Dusseldorf, Beijing When the Olympic Games start with a grand opening ceremony in Beijing this Friday, Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), will finally have reached their goal – and with him the Chinese head of state and party, Xi Jinping. In a “bubble”, shielded from the rest of the population, the athletes should perform outstandingly in the middle of the corona pandemic.
Xi and Bach have had a special relationship for years. China’s most powerful man calls Bach, the world’s most influential sports official, a “good friend”. As early as 2017, Xi personally thanked the German Bach at a meeting. “Over the years, the IOC and President Bach have made important contributions to the healthy development of not only the Olympic movement but also the development of sports in China,” said the Secretary-General of the Chinese Communist Party.
Bach has been President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 2013. In March 2021 he was confirmed in office for another four years, there was no opposing candidate. But 2025 will definitely be the end. According to the Olympic Charter, the lawyer cannot stand again.
There is hardly an international leader that Xi has regularly gotten as close to as Bach in recent years. At the end of January, it was the German sports official whom the Chinese head of state met after almost two years of isolation – not US President Joe Biden, not the new Chancellor Olaf Scholz, not Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
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It was Bach, the former world foil fencing champion, for whom Xi broke his self-imposed Covid isolation from foreign arrivals. There has even been a bust of the IOC chief in a Beijing park for a few weeks.
Bach is master of the billions of euros that can be earned with the Olympic Games and with which autocrats like Xi want to polish their image at home and internationally. With a lot of ambition, meticulousness and a worldwide network, the 68-year-old Bach has steadily worked his way up the ladder.
Popular within the IOC
Bach was a member of the National and International Olympic Committee, the German Olympic Sports Confederation, the Cas Sports Court, he sat on the supervisory board of the organizing committee for the 2006 World Cup and wanted to bring the 2018 Winter Games to Munich. In 2013 he was then elected IOC President.
Bach enjoys great approval within the IOC. He is publicly pursuing a reform course and wants to make the IOC and the Olympic Games fit for the future. Economically, Bach was able to present new record balances up until the Corona crisis, with billions flowing into the coffers from media partners and sponsors.
But the sports official is also controversial. He is seen as a tenacious tactician, a backroom diplomat, and one who is running the IOC more than ever like a large corporation. The IOC boss has also been accused of his rather lenient handling of Russia’s state-organized doping system for years. Olympic experts even accuse him of being an “egomaniac”.
Bach also does not shy away from standing by his friend Xi in sensational scandals. For example, when the Chinese government came under international pressure last year in the controversy surrounding Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, Bach Xi jumped in.
Peng had accused Zhang Gaoli, a former member of the State Council, of sexually abusing her in an emotional post on a Chinese social network. As a result, the tennis player, known in the People’s Republic, disappeared from the public eye for weeks.
International organizations have demanded a sign of life from her, concerned that the athlete might be detained as punishment for her allegations against such a high-ranking Communist Party figure.
Xi can bet on Bach
Bach allowed himself to be harnessed by Chinese state propaganda and circulated through the IOC that he had spoken to Peng. A press release from the committee said the athlete was fine — no word on the allegations of abuse, no proof of her whereabouts or whereabouts. International human rights organizations sharply criticized Bach for the statements.
It is still unclear whether the Chinese authorities are investigating the allegations against Gao and how much pressure they are putting on Peng. Ahead of the opening ceremony, Bach has confirmed his plans to meet the tennis player during the Beijing games.
Xi was also able to rely on Bach on many other occasions. He regularly praises party leader Xi in public for his “very impressive” performance. The athletes have “excellent and safe conditions” in China, Bach said at a public meeting of the IOC on Thursday.
In view of the highly contagious omicron variant, the Chinese regime is imposing numerous, sometimes drastic, measures around the Winter Olympics.
(Photo: dpa)
The Belgian athlete Kim Meylemans had posted a widely shared video just one day earlier, showing her completely distraught after three days of isolation because she had tested positive for Corona on arrival. Instead of returning to the Olympic Village after several negative tests, she was taken to another isolation hotel, where she was to remain without contact with other people for seven more days.
Bach also didn’t say a word about the massive restrictions on press freedom, the suppression of critical voices in China about the games and the accusations by environmentalists that the Chinese government is holding the Winter Games in a place where there is naturally hardly any snow and there is also a lack of water .
The IOC boss only becomes critical when it comes to a possible boycott of the games in China. One saw “that in the minds of some people the boycott ghosts of the past showed their ugly heads again,” Bach said at the IOC meeting on Thursday.
More: How China is implementing its zero-Covid policy even during the Olympics