COVID-Zero keeps Beijing Winter Olympics opening a muted affair

byDuc Manh •February 13, 2022

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Dancers perform during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) — Dancers carry out in the course of the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photograph/Jeff Roberson)

The Winter Olympics formally kicked off Friday night in Beijing six months after the delayed Tokyo summer time video games, marking the second time the worldwide sporting occasion has taken place in the course of the coronavirus pandemic.

The extravaganza within the Beijing Nationwide Stadium, also referred to as the Hen’s Nest, plans to showcase the Chinese language lunar calendar’s seasons and have a good time the brand new 12 months with a solid consisting of bizarre Chinese language residents, in line with a preview offered by organizers. Your entire present will happen on prime of a big LED-screen flooring.

Directed by acclaimed film director Zhang Yimou, who additionally helmed the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Summer time Olympics, this 12 months’s occasion is anticipated to be a extra muted affair as a result of pandemic. It'll final simply 100 minutes, whereas the 2008 present, extensively seen as some of the lavish shows in trendy Olympic historical past, lasted 4 hours and featured 15,000 performers.

Beijing can even be the primary metropolis to have hosted each the summer time and winter Olympics, however the 90,000 seats on the stadium this 12 months gained’t be absolutely occupied resulting from Covid restrictions. No tickets have been bought to most people however organizers have been allowed to ask some spectators, who need to bear quarantine to attend occasions.

The stakes are excessive for Beijing this 12 months, because the nation seeks to make use of the event to showcase a extra constructive view of Chinese language tradition amid deteriorating views of the nation world wide, notably amongst democratic nations. A U.S.-led diplomatic boycott of the video games implies that President Xi Jinping will host simply 21 world leaders, a majority of whom are from non-democratic nations. Some nations, together with New Zealand and Austria, cited Covid restrictions as the rationale for not sending dignitaries to the occasion.

In its dedication to stamping out Covid-19, athletes and different members should enter a “closed loop” in Beijing that's fully lower off from the broader inhabitants, with measures together with day by day testing. To date, 380 Covid circumstances have been detected on the video games. Compared, the Tokyo Olympics recorded simply over 100 infections earlier than the opening ceremony, reflecting the extra infectious nature of the omicron variant and extra frequent testing in China.

The beginning of the Olympics has additionally boosted market sentiment. Shares of Chinese language sportswear makers climbed in Hong Kong buying and selling Friday as buyers guess that the video games will spur demand amid the federal government’s drive to extend well being consciousness and promote winter sports activities.