On Friday next week, China is to host the Beijing Winter Olympic Games under a cloud of diplomatic boycotts, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the country and simmering strife between factions within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It looks set to be the most politicly charged Olympics since the 1980 Moscow Summer Games, when the US led a boycott to protest the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union a year earlier.
The CCP is going to extreme lengths to ensure that the Games present China in the best possible light. Foreign visitors are banned from entering China, while athletes