Hangzhou Asian Games in China postponed indefinitely

The Hangzhou Asian Games in China have been postponed indefinitely because of concerns over the spreading Omicron variant in China. The 2022 Asian Games was scheduled to be hosted in East China's Hangzhou, a city in Zhejiang 200 kilometers from COVID-hit Shanghai, from 10 to 25 September. The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) announced on Friday that the new dates for the games will be announced at a later date.

As China battles a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and large parts of the country are under some form of lockdown, three major sports events to be held in China in second half of 2022, including the Asian Games, have been postponed casting a shadow to the global sports calendar, as well as some athletes' career.

The OCA added that as the 2021 Asian Youth Games, which was scheduled to be held in December 2022 in Shantou, South China's Guangdong Province, had already been postponed once, will be cancelled entirely, Chinese state media reported.

Also on Friday, the



International University Sports Federation (FISU) announced that the Chengdu 2021 World University Games has been again postponed until 2023 which had already been rescheduled for the summer of 2021 to June 2022 following the postponement of the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020.

Experts said, as the country's biggest city, Shanghai has endured lockdown for more than six weeks as part of the ruling Communist Party’s zero-tolerance approach to the virus, the government would not like to take any risk ahead of the most important political event, 20th party congress in the autumn this year.

Even though Beijing hosted Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in the beginning of 2022 to boost its image, it will avoid any such risk in the second half of 2022 due to the risks associated with the Omicron spread as President Xi Jinping has defended his dynamic ‘zero-covid’ policy and warned the detractors amid huge public discontent and online protests.