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As the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics comes to a close, human rights activists, politicians, and scholars of authoritarian influence find themselves faced with lingering questions. Was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) successful in leveraging the Games to burnish its image and discourse power on the global stage? Did a series of diplomatic boycotts prompted by Chinese authorities human rights abuses make a difference? After a successfully executed Games, will China be further emboldened to extend its surveillance and censorship regime beyond its borders? To help bring potential answers to these questions into context, were featuring some of the most relevant reporting and analysis published by news outlets and research institutions throughout the duration of the Olympic Games.

The Winter Olympics were held, again, in an authoritarian state, raising questions for human rights groups and many American corporations. PBS NewsHours Nick Schifrin reported on what advocates said about Chinas exploitation of the Games, as it tried to project the carefully crafted image its leader wants the world to see.

The Chinese government has a history of forcing people to make all sorts of propaganda videos and covering up what they have been doing to the people. Jewher Ilham, Uyghur Activist

Fourteen years after China first hosted the Olympics, an event often described as a pivotal moment for the countrys political trajectory, Beijing hosted the Games again. This time, they occurred during a surging pandemic, a new wave of lockdowns, multiple diplomatic boycotts, and international alarm at the disappearance of one of the countrys top athletes. ChinaFile asked leading China experts, including NED senior program officer Akram Keram, what the Beijing Games meant this year and to what extent they marked a significant juncture in Chinas relations with the world.

As Beijings abuses deepen and as Xi Jinping seeks to assert the Chinese governments power and influence beyond the countrys borders, some governments have demonstrated that they recognize the Chinese Communist Party as an ambitious force aspiring to remake the world in a manner more friendly to itselfand less friendly to human rights and democracy. Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch

Why boycott the Beijing Olympics? What could boycotts look like? Would China retaliate? Lindsay Maizland considered these questions ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as human rights groups and some politicians in Western nations pressured countries to boycott the Games over the CCPs human rights abuses.

Boycotts have impacts in a variety of ways that are almost always indirect, almost always over a relatively extended period of time, and sometimes counterproductive. David Black, Dalhousie University

Over the course of a 12-month period, countries such as China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have been criticized for human rights violations, will use prestigious sports events to polish their public image on an international stage. While sportswashing has long been a popular tactic, 2022 is a particularly concerning year because both the Olympic Games in China and the World Cup in Qatarthe two most-watched sporting events in the worldare being hosted in countries with markedly oppressive regimes.

This strategy has proven to be remarkably effective in overhauling these states public images and legitimizing their regimes. Karim Zidan, the Guardian

China analyst Sarah Cook identified five types of potential restrictions before, during, and after the Olympic Games: surveillance of athletes and journalists, reprisals for political speech and independent reporting, rapid censorship of scandals, stonewalling foreign journalists, and repercussions after the closing ceremony.

Chinas leaders might feel compelled to quickly suppress any number of unfavorable news stories, such as revelations that Olympic attire was produced with Uyghur forced labor, athlete complaints about an Olympic venue, or unsportsmanlike conduct by a favored Chinese athlete. Sarah Cook, Freedom House

Bonus: Beijings expanding efforts to shape global narratives go beyond simply telling Chinas story. Sarah Cook documented how the CCP leverages propaganda, censorship, and influence over key nodes in the information flow to shape media content around the world, and how nongovernmental actors are countering this influence while protecting democratic institutions. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English or Spanish.

Automated pro-China accounts flooded Twitter with spam-like tweets using #GenocideGames. The hashtag had initially been used by activists and Western lawmakers to raise awareness about human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Researchers said the tactic, known as hashtag flooding, was used to dilute the hashtags power to galvanize criticism of the Winter Olympics host nation.

The Chinese propaganda apparatus has been very focused on defending their image regarding the treatment of the Uyghur, while also promoting the Olympics. This hashtag is at the nexus of those two things. Darren Linvill, Clemson University

During a wide-ranging Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Politico ahead of the Opening Ceremony, a panel of experts weighed in on Beijings unprecedented, closed loop covid mitigation system, international concern over Chinas human rights record, threats to the safety and data privacy of competing athletes, and the perceived deaf ear of the International Olympic Committee and the Games corporate sponsors to these concerns.

The idea that the Games are apolitical is laughable. And yet that same justification is used to silence athletes [and] put in place rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter, which says that any political demonstration on the field of play or on the podium will be punished by the International Olympic Committee. [This] is used to facilitate the use . . . of athletes as pawns because if athletes cant speak up, theyre easier to use in whatever way you find advantageous. Noah Hoffman, Global Athlete

Bonus: For China, a Uyghur lighting the Olympic cauldron was a feel-good moment of ethnic unity. But to human rights activists and Western critics, it looked like Beijing was using an athlete (who later avoided foreign media) in a calculated, provocative fashion to whitewash its suppression of Uyghurs in the region of Xinjiang. Read more in the New York Times.

The extraordinary foreign commercial relationships that open societies have forged with authoritarian countries have enabled new channels for authoritarian control to limit expression in democratic societies. Facing pressure from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian regimes that leverage both political and economic incentives to induce censorship, private sector firms (including some sponsors of the Olympic Games) have walked back statements, altered their content, or altogether avoided topics that could be considered politically sensitive.

For foreign companies facing the prospects of official reprimand, legal troubles, consumer backlash, and financial risk, compliance with authoritarian censorship demands can sometimes outweigh the reputational benefits of enabling free speech and generating products that facilitate creative expression. Rachelle Faust, International Forum for Democratic Studies

There are many overlapping parts of Chinas security state, from media censorship and monitoring of online discussion to surveillance and control of dissident figures. China also employs methods of voice and image analysis developed by technology firms and a massive network of low-level volunteer informants on the lookout for suspicious or criminal activity. How much of Chinas surveillance apparatus would be targeted at Olympic athletes was hard to know. But the countrys intensifying domestic controls, brazen arrests of foreign nationals, and harassment of activists and journalists gave Western governments reason for concern.

The national security prism is now inescapable, especially for the lengthening list of groupsUyghurs, Tibetans, rights lawyers, feminists and foreign journalists, to name a fewconsidered inherently a danger to party control. Christian Shepherd, Washington Post

Bonus: China isnt just upgrading its domestic surveillance state; its exporting the technologies it uses to monitor its populace and control society at home. Samantha Hoffman describes how the PRC leverages emerging technologies and an active role in international standards-setting bodies to undercut democracies stability and legitimacy while expanding its own influence. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English and Spanish.

MY2022 () is a multi-purpose app required to be installed by all attendees to the 2022 Olympic Games, including audience members, members of the press, and athletes. An analysis of the app conducted by the Citizen Lab found security deficits that potentially violated not only Googles Unwanted Software Policy and Apples App Store guidelines, but also Chinas own laws and national standards pertaining to privacy protection. MY2022 also included features allowing users to report politically sensitive content and a censorship keyword list that, while inactive at the time of the analysis, targeted a variety of political topics such as Xinjiang and Tibet.

The knee-jerk reactions against Chinese apps and suspicions of their censorship and surveillance capacities are to a large extent warranted as there exists extensive documentation of security flaws, privacy violations, and information controls on apps operated in China and internationally-facing apps developed by Chinese companies. Jeffrey Knockel, Citizen Lab

Read more:
Censorship, Surveillance, and Human Rights: 10 Ways These Trends Intersect with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics - NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY -...