⚠️ HRF CBDC ⛓️🪙 alert from HRF for China (29-FEB-2024)

🗝️ℹ️ (Key Information)

CBDC Status: Launched

CBDC Launch: 2020-04-01

CBDC Model: Retail

CBDC Issued: ¤1,810,000,000

Inflation Rate: 1.97%

One-Sentence Summary:

🇨🇳's central bank digital currency (CBDC), despite being touted as a pilot, substantially outpaces others globally in terms of accessibility and usage, while posing significant concerns on human rights and civil liberties.

1. 🇨🇳's CBDC might appear misleadingly named as a pilot, as it's largely open to public use unlike other nations' yet-to-deploy CBDCs.

2. Initiated back in 2014, the People’s Bank of 🇨🇳's digital yuan research project brought significant financial institutions onboard by 2017, and by 2020, it was publicly piloted in four cities.

3. Selected citizens in four 🇨🇳 cities accessed digital yuan through a lottery, spending the equivalency of millions in USD at numerous locations; by the close of 2021, 261 million users and 8 million merchants had made $13.8 billion worth of transactions.

4. As of March 31, 2022, the CBDC was further extended to multiple cities accompanied by incentives to boost adoption; by year-end, about 13.61 billion yuan ($1.81 billion) was reportedly in circulation, yet usage seemed unexpectedly low according to a former director at the People's Bank of 🇨🇳.

5. The CBDC is used through a mobile app allowing for basic banking functions though individuals are restricted on how much they can hold based on disclosed personal information.

6. Collaborating with the Bank for International Settlements on Project mBridge, the People’s Bank of 🇨🇳 seeks to solve issues with cross-border payments while retaining monetary and financial stability.

7. CBDC development in 🇨🇳 predated Facebook's Libra introduction and is seen as a tool to combat the rise of cryptocurrency, alongside expanding state surveillance and control over the population.

8. As per reports from U.S. Department of State, 🇨🇳 for its abuses of human rights and civil liberties, the implementation of a CBDC could further compromise the risks to financial privacy and financial freedom.

9. 🇨🇳's extensive surveillance mechanism could grow more potent with a CBDC, targeting protestors and carrying out persecution such as forced internment or sterilization.

10. Alongside extensive censorship of media and online platforms, a CBDC could empower the state to cut-off dissenting voices and control individual finances to a greater extent.

Hashtags:

#HumanRights #PrivacyRights #FinancialFreedom

Question:

Given the potential risks and implications raised by 🇨🇳's CBDC on individual privacy and freedom, how should international organizations and governments respond, keeping in mind the balance between financial innovation and preservation of civil rights?

Disclaimer: This is an AI-generated summary of the original text from HRF, forigve fuck-ups plox. If you find it useful, ⚡ the Tracker Bot because the AI and Cloud bits are not free to run.

Source of data: https://cbdctracker.hrf.org/home (npub1zhqcda52mrvcc0vkwegwsp5xtpk6l6x5kqx85f06tu9lw5h6xx0scch0dw)

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