By Xia Wenxin
“Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics turns into Hunger Games as stars complain about ‘no hot meals’,” reads the terrifying title of a report from UK media outlet The Mirror on Monday.
It is quite ironic for a UK media to complain that athletes are starving in China, a country famous for its variety of food in the world. Considering the only famous British dish is fish and chips, it makes people wonder whether athletes will suffer from starvation should the Olympics return to the UK.
Besides the meaning of “starvation,” the phrase “Hunger Games” in The Mirror article also implies that similar to the setting in the famous series of novels The Hunger Games, some participants of the Beijing Winter Olympics seem to be forced to fight a battle for survival. The Mirror article claimed that athletes, coaches, and officials from several countries had made complaints ranging from food to quarantine facilities.
Because of these seemingly negative opinions about the Games, some netizens from the West already started to declare China a failure at hosting the Winter Games. Some even argue that these athletes probably deserve it, claiming this is a lesson for not boycotting this year’s Olympics.
Evidently, no Olympian deserves to suffer through bad conditions. If they feel unsatisfied with any aspect of the event, they can always communicate with the officials of the Games, be it directly or through the media, and it usually works.
There always are complaints from athletes in almost every Olympics. The organizing committee of last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics, for instance, has faced complaints similar to those in the ongoing Winter Olympics.
Both Tokyo and Beijing face the dual challenge of meeting the needs of Games participants and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, making it much more difficult to host the Olympics. Nevertheless, the organizers of both Games have tried their best to balance the two factors.
Facing various complaints, the Beijing Organizing Committee has promised to “solve issues that bring dissatisfaction as soon as possible.” In fact, according to media reports, German, Belgian and Russian athletes who had previously made complaints later said the conditions were improved.
This, unsurprisingly, is not included in The Mirror’s report. By selectively reporting on the truths, the UK media outlet intends to cover up its own jealousy of any positive development in China. Some Western media try to provoke conflict where there is none and amplify some individual negative cases. Now it seems outlets like The Mirror has nothing bad to talk about China, so they focus on hyping “Hunger Games” in Beijing. Such a gimmick is utterly ridiculous and pathetic.
There are inevitably imperfections within a system as massive as the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics’ closed loop. But how fast and effectively the organizers react to these issues is unquestionable. While effectively protecting the health of all Olympic personnel and the people of the host city, the organizing committee in Beijing should take the responsibility to continue to fix the flaws in its system proactively, so that they won’t affect the athletes’ life in the Olympic Village or their participation in the Games.
Given China’s strong organizational capabilities, we are confident that China will present the world with a healthy, safe, and exciting Winter Olympic Games from beginning to end. At the same time, we hope that the world will show more understanding toward hosts like Tokyo and Beijing, as they are doing their best to organize grand sports events despite the global plight of the COVID-19.
Of course, we would also like to send our best wishes to those voices of some media trying to stir up trouble. They really try hard to annoy China by buzzing around like flies, even though their endless efforts are ultimately wasted. To these forces, there couldn’t be a better occasion to quote the one famous line from the trilogy The Hunger Games and tell them, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” in a sarcastic way. -The Daily Mail-Global Times News Exchange Item
