China’s embassy in Japan and government spokesperson Hua Chunying have promised that there will be support for Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu at next year’s Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, after the skater’s fans called on Chinese fans to support him as foreign fans are banned.
Following the announcement on Thursday that the Beijing Games will not be open to overseas fans, Japanese social media users expressed their disappointment at not being able to travel and called on fans in China to support the two-time Olympic gold medallist.
The Chinese embassy in Japan then sent a tweet from their official Twitter account promising support for the skater.
“The voices of our fans have also arrived here. During the Beijing Winter Olympics session, we will firmly support the Japanese team with Japanese people living in China and Japanese volunteers at the tournament,” the account wrote on Thursday.
This captioned a tweet sharing the headline from a Mainichi newspaper article on Hanyu: “Hanyu fan ‘local support, entrusted to Chinese people’ Beijing Olympics, seeing off overseas customers”.
China spokesperson Hua Chunying, Director of the Foreign Ministry Information Department of China, then added their support in response to the embassy’s tweet.
“To all the fans of Yuzuru Hanyu, I saw a voice saying, ‘We will entrust the local support to the Chinese people.’ Please choose for me! And thank you for your understanding of China‘s support for the novel coronavirus!” she wrote in Japanese.
“We will firmly support athletes from all over the world, including Japan, at both the Winter Olympics and Para. Following the Tokyo Olympics, we will do our best for the success of the Beijing Winter Olympics!”
Chinese netizens have shown their support to Hanyu before.
In 2019 they expressed their sympathy to the skater when he won silver at the Grand Prix Final on his 25th birthday.
The hashtag “Feel Sorry for Yuzuru Hanyu” racked up more than 290 million views on China‘s Twitter-like Weibo after US skater Nathan Chen beat the Japanese superstar to gold.
Fans also shared messages of support for Hanyu at the time.
There were almost no fans at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games this summer and there will be none from overseas in Beijing, though local fans are expected to be allowed to buy tickets.
Beijing will have even stricter Covid-19 protocols than Tokyo, the IOC revealed this week.
“Games participants who are not fully vaccinated will have to serve a 21-day quarantine upon arrival in Beijing,” the IOC said in a statement.