Hi China Watchers. We're just two weeks away from the opening of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games so we're kicking the tires of Biden's diplomatic boycott, previewing the upcoming Lunar New Year's (literally) explosive movie openings and paying tribute to China's newly crowned "King of Quarantine." Let's get to it. — Phelim The Biden administration's diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics aims to thread the needle. It's intended to convey U.S. revulsion toward human rights abuses in China while still allowing U.S. athletes to compete. But Republican lawmakers and rights advocates say the administration has squandered the opportunity to build an effective coalition that would actually get Beijing's attention. Only nine other nations have joined the boycott so far — fewer than the number of countries that supported the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games — and the international response has ranged from indifference to scorn. That paltry showing undermines U.S. credibility as an effective coalition builder against authoritarian repression and rendered Washington the perceived loser of a geopolitical influence contest that Beijing is peddling as a propaganda victory. "The reason the diplomatic boycott has been largely a failure is because the U.S. wasn't leading [and] instead, the Biden administration spent a year twiddling its thumbs and had provided no top cover to the world at large," said Rep. MICHAEL McCAUL (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "The only other option is the president tried to get our allies on board and failed, [and] if we tried to get France or Germany or others on board with this diplomatic boycott and we weren't able to do so, that's even worse than not trying to build a boycott coalition." The U.S. announced its diplomatic boycott Dec. 6, three days after Lithuania did so , in protest of what White House spokesperson JEN PSAKI described as "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses." China has denied the genocide accusations but Psaki said the boycott was necessary to avoid perceptions of U.S.-China "business as usual" in the face of ongoing atrocities. Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom quickly signed on . New Zealand announced on Dec. 7 that it wouldn't send ministerial-level officials to the Games, but described it as a Covid-19 precaution. Belgium confirmed on Dec. 14 that its officials would shun the Games, followed by Japan a week later. Over the past seven days, both Denmark and Estonia have joined the boycott ranks. But two weeks from the opening of the Games, the number of boycotting states remains stuck in the single digits. There's recognition among some Democrats that the boycott's rollout has failed to meet expectations. "There is more that could be done [to promote the boycott], but this is what we have now and I do hope that a lot of [governments] will speak out as the genocide Olympics take place," Rep. JENNIFER WEXTON (D-Va.) said at a press conference Wednesday. Traditional U.S. allies also have criticized the boycott. French President EMMANUEL MACRON dismissed it as "insignificant and symbolic," Czech President MILOŠ ZEMAN called it a "misuse of the Olympic idea" and Austrian Foreign Minister ALEXANDER SCHALLENBERG warned it was an "artificial politicization" of the Games. The Biden administration insists it never intended to marshal an international diplomatic boycott coalition akin to President JIMMY CARTER's 65-country alliance that supported a full boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union subsequently rallied 14 countries to join a counter-boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games. "We were not and are not coordinating a global campaign regarding participation at the Olympics [and] that was not and is not our intention or goal," a senior administration official told China Watcher via email. "We did consult with allies and partners and informed them of our decision before we made it public, but again, we were not urging anyone to take specific actions [and] we always fully expected other countries to make their own decisions on their own timelines, and that is exactly what is playing out now." U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD echoed that position Tuesday at a Washington Post Live event. "How other countries proceed is up to those countries," said Thomas-Greenfield, who represented the U.S. at last year's Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony. But there are growing perceptions that the administration has fumbled an opportunity to organize a wider and more influential diplomatic boycott that currently lacks even a single participant from Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. "You might have expected that [the administration] would anticipate that they needed a broad level of support for it to look good … [but] it looks like they were sort of checking a box," said SUSAN BROWNELL, anthropology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and an expert on Chinese sports. "Either it was just badly thought out in the first place, or it was never intended to be something they were going to invest a lot of effort in." Beijing has proclaimed the boycott's limited support as a diplomatic victory. "Their political agenda wins no support and is doomed to fail," LIU PENGYU, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., said in a statement. The Biden administration is unfazed. "We know the PRC will continue to attempt to mislead the public about our decision, but our position has been clear and consistent on what we were and were not doing," the senior official said. Sen. MITT ROMNEY, who proposed a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games in a March 15 New York Times op-ed , attributed the boycott's unpopularity to China's economic muscle rather than an administration misstep. "There are many countries that do a lot of business in China and are frightened about the [potential] blowback from China," Romney said. Those fears aren't misplaced. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson ZHAO LIJIAN warned last month of unspecified "resolution countermeasures " against boycotters. "China is using [the] diplomatic boycott as a kind of loyalty test with its allies and the rest of the world," said OMER KANAT, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project. "If China wants to play a numbers game, it's up to the U.S. to push for more support from Germany and the rest of the EU." Governments with close trade ties to China have reason to fear potential reprisals given both Australia's and Lithuania's recent experience of punitive trade sanctions for displeasing Beijing. And the Chinese government's recognition that foreign states' economic considerations effectively derailed a wider diplomatic boycott may well reconfirm Beijing's worldview that its position as the world's second largest economy makes it impervious to symbolic international protest actions. "The new diplomatic victory against the 2022 boycott … reinforces China's belief in its material power and the geopolitical influence this power generates," said TONG ZHAO, senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Activists and politicians alike describe the diplomatic boycott as an unhelpful distraction from a potentially more fruitful focus on the International Olympic Committee and the Games' corporate sponsors. Human rights organizations have slammed the IOC's decision to award the 2022 Games to China despite its failure to honor the host city's human rights commitments for the 2008 Beijing Games. "This is the IOC's problem — why are we not condemning the IOC for putting us in this position by giving the Games to China in the first place [and] why has the IOC gotten away with this?" said NOAH HOFFMAN, a two-time U.S. winter Olympian and board member of the nonprofit Global Athlete, which advocates for positive change in world sport. Lawmakers are listening. Reps. MIKE WALTZ (R-Fla.) and Wexton on Wednesday announced a bill aimed to strip the IOC of its 501(c)(4) tax-exemption for failing to adequately respond to international concerns about China's human rights record. "The IOC is forcing our athletes to choose between their values and being able to compete, so I for one don't think they should enjoy that tax exempt status any longer," Waltz told reporters. Meanwhile, the Games' 13 Olympic Partner Program (TOP) sponsors — they include U.S. corporate giants Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Intel, Visa and Airbnb — are taking heat for prioritizing profits and market access over principles embodied in their internal social responsibility commitments and the United Nations' Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The chairs of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China on Tuesday urged U.S. sponsors in a statement to "disassociate their brands from genocide." Also on Tuesday, Waltz accused sponsors of "disgusting hypocrisy" for failing to speak out publicly about China's human rights abuses. Romney says attacking sponsors is unfair. "Companies like Procter & Gamble are not sponsoring the Beijing Olympics, they sponsor the Olympics generally … [and] I'm sure they would love to step away from Beijing," said Romney, who headed the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Advocates pressuring sponsors to speak out on China's human rights record are unconvinced. "When you're providing millions [of dollars] to support one of the most-watched events of the year, you're getting dangerously close to complicity in atrocities if you stay silent," Kanat said. TRANSLATING WASHINGTON — COTTON, KELLY TARGET CHINA'S RARE EARTHS: Sens. TOM COTTON (R-Ark.) and MARK KELLY (D-Ariz.) introduced a bill Friday aimed to reduce American dependence on Chinese-sourced rare earths. The Restoring Essential Energy and Security Holdings Onshore for Rare Earths (REEShore) Act will require the creation of a strategic rare earth stockpile by 2025 and bar use of Chinese-sourced rare earths in U.S. advanced defense technology by 2026. China controls more than 90 percent of global supply of rare earths and diversifying supply will be a heavy lift. "Efforts are being made to decouple the supply from the PRC — major finds in Canada, and research on extracting [rare earths] from tailings in West Virginia and Kentucky coal mines, for example, but these take years, and like mining undersea [rare earths] in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone, aren't commercially feasible," JUNE TEUFEL DREYER, professor of political science at the University of Miami, told China Watcher. Rare earths are a category of 17 metallic elements essential in the manufacture of high technology devices, including smart phones. — LURIA: FAST-TRACK TAIWAN INVASION RESPONSE: Rep. ELAINE LURIA (D-Va.) last week called for legislation to fast-track a U.S. military response to a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. "If China were to invade Taiwan today, the president would have to come to Congress for authorization to respond [and] we can't lose [the] months that it would take in order for us to provide a response," Luria told Stars and Stripes. Sen. RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.) channeled that concern into a provision of his Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act introduced in February that would provide "limited authorization for the President to use military force for the specific purpose of securing and protecting Taiwan against armed attack." | 
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