Beijing Olympics sponsor Procter & Gamble silent on Uyghur genocide after calling out US 'systemic racism'

Procter & Gamble (P&G) is remaining silent about China's genocide of Uyghur Muslims as an official sponsor of the 2022 Winter Olympics in the communist country, even though the company has repeatedly called out "systemic" racism in the U.S.

P&G, which reportedly opened a beauty salon in Beijing’s Olympic Village, along with the 12 other corporate sponsors of the Winter Games, has come under fire for downplaying their involvement in funding the event while the Chinese government continues its ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

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P&G has declined to launch a major U.S. ad campaign for the Olympics like in years past, the Wall Street Journal reported, but the company has also declined to weigh in on the rampant human rights abuses in China.

P&G finance chief Andre Schulten told the Journal the company is focused on individual athletes and leaves the marketing decisions up to individual market leaders.

"Every brand has their own context, there really is no global approach. It’s done tactically and individually by market," Schulten said. In China, "the focus is on the customer."

Companies have notoriously been reluctant to speak out against China out of fear it will damage profits. P&G, for instance, brought in $6 million in revenue from China in 2020, Bloomberg reported.

But speaking out on political issues is not out of character for P&G.

Last February, the company launched its Disrupt and Dismantle campaign, declaring, "racial inequality is the inescapable reality of America" and that "systemic racism" needs "to be challenged, confronted and changed."

Last March, the company launched its Widen the Screen campaign to "address the systemic bias and inequality in advertising and media."

In April, the company affirmed its support for preserving the "right to vote" amid a Republican-led effort in dozens of states to enact restrictions on mail-in and early in-person voting, among other measures.

"The act of voting is an act of public service," Chairman and CEO David Taylor said at the time. "Every effort should be made to support easy access for citizens to vote, not make the ability to vote more restrictive."

Boycotts aren’t out of character for P&G either. In 2017, the company temporarily stopped buying ads on YouTube over concerns of inappropriate content. P&G resumed buying ads on the platform a year later after saying it "worked extensively with YouTube to improve brand safety."

According to public records, P&G also lobbied Congress and the White House on issues related to U.S.-China relations and the Beijing Winter Olympics Sponsors Accountability Act, which would have barred federal agencies from doing business with corporate sponsors of the Games.

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., said P&G was among several firms that actively opposed the measure last month when he unsuccessfully tried to insert a related amendment into the National Defense Authorization Act, Politico reported.

"We saw [Olympic corporate] sponsors were clearly rattled behind the scenes in the leadup to the NDAA markup and some of these sponsors such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Intel, NBC and big-business entities such as the Chamber of Commerce were mobilized against the amendment," Waltz said in a statement.

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In July, executives from P&G and several other Olympic sponsors were grilled by lawmakers of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China on whether they’re putting profits above people.

In his testimony, P&G executive Sean Mulvaney affirmed the company’s "commitment to respecting and prioritizing human rights" but did not mention the Chinese government or allegations of genocide.

P&G did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Fox News’ Cameron Cawthorne contributed reporting.