FIGHTING SINO-ESPIONAGE ACT
Senate Bill
to fight Chinese Espionage
TITLE I: CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES
A. In this act, the term “Confucius Institute” means a cultural institute directly or indirectly funded by the Government of the People’s Republic of China.
B. An institution of higher education or other postsecondary educational institution (an “institution”) shall not be eligible to receive any federal funds unless the institution ensures that any contract or agreement between the institution and a Confucius Institute cultural institute directly or indirectly funded by the Government of the People’s Republic of China includes clear provisions that:
1. protect academic freedom at the institution;
2. prohibit the application of any foreign law on any campus of the institution;
3. grant full managerial authority of the Confucius Institute cultural institute directly or indirectly funded by the Government of the People’s Republic of China to the institution, including full control over what is being taught, the activities carried out, the research grants that are made, and who is employed at the Confucius Institute cultural institute directly or indirectly funded by the Government of the People’s Republic of China; and
4. prohibit discrimination against religious persons, including but not limited to Christians, Muslims, and Falun Gong.
C. This title shall take effect January 1, 2023.
TITLE II: CHINESE SPYWARE
A. The term “covered application” means the social networking service TikTok or any successor application or service developed or provided by ByteDance Limited or an entity owned by ByteDance Limited;
B. The term “information technology” means any equipment or interconnected system or subsystem of equipment, used in the automatic acquisition, storage, analysis, evaluation, manipulation, management, movement, control, display, switching, interchange, transmission, or reception of data or information by a federal office, bureau, agency, or other entity, if the equipment is used by such federal entity directly or is used by a contractor under a contract with the federal entity that requires the use of that equipment or of that equipment to a significant extent in the performance of a service or the furnishing of a product; this term includes computers, ancillary equipment (including imaging peripherals, input, output, and storage devices necessary for security and surveillance), peripheral equipment designed to be controlled by the central processing unit of a computer, software, firmware and similar procedures, services (including support services), and related resources; but does not include any equipment acquired by a government contractor incidental to a public contract.
C. Not later than fifteen (15) days after the date of the enactment of this Act, any covered application shall be prohibited from being downloaded on any federal information technology and any such information technology already containing a covered application shall be removed.
Minor amendment to fix wording issues