BEIJING—With a parade of national flags and a final burst of fireworks in the stadium known as the Bird’s Nest, China on Sunday officially concluded a Beijing Winter Olympics that sought to unify the world but ended up highlighting its divisions.

Athletes competed for medals while the threat of war loomed in some of their homelands. The breakout star was not a Usain Bolt-like figure whose athletic feats transcended borders, but rather a U.S.-born Chinese skier, Eileen Gu, whose virtuosity on the slopes was accompanied by questions...

BEIJING—With a parade of national flags and a final burst of fireworks in the stadium known as the Bird’s Nest, China on Sunday officially concluded a Beijing Winter Olympics that sought to unify the world but ended up highlighting its divisions.

Athletes competed for medals while the threat of war loomed in some of their homelands. The breakout star was not a Usain Bolt-like figure whose athletic feats transcended borders, but rather a U.S.-born Chinese skier, Eileen Gu, whose virtuosity on the slopes was accompanied by questions about allegiance and privilege.

And as the closing ceremony drew the 16-day event to an end on Sunday, it reminded the world not only of China’s status as an economic and political superpower but also of its increasing global clout in sports and culture, a divisive giant that will lead medal tables and sway the economics of athletics for the foreseeable future.

Visitors at the Winter Olympics were allowed to convert foreign currencies into the digital version of China’s yuan. WSJ’s Jing Yang exchanges U.S. dollars to buy a cup of coffee to show how the central bank is trying to expand the e-CNY’s reach. Photo Composite: Michelle Inez Simon The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

In many ways, these Olympics were a roaring success for the host nation. The world had come back to China and played by its rules. Outsiders got a firsthand taste of its “zero-Covid” policy inside a bubble that mandated masks and daily testing—and that all but squelched transmission of Covid-19. Major protests over its human-rights record were nonexistent, at least within the Olympics themselves. Then, China went out and won the most Winter Games gold medals in its history, even beating out the U.S.

“From the government perspective, before it started, China already achieved its objective” just by getting to host the Olympics, said Xu Guoqi, a University of Hong Kong professor who studies China’s relationship with the Olympics. “Now, it’s achieved multiple objectives.”

It wasn’t always clear that these Olympics would go so smoothly. At home, the Olympics competed for attention with the plight of a mother of eight in rural China who had been found chained in a shed, sparking an outcry that captivated the Chinese internet for the past two weeks.

Athletes celebrating the closing of the Winter Games.

Photo: James Chance/Getty Images

“No amount of Olympic champions can win more hearts and minds than being kind to ordinary people,” read one image widely shared on Chinese social media, accompanied by an image of the five Olympic rings, one of which was replaced with a shackle.

And overseas, Western democracies, led by the U.S., declined to send diplomatic representatives to the Games. Among other reasons, they cited Beijing’s program to forcibly assimilate Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. China has defended its policies as necessary to counter extremism.

The most prominent foreign dignitary at the Olympic opening ceremony was Russian President Vladimir Putin, crystallizing global attention as he amassed tens of thousands troops along the country’s border with Ukraine. It was under Mr. Putin that Russia invaded Georgia—while Beijing was hosting the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics. In 2014, while Russia was hosting the Winter Olympics in Sochi, it was again Mr. Putin who launched Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.

The prospect of another Russia-initiated war prompted the most overt political athlete protest of these Olympics, when a Ukrainian skeleton racer held up a sign reading “No War in Ukraine” after a race.

The harshest criticism of China, meantime, came from double gold-medal champion speedskater Nils van der Poel, who called it extremely irresponsible to award the Olympics “to a country that violates human rights as clearly as the Chinese regime does.”

But Mr. van der Poel made those comments only after he returned to Sweden and declared his retirement, telling the Sportbladet newspaper that he didn’t want to say more because teammates were still in China. Mr. van der Poel didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The International Olympic Committee has said its stance is to stay politically neutral, while IOC President Thomas Bach has delivered only unreserved praise for China’s management of the event.

“The Olympic spirit can only shine so brightly because the Chinese people set the stage in such an excellent way,” Mr. Bach said during the closing ceremony.

Colorfully costumed performers dance at the closing.

Photo: Sarah Stier/Getty Images

The Olympic cauldron after the flame was extinguished during the closing ceremony.

Photo: Kyodonews/Zuma Press

Adding to China’s triumph was its nine gold medals, topping its own previous Winter Games record and surpassing its American rivals. In a twist, that feat couldn’t have happened without Ms. Gu, the 18-year-old San Francisco native competing for China, who helped put her adopted home country ahead with her two golds and a silver.

The U.S.-China rivalry fueled heated nationalist rhetoric that ensnared Chinese-American athletes, with detractors in both countries accusing Olympians of betraying or bringing shame to their countries, namely Ms. Gu for switching affiliations and Zhu Yi, another U.S.-born figure skater competing for China, who received online abuse after tumbling twice.

With the Beijing Games over, the IOC can look forward to what will likely be at least a decade of future Olympiads with less rancor over host nations’ human-rights records. The next three Olympic sites are in France, Italy and the U.S. The leading contenders for the 2030 Winter Games are also Western-style democracies, while Australia will host the 2032 Summer Olympics.

In a closing-ceremony ritual, China passed along the Winter Games to the next host nation, Italy. In the handover ceremony, two small children hugged a large globe above an image of cracking ice.

The handover ceremony’s director, Marco Balich, said beforehand that he wanted to put joy on display after the pandemic sullied both the Tokyo Summer Olympics and Beijing Games. But he said he wanted to balance optimism with a warning about the perilous state of the environment. “We have to take care of our planet,” he said.

Fireworks exploding over Beijing’s National Stadium at Sunday’s closing.

Photo: TINGSHU WANG/REUTERS

Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com, Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com and Jing Yang at Jing.Yang@wsj.com