The ceremony ended with a member of China's Uighur minority - whose treatment is the focus of international human rights criticism - helping to light the Olympic cauldron.
USA TODAY Network/Sipa USA
The lighting of the stadium cauldron by the last athlete in the torch relay, their identity kept secret until the last moment, usually provides the climax at the end of the Olympic opening ceremony, and this one proved especially significant.Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a 20-year-old cross-country skier born in Altay in the western Xinjiang region, lit the flame along with Nordic combined athlete Zhao Jiawen.
With China still sticking to a "zero Covid" policy despite the Omicron variant spreading fast across the globe, organisers decided last month not to sell tickets to the public, kept outside a "closed loop" of competitors and other personnel. The Russian leader - who hosted his own Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, days before sending troops to seize Ukraine's Crimean peninsula - thanked Mr Xi for inviting him, adding: "We know first-hand that this is a huge job."
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