[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3945 Introduced in House (IH)]
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117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 3945
To prohibit using Federal funds to refer to the head of state of the
People's Republic of China as ``President'' on new United States
Government documents and communications, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
June 16, 2021
Mr. Perry (for himself, Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Norman, and Mr. Gosar)
introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on
Foreign Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To prohibit using Federal funds to refer to the head of state of the
People's Republic of China as ``President'' on new United States
Government documents and communications, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``General Secretary Act''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The leadership of the People's Republic of China has
gone unchallenged in its perverse pursuits of human rights
abuses across decades, including in its commission of the
following:
(A) The Campaign to Suppress
Counterrevolutionaries, which killed 712,000 people.
(B) The Chinese Land Reform Movement, which may
have killed up to a million Chinese citizens.
(C) The Great Chinese Famine, a man-made disaster
that may have killed approximately 30,000,000 people;
of that total, it is estimated that anywhere between
2,000,000 and 3,000,000 people were beaten or tortured
to death.
(D) The crackdown of the pro-democracy Tiananmen
Square protests in 1989, which may have killed up to
10,000 people.
(2) In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has
continued its barbaric and uncivilized rule, including by--
(A) harvesting the organs of up to thousands of
Chinese citizens every year, many of whom are Falun
Gong practitioners;
(B) coercing over half a million Tibetans to work
in forced labor camps in the first seven months of
2020, and forcibly sending thousands of Tibetans to
areas within the People's Republic of China (PRC); and
(C) imprisoning up to 2,000,000 Uyghurs and ethnic
Kazaks and Uzbeks in ``re-education'' camps since April
2017, as well as condoning and facilitating the
practice of forced abortion, sterilization, and other
forms of sexual abuse on women imprisoned in these
camps.
(3) On January 19, 2021, then-Secretary of State Michael R.
Pompeo determined that the CCP has committed genocide against
the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious
minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
(4) Since late 2016, when the CCP escalated its ``Strike
Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism'', Xinjiang province's
criminal justice system has convicted and sentenced more than
250,000 people to imprisonment, often without the defendant
having committed a ``genuine'' offense.
(5) The blatant disregard that the CCP has for basic human
decency runs contrary to the well-functioning of an open and
civilized society, and responsibility for the ongoing genocide
in Xinjiang and human rights abuses throughout China must lie
with the head of state of the People's Republic of China.
(6) The title of ``President'' has often been utilized to
describe the office of the head of state of the People's
Republic of China, in both the United States Government and
private publications.
(7) Addressing the head of state of the People's Republic
of China as a ``President'' grants the incorrect assumption
that the people of the state, via democratic means, have
readily legitimized the leader who rules them.
(8) The head of state of the People's Republic of China
derives all power and authority from the CCP and is accountable
only to them.
(9) The bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission stated the following in the Executive Summary of
their 2019 report to Congress: ``If there were glimmers of
political opening in China, they have been firmly extinguished.
It is for this reason that this year the Commission made the
decision to start referring to Xi Jinping using the title by
which he derives his authority: General Secretary of the
Chinese Communist Party. China is not a democracy, and its
citizens have no right to vote, assemble, or speak freely.
Giving General Secretary Xi the unearned title of `President'
lends a veneer of democratic legitimacy to the CCP and Xi's
authoritarian rule.''.
SEC. 3. UNITED STATES POLICY.
It is the policy of the United States to--
(1) condemn in the strongest possible terms the horrific
human rights abuses being perpetuated and enabled by the
leadership of the CCP;
(2) urge all countries to do the same;
(3) recognize the deep friendship between the United States
and the citizens of the People's Republic of China, the first
victims of their government's cruelty; and
(4) honor the memory of all those who have died as a result
of the callous rule of the CCP.
SEC. 4. PROHIBITION ON USING FEDERAL FUNDS TO REFER TO THE HEAD OF
STATE OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AS ``PRESIDENT''
ON NEW UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS AND
COMMUNICATIONS.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Government
may not obligate or expend any funds for the creation and dissemination
of United States Government documents and communications that refer to
the head of state of the People's Republic of China as anything other
than ``General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party'', or
alternatively, as ``General Secretary''.
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