Jen Psaki Says Athletes Will Attend China Olympics Despite Human Rights Abuses — Insists Keeping Diplomats Home Will Send ‘Clear Message’

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Monday that although the United States is still sending athletes to the Olympic games in Beijing, keeping diplomats at home will send a clear message of disapproval for China’s many and ongoing human rights abuses.

Asked about the Biden administration’s decision to keep officials at home for the the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Psaki told a reporter at the daily White House press briefing that it was not necessarily a “diplomatic” boycott, saying that phrase hearkens “back to 1980,” the first year that Communist China participated in the Olympics after a decades-long boycott in protest of Taiwan.

“Everybody can call it whatever they want to call it,” Psaki said. “I would just remind you that, often when you use ‘diplomatic boycott,’ that phrase, that brings people back to 1980. And we are not — the athletes will be participating. We will be rooting for the athletes at home.”

“But I think this is just an indication that it cannot be business as usual — that not sending a diplomatic delegation sends that message,” she added.

Asked later in the press conference whether the White House considering keeping athletes at home as an additional measure protesting China’s human rights violations — including its oppression of more than a million Uighurs forced to perform slave labor — Psaki declined to answer.

“I’m not going to get into additional considerations,” Psaki said. “All I can convey to you is where we landed and the decision that was made and why.”

At a briefing prior to Psaki’s press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian pledged retaliatory measures would be taken against the U.S. for moving to keep diplomats home, saying, “If the U.S. insists in willfully clinging to its course, China will take resolute countermeasures.”

Watch above via the White House.