Title: General Secretary Act
Policy area: International Affairs

Summary:
General Secretary Act
This bill prohibits the federal government from creating or disseminating documents that refer to China's head of state as anything other than General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party or General Secretary.

[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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