[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 3164 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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118th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 3164

  To state the policy of the United States with respect to religious 
   freedom in the People's Republic of China, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                            October 30, 2023

 Mr. Budd (for himself and Mr. Tillis) introduced the following bill; 
which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
  To state the policy of the United States with respect to religious 
   freedom in the People's Republic of China, 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 ``Combatting the Persecution of 
Religious Groups in China Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress makes the following findings:
            (1) According to estimates included in International 
        Religious Freedom reports issued by the Department of State, 
        Buddhists comprise 18.2 percent of the total population in the 
        People's Republic of China, Christians, 5.1 percent, Muslims, 
        1.8 percent, followers of folk religions, 21 percent, and 
        atheists or unaffiliated persons, 52.12 percent, with Hindus, 
        Jews, and Taoists comprising less than 1 percent.
            (2) The Government of the People's Republic of China 
        recognizes 5 official religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, 
        Protestantism, and Catholicism (according to an International 
        Religious Freedom report issued by the Department of State), 
        and only religious groups belonging to 1 of the 5 sanctioned 
        ``patriotic religious associations'' representing those 
        religions are permitted to register with the Government and 
        hold worship service, excluding all other faiths and denying 
        the ability to worship without being registered with the 
        Government.
            (3) The activities of state-sanctioned religious 
        organizations in the People's Republic of China are regulated 
        by the Chinese Communist Party, which manages all aspects of 
        religious life in the country.
            (4) The Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking to 
        control, govern, and manipulate all aspects of faith through 
        the ``Sinicization of Religion'', a process intended to shape 
        religious traditions so they conform with the objectives of the 
        Chinese Communist Party.
            (5) On February 1, 2018, the Government of the People's 
        Republic of China implemented new religious regulations that 
        imposed restrictions on Chinese contacts with overseas 
        religious organizations, required Government approval for 
        religious schools, websites, and any online religious service, 
        and effectively banned unauthorized religious gatherings and 
        teachings.
            (6) There are numerous reports that authorities in the 
        People's Republic of China have forced closures of Buddhist, 
        Christian, Islamic, and Taoist houses of worship and destroyed 
        public displays of religious symbols throughout the country.
            (7) Authorities of the People's Republic of China have 
        arrested and detained religious leaders trying to hold services 
        online.
            (8) There are credible reports of Chinese authorities 
        raiding house churches and other places of religious worship, 
        removing and confiscating religious paraphernalia, installing 
        surveillance cameras on religious property, pressuring 
        congregations to sing songs of the Chinese Communist Party and 
        display the national flag during worship, forcing churches to 
        replace images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures 
        of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and banning children and 
        students from attending religious services.
            (9) It has been reported that the Government of the 
        People's Republic of China is rewriting and will issue a 
        version of the Bible with the ``correct understanding'' of the 
        text according to the Chinese Communist Party. Authorities 
        continue to restrict the printing and distribution of the 
        Bible, Quran, and other religious literature and penalize 
        publishing and copying businesses that handle religious 
        materials.
            (10) According to International Religious Freedom reports 
        issued by the Department of State, the Government of the 
        People's Republic of China has imprisoned thousands of 
        individuals of all faiths for practicing their religious 
        beliefs and often labels groups of those individuals as 
        ``cults''.
            (11) According to the Department of Labor, the Government 
        of the People's Republic of China has arbitrarily detained more 
        than 1,000,000 Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in 
        China's far western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
            (12) It has been reported that the Government of the 
        People's Republic of China engages in transnational repression 
        activities such as relentlessly intimidating diaspora religious 
        communities and others with ties to China.
            (13) As of October 11, 2019, the Political Prisoner 
        Database maintained by the Congressional-Executive Commission 
        on China counted 1,598 cases with information on political and 
        religious prisoners known or believed to be detained or 
        imprisoned in China.
            (14) As of June 30, 2023, the Political Prisoner Database 
        maintained by the human rights nongovernmental organization Dui 
        Hua Foundation counted 2,897 individuals imprisoned in China 
        for ``organizing or using a `cult' to undermine implementation 
        of the law''.
            (15) The United States Commission on International 
        Religious Freedom (USCIRF) maintains a list of religious 
        prisoners of conscience who were imprisoned in China for their 
        religious belief or non-belief, religious activity, religious 
        freedom advocacy, and other related issues. Those prisoners of 
        conscience include--
                    (A) the 11th Panchen Lama, Gedun Choekyi Nyima, who 
                has been held captive along with his parents since May 
                17, 1995;
                    (B) Pastor Zhang Shaojie, a Three-Self church 
                pastor from Nanle County in central Henan, who was 
                sentenced in July 2014 to 12 years in prison for 
                ``gathering a crowd to disrupt the public order'';
                    (C) Pastor John Cao, a United States permanent 
                resident from Greensboro, North Carolina, who was 
                sentenced to 7 years in prison in March 2018 under 
                contrived charges of organizing illegal border 
                crossings; and
                    (D) Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant 
                Church, who was arrested and sentenced to 9 years in 
                prison for ``inciting to subvert state power'' and 
                ``illegal business operations''.
            (16) Authorities of the People's Republic of China continue 
        to detain Falun Gong practitioners and subject them to harsh 
        and inhumane treatment.
            (17) Since 1999, the Department of State has designated the 
        People's Republic of China as a country of particular concern 
        for religious freedom under the International Religious Freedom 
        Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.).
            (18) On June 17, 2020, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act 
        of 2020 (Public Law 116-145) came into force, requiring 
        reporting on human rights violations and abuses committed by 
        the Government of the People's Republic of China against 
        Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur 
        Autonomous Region and calling for the use of targeted sanctions 
        against officials of the People's Republic of China found to 
        have engaged in such violations.
            (19) On June 21, 2022, section 3 of Public Law 117-78 (22 
        U.S.C. 6901 note) (commonly referred to as the ``Uyghur Forced 
        Labor Prevention Act'') came into force, blocking products, 
        goods, and material originating from the Xinjiang Uyghur 
        Autonomous Region from entering the United States due to the 
        risk that such items were produced using forced labor.
            (20) The National Security Strategy of the United States, 
        issued in 2017, 2015, 2006, 2002, 1999, 1998, and 1997, 
        committed the United States to promoting international 
        religious freedom to advance the security, economic, and other 
        national interests of the United States.

SEC. 3. STATEMENT OF POLICY.

    (a) Holding Senior Officials of the People's Republic of China 
Responsible for Religious Freedom Atrocities.--It is the policy of the 
United States to consider any senior official of the Government of the 
People's Republic of China who is responsible for or has directly 
carried out, at any time, atrocities including arbitrary imprisonment, 
forced sterilization, torture, forced labor, and draconian restrictions 
on freedom of religion, expression, and movement against religious 
minorities, including Christians, Uyghurs, and Falun Gong, in the 
People's Republic of China to have committed--
            (1) a gross violation of internationally recognized human 
        rights for purposes of imposing sanctions with respect to such 
        official under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability 
        Act (22 U.S.C. 10101 et seq.); and
            (2) a particularly severe violation of religious freedom 
        for purposes of applying section 212(a)(2)(G) of the 
        Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(2)(G)) with 
        respect to such official.
    (b) Department of State Programming To Promote Religious Freedom in 
the People's Republic of China.--It is the policy of the United 
States--
            (1) that the Ambassador at Large for International 
        Religious Freedom should support efforts to protect and promote 
        international religious freedom in the People's Republic of 
        China; and
            (2) for programs of the Department of State to protect 
        religious minorities in the People's Republic of China and 
        combat transnational repression engaged in by the People's 
        Republic of China.
    (c) Designation of the People's Republic of China as a Country of 
Particular Concern for Religious Freedom.--It is the policy of the 
United States to continue to designate the People's Republic of China 
as a country of particular concern for religious freedom under section 
402(b)(1)(A)(ii) of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (22 
U.S.C. 6442(b)(1)(A)(ii)) as long as the Government of the People's 
Republic of China continues to engage in particularly severe violations 
of religious freedom (as defined in section 3 of such Act (22 U.S.C. 
6402)).

SEC. 4. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING PROMOTION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN 
              THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

    It is the sense of Congress that the United States should promote 
religious freedom in the People's Republic of China by--
            (1) strengthening diplomacy relating to religious freedom 
        on behalf of Christians and other religious minorities facing 
        restrictions in the People's Republic of China, including 
        through the widespread engagement of international partners to 
        combat the violations against religious freedom committed by 
        the Government of the People's Republic of China;
            (2) raising the cases of religious and political prisoners 
        at the highest levels with officials of the People's Republic 
        of China because experience demonstrates that consistently 
        raising prisoner cases can result in reduced sentences, or in 
        some cases, release from custody, detention, or imprisonment;
            (3) encouraging Members of Congress to become advocates for 
        prisoners of conscience in the People's Republic of China 
        through the Defending Freedoms Project of the Tom Lantos Human 
        Rights Commission, raise the cases of those prisoners with 
        officials of the People's Republic of China, and work publicly 
        for their release;
            (4) calling on the Government of the People's Republic of 
        China to unconditionally release religious and political 
        prisoners and ensure that detainees who have not yet been 
        released are treated humanely with--
                    (A) access to family, the lawyer of their choice, 
                independent medical care, and international monitoring 
                mechanisms; and
                    (B) the ability to practice their faith while in 
                detention;
            (5) encouraging the global faith community to speak in 
        solidarity with the persecuted religious groups in the People's 
        Republic of China; and
            (6) hosting, once every 2 years, the Ministerial to Advance 
        Religious Freedom organized by the Department of State in order 
        to bring together leaders from around the world to discuss the 
        challenges facing religious freedom, identify means to address 
        religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, and promote 
        great respect for and preservation of religious liberty.

SEC. 5. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING ACTION BY THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN 
              RIGHTS COUNCIL.

    It is the sense of Congress that the United Nations Human Rights 
Council should issue a formal condemnation of the People's Republic of 
China for the ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other religious and 
ethnic minority groups and the persecution of Christians, Falun Gong, 
and other religious groups.
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