Chinese CBDC Prohibition Act of 2023

In 2021 testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, Yaya Fanusie, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, noted that China is pushing aggressively to become a global leader in financial technology, and the People’s Republic of China is in a position to launch the largest digital currency project of any major economy. Additionally, the Chinese central bank digital currency (CBDC) will provide the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with data on its users, and bolster the CCP’s social credit program, ultimately furthering the Party’s punitive control power over Chinese citizens.

On April 28, 2021, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “The [digital] currency that is being used in China is not one that would work here. It’s one that really allows the government to see every payment for which it is used in real time”.

According to Sir Jeremy Fleming, Director of the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters, “Control is also a major driver for Beijing as it seeks to build a centralized digital currency. Yes, it introduces efficiencies and new ways of settling payments. But the way it’s being implemented allows the monitoring of citizens and it forces companies to use the service. It might, in future, also enable China to partially evade the sorts of international sanctions currently being applied to Putin’s regime in Russia”.