Diplomatic boycotts, Peng Shuai, Uyghurs, genocide, human rights and COVID-19 … these are words, terms and controversies that have defined the run-up to the Beijing Winter Olympic Games.
Now though, as the final days are counted down, athletes, organisers and Olympic officials hope the focus will turn to the sporting excellence on show and put the politicking aside.
Around 3,000 athletes from 90 nations will compete, while a handful of countries, including Australia, are diplomatically boycotting the games — meaning no government officials will attend.
Chinese officials have brushed off the snub, effectively saying, 'We didn't invite them anyway'.
China's most famous dissident artist, Ai Weiwei, told The Associated Press earlier this month: "The West's boycott is futile and pointless. China does not care about it at all."
While politicians will no doubt celebrate any medal-winning performances by athletes at the Games, every opportunity is being taken to remind Beijing of the Australian government's current stance.
Australia-China tensions
Recently Defence Minister Peter Dutton described as "deeply concerning" Tennis Australia's banning of T-shirts with the message "Where is Peng Shuai?", referring to the reported disappearance of the Chinese tennis player after a controversial social media post last November.
While it has been reported she accused former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual abuse, Peng has said herself she did not. Her protestations have not been believed.
Peng is now a symbol, whether she likes it or not, of the tensions between East and West playing out on the sidelines of these Olympic games.
Sightings of Peng eating out, presenting certificates at a kids' tennis camp, chatting with other Chinese athletes at sporting events and in conversation with IOC president Thomas Bach have done nothing to quash reports she is being held against her will.
"I think we should be speaking up about these issues,' Mr Dutton told Sky News.
"I'd encourage not just celebrities but tennis organisations, including Tennis Australia … other governments and other bodies, we need to speak as one voice on this."
Following the minister's comments, Tennis Australia reversed its ban on Peng Shuai T-shirts.
Meanwhile, China's new ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, flew into the country on Australia Day releasing a statement marking positively the 50th anniversary of China-Australia relations, but also noting the relationship was at a "critical juncture".
"As long as both sides adhere to the principles of mutual respect, equality, inclusiveness and mutual learning and firmly grasp the right direction of the development, the China-Australia relations will keep moving forward and make further progress," Mr Xiao said.
Talk of mutual respect seems to be more hopeful than realistic.
In an absence of any public welcome message from Foreign Minister Marise Payne, a spokesman for her said: "The Australian government welcomes the new Chinese Ambassador-designate to Australia and looks forward to engaging with him."
Uyghurs, Tibetans and others
Human rights groups have used the build-up to the Games to highlight the detention of up to a million mainly Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.
China says they are re-education camps, designed to stamp out terrorism and a separatist movement in the region. The US calls them forced labour camps. On December 23, President Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act into law.
Some are describing the Beijing Games as the "genocide Olympics".
Human Rights Watch said this past week the Beijing Olympic Games will begin "amid atrocity crimes", with over 200 NGOs signing a joint statement highlighting the treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hongkongers and religious groups and asking "for athletes and sponsors not to legitimise government abuses".
A people's tribunal, under the chairmanship of Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, was formed to consider allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity and torture against minorities in Xinjiang.
"Genocide means certain acts committed with an intention to destroy in whole or part of a national, ethnic or racial or religious group as such," Sir Geoffrey told The Ticket.
The Genocide Convention speaks of five distinct acts, ranging from mass killing to the forcible transfer of children. The People's Tribunal found no evidence of genocide in four of the five areas.
"In the case of the Uyghur Tribunal there was no evidence of mass killing," Sir Geoffrey said.
"The only one upon which we found sufficient evidence is imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
"And that we found proved by a number of methods – forced abortions, effectively forced birth control by insertion of irremovable intrauterine devices, and that happened on a widespread basis throughout Xinjiang … this has to be committed with an 'intention' … to destroy in whole or part.
"We made findings along this line, proof beyond reasonable doubt … the intention to destroy biologically by prevention of births, and the act of destroying by prevention of births."
The Chinese government publicly discredited the tribunal's findings, but Sir Geoffrey said it was possible the most powerful nation on Earth would still consider them – and international public opinion – in private.
"They do not want to be regarded as a pariah. And most importantly, they don't want their other interests – commercial interests, sporting interests – to be affected by things that could be corrected," he said.
The tribunal's conclusion in part reads: "Could the wonderful, diverse entity of China have expected better of itself? Could we have expected better of China?"
COVID and the closed-loop Games
By far the biggest threat to the success of the Games, in China's eyes, is that posed by COVID.
It has maintained its zero-tolerance approach to the virus, coming down particularly hard on even the smallest outbreaks in the lead-up to the Games.
The population of 14 million in the port city of Tianjin, just outside Beijing, went into lockdown in early January after 49 positive cases were identified.
When an office worker in Beijing tested positive to the new Omicron strain in mid-January the office block was locked down with those inside only allowed to leave after returning a negative test.
Driving Beijing's determination is the wish to do better than last year's delayed Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, where genomic testing showed there was no transfer of COVID from inside the Games bubble to the general population outside of it.
Last week, Games organisers said since January 4, when the closed-loop system went into operation, 106 people have tested positive, 42 of them infected while inside the bubble.
The closed-loop system means everybody at the Games will be isolated from the city's population.
Dedicated transport from the athletes' village and media hotels will transfer Games-accredited visitors directly to their events and back again, designed to limit interaction with others and eliminate any contact at all with the outside world.
Athletes, officials, and media will be tested daily, sometimes twice daily.
Volunteers and residents of Beijing working at the Olympics are expected to be required to go into a three-week quarantine at the end of the Games before they can return home to their families who, in some instances, live down the road.
It is still not known who will make up the "invite only" crowds, nor how large they'll be. Organisers have already said those privileged enough to spectate will enter and exit through separate gates to avoid any contact with athletes and others living inside the loop.
Creating a winter sport industry
China has made no secret of why it wanted to host a Winter Olympics, it is using them to kickstart an entire industry – making winter sport an activity for 300 million Chinese.
Unlike the Summer Games in 2008, used to signal an opening up to the rest of the world, the 2022 Games have been designed entirely to benefit the domestic market, with an investment reportedly worth over $140 billion. The aim is to promote winter sport as a viable option for locals, to grow winter sport tourism around the nation and to establish a National Ice and Snow Sports Facilities Construction plan.
According to reports inside China, the goal has already been reached before the Games have even begun.
Images of the venues are spectacular. The IOC has applauded the efforts local organisers have gone to in the pursuit of staging a green Games, despite most of the facilities being prepared almost entirely with man-made snow.
All venues will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy with the primary sources being wind and solar, and in a first for Beijing and the Olympics, ice venues will use natural and low carbon emission CO2 refrigeration systems.
Five of the six venues in Beijing are remodelled 2008 Games venues. One is the water cube, where Australian swimmers won gold in 2008, which has been renamed the ice cube and will host Australia's first-ever mixed pairs curling team, Tahli Gill and Dean Hewitt.
Big Air Shougang, home to freestyle skiing and snowboarding big air events at the games, has been built on top of a former steel mill shut down ahead of the 2008 Games because of the pollution it was emitting. It will remain as the world's first permanent big air venue.
Australia tipped for a top-15 finish
With a population of only five million, the success of Norway at the Winter Olympic Games is extraordinary. It has won more gold medals, and more medals overall, than any other nation. It has also finished on top of the medal tally more often than any other country.
Australia is no Norway, but the country is well represented across many winter sports with a core group of athletes who are expected to finish amongst the top place getters in Beijing.
Predicting any medal chart has become notoriously difficult as COVID has prevented some athletes from competing in international competition – including many from Asia and Australia.
Sports data company, Nielsen Gracenote, has done better than most – accurately predicting the top-10 nations at the Summer Games. For the Winter Olympics it forecasts Australia will finish in 15th position with two gold medals, a silver and two bronze.
Australia's strength lies in freestyle skiing and snowboarding.
Aerial skiers have won medals at every Olympics since Salt Lake City in 2002. In Beijing Laura Peel, the current world champion, is well positioned to become the country's third Olympic gold medallist in the discipline behind Alisa Camplin (2002) and Lydia Lassila (2010).
Australia has won medals in snowboarding at the past three Olympic Games. Belle Brockhoff and Jarryd Hughes are competing in their third Olympics alongside four-time Olympian Scotty James, forming the backbone of our most experienced boarding team ever.
Josie Baff is one of the debutants who will compete in snowboard cross. She comes into the Games as a 2020 Youth Olympic Games gold medallist.
Australia is sending a team of 44 athletes to the Games, 20 of them competing at an Olympics for the first time, 10 will contest their second Games, 12 will be at their third Olympics and two – snowboarder Scotty James and moguls skier Britt Cox – will become four-time Olympians.
The opening ceremony will take place in the Bird's Nest Stadium on Friday, February 4. One of China's most recognised film directors, Zhang Yimou, has been put in charge again after the success of his "running man" in 2008.
Suspended on a high-wire former gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast Li Ning appeared to run with the torch around the perimeter of the stadium roof before setting the cauldron alight.
Zhang has revealed little about the opening ceremony this time around, saying only that the cauldron will be lit in a way that is "unprecedented in over 100 years of the [modern] Olympic games".
No matter how the cauldron is lit, these Games have already guaranteed they will be remembered.
