[War and Management] Torch Relay and Nationalism

On the 2nd, Chipa Bao, a regiment commander of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and one of the torchbearers for the Beijing Winter Olympics, is carrying the torch (left). Commander Chi was previously the local Chinese military commander during the border dispute with India in 2020. Beijing, China = Photo by Reuters and Yonhap News Agency

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] On the 3rd, a day before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Indian government suddenly declared a diplomatic boycott, attracting global attention. This was surprising because India had not joined the diplomatic boycott declared by the United States and Western countries on the grounds of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The Indian government canceled the attendance of the charg? d'affaires who had expressed intention to attend the opening ceremony, and the state broadcaster also refused to air the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. The strong boycott declaration was reportedly due to one of the Olympic torchbearers.

The main reason was that among the Chinese torchbearers was Colonel Qi Fabao of the People's Liberation Army. Colonel Qi was the commander of the Chinese troops during the bloody clash between Chinese and Indian forces in the Galwan Valley area of the Himalayas, a border region between China and India, in 2020, which resulted in dozens of deaths. From India's perspective, the commander responsible for sacrificing its soldiers was selected as a torchbearer.

The last torchbearer of this Olympics, cross-country skier Dinigar Iramujan, also became a subject of controversy. Iramujan, who is from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, was deliberately highlighted as the final torchbearer, which was interpreted as a move targeting the United States and Western countries that declared diplomatic boycotts over human rights issues, further fueling the controversy.

As a result, criticism has poured in that the Chinese government is excessively politicizing the Olympics, a festival of peace, and using it for domestic propaganda, similar to Nazi Germany in the past. In fact, the torch relay itself is not based on ancient Olympic tradition but was an event conceived by Adolf Hitler during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

At that time, Hitler legalized racial discrimination and announced it worldwide, facing tremendous international criticism ahead of the Olympics. To overcome this, the large-scale torch relay event was newly created. The relay, involving about 3,000 celebrities from Mount Olympus in Greece to Berlin, Germany, was successfully carried out. As the torchbearers traveled across Germany, the Nazi Party's political propaganda was naturally disseminated, and criticism of racial discrimination was significantly subdued amid the atmosphere of the first-ever televised torch relay.

It is also evaluated that the Chinese government endured the severe COVID-19 situation to carry out the torch relay over three days with the purpose of political image formation and strengthening nationalism. Considering that the Two Sessions (Lianghui: the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference), which will lay the foundation for President Xi Jinping's long-term rule, are to follow, criticism that the Olympics are being mobilized for excessive nationalism seems unavoidable.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.