The Chinese Olympic team won 40 gold medals, 27 silver and 24 bronze at the Paris Olympics, coming second to the United States, which won 40 gold, 44 silver and 42 bronze.
China鈥檚 achievement was maligned and the country accused of doping, cheating and lying. Its athletes were discriminated against and mistreated by officials, other athletes and the media.
Amanda Yee, a journalist based in Brooklyn and co-host of the China Report on Breakthrough News, told that the Olympics has been drawn into a new cold war on China. Yee was interviewed by the organisation, along with Lee Siu Hin of the China-US Solidarity Network.
In Paris, the Chinese swim team won 12 of the 40 gold medals awarded, a remarkable achievement. Chinese swimmer, Pan Zhanle broke a world record for the 100m men鈥檚 freestyle. Chinese swimmers won the 4x100metre men鈥檚 medley relay. But their achievements were marred by skepticism because of a doping controversy that re-emerged in the media in April, a few months before the Paris Olympics.
Slurs
The slur campaign against China included a German-produced documentary, several articles in the New York Times, as well as French newspapers, which created a media storm.
The campaign focused on allegations of doping in 2021, when half of the 23 Chinese Olympic swimmers sent to the Tokyo Olympics tested positive to heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ), which is banned in Olympic sport.
China鈥檚 Anti-Doping Agency, CHINADA, conducted an investigation and found that the the positive results were due to contamination of the restaurant food, especially minced meat.
The 23 athletes had all been staying in the same hotel, eaten in the same dining room and all had eaten meals made with the same ingredient. Some of the swimmers had tested positive one day and negative the next and then positive the following day, and so on. They concluded that these fluctuating results were not consistent with deliberate doping, but more likely accidental contamination.
All the swimmers testing positive were from different parts of China; they all had different coaches. The Chinese swimmers who had been staying at different hotels did not test positive.
CHINADA also found that TMZ was present in the hotel鈥檚 air vents and on kitchen counters.
All the swimmers were cleared to compete. CHINADA reported its findings to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The report was not made public because the athletes were found not to have done anything wrong.
As a result of the NYT reports, the US swimmers, gold medalists, Michael Phelps and Alison Schmidt as well as Travis Teigart, head of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), are testifying before a Congressional Subcommittee. They had friends who competed in Tokyo and now feel "cheated" that the Chinese swimmers took the gold medals away from them.
WADA looked at CHINADA's investigation and couldn鈥檛 find any reason to challenge the results.
However, the US took the anti-China campaign to the next level in August when Congress introduced a bill to withhold funding from WADA and the FBI launched a criminal investigation into the organisation.
Double standard
Meanwhile, it has been reported that the US allowed its own athletes to compete despite violating anti-doping rules.
Reuters reported on April 17 that between 2011鈥14, the US anti-doping agency, USADA allowed several athletes who had tested positive to continue competing in exchange for serving as undercover doping informants.
USADA claimed that WADA signed off on this agreement, which WADA has denied. WADA said that when it became aware of the practice in 2021, it told USADA to stop it immediately.
According to the Reuters report at least three US athletes were allowed to continue competing despite doping violations. One of them was an elite level athlete, who later admitted to taking steroids among other performance-enhancing drugs.
WADA faced pressure from the USADA not to make this information public.
Another double standard is athletes鈥 use of drugs with Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) to treat conditions such as asthma. These drugs would otherwise be prohibited by the Olympic Committee.
In 2015, more than 1000 TUEs were registered by WADA. About 69% of these were granted to just three countries: the US, Australia and France. These included asthma medications, which contain stamina-enhancing properties.
A report in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports found that more than 80% of Olympic participants in endurance sports are diagnosed with asthma and 20% of all athletes at the Olympics have the condition.
Asthma affected 3.4% of the world鈥檚 population, in 2019. The relatively high level of use of TUEs among European athletes is never mentioned in the media.
Yee said that while China is 鈥渘o saint鈥, the same level of media scrutiny is not applied to US athletes.
Chinese athletes are tested far more frequently than their US or British competitors. Since January, each of the 31 members of the Chinese swimming team has been tested 21 times by different anti-doping organisations.
China鈥檚 Pan Zhanle had been tested 20 times in the past few months. Qin Haiyang, who holds the record for the 200m breaststroke, claimed the vigorous testing is designed to disturb their rhythm of training. In contrast, US swimmers were tested only six times and Australian swimmers only four times on average.
鈥淭he racism and double standards are so glaringly obvious. The US is engaged in an informational, psychological warfare against China,鈥 said Yee.
The Olympics should be a chance for countries to showcase the athletic skills and abilities of their citizens. However, to protect its economic, military and sporting hegemony, the US is using the Olympics as part of its multi-layered, cultural cold war against China.