China doesn’t call it a boycott, but what else can it be? Chinese athletes will sit out group sports at the Taipei 2017 Summer Universiade in August, the Taiwan government’s Mainland Affairs Council said Thursday. The China team has time conflicts during the Aug. 19-30 Olympic-style event that will bring college-age athletes together from 150 countries. But the decision reeks of a boycott that's just as obvious as the stink of sweat from the 12,000 athletes who are still expected to play. China is no stranger to boycotts (see a list here) and other snubs when things don't go its way offshore. It has hit back at Taiwan it in plenty of other ways over the past year, too.
China’s avoidance of nine team sports (individual athletes can still play) in the event that will give diplomatically isolated Taiwan some rare international limelight will deliver another kick to overall relations Taiwan. China sees democratic, self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory rather than a country, a leftover from civil war in the 1940s. But Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has declined since taking office almost exactly a year ago to regard the two sides as parts of a single China for dialogue purposes. Beijing has answered her by sending an aircraft carrier around the island 160 kilometer away, blocking Taiwan from the World Health Assembly this month and, a lot in Taipei suspect, urging Chinese tourists not to visit.
Athletes from China skipped draws for team events such as baseball, basketball, soccer and volleyball and baseball earlier this month, the Global Times news website in China reports. The paper quotes a Taiwan studies expert in China saying that while a time conflict may be a key reason, the Taiwan ruling party’s approach to relations was “also an objective reason for the absence of the mainland teams.”
The Universiade office in Taipei did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, but the Mainland Affairs Council said it hoped politics would not affect the summer games. “We hope the mainland China delegation in accordance with the spirit of athletic competition will proactively attend the event,” the government office told Forbes in a statement.
China’s decision against sending teams to the games, which take place in a different world city every two years, will at least roll eyes in view of the general backlash from China against Tsai and her Democratic Progressive Party. “I don’t think anyone will be surprised given overall state of cross-Strait relations,” says Raymond Wu, managing director of Taipei-based political risk consultancy e-telligence.
Keeping athletes out of the Taipei Universiade also risks that common Taiwanese will turn their backs on China, says Wang Yeh-lih, a professor of comparative politics at National Taiwan University. China had tried under the past Taiwan president, who was friendlier to Beijing, to meet and understand people on the island. Officials from Beijing tried that to charm the public into favoring China's goal of eventually unifying the two sides, politics scholars said at the time. “I think if China in various ways goes against most people’s ideas, it will of course cause it to become more distant in terms relations with the hearts of the Taiwanese people,” Wang says.
