Olympic Games in Science & Technology

qingdao Cheering on state television Saturday night was frenetic as the Chinese speed skaters won China’s first gold medal. A popular microbrewery in Beijing even gave its guests a round of beer on the house. But it is at least as important as the sporting successes of its athletes to show the Chinese government that the country is also a world leader in terms of technology. That is why she gave the sports competition the nickname “Olympic Games in Science and Technology”.

Media around the world are showing videos from the Olympic village in which burgers are fried and packaged fully automatically by machines. The finished dish is lifted into the air with a special cable device and transported to the customer’s place. The robot service is intended to help reduce the risk of infection in times of a pandemic. But host China is also demonstrating how technologically advanced the country is. It is no coincidence that the “smart restaurant” is, of all things, the dining room of the media center. The pictures should go around the world. The US broadcaster CNN speaks appreciatively of a “futuristic experience”.

Restaurant in the Media Center at the Olympic Games

The finished dish is lifted into the air with a special cable device and transported to the customer’s place.

(Photo: imago images/Lehtikuva)

But the technical gimmicks when serving food are by no means everything. An armada of rolling robots disinfects, transports and monitors compliance – and warns those who don’t wear their masks correctly. You can pay with the virtual currency E-Yuan via app. The fast 5G mobile communications standard is available everywhere, and all data ends up in the cloud of the e-commerce group Alibaba.

The athletes’ beds analyze their sleeping habits, breathing, heartbeat and whether they snore. In the event of irregularities, the trainer can be informed. With the help of special plasters, the body temperature of the staff can also be checked. As soon as this exceeds 37.3 degrees Celsius, the disease prevention team is automatically alerted, according to Chinese online media. The built-in tracking function enables security forces to quickly find people with “abnormal body temperature”.

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A burger is prepared automatically

The Chinese government has given the sports competition the nickname “Olympic Games in Science and Technology”.

(Photo: imago images/Lehtikuva)

Are you like me? Did you smile about the burger frying robots? Paying by app also sounds very practical. But at the latest with the digital surveillance patch, a queasy feeling creeps up on you.

Olympic Games as a technological performance show

China is showing what it’s technologically capable of at the Olympic Games. But in an authoritarian system, these achievements are also used to control, to spy, and inevitably to oppress.

Precisely for this reason, mistrust of technology “Made in China” is growing in the West. Sports federations from the USA, Great Britain and the Netherlands have called on their athletes to only take disposable smartphones with them to China. Many Western companies that send employees to the People’s Republic have been doing this for a long time. Because it is not only the Olympic Games that show that China has reached the top of the world technologically in many areas – and it uses the technology in the interests of the communist state leadership: to maintain its power.

More on this: Games in the Bubble – How China is enforcing its zero-Covid policy even during the Olympics

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