Beijing - Page 4

Chinese state media on Thursday tried to counter widespread reports of poor-quality food and borderline starvation among foreign athletes at the Beijing Winter Olympic village by claiming the visitors were actually enjoying a “banquet of delicacies” to go along with the corrupt and morally compromised “sports feast” of the Genocide Games.

19-year-old figure skater Zhu Yi, who was born in California but renounced her American citizenship in 2018 to compete for China, was mercilessly heckled by Chinese social media users after she fell on the ice on Sunday and finished in last place at the Beijing Winter Olympics. The heckling was so intense that Chinese government censors intervened and shut down almost a hundred accounts on Weibo, China’s heavily-controlled alternative to banned Twitter.

Race activist Rev. Al Sharpton is criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi for telling Olympic athletes not to criticize the Communist Chinese Party.

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Brian Leung denounced mainstream corporations for supporting Beijing’s hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics at a “#NoBeijing2022” rally on Thursday in Washington, DC, saying their sponsoring of the event equates to tacit approval of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights violations.

China recorded 32 more coronavirus cases linked to the Beijing Winter Olympics on Tuesday, including 17 inside the “closed loop” or “bubble” meant to separate Olympic venues from the rest of the city. 11 Beijing Games personnel are now hospitalized with Chinese coronavirus.

Pope Francis gave a shout-out to the Beijing Winter Olympics Wednesday, wishing the organizers of the controversial event “every success.”

Health officials in Beijing recorded the city’s highest number of new Chinese coronavirus cases on Sunday since June 2020, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, making the national capital the epicenter of China’s latest coronavirus outbreak just four days before Beijing is set to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Health officials in Tianjin, China — which has been locked down since January 9 — confirmed on Thursday the detection of four new, locally transmitted Chinese coronavirus cases “caused by accidental exposure” to the virus inside a governemnt-run quarantine facility, the Global Times reported Friday.

Chinese Communist Party officials locked down much of the city of Sanhe, which borders Beijing, on Wednesday — just nine days before Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics — after detecting a new Chinese coronavirus infection in a Sanhe resident who commutes to Beijing daily, the Global Times reported.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi softened her previous criticisms of China’s communist regime as her husband and son scored big business deals in China, according to revelations in Peter Schweizer’s new book “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.”

Hunter Biden arranged to share his family’s office space in DC with a Chinese intelligence-linked firm that employed a man Hunter described as “the f**king spy chief of China.”

A Chinese global energy company linked to a Chinese intelligence operation sent close to $6 million to Hunter Biden in 2017.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is set to be re-appointed Tuesday via a secret ballot – standing for the role unopposed.

Liu Youbin, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, on Monday promised “administrative measures” would be taken to clean up the heavy cloud of smog that has descended over the city of Beijing on the eve of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Chinese state media on Sunday reported more lockdowns and mass testing programs in Beijing neighborhoods as the first group of athletes and staff arrived at the Olympic village.

Compulsory mass coronavirus testing was ordered in parts of Beijing on Sunday following a runaway series of infections as China tightened anti-disease controls two weeks out from the Winter Olympics.

Local media in China’s capital of Beijing report that with only two weeks to go before the Winter Olympics begin, city health authorities have resumed a controversial practice from early in the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic: using anal swabs to check for infections.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden reportedly plans to send as many as “46 officials, most of whom work for the [U.S.] Department of State,” to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Chinese state media on Wednesday acknowledged the coronavirus outbreaks in Beijing and other cities have grown more serious, but confidently predicted they would be fully under control before the Beijing Winter Olympics begin in a few weeks.

The State Post Bureau of China announced on Tuesday that it would pass all international mail entering the country through four rounds of “disinfection” to prevent the spread of Chinese coronavirus, despite most mainstream scientists agreeing that touching infected surfaces is not a main form of coronavirus transmission.

With the Beijing Winter Olympics only a few weeks away, and a coronavirus wave sweeping across China, many residents of Beijing have reportedly decided to flee the city while they still can, taking the very same Lunar New Year holiday trips to visit family that Chinese officials have been discouraging.

The Chinese Communist Party’s latest excuse for the coronavirus wave it can no longer conceal is that packages from overseas brought the omicron variant to China. The party is using this notion as an excuse to limit imports.

Tianjin, a Chinese port city directly bordering Beijing, recorded its “biggest rise in daily cases” of the coronavirus on Monday since a local outbreak of the disease started earlier this month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

The Communist Party of China admitted on Sunday that it had detected at least one case of the omicron variant of Chinese coronavirus in Beijing on Sunday, a less severe but more contagious iteration of the Wuhan disease.

Chinese state media on Friday reported Beijing is tightening coronavirus restrictions to “prevent a flare-up in China’s capital and ensure people’s safety as the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games approach.”

Organizing officials for the 2022 Winter Olympics said Tuesday the Games’ host city, Beijing, has no plans to lock down any sections of the capital to prevent the spread of the Chinese coronavirus during the event — scheduled to take place from February 4 through February 20 — despite increasing lockdowns in surrounding areas.

GOP lawmakers introduced a bill on Tuesday which would sanction Beijing for its “continued obstruction of a COVID origins investigation.”

Beijing’s Traffic Management Bureau warned locals on Sunday to “maintain a safe distance” from potential traffic accidents involving 2022 Winter Olympic vehicles during the upcoming event, as interactions between participants of the Beijing-hosted Games and any outside persons is strictly prohibited by the Chinese Communist Party to prevent transmission of the Chinese coronavirus.

Chinese Communist Party authorities forbade all of Tianjin’s 15 million residents from leaving the city on Sunday in an effort to contain the municipality’s recent Chinese coronavirus epidemic, which threatens to affect neighboring Beijing just 25 days before it is set to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Monday that construction is still under way on venues for the Winter Olympics in the city of Zhangjiakou, where many of the skiing and snowboarding events for the Beijing Games will take place. 

China announced over the weekend that it would ban local officials and staffers in Zhangjiakou, the suburb of Beijing scheduled to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, from leaving the area without “approval.”

President Joe Biden has opted for a “diplomatic” boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, but not a full boycott that would affect the athletes. Yet he backed a boycott of Atlanta by Major League Baseball, which withdrew the All-Star Game.

American athletes should not participate in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said on Wednesday.

New Zealand announced Tuesday it will not send representatives at the ministerial level to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, in February because the “logistics of travel” during the coronavirus pandemic “are not conducive” to such a trip, though Wellington said its diplomats may still attend the Games.

Senior officials from the Slovak Republic are in Taiwan for talks on deepening ties with the island, the highest-level visit in many years.

The manager of a Beijing venue that is set to host men’s ice hockey events during the 2022 Winter Olympics told China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday Olympic coordinators have yet to determine if seats in the stadium “will be open to the public.”