Over 30 foreign leaders travelled to Beijing to attend Friday’s opening ceremony. But the United States and other Western countries have subjected the Winter Games to a diplomatic boycott amid rising geopolitical tensions and allegations of human rights abuses in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang.
The Global Times, run by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, hit back at foreign media reports that the event had attracted only “authoritarian” leaders, accusing them in an editorial of using “outdated anti-China cliches.”
