At the bottom of the slope where snowboarders will compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, an electronic sign cycles through ads for companies such as Samsung and Audi. Coca-Cola’s cans are adorned with Olympic rings. Procter & Gamble has opened a beauty salon in the Olympic Village. Visa is the event’s official credit card.
U.S. President Joe Biden and a handful of other Western leaders may have declared a "diplomatic boycott” of the Winter Games, which begin next week, but some of the world’s most famous brands will still be there.
The prominence of these multinational companies, many of them American, has taken the political sting out of the efforts by Biden and other leaders to punish China for its human rights abuses, including a campaign of repression in the western region of Xinjiang that the U.S. State Department has declared a genocide.