While athletes and support staff arriving for the Beijing 2022 Olympics still have the ability to use digital currency for payments at many venues, China’s CBDC’s international test launch is reportedly facing hurdles due to the pandemic.
Athletes, officials and journalists participating in the country’s Olympics are largely separated from the Chinese population by a quarantine “bubble” to prevent the spread of COVID-19, according to a CNN report released on Monday. These precautions, combined with the Chinese government’s decision to limit viewership, could result in far fewer people testing the digital yuan as a payment method at a major event.
“The Olympics would have been the first real chance for Chinese tourists and citizens to experience the digital yuan, but that door slammed when the Chinese government decided to severely limit the number of spectators at the Olympics,” said Craig Singleton, senior fellow at the Defense Democracy Foundation. “This decision alone, more than anything else, is likely to further delay the mass adoption of digital currency.”
The news outlet reported that roughly 11,000 people would be kept in a separate bubble from the Chinese population, with foreign and Chinese visitors outside the bubble not being allowed to attend the games at all. Despite these measures, Reuters reported today that officials have identified 119 cases of COVID-19 “among athletes and staff” over the past four days.
Snowboarding Olympic medalist tested positive for COVID after arriving in China https://t.co/SuhNIsJAGJ pic.twitter.com/gE4KV6MEDC — NBC OlympicTalk (@NBCOlympicTalk) January 28, 2022
Some 3,000 athletes from 91 countries are expected to take part in this year’s Olympics, but anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 could end competition for many who have come into contact with them. During the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo last year, which has similar entry restrictions, there were still 788 positive cases among athletes, staff and volunteers.
Even if the games were held without restrictions due to the pandemic, US lawmakers have called on Olympic officials to ban athletes from using digital yuan during competitions. In July, Senators Marsha Blackburn, Roger Wicker, and Cynthia Lummis wrote a letter to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee alleging that the Chinese Communist Party could use the CBDC to spy on visiting athletes both while in China and upon their return to the United States. States. The committee reportedly suggested that athletes leave their smartphones at home and only use “recording” phones while in China, as the former could be infected with “malware”.
On the subject: China wants US senators to ‘stop making trouble’ with digital yuan
Chinese officials began piloting the digital yuan in April 2020, distributing thousands of dollars worth of CBDC to residents of major cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Suzhou, and Chengdu. On January 28, it was reported that digital yuan transactions have totaled more than $13 billion since its launch. , and by November 2021, about 10 million merchants have activated digital wallets for CBDC. Earlier this month, the People’s Bank of China released its pilot project for a CBDC, a yuan-denominated digital wallet.
China’s CBDC rollout is frequently cited by US lawmakers both because of privacy concerns and the Federal Reserve’s potential lag in major technological innovations. Some US government officials have reportedly called the digital yuan a national security threat due to its potential impact on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
