BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the Winter Olympics open Friday night, inviting the world back — sort of — for the pandemic era’s second Games, this time as an emboldened and more powerful nation whose government’s authoritarian turn provoked some countries’ leaders to stay home.

China used its first Olympics in 2008 to amplify its international aspirations. This time, in a ceremony held in the same lattice-encased Bird’s Nest stadium that hosted the inaugural event of that year’s summer Games, it presented a more confident, and defiant, face to the world.

Athletes Zhao Jiawen and Dinigeer Yilamujiang delivered the Olympic flame. The choice of Yilamujiang, a member of the country’s Uyghur Muslim minority, was steeped in symbolism: Western governments and human rights groups say the Beijing government has oppressed Uyghurs on a massive scale.

With the flame lit, Beijing became the first city to host both winter and summer Games. And while some are staying away from the second pandemic Olympics in six months, many other world leaders attended the opening ceremony. Most notable: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met privately with Xi earlier in the day as a dangerous standoff unfolded at Russia’s border with Ukraine.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach addressed assembled athletes: “Dear fellow Olympians: Your Olympic stage is set.”

The pandemic also weighs heavily on this year’s Games, just as it did last summer in Tokyo. More than two years after the first COVID-19 cases were identified in China’s Hubei province, some 700 miles (1,100 km) south of Beijing, nearly 6 million human beings have died and hundreds of millions more around the world have been sickened.

The host country itself claims some of the lowest rates of death and illness from the virus, in part because of strict lockdowns.