The U.S. Senators of the Republican Party revealed a bill to restrict platforms that hold apps to enable transactions in China’s digital yuan. They have cited it as a concern for national security amid concerns that the payment mechanism could be used to spy on Americans.
Three senators, Tom Cotton, Mike Braun, and Marco Rubio proposed a “Defending Americans from Authoritarian Digital Currencies Act” on Thursday to resist the Chinese Yuan expansion into the country.
The clauses in the bill prohibit U.S based companies such as Google and Apple to launch apps that enable or support China’s digital Yuan or e-CNY.
“The Chinese Communist Party will use its digital currency to control and spy on anyone who uses it,” said Cotton in a statement. “We can’t give China that chance—the United States should reject China’s attempt to undermine our economy at its most basic level.”
The digital Yuan is the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) issued by the Chinese central bank to replace physical currency. As the digital currency is state-owned, it’s difficult to trust it for its global use.
China is looking for one or the other way to pump its digital Yuan at the global and local levels. Chinese technology behemoth, Tencent has updated its WeChat Pay wallet to include support for the country’s digital yuan in January.
The republican senators reasoned that prohibiting China’s digital yuan from being used in the United States would let the country to avoid “direct control” and surveillance of users’ financial transactions.
“We cannot allow this authoritarian regime to use their state-controlled digital currency as an instrument to infiltrate our economy and the private information of American citizens” republican senator Braun said in a statement