The U.S. should stage a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing to call out China for exerting control over Taiwan, according to former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley.
“The last Olympics that they had [in 2008] was their coming out. That’s how they saw it. They were introducing themselves to the world,” Haley, who served under then-President Donald Trump, told House GOP members behind closed doors Wednesday, The Hill reported.
“This next Olympics, if it goes unscathed, this is their way of showing that they are now the superpower of the world.”
Haley’s remarks to the Republican Study Committee emphasized the U.S. cannot allow China to exert control over Taiwan, or else “it’s all over.”
“And if we don’t boycott, if we don’t do something to really call them out, mark my words: Taiwan is next,” Haley said, The Hill reported. “And if they take Taiwan, it’s all over, because they will think that gives them free rein to grab any territory, not in the region, but anywhere they want to go.”
A Beijing 2022 Olympics boycott needs to come from allies like India, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Canada, Haley told the committee.
Haley added a rebuke of the G-7 leaders’ weak joint statement with President Joe Biden on denouncing China’s human-rights abuses, saying the statement should have recognized the East Asian island as a “sovereign country” outside the rule of China and its Communist Party.
Notably, Haley was not challenged regarding her criticism of then-President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, but she did reject the racially tinged comments of her successor at the U.N., Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Thomas-Greenfield had said the United States’ “original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”
“I had always proudly never spoken against a successor, in the governor’s office and as ambassador, but I did speak out against [Thomas-Greenfield] because I was sick to my stomach when I saw her give that speech that said America is a racist country,” Haley said, The Hill reported.
“Because what she may not realize, in one speech, she weakened us in the eyes of the world. They loved that; they loved that she did that. And so, I just have to say that that was a real disappointment.”
Haley came back to China, however, with regard to forced technology transfer to its Communist regime, according to The Hill.
“Think about the health data they have; think about the financial data they have; think about the surveillance actions they have on all of us,” Haley said, The Hill reported. “Now think that that’s in the hands of the Chinese military. The way President Xi [Jinping] sees it is, whoever owns the data rules the world.”
