BEIJING —Several months before the "Genocide Games," as that chilling nickname for these Olympics took hold, an American snowboarder reached out to Yahoo Sports to talk China. She'd been reading about the government's mass detention of Uyghurs; about forced sterilization and sexual assault; about crackdowns throughout the country. "These things are insane," she said, and she was eager to speak about them.
But not on the record. The Olympics, she said, were a "life goal." And activism, she worried, could jeopardize her pursuit of it.
"If I were to protest and become a big voice in this movement," she said, "China could block me from even going.