The bill, unveiled Thursday and first reported by Reuters,
states that companies that own or control app stores "shall not carry or
support any app in [their] app store(s) within the United States that supports
or enables transactions in e-CNY." It is sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton,
Marco Rubio and Mike Braun.
According to Cotton's office, digital yuan could provide the
Chinese government with "real-time visibility into all transactions on the
network, posing privacy and security concerns for American persons who join
this network."
The Center for a New American Security, a Washington,
DC-based think tank, said in a January 2021 report that China's digital
currency and electronic payments system was "likely to be a boon for CCP
surveillance in the economy and for government interference in the lives of
Chinese citizens," noting that "transactions will contain precise
data about users and their financial activity."
The move comes after WeChat, a messaging and payment
application owned by China's Tencent with over 1.2 billion users, announced it
would begin supporting the currency earlier this year. Alipay, the hugely
popular payments app owned by Jack Ma's Ant Group, also accepts the digital
currency. Both apps are available in the Apple and Google App stores.
Apple, Alphabet's Google, Ant Group and Tencent did not
respond to requests for comment.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington called the legislation
"another example of the United States wantonly bullying foreign companies
by abusing state power on the untenable ground of national security."
While stopping potential national security threats related
to China is a rare point of bipartisan agreement in the deeply divided US
Congress, prospects for the bill's passage ahead of midterm elections are
uncertain. © Reuters
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