news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Source: Global Times New Media

At the end of 2020, former US President Trump signed a "bill" that seriously undermined international rules, allowing the US government to play the role of "world policeman" in doping testing and "enforce the law" on other countries. This move quickly aroused opposition from the International Anti-Doping Agency.

But in order to support and maintain the US hegemony in this matter, the US media began to frantically find fault and touch upon the World Anti-Doping Agency - and the Chinese swimming team thus became a victim of this US hegemony.

On the 4th local time, four outstanding athletes of the Chinese swimming team overtook the United States in the men's 4x100 medley relay at the Paris Olympics and won the Olympic gold medal for China. However, the major American news agency, the Associated Press, did not congratulate the Chinese athletes on their gold medal like the American team members in the Olympics. Instead, it joined forces with a British swimmer who came in fourth place in the game and failed to reach the podium to discredit the Chinese athletes again.

British swimmer Peaty unhappy with Chinese team's win

This British swimmer who makes people feel a little "unable to lose" is named Adam Peaty. He had "festivals" with some Chinese swimmers before. This time, he told the Associated Press that Britain failed to win a medal because the swimming arena was "unfair." And this so-called "unfairness", according to the Associated Press and Peaty, is because two of the four Chinese team members participating in the relay race had accidentally eaten food containing trace amounts of stimulant ingredients with other 21 swimmers from January 1 to 3, 2021 due to food contamination in the restaurant kitchen. Although the China Anti-Doping Center, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and the independent investigators invited by the World Anti-Doping Agency have determined that this was an accident that the athletes were unaware of, some people who can't afford to lose in swimming competitions, or can't bear to see Chinese and Asians surpass Europeans and Americans to win gold medals and break world records, have been holding on to this matter and desperately discrediting the efforts and efforts of Chinese athletes.

Screenshot of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s announcement

In addition to smearing Chinese athletes in their "reports", the Associated Press and European and American media such as Reuters, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, which had previously continued to criticize Chinese athletes in Olympic swimming competitions, are also attacking another target - the World Anti-Doping Agency, which was established in 1999 by the International Olympic Committee and is abbreviated as "WADA".

In fact, the United States’ hostility towards the World Anti-Doping Agency is probably one of the reasons why these media outlets repeatedly insult Chinese athletes.

It turns out that a large amount of public information and media reports show that at the end of 2020, former US President Trump signed and passed a "bill" passed by both houses of the US Congress. This law will allow the US government to launch a criminal investigation into any foreign personnel suspected of having "doping problems" by the US government in sports events participated by US athletes, sponsored by US companies, or reported by US media. Once convicted by the United States, they will face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Although the United States claims that this is to better combat the use of doping after the Russian doping scandal, many people in the sports world believe that this is an opportunity for the United States to openly extend its geopolitical hegemony of "long-arm jurisdiction" to the sports world, in order to suppress countries that do not listen to the United States through politically driven "investigations."

Screenshot of US media reports

Therefore, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) publicly expressed its opposition to the bill as early as when the U.S. Congress passed it. In its statement, the WADA said that they support the efforts of countries around the world, including the United States, to further combat the use of doping, but the long-arm jurisdiction part of the U.S. bill will disrupt the internationally recognized anti-doping legal framework and impact the WADA's role in the global anti-doping cause.

World Anti-Doping Agency issued a statement opposing the US "Bill"

It is conceivable how unhappy the World Anti-Doping Agency would be when the United States finally ignored its opposition and passed this "bill" that wantonly trampled on international rules and the sovereignty of other countries.

Moreover, in the view of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the US's approach is not only driven by geopolitics, but also very "double standards" because in the view of the agency, the United States, as a sports power in the world, does not follow the WADA's testing standards for many of its major events, but instead has its own set of testing standards. This results in the WADA being unable to confirm whether the test results of these athletes are qualified - and even for those sports that implement the WADA testing standards in order to participate in the Olympics, the frequency of doping tests on American athletes is significantly lower than that of athletes from other countries.

The World Anti-Doping Agency listed the above problems in a statement publicly rebuking relevant US parties in June this year, and emphasized that in 2023, the United States' own anti-doping agency collected a total of 7,773 doping test samples from 3,011 athletes, but this number is less than half of Germany - even though the United States' own doping testing agency has twice as much funding as Germany.

The World Anti-Doping Agency therefore complained that as a country with a large population, a large athlete base and a large Olympic delegation, the US data is really "disappointing."

It can be seen that the World Anti-Doping Agency's dissatisfaction with the United States has been accumulating for many years. However, the United States has gone too far, and it seems that the World Anti-Doping Agency has become intolerable.

Screenshot of the World Anti-Doping Agency's public statement condemning the United States

In addition, according to the Global Times, American athlete Eliyan Knighton, who competed in the men's 200-meter track and field event at the Paris Olympics in the early morning of August 6, Beijing time, was found to be positive for steroids (trenbolone) in an out-of-competition doping test on March 26 this year. However, the United States also announced that this was caused by the athlete's consumption of contaminated meat, and decided not to impose a ban on him, allowing him to represent the United States in the Paris Olympics. This was also seen by all parties as exposing the "double standards" of the United States, and became a focus of the World Anti-Doping Agency's counterattack against the United States: If Eliyan Knighton's case happened to an athlete from China, what would the United States Anti-Doping Agency say?

WADA mentions American athlete Eliyan Knighton

But it seems that in order to shut up the increasingly "disobedient" World Anti-Doping Agency, the US government has been letting its "big foreign propaganda" media launch a public opinion offensive against the World Anti-Doping Agency in the past few months by frantically hyping up the incident in which 23 Chinese swimmers accidentally ingested food contaminated with trace amounts of stimulant ingredients in January 2021. Moreover, this round of offensive seems to be trying to "kill two birds with one stone": on the one hand, it undermines the credibility of the World Anti-Doping Agency, and on the other hand, it discredits China.

However, some analysts believe that although the current round of public opinion offensive launched by the Western media, which still holds the hegemony of international discourse, seems "fierce", the response of the World Anti-Doping Agency, China and other international sports associations such as the World Swimming Federation seems more appropriate. After all, when the world sees that Chinese swimmers have undergone far more doping tests than the United States and other countries from January this year to the start of the Olympics, and the frequency of Chinese athletes being tested in large numbers after the start of the Olympics, not to mention that these drug tests are in compliance with the standards of the World Anti-Doping Agency, anyone who is not blind and has a black heart will know that these athletes are innocent, and will also see more clearly what the United States and Western media who are still holding on to them are thinking, and understand why the World Anti-Doping Agency will issue a special statement on July 30 to publicly clarify for Chinese athletes and bluntly accuse the US media of engaging in geopolitical framing.

Screenshots of foreign media reports and WADA announcements

I found that whether it was the Associated Press's "report" after China won the 4x100 medley relay gold medal, or the articles in the New York Times, Washington Post and other American media attacking Chinese athletes and the World Anti-Doping Agency in the past two days, they all had a very ironic commonality, that is, they all kept silent about the "huge" amount of doping tests that Chinese athletes have undergone this year. This is obviously inconsistent with the objective reporting that these media usually claim to have.

So, when The Washington Post published the headline "Chinese swimmers' Olympic doping scandal requires a response, not a dodge" in its August 4 editorial, as a Chinese media person, I would like to ask The Washington Post: Why are you avoiding the fact that Chinese athletes have undergone so many tests but have not had any problems?