Biden issued an executive order last year on Central Bank Digital Currency, which ‘places the highest urgency on research and development.’
President Joe Biden issued a sweeping executive order last year on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which “places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.”
The Biden administration and its corporate media echo chamber want Americans to focus only on CBDC’s many benefits. But experiences in China, a nation that launched a digital currency in 2020, have shown that a CBDC considerably expands government power at the expense of individual freedom.
China’s digital currency, e-CNY, differs significantly from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. For instance, neither central banks nor governments have the power to program or manage Bitcoin. The total amount of Bitcoin was capped at 21 million by its mysterious creator. Such a finite supply gives Bitcoin its anti-inflation property. While Bitcoin transactions are transparent for all to see, users remain anonymous.
China’s central bank, however, controls the supply of its digital yuan and can dictate when and how people spend it. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese digital yuan is programmable, and “Beijing has tested expiration dates to encourage users to spend it quickly, for times when the economy needs a jump start.”
Users of the digital yuan do not have the benefit of anonymity, so they are traceable, and the government knows precisely when each person spends money and what they spend it on. The digital yuan gives China’s authoritarian regime another powerful surveillance tool to control the Chinese people.
China’s intrusive social credit system already monitors 1.4 billion Chinese people, and it subjects their behaviors to various rewards and punishments. Beijing has a broad definition of “bad behavior,” ranging from running a red light to being critical of the Chinese government’s policies. Even before the digital yuan’s issuance, those Chinese citizens who received lower social credit scores due to “bad behaviors” struggled to live an everyday life. Many couldn’t travel because they were unable to buy plane or train tickets, some were denied school or employment opportunities, and some pet owners even had their pets confiscated.
The digital yuan has enabled the Chinese government to reprimand human rights activists, religious practitioners, and government critics in new and terrifying ways: by instantly deducting fines from their bank accounts, confiscating their wealth, or banishing them from China’s digital payment system completely.
