Curlers from China’s curling team will play during a mixed test event for the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 in the Water Cube on April 1, 2021 in Beijing.
Photo:
Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
When President Biden publicly campaigned for Major League Baseball last week to move his All-Star Game out of Georgia, he no doubt thought he was on the side of the angels. But what is he going to do now at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022?
Mr. Biden objects to Georgia’s new voting law as an “atrocity”, although it offers more opportunities to vote than New York and Delaware, among others. The president is so offensive that he called on a sports league to boycott a U.S. state by inflicting economic damage on the Atlanta area, and to lubricate the legislature essentially as braggart.
We can not wait to see what the US president will say about China’s voting rules. There are no lines at polling stations in the Middle Kingdom because there are no polling stations, no absence of ballot papers because there are no ballot papers. The country is governed by a leadership cadre of the Chinese Communist Party, and its decisions are ratified by the rubber-stamped National People’s Congress, which meets once a year.
Maybe Mr. Biden compares the voting rules in Georgia to those in the re-education camps in Xinjiang province. His own foreign minister says China is committing genocide against the Uighurs.
He could send Rob Manfred as a missionary to investigate as the MLB commissioner tries to expand his league’s business in China, even though it boycotts a US state. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will surely allow Mr. Manfred inspects the camps, and why not bring along Georgia’s fellow enthusiast LeBron James to declare the Uighur cheerful in their work?
For the record, we are not working for an Olympic boycott. That would punish American athletes while the games would continue anyway. This is easy symbolism, but it is very important to do more to defend Taiwan or to stop Chinese cyber theft.
But Mr. Biden put himself in this band with his stunt about Georgia. He will inevitably be asked why a law that seeks to balance the access of voters with a voting integrity in a U.S. state that voted for him in 2020 justifies a boycott, while authoritarian China deserves a political pass. The answer will be instructive.
Editorial Report of the Journal: Corporate CEO joins Joe Biden’s attacks on Peach State voting rights. Image: Megan Varner / Getty Images
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Appears in the print edition of April 5, 2021.