WASHINGTON: With the Beijing Winter Olympics just three months away, the Joe Biden administration is making make clear whether it plans to send an official delegation to China.
According to several sources familiar with the plans, the White House is expected to announce that neither President Biden nor any other U.S. government officials will attend the Beijing Games, Washington Post reported.
This diplomatic boycott is intended, the sources say, as a way to respond to the Chinese government’s human rights abuses without impacting U.S. athletes, it said.
Although the administration technically has not finalized this decision, a formal recommendation has been made to the president and he is expected to approve it before the end of the month, according to Washington Post report.
The timing of this process was not linked to the Biden-Xi virtual meeting Monday evening, which was billed as a way for the two leaders to demonstrate their ability to manage complex U.S.-China relations in an era of rising tensions, it added
Various reports this week have said that Xi Jinping intended to bring up the Olympics issue with Biden, perhaps even inviting him to personally attend.
But the issue didn’t come up at all during the 3½-hour meeting, according to the report.
Biden administration officials have been virtually silent on Olympics-related issues in recent months, refusing to speculate on whether Biden would support a full athlete boycott (as human rights groups and activists are calling for), or a more limited boycott, or no boycott at all, the Washington Post said.
(With inputs from Washington Post)
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