“It’s something we’re considering,” Biden confirmed when pressed on the issue during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office on Thursday.
A diplomatic boycott from the U.S. would mean that the Biden administration would not send dignitaries to the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in February 2022, but American athletes would still be allowed to compete.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian hit back at Biden’s remarks on Friday, saying that it is wrong to politicize the Games.
“The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the Paralympics are the stage for athletes from all over the world,” he said. “Politicizing sports is against the Olympic spirit and harms the interests of athletes from all countries.”
Biden’s remarks came amid growing calls by several lawmakers and human rights groups for the U.S. to boycott the Beijing Olympics over its human rights abuses, including against its Uyghur population in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where it is estimated that at least one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are being held in a sprawling network of detention camps.
At a press conference on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the Biden administration was considering a diplomatic boycott of Beijing’s 2022 Olympics due to concerns over human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
“There are areas that we do have concerns: human rights abuses. We have serious concerns,” Psaki told reporters.
“Certainly there are a range of factors as we look at what our presence would be,” she said, adding that there is currently no timeline for a decision by Biden on the potential diplomatic boycott.
Traditionally, high-level delegations from the U.S., as well as other major nations, attend the Olympic Games. This year’s Tokyo Olympic Games were attended by first lady Jill Biden, while second gentleman Doug Emhoff led a delegation to the Paralympic Games.
Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping engaged in their first virtual summit on Monday, but the White House said the pair did not discuss the Games.
On Thursday, Republic Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas urged the Biden administration to commit to a complete boycott of the Beijing Olympics, with “no athletes, no administration officials, no corporate sponsors.”
Cotton cited the Chinese regime’s “crimes against the United States, and the civilized world, and its own people.”
“China runs a totalitarian slave state in which they keep hundreds of thousands, if not millions of religious and ethnic minorities in gulags,” he said, referring to the detention of Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang.
