China was once an insecure country, but a lot has changed.

Not just the space station which is clean, tidy and accessible, nor an undisputed moon landing and return, nor the fact that it now has the world’s largest army and a bigger navy than the USA.

Not even the communications, because 5G is literally everywhere in this vast country. Nor the microchip issues because after China suffered a setback, it’s the US which is hurting from a self-inflicted wound.

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No, China has nothing at all to be insecure about with increasing wealth, the complete eradication of absolute poverty, stark reductions in crime and increases in life expectancy.

Which all lead to a country that is well managed, well governed and with a healthy environment. A good place to live.

Because of this, they’re now able to do something they couldn’t do 50 years ago; produce great athletes.

Many of those developments, and there are many more, exist – at least in part – because of one factor. That factor is US insecurity. The US pushed China into being self-sufficient and self-sustaining. Now they want to share China’s success and borrow some of China’s moon rocks, despite writing their own legislation to prevent that ever happening. They have a military which has a record of failure, or at best a record of not succeeding, and they have an industry, not specifically, but including their military industry, which, by their own admission, relies on the adversary they’ve created to survive.

Lance Armstrong was the greatest cyclist in history, until it was confirmed he was a drug cheat, his excuse at the time was that everyone was doing it, he wasn’t just a cheat, he was the best of all of them.

It’s very sad that today, in the US, we see a nation that reflects those fallen values, an entire government that is prepared to cheat to remain in a position of primacy, a position their predecessors earnt but, now, like an ageing athlete, are not strong enough to keep. The US has found it can’t maintain hegemony through skills, experience or prowess and has decided that cheating in the global arena, in trade, military and economics, is the best way forward and then, when that fails too, hobbling the opposition is the fallback strategy.

Waking athletes up at 5am on the day of a competition, is not fair or reasonable, testing an athlete more than once in a day is not fair or reasonable, being tested 7 times a day is downright abusive and when all these tests are finished, what’s even more unreasonable is the lack of acceptance of the results.

The US has questioned WADA, the Canadian based World Anti-Doping Agency about how Chinese swimmers were allowed to continue competing after being tested for a banned substance a year ago. China informed WADA of this situation, it happened during a training session, in China, during the Covid Pandemic and WADA were not present at the training camp.

Note the important part of the story, it happened in China, and the Chinese anti-doping agency informed WADA. WADA investigated and cleared the swimmers because the kitchen of the hotel was found to be tainted with the same banned substance. Now, both the White House, and the US Anti-Doping Agency want answers to questions that have nothing to do with them.

Furthermore, the US has now opened a criminal investigation and wants to issue arrest warrants for people they deem guilty of cheating in sports, but here’s the rub, they aren’t interested in pursuing US Athletes, only the Chinese.

Just imagine, what would happen if China or Russia issued an arrest warrant for every American cheat, there would be an outcry in the English language media and the Chinese and Russian courts would be full because the USA have made an art form out of cheating any and every system they’re in.

What many didn’t know until a supposed Russian hack in 2016 is that, like lobbying legalized corruption, Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) legalize taking banned substances in sport and the US have taken advantage of it. The US team is awash with athletes who need their TUEs. Between 2014-16, there was an increase in applications for TUEs with 63 percent of those issued being to just three countries: USA, Australia and France.

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Is it possible that such countries have such seriously ill people performing at the very peak of the world’s athletic tables?

But let’s consider for a moment what the US is actually contemplating: they want to issue arrest warrants for people who have not only committed no crime, but have actually been tested and then exonerated by WADA as being innocent. Then, just so they can make more of a media circus of the entire spectacle, the US have subpoenaed the head of the International Swimming Federation to appear before their Criminal Investigation, for an alleged crime that didn’t happen in the US, didn’t happen under any US jurisdiction nor were they crimes against any US national and in fact, are not even crimes at all because there are no criminal statutes in the world for people cheating at sport, the US want to make it a crime but only if the defendant is Chinese or Russian. WADA, for the record describes the allegations as “highly charged, politically motivated criticism.”

Western media however, is full of outrage about how the impossible has occurred, an impoverished nation just a generation ago, has overtaken the leaders in sport as well as every other measurable economic and lifestyle metric. The only response left available to the US is to double down and do their best to “hobble the competition” in every field they can because, if the recent hacked and leaked information about the US use of TEUs is to be relied upon, they are already the world’s greatest sporting cheats and this is yet another of their deflection tactics to point critics in another direction.

Jerry Grey is a former British Police officer who was a general manager in a multi-national security company based in Australia for 17 years. He has lived, worked, travelled extensively and studied in China for almost two decades. He holds a Master Degree in cross cultural change management. 

Jerry Grey is a freelance writer living in Southern China's Guangdong province.

The article first appeared at PEARLS & IRRITATIONS website: https://johnmenadue.com/will-the-real-olympic-cheats-please-stand-up/

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.