Does China Have to Play by the Rules?

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Investigations reveal that 23 Chinese Olympic swimmers tested positive for a banned substance ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Games, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepares for a trip to Beijing and Shanghai, and the U.S. Senate votes on the TikTok divest-or-ban bill.

Another Chinese Sports Scandal Emerges

A doping scandal has rocked the swimming world in the wake of investigations published last weekend by the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD. The reporting revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance prior to the Summer Olympics held in 2021 in Tokyo, where China’s team won medals, including three golds. Several of the athletes are expected to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

At the time, China told the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that a mass contamination incident from a hotel kitchen was responsible for the positive tests. WADA backed down, allowing the swimmers to compete. Usually, any positive result for banned substances leads to at least a temporary suspension. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has now accused WADA of bending the rules for China’s benefit.

The swimming scandal comes on the heels of another suspicious incident during the Beijing Half Marathon this month, where three African runners visibly slowed down near the finish line and allowed Chinese national marathon record holder He Jie to win the event. One of the runners said that he and the others were serving as pacemakers and thus not competing in the race, but there were no records of this arrangement according to the organizing committee.

The race organizers quickly revoked He’s result, but as the swimming investigations show, sports scandals often take years to play out in China—if they ever reach a conclusion. Chinese authorities have a strong interest in covering up suspected violations, and international organizations often comply.

Take the issue of underage gymnasts. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, bronze-winning Chinese competitor Dong Fangxiao was widely suspected to be underage. At the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, past Chinese state media coverage pointed to the Chinese team—which won the all-around gold—as having a few underage competitors, most notably the 4-foot-8 He Kexin.

In 2010, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) ruled against Dong, who returned her medal from a decade earlier, but China provided documents that supposedly proved that the competitors on the 2008 team were all legitimate. The FIG backed down, but the organization’s president had reportedly said there was “strong circumstantial evidence” that at least some of the gymnasts were underage.

Chinese sports culture is notoriously medal-oriented and at times abusive. Sports officials select potential athletes at a young age and often direct them toward sports where they think they can dominate, including those with little popular following. Many parts of this system recall that of the Soviet Union, where abuse and doping were rampant and political interference common.

This approach pays off at the Olympics, where China has gone from zero to world-beating in a few decades. But it also produces a win-at-any-cost attitude that leads to rampant cheating, even in other forums. It also seems less effective in team sports than in individual ones. Chinese soccer, for example, is corrupt and not very competitive, despite years of investment and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s personal interest in the sport.

The sporting scandals reflect a persistent challenge for any international body working in China. Any insistence on outside or independent investigation angers Beijing, but the country is so large that organizations often must compromise to maintain access. Think of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the World Health Organization accepted China’s false figures and claims that it had tracked and isolated the virus.

The swimming scandal was exposed by the kind of journalistic investigation that is today nearly impossible for Chinese media and extremely difficult for foreign media in China. (The Times reporters worked from London, New York, and Lausanne, Switzerland.) There are a lot more problems lurking within Chinese regulatory practices and statistics, especially when it comes to information shared with the rest of the world.

Sports are a relatively low-stakes arena to test how to handle a powerful and intransigent country. International sporting bodies should have the grit to insist China plays by the rules—or kick it out of competition when it doesn’t, as they have done with Russia.

What We’re Following

Blinken in China. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting China from Wednesday to Friday, meeting with senior officials in both Beijing and Shanghai. While there, he intends to put pressure on China to back off support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, underscored by U.S. officials’ messaging in recent weeks. Although trips like Blinken’s are an important part of managing a contentious relationship, making progress on Ukraine seems unlikely.

It’s unclear which tools Blinken can or will use to tighten the screws on Beijing, given how tense U.S.-China exchanges over trade, technology, and climate have become. The U.S. foreign aid bill that includes assistance to Ukraine that the Senate was expected to pass on Tuesday could shift China’s perspective—although in two possible directions.

China may see the issue as not worth risking further tensions, or it could believe that its own global goals would benefit from a Russian victory in Ukraine that indirectly humiliates the United States.

Espionage in Germany? German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s conciliatory visit to China last week was followed by a rash of arrests of alleged Chinese spies in Germany, including an aide to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. China’s ties with the European far right pale in comparison to those of Russia, but they have grown in recent years—especially with the AfD.

The aide who was arrested, identified as “Jian G.,” worked for Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament at the center of multiple scandals, including one focused on his past financial ties to China.

The timing of the arrests could be deliberate. There is often an internal contest between Western politicians who seem to want business as usual with China—such as Scholz—and members of their security services who see Beijing as a major adversary. In Canada, selective leaks have played a role in embarrassing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the country’s own Chinese influence scandal.

Tech and Business

U.S. TikTok ban looms. The hammer is coming down on TikTok in Washington, with the U.S. House passing the divest-or-ban bill last Saturday and the Senate expected to pass it this week. (The legislation is attached to the foreign aid package that the Senate was voting on Tuesday.) However, the law is hardly likely to be the end for TikTok in the United States, with months of legal challenges lying ahead.

China has not helped the app’s case, with reports of embassy staff lobbying against the ban—exactly the kind of action that fuels suspicions that the app is a powerful influence tool for Beijing through its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance.

Meanwhile, former U.S. President Donald Trump has continued to broadcast his reversal on TikTok: After his administration tried to ban the app, Trump now says that any ban would be President Joe Biden’s responsibility. A major Trump funder, Jeff Yass, is also a major investor in the app.

Information warfare reorg. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is undergoing yet another reorganization, with a new Information Support Force (ISF) that will concentrate on information warfare spun off from the Strategic Support Force—which was itself only set up in late 2015. The last year of military purges and corruption concerns suggest that more restructuring is likely to come.

So what will the ISF do? There is the obvious global contestation with the United States, but a key part of the agency’s work is supposed to be coordinating and distributing information within the Chinese military. Information is a contested commodity within Chinese institutions, traded and concealed for personal advancement. So-called knowledge hiding is a persistent problem.

That mentality persists within the PLA, where every officer is simultaneously managing his job alongside any graft they are running and political demands. Part of the reason for creating the ISF is to give Xi and the Chinese Communist Party leadership more direct control over who knows what. That may be as much a hindrance as a help.

FP’s Most Read This Week

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• 3 Ways Israel Could Respond to Iran by Jack Detsch
• Arab Countries Have Israel’s Back—for Their Own Sake by Steven A. Cook

A Bit of Culture

Zhiguai, or “strange tales,” are a staple of Chinese literature. Short, weird, and often funny, they cover everything from sexual curiosities to hidden miniature worlds. Animals make frequent appearances, as in this reptilian tale from the 5th-century collection Further Investigations Into the Spirit Realm, which is traditionally attributed to poet Tao Yuanming.

The snake in this tale talks funny in Chinese, too: He says, “Wu mou jia,” literally, “He slashed a certain some-me.” This is almost certainly textual corruption, but I like the idea of snakes being prolix.—Brendan O’Kane, translator

A Snake Story
Attributed to Tao Yuanming

It was early summer, the middle of the fifth month, and a man from Wuxing named Zhang Gou was tilling his fields. He brought rice with him, packed into a gourd, but when he reached for his dinner he found it gone—and not for the first time. So the next time he staked out the gourd and caught sight of a large snake making off with his food. He slashed at it with his trowel, but the snake slithered quickly away.

Running after it, Gou came to a small hole in the side of a hill. He squeezed into the hole, and overheard a voice whimpering, “He ssssssslashed us!”

“What should we do?” another voice asked.

“Report him to the Lord of Thunder,” said a third voice. “Get him to strike the peon dead with thunder and lightning.” Clouds and rain gathered, and lightning crackled overhead.

Gou was hopping mad. “Heavenly Lord!” he shouted. “I’m a poor man! I wear myself out tilling and working the land! That snake came and took my food—the crime was the snake’s, and now I’m the one getting hit by lightning? You’re one stupid Lord of Thunder! Try it on with me and I’ll slash you in the belly with my trowel!”

Instantly the clouds and rain dispersed and began moving in the direction of the snakes’ nest. Several dozen snakes died.