he 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games was initiated in a bustling show of fireworks that drew a marvelous picture of pageantry in the cold and snowy night sky of Beijing.

As frustrating news on the resurgence of COVID-19 pandemic in the form of its omicron strain seize the media ever since the end of 2021, and people all over the world are increasingly shocked and anxious with the continuously rising losses and tolls, the initiation of Beijing Winter Olympics offers a precious occasion to relax the intensely pulled nerves of both common citizens and political leaders worldwide.

Furthermore, when a large number of policy-makers and experts have been harshly criticizing or remorsefully introspecting over globalization since this pandemic broke out more than two years ago, connecting the sweeping proliferation of COVID-19 with the progressing of globalization, which is now viewed as ruthless and reckless, the 2022 Beijing Olympics may offer a rare opportunity for the world to consider a renovation of globalization through some new form or mechanism. 

First, Beijing’s meticulous and scrupulous administration of pandemic prevention and disease control might provide a useful reference for policy-makers all over the world when they are faced with a dilemma between promoting exchanges with the international community and managing public health risks created by the unpredictability of pandemics. Nowadays sports events have become a flourishing industry closely connected to globalized commerce, so every Olympic games would be a platform on which a diversity of business institutions and media professionals compete for profits and fames. Under such circumstances, it is very easy for the host country of an international sport game to bump into a chaos if it is to embrace the globalized practice of athletic games.

On this 2022 Beijing Winter Games, a strenuous effort has been made to create a pandemic prevention system that is aimed at reducing public health risks as far as possible through an efficient guidance of the inflow and outflow of people, goods, and information. Employing the latest AI and ICT technologies and putting into use the most advanced equipment and facilities, the hosting party in Beijing has established an orderly operating system that is able to resolve any emerging disruption from the highly complex proceeding of games.

In this way, the hosting party has the capacity to prevent any pandemic-related risk from developing into a large-scaled contagion. The endeavors in Beijing’s winter Olympics are maintaining the momentum of globalization while at the same time averting some of the defects brought by the globalized cross-border and interpersonal contacts, such as virus.

Second, the 2022 Beijing Winter Games sets up a multi-layered platform and generates a dynamic for a new-type of globalization, which is not based on pure business competition, but founded on a flexible mechanism of consultations, coordination, and consociations in parallel with normal economic race. In other words, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is not only an arena of sport contests, but also a site for different countries to carry forward coordinative international development, advocate for multilateralism, and improve global governance.

On the grand opening ceremony of this games, a warm greeting was presented by Chinese leaders to all the foreign political leaders and diplomats participating in the ceremony, creating a rare atmosphere of globe-wide cooperation and international solidarity. In the second day, Chinese leaders held a number of meetings with executive leaders or heads of state of many countries, deliberating with them on important matters for sustaining the advance of multilateral cooperation on regional or global governance, such as international cooperation for vaccine development, production, and distribution, joint-investment on infrastructure projects in less developed areas, or more strategic interactions to construct collaborative frameworks for inter-regional or trans-regional governance.

It is amazing that Chinese and foreign leaders are taking full advantage of this once-in-four-year occasion to hold intensive talks beside the sprots arena of Olympic Games. They are actively exchanging ideas and opinions and exploring possibilities to expand their bilateral or multilateral collaborations on regional and global affair.

In this sense, the Beijing Winter Olympics works as an extraordinary platform to sustain and develop global solidarity and cooperation through a complex multi-layered structure, of which the basic level is athletic contests, while the higher levels consist of a series of diplomatic and political meetings or contacts on formal or semi-formal occasions brought by the games. This is a splendid innovation created by China’s diplomacy and contributes to a more rational movement of globalization. 

Globalization has encountered unprecedented frustrations and setbacks in recent years because its indulgence on unscrupulous capitalism is hastening enormous rich-poor gaps in many countries and creating globe-wide calamities in public health, environment, or international order. The world is in urgent need of a new-type of globalization that would distribute wealth more fairly and justly among all social groups, bring more opportunities and resources to underdeveloped regions, and promote better governance on global issues. Sensible leaders and wise scholars all look forward to a new type of mechanism or dynamic that is able to both sustain the huge benefits brought by the globalized economy and social lives and meet the increasing social demands for equality and justice.

Now, as the 2022 Beijing Olympics opens new avenues of international consultations and deliberations for global-wide cooperation and coordination, side by side with the athletic race tracks, a new-type of globalization might be forming beyond the visible horizon.

The author, Dr. Jin Hua, is a professor at the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies, Shanghai International Studies University (SAGGAS, SISU).