Beijing Olympics get political with Taiwan, Uyghur questions

By STEPHEN WADE and GRAHAM DUNBAR
AP Sports Writers

BEIJING (AP) — For two weeks and more at daily news briefings, China’s stance on questions about its politics and policies has been straightforward: It’s the Olympics, and we’re not talking about these things. That changed at the Beijing organizing committee’s last regularly scheduled daily news conference just three days before the end of the Games. The persistent and polite refusal to answer questions gave way to the usual state of affairs at news conferences with Chinese officials. The calibrated answers about the country’s most sensitive situations took center stage with topics that include the Uyghur population of the Xinjiang region, or Taiwan.