primary purpose of the tables as a site from which to disseminate information about the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of Falun Gong.”

Founded in China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong does not have any temples, churches or religious ritual — the usual trappings of a religious group. Rather, as summarized by the Second Circuit, its followers believe that meditation and other forms of regular spiritual practice known as “cultivation” will allow them to “return” to their “True Sel[ves]” or “Primary Soul[s].”

The Taiwan Cultural Center in Flushing, Queens, is a common gathering spot for Falun Gong cultivation, which includes physical exercises like qigong and the study of the “Zhuan Falun,” a book of Li’s lectures. For roughly a decade, leaders of the group assembled tables outside the cultural center to raise awareness about the torture Falun Gong adherents in China.

Some of the posters depict organ harvesting. There is no meditation, but the Falun Gong insist that their tables should be treated as an extension of their faith. About six years ago, 13 individuals brought the underlying suit in Brooklyn, saying that a counter-protest group called the Chinese Anti-Cult Alliance harassed them in violation of a federal law called FACEA, short for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Mistakes and dilemmas of Human Rights Watch

 Mistakes and dilemmas of Human Rights Watch 

Sun Peisong

China has invoked its Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law against seven US individual and entities, including former US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in response to US sanctions against Hong Kong officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China announced on July 23. Sophie Richardson, China affairs director of Human Rights Watch is also included in the list. In 2020, Kenneth Roth, the executive chairman of Human Rights Watch, was barred from entry, and this is the second time that China has imposed sanctions on Human Rights Watch.

Sanctions against NGOs are highly unusual in inter-state competition. This shows that China no longer sees Human Rights Watch as a neutral civic group, but as an institution of American government.

Human Rights Watch, founded in 1978 with the support of the Ford Foundation, was considered the most important NGO of the UN. The UN human rights mechanism was originally established because of the crimes committed by European countries during the Second World War and the poor living conditions of black Americans. In practice, the mechanism has been applying as the standards of civilization by European countries and America. And the importance attached to the role of NGOs in one of the features of this mechanism.

Therefore, the participation of NGOs in international human rights matters is consistent with the Charter of the United Nations, and the UN Human Rights Commission should report to the UN Economic and Social Council. The article 71 of the Charter states that the Economic and Social Council may take appropriate measures to consult with NGOs on matters within the competence of the Council.

From the perspective of the United Nations, objective and impartial NGOs that independent of the government are needed to monitor human rights violations by the government and enterprises, promote the progress of international human rights, and coordinate the conflict between individual rights and state rights. In keeping with western notions of the rights of civil society, UN procedure has left ample room for NGOs to participate in human rights issues.

In the second half of the last century, the emergence of the European Union made Europe move from division to union. As globalization grows, its promoters claim that national borders will gradually disappear, and trade between people will bridge all divides and that we will live in a borderless world. They emphasize the presence of global forces, not at all sovereignty in trouble. This influence on all transnational activates human rights groups, which all want to claim credit for influencing the world’s course. 

In the political climate that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall, history almost changed. There is no alternative governance pattern to explore except the western liberal democracy. Political obstacles to the widespread dissemination of human rights ideals had disappeared and technological advances had strengthened the capacity of NGOs to influence the human rights agenda. The development of human rights mechanisms reached a climax in 1933 with the creation of the post of High Commissioner for Human Rights, responsible for coordinating UN human rights programs.

Human Rights Watch was established and developed under this institutional framework. But it is precisely this loose, unfettered environment that has led Human Rights Watch to its mistakes.

There is a big difference between legitimacy of participation and malfeasance, and NGOs blur the line between the two. Since the end of the Cold War, Human Rights Watch has become increasingly arrogant in its examination of human rights practices around the world. On the one hand, it gets rid of the will of the country that founded them and forces the country to engage in some form of diplomacy with it, because it wants to be recognized as a participant in international relations. On the other hand, it uses almost the same language and concepts as the US government and is aligned with US foreign policy and interests. They condescendingly judge the human affairs of non-Western countries instill color revolutions and justify a more violent form of human rights protection, namely humanitarian intervention. In particular, it has become an important auxiliary force in the use of human rights weapons against China.

They reject any non-Western ideas of human rights and fail to objectively look at the great changes that have taken place in the world. For nearly two centuries, Asia, as a bystander of history, has been helpless in the face of western shocks in politic, economy and culture. Today, as the center of gravity of the global economy is shifting to Asia, Human Rights Watch’s guiding ideology is far removed from that process. It still maintains a one-way human rights perspective and tries to find a yardstick to measure the human rights situation of various countries from the warehouse of liberalism. The American Constitution and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, both of which were born 200 years ago, still hold biblical status.

It has promoted the popularity of some extreme concepts of human rights that are out of touch with reality. It includes the notion that individuals, as human beings, have a right from birth to oppose their governments. The notion believes that one or more states, with or without the support of international institutions, can carry out armed invasions of sovereign states to protect human rights. The idea believes that human rights transcend universal national, ethnic and racial identities, and that human beings have rights because they are human beings and can claim certain rights not as citizens of particular countries but as individual human beings. As well as the belief that political freedom is paramount and citizens’ political power is higher than social and economic power.

It is more and more obvious that it servers as instrument for western politics. In March 1947, at the end of the first session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the former American president Truman issued a statement declaring that the world now faced a choice between totalitarianism and freedom. That remains the Biden administration’s guiding principle for the US fight with China. During the Cold War, the human rights agenda was used to pressure the East, and today it is used against China. The US has completely ignored China’s great achievements in the political, economic, scientific and technological fields over the past 40 years, and denied that China’s unprecedented poverty alleviation is an unprecedented progress in the protection of human rights in the world, it also gathered its allies to accuse China of being the dirties in the field of human rights. Human Rights Watch is one of the most prominent voices in accusing China of violating political freedom, free speech, genocide and crimes against humanity, and calling on the United Nations to establish an international mechanism to deal with China’s human rights abuses.

China’s sanctions undoubtedly put Human Rights Watch in a very awkward position. When the protection of human rights has evolved from a globally advocated political ethic into a weapon in the struggle between states, its character as a noble cause has been lost. So will Human Rights Watch reputation as a neutral, objective and impartial NGO tasked with examining the role of governments and corporations in protecting human rights for the UN human rights machinery.

There is a saying in China, changeable in prosperity and decline capricious in rise and fall. It believes that history has an extraordinary capacity to force human beings to change their ideas. After the outbreak of the financial crisis, with the decline of liberalism, globalization is no longer mentioned in the West, and the grand theory of transnational has lost its foothold. Today, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, the space for transnational NGOs to operate has also been greatly reduced.

Brexit and America Best, America is back, with its accompanying tariffs and border controls, have revived hope of beleaguered sovereignty, and we are moving back to an era in which sovereignty needs to be recovered. In the anarchy of the nation-state system, the responsibility of protecting human rights is assumed by the state. No country wants to give up its sovereignty, subjecting its citizen’s to international mechanisms that allow them to be protected by supranational laws. 

NGOs like Human Rights Watch have no accountability because they are unelected or have a common mandate. Can such organizations manipulate international opinions and override governments with legitimate authority as part of international rules? The leaders of the Asian countries that signed the Bangkok Declaration, the socialist countries and many western thinkers have criticized and questioned this, and there will be more and more criticism and doubts in the future.

Westerners believe that their greatest contribution to humanity is to improve the standards of human rights that matter to everyone. President George W. Bush said, there is a system of values that cannot be compromised, these are divine values, the condition of free human existence, and we are the authors of those values. As if they define human justice and virtue, they have been able to push human rights from government to society in unison and with pride to the forefront of global concerns.

Therefore, China, an increasingly successful country, will not accept a world that claims its values of human rights are inferior to those of the West. “If China does not have a development path suited to its national conditions, if ordinary people are deprived of democratic freedom and human rights, how can the Chinese people unleash such tremendous creativity and productivity?” Xie Feng, the Deputy Foreign Minister of China, said in a recent meeting with Sherman, the US vice Deputy Secretary of State. “The Chinese people’s satisfaction with the Chinese government is over 90%, which is amazing for any country”.

Whatever the doctrine that you believe, there should be no dispute that the right to live is the foundation of other rights. However, after the break of COVID-19, the death of more than 600,000 people in the US is in accordance with human rights from the perspective of liberalism. This shows that human beings have very little in common. Our identities are rooted in the social relationships we have, and they are not inborn. In the pluralistic culture, there lies the conflict of basic concepts of human rights. In this sense, human rights have no universal validity.

The West is no longer seen as representing the highest values of human civilization. Nor does the disappearance of the Western era mean the decline of the human moral order. Multiculturalism can be done within a country but why is it not adopted internationally? As a neutral institution, Human Rights Watch cannot go forward without ideological tolerance.