West sees muck even in gold

The attempts of the West to discredit the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games were evident much before the opening ceremony on Friday. The Sochi Olympics is a sports event, but the West has used it as a political tool against Russia, much like it used the Beijing 2008 Summer Games to criticize China, says a Xinhua commentary.

The West's rhetoric is old-fashioned: alleged corruption, overrunning costs and human rights infringements. Even opinion polls favorable to Russia, especially the one by Gallup that said "Russians see gold in Sochi Olympic Games", could not change the West's attitude.

The run-up to the Beijing Olympics, too, had seen the Western media reveling in negative coverage, primarily because of ideological and political differences between the West and China.

No Olympics has been free of problems; Beijing had its share, so did London. Sochi has its troubles, so does Rio de Janeiro, which will host 2016 Summer Games. But the West should know that unnecessarily magnifying the problems is not what the Olympic Games are about.

"The Olympics are about building bridges to bring people together," International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said at the opening ceremony in Sochi. "They are not about erecting walls to keep people apart. Embrace human diversity and unity."

Such was the spirit that President Xi Jinping carried to Sochi. He said it is customary for the Chinese people to congratulate their neighbors on their joyous occasions.

China supports Russia for hosting the Sochi Games, manifesting its respect for sportsmanship and the Olympic spirit, and giving the vote of confidence to a close neighbor and friend. This principle, as part of China's "new type of relationship between major powers", should apply to other international affairs too.

That many Western leaders decided not to attend the Sochi Games opening ceremony shows that they were swayed by politics rather than humanity. Many media outlets, including The Economist, have stoked the memory of 1980, when almost all the Western countries boycotted the Moscow Summer Olympics.

But against the wishes of the West, the Sochi Games has begun on spectacular note, prompting an editorial in The Wall Street Journal on Feb 7 to say: "Soon enough, attention will turn to the athletes and competition, as it should." Perhaps the paper has realized its earlier criticism of the Sochi Games was inappropriate.