“Nobody cares” about Australia’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese government said on Wednesday after Canberra announced it would not send diplomatic representatives to the event.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday that his country would send athletes but not an official delegation to the Olympics in February, adding to the diplomatic boycott the United States announced on Monday in defense of human rights.
Asked during a press conference, the spokesman for Chinese diplomacy, Wang Wenbin, assured that his country had never intended to invite Australian authorities.
“Nobody cares whether they come or not,” he said. “His political maneuvering and his little tricks will not change the success of the Olympics at all,” he said.
Australia has had very difficult relations with China for several years, which accuses it of systematically aligning itself with the US positions.
The Canberra decision “shows in the eyes of all that the Australian government is blindly following the line of one country,” said Wang, without naming the United States.
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