Beijing Winter Olympics and China’s Middle East Diplomacy in the Xi Era

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sports diplomacy, host diplomacy and pandemic diplomacy intertwined in the Beijing Winter Olympics and jointly served China’s overall diplomacy. The Middle East region has a long history of participation in the Winter Olympics. A total of seven Middle East countries, including Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Iran, participated in Beijing Winter Olympics, while Israel and Iran participated in the Beijing Paralympic Winter Games. Middle East countries generally help China break the politicization of the Winter Olympics from other countries. Thanks to the Beijing Winter Olympics, Chinese president and leaders of Middle East countries met offline for the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is also conducive to the new development of relations between China and the Middle East in the post-pandemic era. The leaders of Egypt, the UAE and Qatar also took the opportunity of attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics to hold their own meetings, which is conducive to the further repair of the relations among these countries since the Qatar diplomatic crisis. The Beijing Winter Olympics objectively set up a platform to promote the easing of crisis issues in the Middle East.