US lawmakers don't want Olympic athletes to use digital yuan at 2022 games

Published at: July 19, 2021

Three United States senators have signed a letter urging Olympic officials to forbid American athletes from using the digital yuan during the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

In a Monday letter to U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee board chair Susanne Lyons, Republican senators Marsha Blackburn, Roger Wicker and Cynthia Lummis requested officials prevent U.S. athletes from using or accepting digital yuan, given their allegation that it can be "tracked and traced" by the People’s Bank of China, or PBoC. The three claimed that the Chinese Communist Party could use the digital currency to surveil visiting athletes and upon their return to the United States.

The senators said that the Chinese government recently rolled out new features for the digital yuan, giving officials the ability “to know the exact details of what someone purchased and where.” They cited the messaging and payment app WeChat as precedent, claiming the platform was “already being used to surveil, threaten, and arrest Chinese citizens.”

Lummis, Blackburn and Wicker requested a briefing on the topic for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation within 30 days. They urged the Olympic committee to work with federal agencies “to protect the privacy of American athletes from the Chinese Communist Government.”

Related: China aims to let foreigners use digital yuan at Winter Olympics in 2022

China started piloting trials of its digital yuan in April 2020, giving away thousands of dollars worth of the central bank digital currency, or CBDC, to residents in different cities. The PBoC also said it was exploring letting foreign athletes and visitors use the CBDC during the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, which would reportedly be the first such test by foreign nationals in China.

Though the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were delayed by a year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing is reportedly still on track in preparing for the winter games, scheduled to begin in February 2022. China’s National Health Commission has consistently reported fewer than 200 new daily domestic cases of COVID-19 since March 2020, but some reports have suggested the government is responsible for a misinformation campaign concerning the pandemic.

Tags
Regulation
United States
Digital Currency
China
Sport
Games
Cbdc
Yuan
Related Posts
US lawmakers issue warnings about digital yuan as Winter Olympics kicks off
With the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics completed and all competing athletes currently in China, two members of Congress are warning of the potential dangers of using digital yuan at the events. According to a Friday report from Reuters, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Feb. 3 expressing concern that the Chinese government could use the games to promote greater adoption of its central bank digital currency, the digital yuan. The country has been conducting trials of the CBDC since April 2020, later announcing …
Regulation / Feb. 4, 2022
China wants US senators to ‘stop making trouble’ out of digital yuan
The heat is rising between United States lawmakers and Chinese officials even before the lighting of the Olympic flame at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. During a press briefing on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian addressed U.S. senators’ warning letter to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee regarding the use of the digital yuan at the Olympic games next year. Calling for the U.S. politicians to “abide by the spirit stipulated in the Olympic Charter,” Lijian asked them to “stop making sports a political matter and stop making troubles out of the digital currency in China,” the South …
Regulation / July 21, 2021
China’s digital yuan is ‘a long way’ from beating USD says financial firm exec
David Roche, president and global strategist at Independent Strategy, believes that China’s digital yuan has “a long way” before it will become able to challenge the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, CNDC reports Nov. 2. According to Roche, China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC, could hypothetically beat the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, but it would take a “very, very long time.” The strategist reportedly emphasized that the euro accounts for a “miserable” 18%–20% of all global trade, while the Chinese yuan composes 2% of international trade settlements. He said: “Dethroning the dollar — which the euro …
Technology / Nov. 3, 2020
Bahamas strikes first with Sand Dollar amid US–China CBDC faceoff
The Bahamas, an island nation in the West Indies, made digital currency history on Oct. 20 with the official launch of a new central bank digital currency, the so-called Sand Dollar. It became the first country to roll out a CBDC available to all residents, and while the Bahamas is a small nation — with only 393,000 people — it appears to be an event of some global financial significance. Or is it? “It could be if it succeeds,” Ross Buckley, KPMG-KWM professor of disruptive innovation at University of New South Wales, Sydney, told Cointelegraph. “Other small island nations — …
Blockchain / Oct. 26, 2020
No one can refuse China’s digital currency, says central bank exec
China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) known as the digital yuan should be regulated in line with cash-related laws, according to a senior exec at the country’s central bank. In an opinion article on Sept. 14, Fan Yifei, a deputy governor of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), outlined the major regulatory principles for the operation of the digital yuan. the digital representation of the official currency of the People’s Republic of China. According to Fan, the digital renminbi is legally compensatory to the traditional fiat currency. In the article, the deputy governor outlined that the digital RMB is “mainly …
Regulation / Sept. 14, 2020