U.S. news outlets say the Biden administration is expected to announce a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.
A diplomatic boycott means no U.S. officials would attend any events of the Beijing 2022 Games, while still allowing athletes on Team USA to participate.
That would avoid a repeat of 1980, when then-President Jimmy Carter kept U.S. athletes from attending the Moscow Summer Games because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979.
CNN was first to report the expected announcement.
In Beijing Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused U.S. lawmakers who have been pressuring President Joe Biden for a diplomatic boycott of the Games of “grandstanding,” and warned China would take “countermeasures” if Washington were to go through with the boycott.
Biden said last month he was considering a diplomatic boycott due to criticism of China’s human rights abuses, including the detention of millions of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province and the crackdown on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong.
The Beijing Winter Olympics will run from February 4-20.
Some information in this report came from Reuters and the Associated Press.
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