Madrid, 6 (Europe Press)

The US government plans to announce this week that no senior US officials will attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, a diplomatic boycott that will not in principle involve changes in the sports field but is unprecedented since 1980.

Therefore, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, the United States politically distanced itself from the Moscow Olympics. Now, Washington wants to show its disapproval of Chinese policies by refusing to send any political representative to the upcoming sporting event, according to sources cited by CNN.

US President Joe Biden himself admitted in November that a diplomatic boycott was on the table, after prominent voices from major parties, including Democrat Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, asked for it.

Tensions between the United States and China have been steady in recent years, and in fact, Biden has not invited the Asian giant to the democracy summit he is organizing this week. One major US blame relates to the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, although it has also criticized the crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.

The official Chinese press has in recent weeks echoed the boycott threats that came from the United States as well as other countries from the United Kingdom, and at the end of November the Global Times made it clear that Beijing would not invite leaders who even provoked diplomatic retaliation linked to the Olympics.