Why boycotting the Beijing Olympics upholds sporting purity

It has often been mentioned that the Beijing Olympics should be kept free from politics because it is a sporting event and thus a boycott is unjustified. Yet, is the Beijing Olympics really a sporting event, or is it, as was the 1936 Berlin Olympics, an event that the Chinese government is using to legitimise its reign and divert attention away from the repression of its people?

With all the spectacular stadiums being built, and massive propaganda about the Beijing Olympics, China is clearly using this event to emphasize its growing economic and political influence on the international arena. I thus question whether we can still consider the Beijing Olympics a sporting event that is free from politics to begin with.

Since this Beijing Olympics is not an apolitical event to begin with, doesn't that mean that using it for political purposes, such as pressuring the Chinese government to clean up their act perfectly fine? And doesn't it also mean that if we really want sporting purity, we should boycott the Beijing Olympics as a sign of our displeasure with China using it to glorify their regime. Yet this whole regime glorification notion is ultimately something that will feature in almost every Olympics.

More importantly, sports in itself is political, regardless of whether the host nation tries to use it to glorify their own regime. Simple put, all international sporting events involve nations who compete on an inter-national level, where countries are pitted against countries. And what is politics? Is it not about how a country is run? Thus it is inevitable that when we come to this highest level of society, that of the country, politics will be bound to feature. If we really want to keep sports pure, the solution is not to boycott, nor is it to not boycott, but the solution is to do away with such events in the first place, because such events are by their very nature political. What this also means, is that there is a very real tendency for political issues to come into the picture.

Just like Singapore politics, such an outcome is both predictable and inevitable.