A bipartisan group of US senators were to revive legislation as soon as yesterday to counter Chinese censorship in the US, a new effort by US lawmakers to hold Beijing accountable for its growing efforts to stifle criticism beyond its borders, US Senator Jeff Merkley said.
US officials have complained that the Chinese government has increasingly sought to suppress opposition to the Chinese Communist Party by coercing US companies — from hotel chains and airlines to Hollywood film producers — to take pro-Beijing stances.
“We must monitor and address the impacts of China’s censorship and intimidation of Americans and our companies, so we can create a strategy to safeguard this bedrock freedom and hold those accountable who suppress and destroy it,” Merkley, a Democrat leading the effort who is soon to be chair of the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said in e-mailed comments.
Photo: Reuters
The bill is cosponsored by Republicans Marco Rubio and John Cornyn, as well as Democrat Elizabeth Warren. A similar bill was introduced in 2019, but stalled.
The new censorship bill would direct the US president to set up an interagency task force under the National Security Council to monitor and address China’s censorship or intimidation of Americans and US companies.
It would mandate a report with recommendations for “industries in which freedom of expression issues are particularly acute, including the media and film industries,” a copy of the proposed legislation showed.
The censorship bill is among a barrage of legislation to confront China, as deeply divided Democrats and Republicans in Congress find common ground opposing Beijing.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday said that he had directed lawmakers to craft a package of measures to counter China’s rise.
In 2018, the Chinese government compelled global airlines and hotel chains to change their online references to Taiwan to imply that it is part of China.
Former US attorney general William Barr last year said that Hollywood companies routinely caved to pressure and censored their films to “appease” China, which last year overtook the US as the world’s largest film market.
Entertainment companies did not respond to Barr’s allegations at the time.
NBA games were taken off the air in China for a year in 2019 following a Twitter message from a Houston Rockets manager backing Hong Kong democracy protests.
A Democratic Senate aide involved with the bill said that drafters recognized it was a sensitive issue for companies, and did not want to make bad guys out of “victims of economic coercion.”
“We want to help provide focus in the US government to address this problem,” the aide said. “In a certain sense, we are trying to help insulate companies from pressure rather than raise the temperature further.”
Some in Congress say that a task-force approach is not sufficient and call for a stronger response, such as making it easier for US employees to sue if fired based on pressure from China, or requiring US universities to disclose financial ties to Confucius Institutes, which are Chinese government-backed cultural centers.
US allies have also warned of Chinese censorship playing out at home.
Germany on Tuesday said that China had tried to intimidate Hong Kong residents living in the country since pro-democracy protests broke out in the territory two years ago.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS