China Eyes February 2022 Beijing Olympics for Digital Yuan Launch but Is It Still Viable Amidst COVD-19 and Rising anti-China Movements?

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus in its central city of Wuhan, China became a target of blame by the world. While Beijing hosts the 2022 Winter Olympic Games next February, it is doubted that many will visit the Asian country. This puts the plan to present the digital yuan to the world at stake.

Many countries, especially those in the West were green with envy since the Chinese economy grew so fast and surpassed Japan’s to become the second-largest, only after the US. Human rights activists, on the other hand, are constantly wearing black moods towards the Communist regime due to its unfair treatment of minority groups. 

Coronavirus, “more insult to injury”?

Things got even worse after a pandemic that claimed more than 3 million lives, shook the global economy and distorted the political and social aspects of the world starting in China in 2020. The economic recession as a result of COVID-19 is now considered the world’s worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) has constantly warned against calling the coronavirus “Chinese Virus”, “Kung Fu Flu” and other names that were thought to be stigmatizing against China and its people, social media has mostly been flooded with such negative sentiments since the outbreak of the virus.

“Wuhan Virus. Chinese Virus. Facts”, writes Sherwin, a Twitter user in response to the WHO post against the use of China-related names when describing the deadly virus.

The bitterness has not only been portrayed by social media users but top-level diplomats and governments have all joined the blame game and want China to “pay a price” for the damages caused by the pandemic.

“I’m very confident that the world will look at China differently and engage with them fundamentally differently than they did before this catastrophic disaster,”

former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said in an interview with a Washington-based media The Hill.

Beijing Olympics boycott and the future of the digital yuan

After hosting the Summer Olympic Games in 2008, Beijing is yet to host the 2020 Winter Olympics, making it the first city in the world to host both the summer and winter Olympics.

While hosting the Games could be enormously expensive, it seems like countries, both developed and developing have a different view of the occasion. Economists mainly anticipate an economic boom in a country after an Olympics due to the massive financial inflow.

While this argument could be true, Beijing’s case might be different this time with the increasing hatred from the world brought about by the coronavirus tragedy. It is only 10 months till the Beijing Winter Olympics happen in China, but many are casting doubts about the occurrence of the international event amid a pandemic and rising Chinese criticisms, mainly led by the US.

Digital Yuan might end up with the Chinese audience

China has been actively pursuing the digital yuan project for the past several years, as per the report by CoinIdol, a world blockchain news outlet. It is almost time for the long-awaited digital Chinese yuan to be presented for domestic use, but also the entire world. The regime is considering debuting the currency at the Winter Olympic Games as a gateway to catching global attention.

“For the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, we were trying to make e-CNY available not only to domestic users but also to international athletes and like visitors,”

Li Bo, People’s Bank of China (PoB) Deputy Governor mentioned at a recent CNBC conference held in the Island city of Hainan in Southern China.

However, with such a highly tense anti-Beijing agenda on the global stage, it could be another nail in its coffin as things already seem quite bad all across the world. There is a fat chance that countries heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic would like to visit China in the middle of a global tragedy it is accused of causing.

China has been blamed for human rights abuse, environmental degradation and lately, the outbreak of the coronavirus, among other faults. The blames on the Southeast Asian country have accumulated over time and could hugely impact its economy including its pet Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), also called the digital yuan due for launch soon. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics might see the least turn up in the history of international sports. Regardless, China is heads and shoulders above the rest of the world in pursuing the CBDC project race.