Olympics 2022: US legislators forbid American athletes from using Digital Yuan
2 min readTL;DR Breakdown
- US legislators wants to stop American athletes from using digital yuan in Olympics 2022
- Legislators allege digital yuan can be tracked and traced by china
- Legislators says new features has been deployed on WeChat to survil and arrest China citizens by Chinese govt
Three US senators have signed a letter for officials at the Olympics 2022 event to forbid American athletes from using the China Central Band Digital currency (Digital Yuan).
The letter on Monday was sent to US Olympic and Paralympic Committee board chair Susanne Lyons. Senator Marsha Blackburn, Roger Wicker, and Cynthia Lummis requested that US athletes are stopped from using or accepting digital yuan.
China to test CBDC at Olympics 2022 vs. US allegations can be “tracked and traced”
The Asian country has announced plans previously that the digital yuan may be rolled out for wider use during the Winter Olympics. The currency has been tested across several states months before the start of the Olympics.
PBoC also said it was exploring letting foreign athletes and visitors use the CBDC during the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022, which would reportedly be the first such test by foreign nationals in China.
Although the US appears to be unsettled developing a CBDC for themselves, they are clearly unhappy about China’s digital yuan success.
In the letter by the three US legislators, they allege that the digital yuan can be “tracked and traced” by the People’s Bank of China. They also claimed that the Chinese Communist Party could use the digital to surveil visiting athletes during and after the sporting event.
In their allegation, they stated further that the Chinese government had recently rolled out new features for the digital yuan, giving officials the ability “to know the exact details of what someone purchased and where.”
The legislators also said that messaging and payment app WeChat was being used by China to surveil, threaten, and arrest Chinese citizens.
The three lawmakers were seeking a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation briefing on the topic and said its request is aimed at “protect[ing] the privacy of American athletes from the Chinese Communist Government.”
