US Olympians will likely be forced to use Chinese tech linked to human rights abuses

U.S. athletes and attendees at the Beijing Winter Games will likely be forced to use technology linked to Chinese Communist Party repression thanks to selections by China and the International Olympic Committee.

The 2022 Games have been dubbed the “Genocide Olympics” by leaders and activists who believe the competition should not be held in a country responsible for a host of human rights abuses. The United States concluded that the CCP is conducting a genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang in western China.


The Chinese companies that attendees at the Olympics will likely need to rely upon for basic telecommunications, translation, and internet services are linked to China’s military, Uyghur repression, or China’s broader surveillance apparatus.

Telecommunications — China Unicom

The Federal Communications Commission banned China Unicom from the U.S. market last week, labeling the Chinese military-linked company a national security threat as it is set to be the telecommunications provider at the Olympics.

The FCC assessed that the Chinese government’s influence over China Unicom raised “significant national security and law enforcement risks,” including the risk of “espionage.”

The Beijing Olympics selected China Unicom Beijing for the key communications role.

The Treasury Department added China Unicom to the “Communist Chinese Military Companies List” in January 2021 and placed it on the list of “Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies” that June.

President Joe Biden labeled the company part of China’s “defense and related materiel sector.”

Leaders from both China Unicom and Huawei, as well as Chinese state-run media, have made it clear that China Unicom is working closely with Huawei and relying upon Huawei technology for the Olympics.

Huawei has been deemed a national security threat by the U.S. government and has been blacklisted in part for its key role in Uyghur repression and surveillance.

Wang Chuanbao, the deputy general manager of China Unicom Beijing, purportedly published a piece on Huawei’s website laying out how China Telecom made use of Huawei’s technologies to prepare for the Olympics.

Huawei’s blog posted another article in January in which China Unicom said that “we have deployed Huawei’s intelligent network management and control system” for the Olympics.

Translation Services — iFlytek

The official translation services provider for the Beijing Olympics has been blacklisted by the U.S. for helping the CCP spy on Uyghur Muslims.

Known as iFlytek, the voice recognition firm has a long history of assisting China’s Ministry of Security and local Chinese police in Xinjiang and elsewhere. The company announced in 2019 that it was designated the “Official Automated Translation Software Exclusive Supplier of Beijing 2022.”

The Commerce Department said in October 2019 that iFlytek was among more than two dozen Chinese entities “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance” against the Uyghurs and others.

Liu Qingfeng, iFlytek’s founder and CEO, is also a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the CCP’s rubber-stamp national legislature.

The company was named a national “AI champion” by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2018.

Fu Liting, marketing director of the Public Security Division at iFlytek, told the CCP-run China Daily that “we work with the police by applying our artificial intelligence.”

Human Rights Watch said in 2017 that iFlytek says it helped China’s Ministry of Public Security build a national voice pattern database to “solve cases” in Xinjiang and Tibet.

Liu has touted his partnership with Huawei.

The Washington Post revealed in December that Huawei, as part of a pitch to assist Chinese authorities in analyzing voices for “national security” purposes, made slides showing that an “iFlytek Voiceprint Management Platform” could identify individuals through a massive “voiceprint” database.

Cloud Services — Alibaba

The IOC chose Alibaba as its exclusive provider of cloud services at the Olympics, even though the Chinese tech giant is regarded by the U.S. as a possible national security threat.

Alibaba, founded by billionaire Jack Ma, has been the subject of a power grab by Chinese President Xi Jinping and has been implicated in the Chinese government’s surveillance of the Uyghurs.

The U.S. government has concerns about Alibaba’s possible threat to U.S. national security.

It was reported by Reuters in January that the Biden administration is scrutinizing Alibaba’s cloud services “to determine whether it poses a risk to U.S. national security” and whether China might use Alibaba’s cloud to steal U.S. data.

The IOC announced in 2017 that it was entering into a “long-term partnership” with Alibaba, with the company becoming the official cloud services and e-commerce platform partner for the IOC, as well as a founding partner of the Olympic Channel.

An executive order by President Donald Trump in January 2021 took aim at a number of Chinese applications, including Alibaba’s Alipay.

The Trump State Department announced a “Clean Cloud” effort in 2020 aimed at preventing data from being stored on “cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries through companies such as Alibaba.”

Daily Health App — My2022 and Beijing Financial

The health monitoring app that athletes competing in the Olympics have been told to use has significant security flaws and was developed by a company chaired by a CCP loyalist.

The My2022 app is owned by Beijing Financial Holdings Group, a state-controlled company founded in 2018. Beijing Financial’s chairman is Fan Wenzhong, who is also the secretary of the company’s CCP committee.

Everyone attending the Olympics in Beijing is required to submit their health status through My2022 each day.

Citizen Lab, a Toronto-based cyber research group, released a report this month concluding that the My2022 app “has a simple but devastating flaw where encryption protecting users’ voice audio and file transfers can be trivially sidestepped” and that “health customs forms, which transmit passport details, demographic information, and medical and travel history, are also vulnerable.”

The firm said My2022 also includes features allowing users to report “politically sensitive” content, with “a censorship keyword list, which, while presently inactive, targets a variety of political topics including domestic issues such as Xinjiang and Tibet.”

The IOC defended the app, saying two outside groups had assessed My2022 and found no security flaws with it, calling it “an important tool in the toolbox of the COVID-19 countermeasures.”

The IOC’s “Playbook” for the Olympics touted My2022’s “Health Monitoring System.”

Beijing Financial’s Chinese-language website touts the My2022 app owner’s close links with the CCP, with dozens of posts on “Party Building” detailing how the company is implementing CCP rules all the way down to “the lowest level.”

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