China is determined to make the Winter Olympics go smoothly

CHINESE OFFICIALS like to call Beijing the “double-Olympic city”. No other can boast having staged both the summer games and its winter equivalent, the 24th iteration of which will open in the Chinese capital on February 4th. The winter games will arouse less enthusiasm, in China and globally, than the summer ones in Beijing in 2008. But for Xi Jinping, China’s leader, they are of great symbolic importance. They are also fraught with risk. Overshadowed by diplomatic boycotts, a potential war in Europe involving China’s close friend, Russia, and by Omicron’s advance, the event will fray nerves.

These are the first games on Mr Xi’s watch. State media point out how much he has been involved with them from the earliest stage, when China was preparing to submit a bid to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host them. Beijing won its bid in 2015 by a thin margin, gaining four more votes from IOC delegates than its rival, Almaty in Kazakhstan. That may be a huge relief in retrospect for the IOC: more than 200 people died this month in Kazakhstan, many of them in Almaty, in unrest that was triggered by rising fuel prices. But Mr Xi may now be wishing that Beijing had not been successful.