When the Winter Olympics begin next week in Beijing, many in the cryptocurrency world will be watching. That’s because China’s new Chinese digital yuan, the first central bank digital currency in a major economy, is expected to see wider use during the games. The People’s Bank of China has stepped up testing of the currency. A digital wallet has already appeared in app stores.

Of course, this currency is still in a trial phase, but the Olympics, during which digital yuan is expected to be available to foreign athletes, offers a chance to expand its use.

It’s a test, but not just for China. Canada is creating a digital currency, though it says it may not issue one.

The U.S. is exploring the idea, though Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell seems ambivalent about it. Governments around the world are considering creating their own digital currencies. They will all be watching to see how China implements and executes the idea. And there is plenty to watch. Observers have already noted that such a digital currency would give China sweeping new powers of surveillance and population control. One U.S. lawmaker urged athletes not to use it. We may not get much meaningful information in two weeks, but the Olympics will mark the beginning of a new focus on China.

Governments around the world may change their attitudes toward central bank digital currencies depending on how the digital yuan is used and whether it is successful. No conversation about the digital yuan, of course, can avoid the macro and geopolitical perspective. China has long sought not only to bypass the dollar-denominated international financial system, but also to gain absolute control over its currency. Having been the target of new U.S. sanctions last year over activities in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, China undoubtedly considers its longstanding currency goals doubly relevant. The digital yuan represents a tool against American hegemony. But there is also a domestic aspect: the social and political implications of a central bank’s digital currency domestically. China’s digital yuan allows it to essentially peek at everyone’s spending, similar to how Bitcoin transactions are public.

The digital yuan can also be programmed. The government can theoretically issue money that expires after a certain period of time, or money that can only be used for certain goods, which can be used to incentivize the behavior the government is seeking. And just as money can be easily distributed, it can also be easily confiscated. In the U.S., Representative Tom Emmer has already introduced a bill to prohibit the government from creating its own central bank digital currency, calling it, among other criticisms, “a surveillance tool that Americans should never tolerate from their own government.” Of course, only five percent of bills introduced in Congress ever become law. A single lawmaker’s proposal, especially one whose party is in the minority, may not make much difference in terms of tangible policy.

Not to say that much of Emmer’s reasoning is based on conjecture. But he has articulated real and pressing problems. The idea of central bank digital currencies is being explored around the world, and only small economies have launched digital currencies, but mostly symbolically. Much of the discussion is still centered on theory. How would such a digital currency actually function in a large economy? China’s implementation of its digital yuan provides the first practical example. If China transfers to the digital yuan the same old methods of state control and surveillance that it has long practiced, the world will take notice.

Just as the breakaway island of Taiwan gained a new aversion to reunification after observing the severe restrictions on political freedom in Hong Kong, so too may governments around the world take a dim view of the CBDC idea. For China, obviously, much depends on this Olympic challenge, which the whole world is watching. But how China’s citizens use the digital yuan over the long term will have larger implications for central banks around the world.