[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHINA'S LATEST CRACKDOWN ON DISSENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
AND HUMAN RIGHTS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 13, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-59
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
66-295PDF WASHINGTON : 2011
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ELTON GALLEGLY, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California BRAD SHERMAN, California
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
RON PAUL, Texas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MIKE PENCE, Indiana RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
JOE WILSON, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
CONNIE MACK, Florida GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas DENNIS CARDOZA, California
TED POE, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
DAVID RIVERA, Florida FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
VACANT
Yleem D.S. Poblete, Staff Director
Richard J. Kessler, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas KAREN BASS, California
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Wei Jingsheng, chair, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition... 8
Mr. Harry Wu, executive director, Laogai Research Foundation..... 11
Ms. Jing Zhang, director of operations, All Girls Allowed........ 18
Mr. Steven Mosher, president, Population Research Institute...... 31
Mr. Phelim Kine, Asia researcher, Human Rights Watch............. 46
Ms. Andrea Worden, Adjunct Professor of Law, American University
Washington College of Law...................................... 52
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Wei Jingsheng: Prepared statement............................ 10
Mr. Harry Wu: Prepared statement................................. 14
Ms. Jing Zhang: Prepared statement............................... 23
Mr. Steven Mosher: Prepared statement............................ 36
Mr. Phelim Kine: Prepared statement.............................. 49
Ms. Andrea Worden: Prepared statement............................ 56
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 80
Hearing minutes.................................................. 81
Mr. Phelim Kine: Summary of Human Rights Watch report: Promises
Unfulfilled.................................................... 82
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith: Material submitted for the
record......................................................... 89
CHINA'S LATEST CRACKDOWN ON DISSENT
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FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2011
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
and Human Rights
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 o'clock a.m.,
in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. Good morning, and welcome to our witnesses and
to everyone who is joining us to examine the Chinese
Government's intensifying assault on human rights.
In recent months, the human rights situation in China has
gone from abysmally bad to worse. In fact, we have not seen
this level of blatant violations of human rights since the
crackdown on Tiananmen Square protestors in June 1989.
Since February of this year, the Chinese Government has
significantly increased its oppression of human rights
advocates, including activist lawyers, bloggers, clergy and
members of independent religious groups. It has resorted not
only to social pressure, intimidation, and physical harassment,
but also to threats against family members, beatings, and even
forced disappearances.
Lawyers, in particular, have been targeted. In William
Shakespeare's play, ``Henry VI,'' Dick the Butcher and
anarchist Jack Cade plan the success of their diabolical plot
by stating that, ``The first thing we do, let's kill all the
lawyers.'' Frankly, it is no different in China today.
Government harassment of lawyers and law firms that work on
human rights cases or other politically sensitive matters is on
the rise. In recent years, lawyers who took cases in opposition
to the government's interests have faced disbarment, house
arrest, kidnapping, beatings, and prison.
A very recent example is Li Fangping, the lawyer for Chen
Guangcheng who has been engaged in a public crusade to expose
the horrors of forced abortion in China. Mr. Li was abducted by
unidentified individuals on April 29th, 2011, outside the
offices of a health rights non-governmental organization for
which Mr. Li was serving as a legal advisor. His whereabouts
today are unknown. Ironically, his arrest occurred the day
after the United States and Chinese Governments concluded a
human rights dialogue.
Religious freedom is also under increased attack. Although
China has been designated a ``Country of Particular Concern''
since 2000 (meaning it is one of the worst violators of
religious freedom in the world), statistics from 2009 and 2010
indicate that the number of arrests of Christians increased
almost 43 percent.
Because the Chinese Government demands that religious
organizations serve the aims of the state, religious
organizations must receive government approval to operate.
Failure to do so means the groups lack legal protection and the
membership is vulnerable to human rights abuses at the hands of
government officials.
However, many religious observers adhere to the tenet that
they must ``render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but unto God
what is God's,'' and as a direct result, they are severely
persecuted.
Recent cases include the denial of the Shouwang Church in
Beijing from occupying either the space they rented or the
space they purchased; the disappearance of three Catholic
priests who refused to register with authorities for official
recognition; and the lockdown of the Kirti Monastery in Sichuan
Province and the disappearance of approximately 300 monks from
there.
We will also be examining recent developments with respect
to the Chinese regime's ongoing imposition of the barbaric one-
child policy. Few outside of China understand what a massive
and cruel system of social control the one-child policy
entails.
According to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on
China, the system is marked by pervasive propaganda, mandatory
monitoring of women's reproductive cycles, mandatory
contraception, mandatory birth permits. Imagine, you need
permission from the government in order to have a child. And
coercive fines for failure to comply, in addition to forced
sterilization and abortion.
The price for failing to conform to this barbaric system is
staggering. A Chinese woman who becomes pregnant without a
permit will be put under mind-bending pressure to abort. She
knows that ``out of plan'' illegal children are denied
education, healthcare, and marriage, and that fines for bearing
a child without a birth permit can be up to 10 times the
average annual income of both parents, and those families that
can't or won't pay are jailed or their homes are smashed in or
their young child is killed.
If the brave woman still refuses to submit, she may be held
in a punishment cell, or if she flees, her relatives may be
held and, very often, beaten. Group punishments will be used to
socially ostracize her. Her colleagues and neighbors will be
denied birth permits. If the woman is, by some miracle, still
able to resist this pressure, she may be physically dragged to
the operating table and forced to undergo the killing of her
child. Her trauma is incomprehensible.
It is a trauma she shares, in some degree, with virtually
every woman in China, whose experience of intimacy and
motherhood is colored by the atmosphere of fear created by the
government, by government threats and determination to intrude
itself in a deadly fashion in the most private aspects of her
life.
The World Health Organization reports over 500 female
suicides occur each and every day in China. China is the only
country in the world where female suicide rates are higher than
the male, and according to the Beijing Psychological Crisis
Study and Prevention Center, in China the suicide rate for
females is three times higher than that of males. The result of
this policy is a nightmarish brave new world with no precedent
in human history, where women are psychologically wounded and
girls fall victim to sex-selective abortion.
In some provinces, there are some 140 boys that are born
for every 100 girls, and most children grow up without brothers
or sisters because, again, brothers and sisters are illegal.
They also grow up without aunts or uncles or cousins.
Gendercide is a serious crime and it is absolutely prevalent in
the People's Republic of China today.
The one-child policy is spawning other grave human rights
violations as well. Just this week there were media reports
that government officials in one province were kidnapping
children who were allegedly born in violation of the one-child-
per-couple policy and effectively selling them for a profit to
be adopted overseas. We all know that sex trafficking is
exponentially increasing in the People's Republic of China as a
direct result of a dearth of females.
It is estimated that something on the order of 40 million
men will not be able to find wives by 2020 because they have
been systematically eliminated pursuant to the one-child-per-
couple policy. That is absolutely outrageous and a serious
crime against humanity and is among the most serious crimes of
gender ever.
I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague Mr.
Payne, the ranking member, for any opening comments he might
have.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like
to commend you for calling this timely hearing. With the recent
conclusion of the strategic and economic dialogue, as well as
the human rights dialogue, the administration is working to
ensure that human rights remain an important aspect of U.S./
China discussions.
I look forward to hearing from our panelists who work with
dedication to advance human rights in an increasingly
repressive China. I commend you all for your courage and
continued work on this issue and I look forward to your
testimony.
China's repression of religious minorities is not new. Last
July Falun Gong practitioners from around the world joined
together in Washington, DC, to hold a nighttime candlelight
vigil remembrance of the opposition of the Falun Gong that
started in China in 1999.
For 12 years now the millions of Falun Gong practitioners
in China, and at one point here even in the United States, have
been subjected to acts of violence and assault, property theft
and destruction, illegal wiretapping, harassment, intimidation
and persecution against practitioners of Falun Gong in the
United States.
In China thousands of practitioners of the peaceful
religion have been killed. Hundreds of thousands have been
detained and more than 100,000 have been sentenced to forced
labor camps, typically without trial. Now the Chinese
Government is using similar tactics against its burgeoning
civil society.
Over the past several months Chinese security forces
reportedly detained, arrested, and held incommunicado between
50 to 100 people and placed another 200 under heavy
surveillance. The government's coercive extrajudicial tactics
against its critics including physical harassment, beatings,
forced disappearances, and threats against family members.
This crackdown is unprecedented and its scale under the
current leadership appears sadly to be a part of a broad
strategy to regulate an increasingly dynamic society. Without a
doubt the Chinese watch nervously as masses of disenfranchised
citizens successfully challenge the dictatorships in Northern
Africa and the Middle East.
The call of Chinese activists for their own Jasmine
Revolution of peaceful protest marches have been met with firm
repression. To date the Chinese Government holds an estimated
25,000 prisoners of conscience in detention. Yet, despite this
repression we are also seeing an increasing active civil
society as human rights defenders, activists, lawyers,
bloggers, churches and minorities strive to make their voices
heard.
In 2010 we saw a 20 percent increase of major social unrest
as Chinese civil society activists voice their deep grievances
against local government corruption. The courage of lawyers
who, despite retaliation, continue to defend human rights
defenders of fathers who, despite threats to their own safety,
work to advance consumer protection after corruption and food
safety endangered their children.
And of religious minorities who despite severe restrictions
on non-registered places of worship, continue to practice their
faith and claim their cultural rights, their courageous cause
for hope. I look forward to hearing to what extent the Chinese
public is becoming involved in these changes and how it has
been affected by the political repression and political
involvement.
During the past decade, due to strong congressional
leadership, the U.S. administrated a growing number of foreign
assistance programs, the majority of which was devoted to human
rights, democracy, rule of law, as well as related activities
such as supporting the Tibetan community and protecting the
environment. I'm heartened to see that U.S. programs seem to be
helping to build a small but determined core of civil society
individuals and reformist government officials who in the long-
term may enable China to transition to democracy.
China is a growing power and a partner in individual trade
and global development. Yet, it is important to recognize that
the Chinese cannot enforce stability at the expense of human
rights. Too many of the challenges the Chinese people face,
from HIV/AIDS epidemic to a looming food crisis, will require
citizen activism and involvement to find sustainable solutions.
It is my strong belief that the United States cannot be
indifferent to Chinese human rights violations. I firmly
believe that a nation that pursues growth by silencing its
citizens is building a foundation in sand which cannot resist
the tides of civilian unrest.
I look forward to your testimony on the state of the
current crackdown, and your estimations on how this Congress
can target its involvement and aid to civil society to enable
viable long-term reform in China. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Ranking Member, for your statement.
Now I yield to the vice chairman of the subcommittee, Jeff
Fortenberry.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening
this important and timely hearing, particularly given this
week's U.S./China strategic economic dialogue here in
Washington.
I am heartened, Mr. Chairman, that the United States and
Secretary Clinton have taken a more deliberate tone with China
on human rights this week than during the recent state dinner
for President Hu Jintao.
Part of the change in tone and tenor, I believe, is due to
the wave of freedom we have seen sweep North Africa and the
Middle East known as the Arab Spring. As Secretary Clinton
said, they are trying to stop history which is a fool's errand.
As the Chinese Government attempts to play down the
Secretary's remarks, I think it is important that this body
give thorough and clear attention to the many extreme human
rights abuses by the Chinese Government against its citizens
wishing to exercise some modicum of freedom.
Do I want a good relationship with China? Yes, absolutely.
China is a valuable world partner. But for China to achieve the
legitimacy that it seeks, it needs to make significant gains on
a number of fronts and join the community of responsible
nations.
Since I began serving in Congress, Members of Congress from
both sides of the political aisle have boldly challenged
Beijing on its ruthless treatment of democracy activists and
their families, Internet freedom advocates, religious
minorities, women and families victimized by a callous one-
child policy and even coerced abortion.
We have tried managing our complex relationship with China
in a manner that honors the transcendent principles that define
our national purpose and identity, a nation founded on freedom
of religion, a nation that embraces freedom of speech and
justice, and free and fair commerce as worthy foundations of
prosperity for future generations.
As this hearing is underway many individuals continue to
suffer horrific tortures in China for voicing their desire for
personal liberty. Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo languishes in
prison as his wife and family members remain under house
arrest.
Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer who exposed to the world
China's cruel and draconian forced abortion policy, has
continued to be victimized by the Chinese Government. His
lawyer abducted and his whereabouts unknown. Countless others
suffer in silence. People who have disappeared into the vast
network of gulags that no human being should ever have to see
or experience.
Why do we care so deeply about China's legacy of violence
and oppression? Aside from our deeply-held philosophical
principles of liberty and universal rights, Americans, of
course, buy a vast amount of Chinese made goods and China holds
a great deal of American debt, nearly $2 trillion by some
estimates. And we have a bilateral trade deficit approaching
$300 billion that poses weighty concerns.
We must also challenge China to abandon its embrace of
unbridled mercantilism which manifests itself in massive
subsidies and other trade distorting practices that contribute
to this staggering imbalance. China must know that global trade
is inseparable from global responsibility.
In terms of global stability, managing our military
relationship to maintain regional stability becomes all the
more critical now that China has achieved an initial
operational capability in land-based anti-ship ballistic
missiles threatening our Pacific fleet. In the nuclear realm
China's policies also cause concern. China is modernizing its
nuclear arsenal.
We have a responsibility to work together to shake this
complex relationship with China, to seek meaningful progress on
the tough issues, and to acknowledge the many positive elements
of China's ancient culture and civilization. However, we must
do so without shrinking from challenging the outright
effrontery to our principles and whitewashing grave threats to
our integrity such as the egregious human rights violations
that will come to light in this hearing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Fortenberry, thank you very much for your
statement.
I would like to now introduce our extraordinary panel of
experts, three of whom have spent considerable time, in two
cases almost two decades, in the infamous Laogai system and
speak with profound authority concerning what they experienced,
what they know. Their friends are still languishing and
suffering the brutalities of the dictatorship, as well as
academics and human rights advocates who speak out daily and do
so courageously on behalf of all of the human rights issues in
China.
I'll begin first with Mr. Wei Jingsheng who served two jail
sentences totalling more than 18 years in China for his pro-
democracy work. He was forced into exile in 1989 but continued
to advocate for human rights and democracy in China.
In 1998 Mr. Wei founded and became the chairman of the
Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition, an umbrella organization
for many overseas Chinese democracy groups. He is also
president of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation and the Asian
Democracy Alliance. He has written numerous articles and
regularly speaks about human rights and democracy in China
including broadcasts in China via Radio Free Asia.
I will note parenthetically that Wei was actually let out
of prison by the Chinese dictatorship in the early 1990s in the
vain hopes of procuring the Olympics in 2000. I met with him in
Beijing at the time and had dinner with him. He was
subsequently arrested when they didn't get Olympics 2000. They
got them years later. He was of such high value as a political
prisoner that one man's release was thought by the hardliners
to be sufficient to obtain the Olympics.
We will then hear from Harry Wu who survived 19 years in
Chinese labor camps. He came to the U.S. in 1980 and became an
activist for human rights in China. In the 1990s he showed
incredible bravery by returning to China on a human rights
mission. He was discovered, arrested, and sentenced to 15 more
years in the Laogai. He was released following an international
campaign on his behalf.
Mr. Wu is the president of the Laogai Research Foundation,
the author of countless reports and numerous books on human
rights, a frequent witness before this and the full committee.
He recently founded the Laogai Museum right here in Washington.
I do hope people will visit it because it is a very chilling
reminder not just of what has been past, but what is the
present, and, hopefully, not the future for China.
We will then hear from Ms. Jing Zhang who built a career as
a newspaper editor for 20 years in Hong Kong and in the United
States. She suffered 5 years in a Chinese prison for her belief
in freedom and democracy. She founded Women's Rights in China
in 2007 to popularize the noble cause of women's rights and
advocate for the weak and underprivileged in China.
As the director of operations of the organization All Girls
Allowed, Ms. Zhang directs the projects aimed at the prevention
of female infanticide, the education of abandoned female
orphans, the reuniting of trafficked children with their
families and the advocacy on behalf of forced abortion victims.
We will then hear from Mr. Steven Mosher who is the
president of the Population Research Institute and the author
of numerous books on China including Hegemon: China's Plan to
Dominate Asia and the World and China Misperceived: American
Illusions and Chinese Reality. I've read three of his books
including A Mother's Ordeal and it brought great insight, I
think, to me and anyone else who took the time to read it.
He served as the director of the Asian Study Center at the
Claremont Institute from 1986 to 1995. He was a commissioner on
the U.S. Commission on Broadcasting to the People's Republic of
China from 1991 to 1992.
He was educated at the University of Washington and
Stanford University and in 1979 became the first American
social scientist permitted to do field research in China since
the Communist Revolution. He was the man, at least for the
U.S., and frankly, most of the free world, who broke the story
of the one-child-per-couple policy.
Frontline, 60 Minutes, the Beijing bureau chiefs for the
Washington Post and others all, back in the early '80s, relied
on his historic and breakthrough research about what women were
experiencing as a direct result of the horrific one-child-per-
couple policy and has worked on this human rights issue and
others ever since.
We will then hear from Mr. Phelim Kine who is an Asia
researcher at Human Rights Watch. A former news wire bureau
chief in Jakarta, he worked as a journalist for more than a
decade in China, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Taiwan prior to
joining Human Rights Watch in April 2007. Mr. Kine's opinion
pieces on China's human rights challenges have appeared in
numerous major media.
He has spoken publicly on China's human rights challenges
at venues ranging from the European Parliament to a hearing of
the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission. Mr.
Kine is a graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. We
greatly appreciate his taking the time to share his insight and
counsel.
We will then hear from Professor Andrea Worden who teaches
Chinese law at American University, Washington College of Law.
She consults on rule of law programs and civil society
initiatives with a particular focus on China.
Professor Worden's current research interests center on
criminal justice and transitional justice in China, as well as
China's interactions with the United Nations human rights
system. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Yale China
Association. Prior to becoming a consultant, Professor Worden
served as general counsel and senior advisor on criminal
justice with the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
We are joined by Congressman Frank Wolf. I would like to
yield to my very distinguished colleague. I will note
parenthetically Mr. Wolf is the author of the International
Religious Freedom Act. China, as I said in my opening, since
2000 has been designated a CPC, country of particular concern,
because of its egregious violations of religious rights.
Mr. Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you. I cannot stay but I just wanted to
come just to listen to a portion. Thank you to you and Mr.
Payne for having these hearings.
I appreciate, Chris, your effort on China over these years.
Also, you have a very distinguished panel and I will read
everything. I will take it as I leave. I appreciate what they
have done.
With that I yield back. Thanks, Chris.
Mr. Smith. I would like to now yield to Wei Jingsheng.
STATEMENT OF MR. WEI JINGSHENG, CHAIR, OVERSEAS CHINESE
DEMOCRACY COALITION
Mr. Wei. I want to express my gratitude to you for giving
me the opportunity to speak here.
In recent years, especially in the last half-year, China's
human rights have been deteriorating rapidly. The Chinese
Communist regime strengthened its suppression against the
dissidents, human rights lawyers, and all kinds of religious
and faith groups. It also strengthened its blockade and control
of the Internet, broadcasting, and print media.
The regime's attitude toward general mass organizations has
gone from some degree of tolerance into intolerance. It also
increased its arbitrary handling of legal cases involving both
the general public and its own officials. Among all, the most
important changes are reflected in the following two points.
The first is the Communist regime's increased arbitrariness
in dealing with law. There is an obvious strengthening of the
tendency to dominate judicial cases by various levels of the
Communist organizations and officials. Take the Li Zhuang case
in Chongqing as an example. Almost all the legal proceedings
have been destroyed. Only according to the intention of the
local Communist leaders, a wrongful case was created against a
rights-defending lawyer.
The authority has not only undermined the judicial process,
but also used means of deceptive and illegal exchange to force
the related parties to plead guilty. Further, it made illegal
court decisions when evidence was absent. Yet, this decision
has received collective recognition and encouragement by the
highest level of the Chinese Communist leaders.
This model will soon be popularized throughout the whole
country. It will not only greatly encourage illegal sentencing,
but also reduce the possibility of judicial intervention for
the defendant to gain access and help from lawyers and thus
create the biggest convenience for the Communist officials to
interfere with judicial system.
Thus, likely China could revert to the lawless state during
the Cultural Revolution period when the Communist regime
smashed the existence of the judicial mechanism.
The second is that the laws for illegal detention have been
expanded from officials and dissidents to include the general
public include religious and faith groups. The forced
``disappearance'' of the famous artist Ai Weiwei recently is a
typical example. What is noteworthy is that, just as in the
case of Li Zhuang in Chongqing, this case of Ai Weiwei is also
supported by the highest-level Communist leaders. Thus, it soon
will become a model for the whole country.
The characteristic of this case is that the authority
publicly carried out its action of forced ``disappearance.''
After it violated China's own Criminal Procedure Law and
detained the person, the authority did not notify the family,
yet released the related information publicly in the media by
its official spokesman.
This is equivalent to flouting laws in the open, and
announces the fact that the will of the Communist Party is
above the law. This is significantly different from the
individual illegal activities during the Deng Xiaoping and
Jiang Zemin eras. It also represents the transformation of the
whole justice system toward the extreme dictatorship of the
Nazi and Mao Zedong. Two reasons producing these changes are
noteworthy.
The first is that the Chinese Communist Party has lost its
confidence in its own ruling capacity. Due to the increased
opposition from the people, as well as the intensified internal
struggle within the Party, there are very few people who
believe that the system of the Communist Party can continue.
Besides returning to the lawless state of the extreme
dictatorship, the Communist Party does not have a method for
controlling the social crisis.
The second is that the international community,
particularly the U.S. Government, is showing its weakness to
the Chinese Government due to economic interests.
This weakness has led, for a while now, to a rising
defiance against the USA by the Chinese officials and the
society at large. When the international society is concerned
about human rights, it is considered as politicians staging a
show for their own voters, in a way to deceive the people of
their countries. Whoever pays attention to this international
pressure would be ridiculed by the others.
So now it has even developed to the degree of directly
ridiculing the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau
of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. This ridicule enabled the
related Chinese officials gain some benefits of public opinion.
The action of Hu Jintao humiliating the United States at
the White House also won him exceptional praise within the
Communist Party. This kind of attitude has been and will be
applied to the Western businessmen and tourists in general. The
U.S. Congress and the administration should not ignore such
kind of developments.
I thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wei follows:]
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Mr. Smith. Mr. Wei, thank you so much for your testimony.
Mr. Wu.
STATEMENT OF MR. HARRY WU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LAOGAI RESEARCH
FOUNDATION
Mr. Wu. Chairman and Vice Chairman and Congressmen. Let me
say something about Chinese activities today in the human
rights situation.
The Chinese Communist Party rose to power in 1949, and for
about 62 years it has unrelentingly clung onto power by
systematically repressing, disappearing and killing its people.
The Party that originally proclaimed itself the savior of the
common people has become one of the most repressive regimes in
history.
By depriving its people of basic rights and freedoms and
keeping its people in the dark and in a constant state of fear,
the CCP has managed to maintain its sovereignty. Let me give
you some examples. The Central Committee passed a resolution
called 179 that said in government documents, or Communist
Party documents, or in their policy they have to stop using Mao
Zedong thought so this is separate from the central decisions
because many people today are raising up trying to criticize
the Mao Zedong thought.
Secondly, China is actually a country which has a special
ruling. The Party set up so-called two certainty. It means in a
certain time in a certain place the Chinese Communist Party
members if they violate the law they have to make a confession.
Many governors of the province and many ministers,
including in the Ministry of Transportation, were under arrest.
There is no legal arrest but so-called discipline department
officers. They have to make a confession before they go to the
court. How many people were there? Two-point-two million. Two-
point-two million Communist members were under so-called double
certainty.
The third event I want to point out for you. In January
2011 in the Communist center, Tiananmen Square, the Chinese set
up a Confucius statue. I was very surprised because Tiananmen
Square is a political center and only the Communist Party,
central party, can make a decision. They have Mao portrait,
Marx portrait, Lenin portrait, and Stalin portrait.
Very confusedly they have a Confucius statue. So far we
know Mao, when alive, seriously criticized Confucius, was
against Confucius, opposed Confucius. Today in the political
center in Tiananmen Square everybody is confused. Shall we
follow Mao or follow Confucius? In this month, May, around 100
days later, Chinese quietly in the middle of the night removed
the Confucius statue. It disappeared. So these events are
telling you the Communist Party today is very confused and does
not know how to handle the future.
Recently, Chinese Government has been increasingly vigilant
in its efforts to suppress freedom of speech; not only do they
control the media, but they block countless foreign Web sites
and blogs through the use of a highly-intricate surveillance
system called ``Golden Shield.''
In recent months, China has also been arresting and giving
lengthy sentences to political dissidents. Ai Weiwei's father,
was a famous poet, is highly recognized by the Chinese
Communist Party but unfortunately he disagreed with the
government and was arrested.
We do not know how many people have been arrested. So far
we have more than 40 people disappeared. It's not only Liu
Xiaobo, but also another dissent named Liu Xianbin. Liu Xianbin
was arrested by the government twice. The first time he was
sentenced to 2\1/2\ years. The second time 13 years. When he
was released he was rearrested last month and sentenced to
another 10 years.
The Chinese Constitution claims to grant its people freedom
of speech and freedom of assembly, however, without a fair and
just legal system to uphold these ideals, these so-called
rights are just empty words. Yet these ideals are not absent
from Chinese society; they are important enough for Liu Xiaobo
and Liu Xianbin to speak out on behalf of the victims of the
Tiananmen Square massacre.
They continually write and express their pro-democracy
ideas, even at great risk to their own safety and the safety of
their families. Admittedly, lack of free speech and the right
to assembly has ensured that China's single-party dictatorship
remains ``stable.'' However, the longer the CCP refuses to
properly and responsibly deal with the country's changing
political, economic, and social conditions, the more likely
another Tiananmen Square incident becomes.
The longer the CCP tries to keep a tight lid on the
diversity of opinion and expression within society, the more
violent the backlash will be. The reign of the CCP cannot and
will not last forever. There will be a day when China will
finally be a free country.
Recently the Chinese and America had a dialogue, the so-
called the Strategic Economic Dialogue between the U.S. and
China. Despite a promise of the U.S. officials to bring up
human rights issues in the dialogue, the issue of human rights
was barely touched upon and the U.S. and China merely agreed to
continue in constructive dialogue of human rights. How come the
U.S. claimed to be a leader of human rights and freedom in the
world if it is continuing to turn a blind eye to the human
rights situation in China?
Also, I would suggest President Obama and the Congress have
to care about the American companies with their business inside
China. At least they should not have relations with to Chinese
military and security systems. I strongly urge President Obama
and the U.S. Congress to be bold and take a firm stand against
China's human rights abuses.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wu follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Mr. Wu, thank you very, very much.
We now ask Ms. Zhang to present her statement.
STATEMENT OF MS. JING ZHANG, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, ALL GIRLS
ALLOWED
Ms. Zhang [via translator]. All Girls Allowed is a non-
profit Christian organization registered in the U.S. and
founded by Chai Ling, two-time Nobel peace prize nominee and
former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement.
AGA's mission is to restore life, value and dignity to
girls and mothers, and to reveal the injustice of China's one-
child policy. As you may know, and as Congressman Smith
referenced, there are many human rights abuses that are
occurring as a result of the policy. With the love of Christ
and the power of God, AGA is taking on this massive issue, with
faith that this will come to an end. Today I have the privilege
of translating for Jing Zhang, director of operations at All
Girls Allowed.
In February 2011, inspired by the wave of democratic
movements in the Arab World, the Chinese-language Internet
community gave birth to messages of the Jasmine Revolution. The
Chinese Government reacted in panic with a severe crackdown, in
blatant violation of the Chinese Constitution and the U.N.
Charter.
It dismissed international condemnation and arrested
hundreds of dissidents, civil rights attorneys, and artists
including Jiang Tianyong and Ai Weiwei. Even members of the
public in the streets who happened to be carrying jasmine
flowers were arrested.
Through AGA's communication with house church networks, we
know of increased persecution of the Shouwang Church in
Beijing, whose members have been systematically threatened,
arrested, and questioned. In the Guizhou province, since March
18th, more than a dozen dissidents have been arrested without
reason and detained for over a month.
One of them, Ms. Wu Yuqin, had cancer; her 80-year-old
mother was also arrested for defending her daughter. Two other
women, Wang Lihong and Liang Haiyi, were arrested and charged
for expressing opinions related to the Jasmine Revolution. The
Chinese Government has also put non-governmental organizations
and their workers under surveillance. The work of All Girls
Allowed suffered drastically because of threats and harassment
from agents of the Ministry of State Security.
Today, China's cruel control of its own people continues to
deepen. This year's Chinese domestic security budget reached
624.4 billion Chinese yuan, exceeding the military budget of
601.1 billion yuan. This huge spending on domestic security
control and the founding on March 4th of a new National
Internet Information Office lead us to believe that the Chinese
Government has little intention of allowing greater freedom to
its people.
The first of AGA's programs, the Baby Shower program, aids
rural Chinese mothers and baby girls. Every month, AGA workers
distribute stipends to mothers of baby girls; these stipends of
about $20 are used to buy baby formula, food and clothing for
their daughters. The purpose of the stipend is to save the baby
girls from sex-selective abortion, infanticide or abandonment.
The stipend also increases the perceived value of girls and
gives dignity to mothers who might otherwise hang their heads
in shame for having a baby girl.
Over 550 girls and families have benefitted from this
program. Surveys of sponsored families have shown a drastic
change in culture: Despite getting an illegal ultrasound to
verify the gender of their current child, the vast majority of
families who participated in the Baby Shower program expressed
that they would not abort or abandon their next child, even if
it were a girl a remarkable success and breakdown of thousands
of years of oppression against girls and women.
Unfortunately, since March, AGA workers have been harassed
by local police and security agents. Some workers have been
detained and interrogated multiple times and forced to divulge
every detail of the program. Officials of local towns and
villages have disseminated rumors that workers were trouble
makers who would be arrested by the police, which troubled and
inconvenienced mothers who received aid through the program.
In one instance, police not only conducted forced
interrogations, but also sent two agents to record the aid
distribution by video. (In order to protect the personal safety
of our workers, we will not identify the specific location.)
These agents followed the AGA workers on their visits to
families in remote villages, recording the conversations
between our workers and the beneficiary families.
While AGA workers and local families were talking at the
doorstep, they stood nearby. When our workers entered local
houses, the police would enter and sit down as well. One may
well imagine the anxiety and oppression felt by the AGA workers
and rural families. Some families requested to stop receiving
aid in order to escape police attention, fearing that the
attention would have long-lasting ill effects on the entire
family.
Many volunteers also decided to stop contributing their
time to this charitable program. They had volunteered with AGA
to serve the local community, but found themselves treated as
suspected felons under open police surveillance. Neighbors of
AGA workers also became suspicious and began opposing their
work.
In another instance, a farmer whose family receives our aid
was forcibly pushed into a police vehicle for interrogation.
His cell phone was confiscated and he was threatened by the
police. They asked him whether the aid carried any conditions,
what the volunteers said to him, and whether there was any
encouragement to join Falun Gong. After hours of interrogation,
he was released.
As a result of police harassment, some field workers and
aid-receiving families have requested an early termination of
the Baby Shower program. Consequently, hundreds of baby girls
and their families have lost the monthly assistance, which
carried no conditions except that the family must have a
newborn daughter. To a family whose monthly income was only
between 300 to 500 Chinese yuan ($46-$77), this represents a
grave loss.
A field worker told me,
``It's hopeless. If we continue the program, we might
end up in prison. If the government wants to arrest
someone, there's no shortage of made-up charges. In
China, it's not easy to do good even if you want to.
The government wants to watch everything. They don't
want to overlook any detail, even your thoughts. They
have all the money and all the manpower. That's what it
means to have a strong and glorious country.''
The openings of the People's Congress and the Political
Consultation Congress in March coincided with the Jasmine
Revolution, when the government's surveillance and oppression
became even more rampant. Police arrested all ``questionable
personalities'' found in sensitive locations in Tiananmen
Square and kept them in detention centers such as Jingjiuzhuang
in Beijing.
Ms. Nie Lina, a woman from Henan province, contacted AGA
because of her difficulties. She is currently 5-months
pregnant. Her family's house was forcibly demolished, but she
could get no redress from the local government. She had no
option but to petition the central government in Beijing, and
was beaten many times as a result.
She was then put into administrative detention in Beijing's
Jingjiuzhuang center.
On March 28, 2011, Ms. Nie was transferred from
Jingjiuzhuang to her local detention center for 10 days, during
which time she suffered beatings to her head and body at the
hands of government agents.
On April 19th, Ms. Nie was again arrested and kept in a
detention center in Xiangcheng, Hunan. Seven to eight male
government agents undressed her in the court yard of the
detention center in front of 60 onlookers, leaving only her bra
on her upper body. Afterwards, she was dragged to ultrasound
exams and threatened with forced abortion. She was extremely
frightened and greatly humiliated. After she reached out to AGA
our team mobilized hundreds of others to pray for her safety.
God answered these prayers, as she was spared a forced
abortion in the end because none of the authorities dared sign
their name to authorize it. During her 3 day detention, she was
given no food or water by the authorities. Because she was not
fed, she suffered severe stomach pain; only a woman working in
the kitchen had compassion, sneaking her some bread.
The government agents warned her, ``We'll kill you if you
go to Beijing to petition again. The police in Beijing told us
to arrest you.'' I asked if she had visited sensitive locations
with connection to the Jasmine Movement. She answered that she
had no idea about any ``jasmine.'' Her only purpose was to
uphold her rights by petitioning in Beijing.
In another case, a victim of the Family Planning Policy was
detained in Jingjiuzhuang in March 2011. (She has agreed to
publicize these details on condition of anonymity.) Several
years ago, a farmer's wife from Nanping, Fujian, was forced to
undergo tubal ligation surgery, a forced sterilization.
The doctor mistakenly severed the ureter tract of one
kidney, leading to infections in her kidney system. Even when
Beijing hospitals proved that the ureter tract had been
medically severed, the local government and hospital refused to
compensate her, leaving her no option but to petition the
central government.
Local law enforcement agents threatened that if she
petitioned the government again, her death would occur under
``murky'' circumstances. She only recently discovered that the
nervous atmosphere was the result of something called
``jasmine.''
Another of AGA's programs is our Orphan Scholarship
program. As a result of the one-child policy and the
traditional bias against girls, many newborn girls are
abandoned by parents quickly after birth. AGA stepped in to
provide not only shelter and care but also scholarships for the
girls, who are now attending elementary, secondary or
undergraduate schools.
Among these orphans are Shi Minjie, who was found nearly
frozen in a basket 18 years ago, but who is now able to attend
college with the help of AGA's scholarship; and ``Little
Thing'' who was found last year and received lifesaving medical
treatment through AGA's assistance.
Since the beginning of 2011, the nuns suddenly became
unenthusiastic about AGA's assistance, nearly terminating all
aid in February and March. After a special investigation, we
discovered that the nun in charge of processing the funding, a
member of the Tongcheng Buddhist Association, had received
pressure through ``talks'' with local authorities. She was no
longer willing to have any connection with economic aid from
abroad, even charitable foreign Christian donations.
In conclusion, All Girls Allowed testifies that the recent
crackdown has included not only political dissidents, civil
rights advocates and Internet opinion, but also the Chinese
Government has been restricting the purely humanitarian
activities of organizations such as All Girls Allowed and
continues to persecute our workers. Because AGA works mainly to
benefit girls and mothers, such restrictions have led to the
direct suffering of the most vulnerable communities.
We urge American leaders to stand in solidarity with girls
and mothers in China by continuing to support humanitarian
organizations such as AGA, and also to act in the following
ways: (1) Appoint a special investigator to determine the
extent of human rights violations as a result of the one-child
policy; (2) apply diplomatic pressure to the Chinese Government
and issue a Congressional Resolution condemning the one-child
policy; (3) partner with the Chinese Government to develop an
alternative solution to population growth that is humane and
effective.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Zhang follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very, very much.
I would like to now yield to Steven Mosher.
STATEMENT OF MR. STEVEN MOSHER, PRESIDENT, POPULATION RESEARCH
INSTITUTE
Mr. Mosher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, and
thank you very much for holding this important hearing today.
I don't want to summarize recent events in China because
there are people here who can more adequately do that than I. I
do want to put it in the larger perspective, however, because
it seems to me that the aborted Jasmine Revolution is only the
latest chapter in Beijing's long and increasingly sophisticated
campaign to quell all manner of dissent and to control all
important aspects of civil society.
It's not surprising the Chinese dissidents sought to follow
in the footsteps of democratic activists in Tunisia and Egypt.
But the Chinese Government was way ahead of them. It preempted
their actions at every stage. On Saturday, for example,
February 19th, the organizers of peaceful demonstrations in
China announced a very specific plan for demonstrations the
following day, February 20th.
Even 10 days before that Chinese President Hu Jintao as the
commander of chief of the PLA and the chairman of the Chinese
Communist Party had already issued a directive to the military
to be prepared for contingencies. This is well in advance of
any call for peaceful demonstrations.
The directive issued on February 10th specifically
instructed party cells within the military to study a document
called Regulation Governing the Works of the Party Committees
in the Military whose purpose was to strengthen the Party's
control of the military.
The explanatory note that came along with this regulation
said that each one of the 33 articles centers on ensuring the
absolute control of the Party over the military. You can
understand why a one-party dictatorship would be concerned that
in the event of peaceful demonstrations military would be
absolutely obedient to its dictates.
In fact, the document goes on to remind the military that
all of its members owe their allegiance first and foremost to
the Party, then to the socialism, then to the state, and
finally, and only lastly, to the people. If the Party finds
itself in a confrontation with the people, this prioritization
intimates, the military is to support the Party at all cost. We
know what that meant in Tiananmen some 20-odd years ago.
And then on February 19th, the same day that the dissidents
issued a detailed plan for peaceful demonstrations in 13 major
cities Hu Jintao, held a meeting of top officials to combat the
perceived threat of unrest. According to the officials Xinhua
News Agency, the meeting not only included all nine members of
the CCP's powerful Politburo Standing Committee, but also
provincial heads, ministry chiefs and senior military
officials.
Such a high-level meeting could not possibly have been
convened overnight. Obviously this was in planning for a long
time suggesting again suggesting again the preemptive nature of
the Chinese Government's response to the upheavals in the Arab
world and to their possible spread to China.
In his surprisingly blunt address, Hu Jintao stressed that
the Chinese Communist Party must strengthen its ``management of
society'' in order to stay in power.
The ``management of society'' is a phrase that I haven't
heard before. Chairman Mao Zedong, one of the founders of the
Chinese community party, always talked about serving the
people. Now Hu Jintao is talking about managing the people.
This formulation marks a major departure from standard
Communist rhetoric.
The purpose of this societal management, according to Hu,
is to ``maximize harmonious factors and minimize non-harmonious
ones.'' In other words, those who adhere to the Party line are
to be encouraged, while those who depart from it are to be
crushed. I suppose there are many ``non-harmonious'' factors
languishing in jail as we speak today being minimized,
sometimes unto death.
The following day, the very day, in fact, slated for the
demonstrations, the Politburo member in charge of national
public security weighed in. Zhou Yongkang called on the Party
not just to serve the people, but to manage the people as well,
and announced specific ways in which this new ``management''
scrutiny would be carried out.
He announced a national database containing information on
everyone in the country, including specific groups of people
which is code for people are religious, minorities, political
dissidents, other people who question the Party's actions in
anyway.
Second, with strong leadership from the Party, cyberspace
was to be brought under even stricter government control with
strict enforcement of anti-sedition laws. Third, foreign non-
governmental organizations in China will be subjected to a
``dual system of supervision.'' I think this speaks to All
Girls Allowed's problems in China where they are now being
supervised out of business in effect.
This can only mean that all of these organizations, even
foreign organizations that are simply there to do charitable
work and have no interest in politics whatsoever, will be
subjected to heightened scrutiny by several different Chinese
Government agencies and perhaps closed down.
Fourth, an early warning system will be put in place to
alert the authorities to social grievances, so as to allow them
to defuse problems before they deteriorate into outright social
unrest. Now, I would point out here that none of this is really
new. It's an elaboration. It's a deepening of what has gone
before.
I mean, the Ministry of State Security already has compiled
extensive files on Chinese who have in the past questioned this
or that government policy. The Chinese Government's monitoring
and control of the Internet has been growing for years. Foreign
organizations have always been viewed with suspicion, and
Chinese citizens have always been monitored by Party-run social
monitoring networks.
The amount of resources, the amount of money going into
these actions is increasing at an enormous rate. Big Brother in
China is getting ever bigger, not as we hoped 20 years ago ever
smaller as civil society grew.
Even by the time of the Olympic Games in 2008, we saw a
five-tiered social monitoring network. It included camera
surveillance in public areas. It included Internet
surveillance, regular police patrols on the streets, monitoring
by peers in the workplace, and monitoring by neighborhood
committees. Of course, this wasn't created in 2008 for the
Olympics. Some of these things had existed from the founding of
the People's Republic of China, the neighborhood committees,
for example, reporting on your fellow workers in the workforce.
This is not an over-reaction on the part of the regime to
the so-called Jasmine Revolution. This is a misinterpretation
of what happened. The government wasn't reacting to events at
all. It was anticipating them. All of its actions were taken in
advance of any major public demonstrations and are more
properly characterized as a kind of preemptive suppression.
Now, we in the Population Research Institute have carried
out investigations in China over the years as you know, Mr.
Chairman. I want to talk about a couple of things that have
come to light in our recent visits to China.
Well in advance of any unrest in the Arab world, the
Chinese Government was tightening controls on civil society,
especially in the last year or 2. Two examples. The
intensifying persecution of Christians is one. As some of you
may know, the Chinese Government has now reasserted control
over the Catholic Church in China and has installed an illicit
bishop as the head of the church organization run by the
Chinese Government in China.
It has also actually put a man, Ma Yinglin, who has been
excommunicated by the Vatican as the head of the Catholic
Bishop Conference in China. Now an official non-Catholic is in
charge of the Catholic Bishops in China. I don't think you can
get more heavy-handed than that. That violates the unspoken
concordant that we saw between the Vatican and the People's
Republic of China over the last several years in a way that
probably means there is no going back.
We also looked into the one-child policy on our recent
visits to China and we've already heard some heart-wrenching
stories today about particular instances of that. Our
investigation was focused on what are called model birth county
programs which are run by the U.N. Population Fund.
We have visited over the last many months six different
counties which were identified by the United Nations Population
Fund as model birth control counties where the UNFPA told us
that targets and quotas had been lifted, that women were free
to voluntarily select the timing and spacing of their
pregnancies, and that abortion is not promoted as a method of
family planning.
We found in those counties all the abuses that you
mentioned in your opening remarks and that have been brought up
here on a couple of occasions already. Let me just speak to a
couple of points that haven't come up yet. We visited Fengning
Manchu Autonomous County, Hebei province. That's a county right
near the border with what we used to call Manchuria. It's a
U.N. Population Fund Model Birth Control County. Many of its
residents are of Manchu decent, hence its designation as a
Manchu Autonomous County.
From the beginning of the one-child policy the Chinese
Government has maintained that the policy does not apply to
minorities like the Manchus, like the Uyghurs, like the
Tibetans. In fact, the UNFPA, of course, has repeated those
claims on many occasions.
We interviewed a number of Manchus who assured us that the
one-child policy was being just as rigorously enforced on them,
this minority, in this U.N. Population Fund Model Birth Control
County. It was being enforced in the same way with targets and
quotas and coercive sterilizations and, if need be, coercive
abortions that it was being enforced everywhere else. The
Chinese Government's claim that all minorities are exempt from
the one-child policy, which the UNFPA has at various times
repeated, seemed simply not to be true, at least in this
county.
The other thing I would like to talk about in conclusion is
child abduction, child trafficking, and the one-child policy.
We visited a county in Guangxi Province, Lipu County, which is
not very far from the border with Hunan Province to the north.
This is another U.N. Population Fund Model Birth Control
County. We were told by local officials, ``At the present time,
if you don't pay the fine, they come and abduct the baby you
just gave birth to and give it to someone else.''
We have all just read in the last couple of weeks that this
practice of child abduction has been reported in the Caixin
Century magazine where authorities in the Southern Province of
Hunan, just north of where we conducted our investigation, are
looking into a report that population control officials seized
16 babies born in violation of strict family planning rules,
sent them to state-run orphanages which then in turn sold them
abroad for adoption. They quoted an individual saying, ``Before
1997 they usually punished us by tearing down our houses for
breaching the one-child policy but after 2000 they began to
confiscate our children.''
This is the same kind of thing that we found, Mr. Chairman,
that they are not tearing down homes so much as collecting huge
fines from parents. If they can't pay the fine, then the babies
are taken away, abducted. The orphanage pays the population
control officials a couple thousand renminbi for each child.
Then, of course, they in turn collect $3,000 to $5,000 for
each child adopted overseas, money that is paid by the adoptive
parents. It's worth noting that these two reports, our report
and the report from China, came from the same general area of
China and occurred at neighboring provinces.
Local officials, of course, have denied that they abduct
children. They deny that they traffick in babies but it is well
known that China's ``job responsibility system'' requires them
to rigorously enforce the one-child policy and that their
success or failure in this area determines future promotions or
demotions.
Abducting and selling an illegal child or baby would not
only enable an official to eliminate a potential black mark on
his record, it will allow him to make a profit at the same
time. In this way the one-child policy through its system of
perverse and inhumane rewards and punishments rewards officials
for violating the fundamental rights of parents to decide for
themselves the number and spacing of their children.
Child trafficking has occurred in other countries that
offer children for adoption in Cambodia, Nepal, Vietnam where
the abuses are so rampant that the U.S. has put a moratorium on
adoptions. I have always encouraged adoptions from China
arguing that every baby adopted from China is a life saved but,
Mr. Chairman, it may be time to consider a similar moratorium
on adoptions from China. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mosher follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Mosher.
Mr. Kine.
STATEMENT OF MR. PHELIM KINE, ASIA RESEARCHER, HUMAN RIGHTS
WATCH
Mr. Kine. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith, Vice
Chairman Fortenberry, and other distinguished members of the
committee and subcommittee. Human Rights Watch first wishes to
thank the Committee on Foreign Affairs for convening this
timely hearing. It is a privilege to participate along with
such distinguished panelists.
I just want to talk very quickly about the questions before
us; what's going on, why it's happening, and what the U.S.
should be doing about this. What we have documented since mid-
February along with other international and domestic human
rights organizations is the Chinese security forces arresting,
detaining, and disappearing dozens of human rights defenders,
lawyers, civil society activists, artists, and bloggers.
I think the thing that is really notable in this case,
obviously the very moving testimony of Mr. Wu and Mr. Wei
Jingsheng is that the Chinese Government is no stranger to
using repression against its people, but what we've been seeing
in recent weeks is a real ratcheting up in terms of the
unlawfulness and the sheer thuggishness of the Chinese
Government and the security forces' methods against its people.
The use of enforced disappearances are particularly
frightening. Individuals such as the artist Ai Weiwei, lawyers
like Liu Shihui, Li Tiantian, these are individuals who have
been disappeared without any recourse, due process of law, no
protection, incommunicado at high risk of torture in custody.
These individuals are suffering these excesses for doing no
more than asking the Chinese Government to abide by its own
laws and to grant them the rights and freedoms enshrined in the
Constitution of the People's Republic of China.
Perversely, these things are happening in a background in
which the Chinese Government and senior leaders are evermore
ready to use quite lofty rhetoric on human rights in sharp
contrast to the grimmer reality on the ground. It's worth
noting that in December 2010, Liu Xiaobo became the world's
first and only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The Chinese Government marked the conclusion of its very
first 2-year national human rights action plan, a very
aspirational document that was supposed to address these types
of issues. With your permission I would like to enter into the
record a Human Rights Watch Report, ``Promises Unfulfilled,''
an assessment of China's very first national human rights
action plan.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Kine. Thank you very much, sir.
So that's the situation on the ground. Now, why is this
happening? Well, obviously the immediate cause is the events in
the Middle East and in North Africa have sent a chill through
the regime. They recognize that there is a potential threat to
their legitimacy.
Now, what is the longer term? What is the wider view on
this? Well, the fact is that the Chinese Government is doing
this because they know they can get away with it. The Chinese
Government in recent years has run a cost benefit ratio on
repression. They have concluded that it pays.
Why do I say that? Well, echoing comments by my fellow
panelist, Mr. Mosher, we and other organizations have
chronicled a steady tightening and repression against human
rights defenders, civil society organizations, NGOs,
journalists, control of the Internet since the year before the
2008 Olympics.
Now, over this 5-year period while repression was steadily
increasing, the engagement on human rights by China's key
bilateral partners, the United States, the European Union, the
UK, other countries, the engagement on human rights has been
increasingly marginalized.
It's been pushed to the edges through this annual bilateral
human rights dialogues where human rights are taken out of the
box once a year for a couple days, dusted off, and put back. In
these things very often human rights are discussed without
really talking about human beings. They are toothless and, to a
large extent, they have rendered no effective recourse or
impact on human rights in China.
Now, so what is the lesson that we should take from this?
Well, the fact is that the Chinese Government listens carefully
to the messages from the U.S. Government. They know that the
U.S. Government cares a lot about what the U.S. Government
classifies as key bilateral issues and human rights have not
been on that table. That is both short-sighted and unfortunate
both for the victims of human rights abuses in China, but also
for the United States.
Why do I say that? The fact is that in this increasingly
globalized world the victims of the Chinese Government's human
rights abuses are no longer just Chinese citizens. It
increasingly spills over its borders. I think the best example
of that is the fact that in 2002/2003 when China's pernicious
controls over media censorship and freedom of expression
prevented news of SARS being transmitted. As a result, SARS
spread to more than a dozen countries and killed more than 700
people worldwide.
What we're saying is actually there are key elements of the
U.S./China bilateral relationship which have a human rights
core. I'll just briefly lay out three of them. Food safety. In
recent years we've had a catalogue of these really distressing
issues such as poison dog food, toxic toys, poison melamine
milk. These are issues which enter the export stream and end up
on the shelves of U.S. supermarkets. Why?
These are issues that if China had a functioning free
media, if whistleblowers were not victimized, these issues
would be treated, identified, and resolved at the local level
but they're not. Instead we learn about them when it's on the
front page of the New York Times because something has arrived
on U.S. shores. This is a very important issue of visceral
importance to U.S. consumers which has a human rights core in
China.
Another issue is a very important issue of investment and
trade relations with China. Well, I think it's extremely worth
noting that a long-term sustainable trade and investment
relationship with China requires three things; a level, fair
playing field, predictability, and transparency. This is the
essence of rule of law. In China rule of law is under attack.
Today the victims in China of rule of law are people like
Ai Weiwei, Li Shihui, Li Tiantian and the other disappeared and
arrested lawyers and civil society organizers. Tomorrow it
could be U.S. corporations trying to do business in China.
These issues eventually are going to leak up to the sanctity of
contracts. It's only a matter of time. The other issue I want
to mention is environment. China obviously has in many cases
epic environmental problems that are increasingly spilling over
its borders.
We can't have any type of meaningful environmental dialogue
or agreement with China until whistleblowers at the grassroots
who are trying to expose the local state-owned factory pouring
benzene into the river or the lake, until they know that they
will be protected from vindictive reprisals from state security
officials. These are three issues which are of intense
importance to the U.S. Government and U.S. citizens which have
a human rights component.
I want to conclude by saying that we were encouraged early
this week that Vice President Joseph Biden stated that the U.S.
Government and the Chinese Government have a vigorous
disagreement on human rights and the fact that he stated that
it is impossible for the U.S. and China to have a long-term
sustainable relationship based on a false foundation.
What we need moving forward is there needs to be truth and
candor and there needs to be a greater emphasis on human rights
not because it's the right thing to do, not because it's our
obligation to be defending universal rights and freedoms, but
because it has impact on our lives here in the United States.
You know, I think it's really important to send the message
both to our Government and to the Chinese Government that it
shouldn't matter how many U.S. Treasury bonds the Chinese
Government purchases. Those purchases should not buy U.S.
silence on key human rights abuses underway in China.
Thank you very much for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kine follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Kine.
Professor Worden.
STATEMENT OF MS. ANDREA WORDEN, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF LAW,
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF LAW
Ms. Worden. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Payne,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, it is an honor to
appear before you today. Thank you so much for convening this
hearing on such an important topic.
There is much to say about China's current human rights
situation but given time constraints I will focus briefly on
three interrelated aspects of the crackdown that began in mid-
February.
First, as some of my colleagues have mentioned, the
prevalence of enforced disappearances is particularly
disturbing. Second, the likelihood of torture. Third, the
silencing of human rights lawyers.
First, I would like to begin with a little background and
context. China is a very complex and complicated country. The
Chinese Government and the Communist Party are not monolithic.
There are people inside the system at all levels working to
strengthen and promote rule of law and good governance.
When threats to ``social stability'' appear, however, there
is a singular focus on maintaining stability and one-party
rule. These are the party and the government's most important
priorities; everything else is secondary. To the Chinese
leadership, ``maintaining social stability'' means, among other
things, squashing dissent, keeping an ever-expanding list of
so-called sensitive cases and issues from making their way into
courts or onto the Internet, and detaining people, called
petitioners, who seek to exercise their right to present
grievances to governmental authorities.
With no meaningful avenue for redress of grievances, it is
not surprising that there are so many protests in China each
year. 127,000 mass protests involving more than 12 million
people were reported in 2008. It appears that the Chinese
Government is fearful that the millions and millions of people
with grievances across China will organize. The most likely
leaders of such a movement would come from the weiquan or
``rights defense'' movement.
Perhaps a viable opposition might even emerge. The Chinese
leadership is undoubtedly very concerned about what is
happening in the Middle East and North Africa as evidenced by
the preemptive strike against even the idea of a Jasmine
Revolution in China. Fearful that the weiquan movement could
become the platform for a Chinese Jasmine Revolution, the
leadership is now set on eviscerating it.
Even though the putative protests scheduled for February 20
and subsequent Sundays really turned out to be nonevents in
China, the Chinese leadership decided to, as Mr. Mosher said,
do sort of a preemptive strike against activists, lawyers,
bloggers, netizens, and ``mavericks,'' as the Chinese state
media has dubbed the artist and activist Ai Weiwei. In other
words, anyone whom they believe could organize, lead, inspire,
or assist such an effort in China needed to be struck out
against.
Now I will say a few words about the issue of enforced
disappearances. The United Nations has noted that enforced
disappearances are frequently used ``as a strategy to spread
terror within the society.'' I appears that the Chinese
Government has now adopted this strategy.
As of May 10th, according to the NGO Chinese Human Rights
Defenders, since mid-February 2011 at least 23 activists,
lawyers, netizens, and others have been disappeared. The
prominent human rights lawyers Teng Biao and Jiang Tianyong
were disappeared for over 2 months. The current whereabouts of
16 of those disappeared since mid-February, including Ai
Weiwei, remain unknown. Gao Zhisheng, who has been disappeared
and tortured several times since September 2007, remains
missing.
With the possible exception of the disappearances of
Uyghurs following the unrest in Xinjiang in July 2009--as Human
Rights Watch has documented--the recent wave of disappearances
is, as far as we know, unprecedented. Enforced disappearances
violate international human rights law as well as China's
domestic law.
The United Nations Declaration on the Protection of all
Persons from Enforced Disappearance prohibits enforced
disappearances, defining the term as the deprivation of a
person's liberty by a state actor or someone acting directly or
indirectly on behalf of the government or with its consent,
followed by the government's refusal to acknowledge such
deprivation of liberty or disclose the fate or location of the
disappeared person--which places the person outside the
protection of the law.
China's Constitution, its criminal procedural law, and
criminal law all have provisions that prohibit state actors
from arbitrarily depriving citizens of their personal liberty.
The U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances issued a statement on April 8th expressing
``serious concern'' over the recent wave of enforced
disappearances in China. The working group noted that, ``Even
short-term secret detentions can qualify as enforced
disappearances. . . . There can never be an excuse to disappear
people, especially when those persons are peacefully expressing
their dissent with the government of their country.''
Next I will say a few words about torture. Torture is a
widespread and persistent problem in China. Although the
Chinese Government has undertaken a variety of legislative and
regulatory measures over the years in an effort to curb the
problem, torture continues, both in lawful detention facilities
and in secret detention centers such as ``black jails,'' which
are predominately used to detain petitioners.
Not surprisingly, torture frequently accompanies enforced
disappearance. The disappeared are held incommunicado. They
have no access to counsel or family and they live in constant
fear for their lives. They are deprived of all of their rights
and are completely outside the protection of the law.
The prominent professor and human rights lawyer Teng Biao
was disappeared from February 19th to April 29th. He has not
communicated with the outside world since his release. We have
no idea what happened to him during his disappearance or of the
current status of his mental and physical health. It is more
likely than not, however, that he was mistreated and warned not
to communicate anything about what happened to him.
A month-and-a-half before he disappeared for 70 days, Teng
Biao published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he
described beatings and threats he received during a brief
encounter with China's domestic security police last December
after attempting to visit the home of another human rights
lawyer, Fan Yafeng.
An officer threatened that they would treat him as they
treat Falun Gong practitioners--that is with torture. And then
one police officer said to another, ``Why waste words on this
sort of person? Let's beat him to death and dig a hole to bury
him in and be done with it.'' The police officer then addressed
Teng Biao. ``Think your family can find you if you're
disappeared? Tell me, what difference would it make if you
vanished from Beijing?''
Few of those who have been released after being detained or
disappeared during the current crackdown have spoken publicly
about being tortured or mistreated while in custody of the
police or other government agents, for fear of reprisals. There
are unconfirmed reports of beatings and other cruel and
humiliating treatment. One confirmed report involves Jin
Guanghong, a lawyer based on Beijing, who disappeared for
approximately 10 days in April. He was held in a psychiatric
hospital for part of this time, where he was tied to a bed,
subjected to beatings, and forcibly medicated.
Next to wrap up I will address the silencing of human
rights lawyers, again related to the first two points of
enforced disappearance and torture. Another alarming feature of
the Jasmine crackdown is the targeting of China's brave and
beleaguered human rights lawyers.
The harassment and persecution of human rights lawyers by
Chinese authorities is by no means new. What is new, however,
as some of the other panelists have already mentioned, is the
scope and prevalence of the use of extra-legal and criminal
methods to suppress them.
In addition to the examples of disappearances and torture
of human rights lawyers mentioned above, and by my fellow
panelists, at least one prominent human rights lawyer has been
criminally detained during the Jasmine crackdown. On April 7th,
Ni Yulan, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer and housing
rights activist, who has been detained and tortured multiple
times over the past decade, was taken into police custody along
with her husband for ``creating a disturbance.''
To conclude, I am an optimist by nature and wish I could
end my remarks on a positive note but the reality is that the
human rights situation has gone from bad to worse since the
run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when many hoped that the
repressive measures taken before the Olympics would ease after
the conclusion of the Games. But then came Charter '08 in
December 2008 and then 2009 was the year of many sensitive
anniversaries. Then in 2010 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded
to Liu Xiaobo.
Crackdowns and repression have become the new normal with
2011 the worst in many, many years. There is no reason to think
that things will improve. The leadership transition next year
will again provide a justification to keep a tight lid on any
and all ``nonharmonious'' activity. But there are some things
the administration and Congress can do.
Also, Ranking Member Payne, I very much appreciated your
comment on their courage is cause for hope. I do agree with
that as well. I have recommendations in my written statement
but one recommendation that I wanted to particularly flag at
this moment is the U.S. China Legal Experts Dialogue, which
will be held in Washington in June, just next month.
I urge the U.S. delegation to raise specific cases of
lawyers who have been disappeared, detained, or subjected to
unlawful home confinement during the Jasmine crackdown and
before. Still missing lawyers include Gao Zhisheng, Li
Tiantian, and Liu Shihui. Chen Guangcheng and Zheng Enchong are
still unlawfully confined to their homes.
I would hope that the U.S. delegation would inquire after
Teng Biao, Jiang Tianyong, Li Fangping, and other human rights
lawyers who were recently disappeared and released but who are
now silent. Dialogue participants should also address a
fundamental issue that is recognized by prominent legal
academics and others in China as well as some of my fellow
panelists--that rule of law in China is regressing.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Worden follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Professor.
Thank you all for your very incisive testimony and
recommendations. Frankly, I would announce that this is the
first of a series of hearings on China. We will be focusing on
a number of very specific abuses from labor rights which are
crushed with impunity, to the one-child-per-couple policy which
we've had hearings on in the past.
Obviously when an entire generation of women and young
girls are being brutally destroyed, it warrants a separate
hearing. We will be focusing on the rule of law and lawyers,
especially those who have disappeared and are most likely, like
Gao, being tortured horrifically. And a number of other issues
that I think, Mr. Kine, you made a very good point about, the
transparency, the predictability.
I have been arguing, frankly, with the business community
for years that if they can crush human rights with nary a word
of real dissent from the West, especially and including the
United States, it's only a matter of time when contract law
will be violated if it serves the interest of the dictatorship.
I thought your point was very well made and certainly on the
environment issues and health issues as well.
Wei Jingsheng, you pointed out that at the visit of Hu
Jintao last January that the United States was humiliated. You
said today how it was seen as a weakness in terms of how,
unfortunately, the administration engaged Hu Jintao.
Mr. Kine, you talked about how the annual human rights
dialogue is toothless. You used other words to describe how
human rights needs to be on the table everywhere, not just in a
hermetically sealed type of conversation.
Mr. Mosher, I think your point about Hu Jintao no longer
talking about serving the people but managing them is right.
Frankly, I think he's managing the world, and that includes
Washington, DC. It includes both sides of the aisle. It
includes the White House and Foggy Bottom.
When you said, Mr. Kine, about China buying silence, Wei
and Harry have always talked about how people in prison are
beaten more when we acquiesce and kowtow. To think that we're
buying silence to sell our debt is unconscionable. It's not
even a good reading of the real situation at hand.
The Chinese Government would have no place to go with their
finished goods if the U.S. market were to crumble and no longer
be available to them. We are symbiotically joined at the hip,
if you will, in terms of our economic relationship. We, I
think, have a much greater, I would say almost completely wide
open, area to speak about human rights without the almost
cowardly view that if we do so, they might retaliate. Well, let
them retaliate. They will lose far more than the United States
will.
When Mrs. Clinton went to Beijing for her first trip, she
said, ``I'm not going to allow human rights to interfere.'' Her
words were carried by all the news media, with the climate
change and with peddling U.S. debt. She set back human rights
efforts of the U.S. Government significantly. I have raised
that with her personally, so I don't need to say it here; I
have done it at hearings where she has testified.
I raise that because I'm concerned about the on again/off
again. You know, the Vice President says something that people
take away as, ``Now we're getting serious.'' An article appears
in a periodical with Mrs. Clinton talking stronger. I would
remind everyone, including my very distinguished colleagues on
the subcommittee, that immediately prior to Hu Jintao's visit
here Secretary Clinton made some very good statements that we
were all saying, ``Yes, we are going to be serious about human
rights when Hu Jintao marches into Washington in January.''
Regrettably, a week later, and the Washington Post actually
did a very laudatory editorial noting that change, and then by
January 19th, the following week after those statements, the
Post made a very very--I would without objection ask that this
editorial be made part of the record--the headline was,
``President Obama makes Hu Jintao look good on rights.''
It notes, very sadly and tragically, that the President's
remarks were surprising because his administration had
indicated before Hu Jintao's visit that he intended to make
human rights a more central part of China policy.
In the press conference the President of the United States
said, ``China has a different political system than we do.
China has a different state of development than we do. We have
different cultures and a very different history.'' Frankly, I
thought that was outrageous. Yes, they have a different
political system. It's called dictatorship.
The Chinese people, and they showed it in the most robust
fashion imaginable with people being killed and incarcerated at
Tiananmen Square and all the dissidents who languish today
being tortured, they are saying with their blood, with their
sacrifice that they want a different political system that
respects fundamental human rights. To say they have a different
culture is very disturbing.
The Chinese, just like the people in the Middle East, just
like people everywhere, yearn to be free. It's not a matter of
some day 30 years from now maybe they'll get it. They deserve
it right now. I was very disappointed. The President, according
to the editorial, made no mention of Mr. Gao who has not been
heard from since--we raised this issue. We've got his picture
here--since his abduction and torture. Or Liu Xiaobo, who has
succeeded Mr. Obama as the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
I would just say it's 5 months almost to the day, December
10th, that Liu Xiaobo got the Nobel Peace Prize. Anyone who
might want to speak further on the lack of President Obama
raising his voice? You do it. We do it. But where else is the
call for this brave Nobel Peace Prize winner who was awarded in
absentia in Oslo? We need to be ratcheting up as they are
ratcheting up their repression. We ratchet up our voices and
also connect this to other policies. You might want to speak to
that and anything else that I just mentioned.
Finally, let me just say about the--I'll go on to the
second question if any of you would like to speak to it.
Mr. Wu.
Mr. Wu. I will talk a little bit about Liu Xiaobo's case.
In the Chinese verdict the Chinese documented the name of our
Web site because Chinese Government identified three articles
from Liu Xiaobo that were published on the Chinese Web site and
charged him, sentencing him to jail for 11 years.
They intend to tell people that our Web site and Liu Xiaobo
were involved in so-called intention to subvert, this is the
claim. Unfortunately, today we try to contact Liu Xiaobo and
Liu Xia. Liu Xia entirely disappeared. Even today nobody can
contact Liu Xia whatsoever, by phone, by email, by personal
contact, whatever. What is this? Home detention? Home arrest?
Nothing. Chinese Government used security to lock up Liu Xia.
At the same time many people have the same situation. This
is no talking about the law or whatever. They just do it. The
government just does that. About Liu Xia we do not know. This
is not talking about Chinese Constitution, talking about
Chinese law or whatever. There is no law in the country.
Whatever the government just did it. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Wei.
Mr. Wei. You had talked about what can we improve on human
rights issue in China. I do have one suggestion. I remember
back 10 years ago when PNTR, permanent normal trade relations,
was passed in the U.S. Congress. There is an amendment as well
as explanation for CECC, the Congressional-Executive Commission
on China.
According to the Representative Levin who made the
amendment, he was saying, ``Look, the CECC is not only
observing the situation in China, it could also make a
recommendation to stop this PNTR when the situation gets
worse.'' Now it's not just the issue of human rights in China
that is deteriorating but also there is a huge trade deficit in
between China and the USA. Now I really think CECC should play
a function.
There is a tendency with the Chinese Communist Government
nowadays it doesn't really care about what the United States or
U.S. Congress cares about. I think when this CECC comes to play
and gives some pressure to them, I think the Chinese Government
will have to respond. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Yes, Mr. Kine.
Mr. Kine. Mr. Chairman, I just want to address your
comments with regards to what the U.S. can do. I think what
we're looking at is this is an extremely pragmatic government.
I think it's worth noting this is the world's first 61-year-old
evolutionary Communist Party and it is a government that has
been able to pull and push an obdurate state bureaucracy into
the World Trade Organization. It's linked into the global
system.
When we speak to the Chinese Government on its points of
interest, it gets it. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, to a large
extent human rights have been marginalized. When and if we can
start to talk to the Chinese Government and raise issues such
as Liu Xiaobo's completely unjust conviction, the disappearance
of these individuals, the arbitrary detention of Liu Xia, Liu
Xiaobo's wife, and say these have ramifications for our
understanding of rule of law and the sustainability of our
economic and financial and trade relationship.
That's when heads come up and people get it. These are
tools to a large extent which have been left in the tool box
and they really need to be taken out. I think that it's
important to remember that if we don't do this, the price of
silence is the status quo will continue and that's really to no
benefit for either side. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. Let me just raise the issue, Mr.
Mosher. You talked about your investigations and whatever
you've published if you could make that available to the
committee or the subcommittee I would appreciate it.
In denying U.S. funds to UNFPA in 2008 Deputy Secretary of
State John Negroponte wrote, and I quote,
``Chinese birth limitation programs retain harshly
coercive elements in law and practice including
coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization. . . .
It is illegal in almost all provinces for a single
woman to bear a child.''
He also noted that the Chinese law is ``the foundation of its
coercive policies and practices and the UNFPA comports with and
adheres to Chinese law.''
So the Chinese law is paramount. Groups that operate there
then comport to it but then they create a false impression, in
my opinion, by suggesting that something more reform minded is
happening in those areas. You have found, if I'm not mistaken,
in the six counties that you investigated that is the case as
well.
Why, in your opinion, is the UNFPA not on the side of
standing with the girls that are being aborted simply because
they are girls? They are missing as many as 100 million girls
in China. Nobody knows the exact number but the gendercide is--
the implications for trafficking, not only the loss of all of
those young women who are now dead and their mothers wounded,
but the trafficking problem.
Now apparently, and I read Reuters and AFP articles, as
well, about family planning, people are allegedly selling
children, even children who were born pursuant to the one-
child-per-couple policy--so there are stolen children as well--
and putting them onto a kind of black market. If you could
speak to that, I would appreciate it.
Ms. Zhang, you might want to speak to it as well, or anyone
else.
Mr. Mosher. I think, Mr. Chairman, that we have to remember
that this was an organization, the United Nations Population
Fund, that was set up to do precisely the kinds of programs
that the Chinese Government embarked upon back in 1979. That
was the year I first went to China. That was the year the U.N.
Population Fund went to China with its first $50 million of aid
and support for China's one-child policy.
It took me about a few months to realize how coercive the
policy was. I was an eyewitness to forced abortions and forced
sterilizations in China. Surely, by the end of my year in China
the U.N. Population Fund, which had been there an equal length
of time, should have realized the policy was being carried out
in a coercive fashion that was in fundamental violation of the
UNFPA's own principle that couples have the right to determine
for themselves the number and spacing of their children.
Yet, as you well know, we have never been able to convince
the U.N. Population Fund to withdraw from China. They continue
to get ever more deeply involved in China's one-child policy.
This model birth control program which they announced, I
believe, to you back in 1998, was supposed to free at least 32,
now 72 counties, from the more onerous restrictions of the one-
child policy.
In those counties we were supposed to see an end to targets
and quotas. Women were supposed to be free to determine the
timing of their child bearing. We have repeatedly gone to
China, we being the Population Research Institute, and found
that isn't the case. In these counties so touted as models by
the U.N. Population Fund as being models free of coercion, you
find the same kinds and levels of coercion there that you find
anywhere else.
So what use has the U.N. Population Fund been in
ameliorating the bad aspects of China's one-child policy? It's
been over 30 years since the UNFPA went into China. The abuses
continue. Arguably they are as bad now as they ever were.
I mean, you can go into these model family planning
counties and see openly posted on bulletin boards statements
like, ``Under the direction of the birth control bureaucracy
and the technical personnel assigned thereto, married women of
child-bearing age who have already had one child shall be given
an IUD. Those couple who have already had a second or higher-
ordered child shall be sterilized.''
It doesn't say they should be, it says they shall be. This
is an order. This is in a model family planning county. Those
who illegally give birth to one child will be assessed a fine
three to five times their annual income. A second illegal child
assesses a fine five to seven times the annual income. A third
child a fine seven to nine times their annual income. Put that
in the context of the United States a fine 3 to 5 years a
family's average income in the U.S. would be a fine of $150,000
to $200,000. It's an equivalent economic blow in China.
Again, these fines are imposed. These punitive fines are
imposed in model family planning counties run by the U.N.
Population Fund. I believe it should immediately withdraw from
China in shame. Having failed to do that, we should withdraw
our funding from this organization.
Mr. Smith. Just let me ask Ms. Zhang if you would respond
to this. About 1\1/2\ years ago we convened a hearing in the
Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. We heard from a woman named
Wujian who is a student, an unmarried woman, a student in the
United States, and she told her story. Without objection I
would like to put her testimony into this record. It is
entitled, ``My `Little Foot,' My Lifelong Pain.''
She was forcibly aborted. She couldn't finish her
testimony. She stood right over there behind a cloak, if you
will, because the Chinese Government had a few thugs sitting in
the back taking notes trying to discern her identity. She
talked about how she was in a room full of moms who had just
gone through forced abortions. They were crying and then it was
her turn.
You can read it if you would like but it is absolutely
chilling. She makes a point that, as the Chinese say, ``If you
have broken your tooth, you swallow it by yourself.'' She
pointed out in her testimony, and I quote, ``I have never
shared this experience with anyone before because the scars in
my heart are 1 million times more painful than the scars in my
body.''
She talked about how other Chinese women had this repressed
trauma that is so profound and so devastating. Yet, they don't
come forward necessarily because they just internalize it. I
believe WHO is right when they say so many women are committing
suicide. The number is about 500 per day.
We don't know how accurate that is but that is an estimate
they've made. I mean, the women of China are traumatized but it
is below the surface. I'm wondering what impact that's having
on the women that your people on the ground are seeing with
regard to the emotional health, the psychological health of the
women in China.
Ms. Zhang. For Ms. Wujian her pain has not stopped. All the
Communist officials in her hometown keep on making trouble for
her. Even now she is still in pain and her case is not yet
finished. Ms. Wujian has come to the United States and she got
asylum so she is not physically harmed anymore, yet in her
hometown there are many people just like her who are are still
suffering.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. If I could just ask, Mr. Kine, has
Human Rights Watch picked up information about the Reuters and
the AFP articles about the sale of ``illegal children''?
Mr. Kine. Chairman, we have noted those articles with great
concern. This is an ongoing point of interest for our
organization. We will continue to monitor and look for research
opportunities.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Let me ask with regard to the designations of Tier III,
Tier I, Tier II under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
The report will be coming in just a couple of weeks. The
information seems to be overwhelming that China ought to be a
Tier III country because of its huge trafficking problems and
it manifests in so many ways. Women from North Korea who get
across the border are sold into modern day slavery once they
get across.
The magnet that the one-child-per-couple policy has caused
with missing women, missing girls, is also exacerbating the
problem. Bride selling. We've heard reports of areas in Hunan
where there is huge coercive bride selling.
I'm just wondering what your recommendations, if any, might
be to U.S. Department of State about whether or not China
should be now designated a Tier III country because of its
egregious abuse of modern day slavery, or embrace of it I
should say. Would you like to comment?
Yes, Mr. Kine.
Mr. Kine. Chairman, I'd start with a more general comment.
I would say that I think one thing that the U.S. Government
could be doing is urging the Chinese Government to allow more
openness. The trouble in terms of documenting these issues in
China today, as I'm sure Mr. Mosher can attest to, is it's
extremely difficult. We're in a time of very, very tight
surveillance, control, retribution against people who are
documenting and compiling information which the government
considers ``sensitive,'' dangerously ambiguous criterion.
I think it's notable that the senior Chinese official on
Charlie Rose the other night said that Americans had a very
simple idea about China due to the fact that the U.S. media
didn't cover it in depth or was biased. The fact is that the
U.S. media in China are extremely controlled. They are under
attack. In recent weeks we've had journalists be beaten and
threatened with having their visas revoked. I think the first
step is allowing the transparency in terms of what's going on.
Mr. Smith. Let me also ask, if I could, your assessment as
to how well or poorly the Human Rights Council has been, how
robust has the United States been in raising China's human
rights abuses within the Human Rights Council?
Professor Worden.
Ms. Worden. In fact, one of my recommendations is that we
strengthen U.S. involvement in the U.N. Human Rights Council
and that we use the Council and other multilateral fora as
additional mechanisms by which to press the Chinese Government
to adhere to its international obligations and commitments with
respect to human rights.
I do want to point out that the U.S. was instrumental in
establishing a new mechanism, a new special procedure on
freedom of association and assembly. The U.S. was very much
involved in that effort and this obviously will have a great
impact to help with the Chinese situation so I applaud the U.S.
Government for that.
Mr. Smith. Yes, Mr. Wei.
Mr. Wei. About the Human Rights Council, we have been
meeting with them for many years so we do have some basic
observations. The Chinese members are working in that council
and they often are directed by the Chinese Government.
Not only that, even the staff from other countries they
often receive a threat or corruption in this regard. To an
organization like this they are so corrupted and their basic
rule is that they are afraid of hooligans but they don't care
about gentlemen. The problem with the United States is it's too
gentleman toward it.
Of course, you know, I'm not saying gentlemen cannot deal
with hooligans but still I think the fact the United States
Government is the big financial support to this organization,
to the United Nations, then I think in regard to the Human
Rights Council we could present a demand in the way you give
the money out.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Ranking Member Payne.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. I certainly appreciate the
discussion here and I would certainly like to once again
commend you very courageous folks, Mr. Wei, Mr. Wu, and Ms.
Zhang for what you've done in standing up for your rights. I
think it's people like you that are the unsung heroes to see
change.
I think, Mr. Wei, you brought up a very interesting point
when you did raise the question about the PNTR. Many of my
friends on the other side of the aisle push for permanent trade
and normal trade relations, rather than the so-called most
favorite nation status which was, in fact, the law. The
difference between the most favored nation status was that it
had to come up every several years for renewal.
I think that with a push to change that most favorite
nation status to permanent normal trade relations which comes
up no more, at least before we had a stick to hold over their
head. When we look at the status of China today and how they
have failed to change as they have become stronger
economically, I think we have to go back in history and find
out who pushed to get them to the position where we are.
I see the articles that are written by Mr. Kine in the
papers that they seem to end up in, the Forbes and the
Financial Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, the Wall Street
Journal, American Chamber of Commerce. I have a question about
what the conversation is with them. I'll ask you later after I
make a statement. I listened very carefully about the criticism
of Mr. Obama and I do think it wasn't a strong enough
statement.
However, I certainly think that the statements made by the
Vice President, and I think Secretary Clinton, will also have
some stronger statements coming up. We look back and look at
the last 8 years of the Bush administration if you want to see
the trade and balance deficit go through the roof. There is
plenty of blame to go around if we want to start name calling.
I think we have a very serious problem but the problem that
we have has been strictly pushed by the financial and the
economic interest of our country. That's where we have such a
trade deficit and we have allowed ourselves to be co-opted by
the business community to where we find ourselves in the
position that we're in and that didn't happen in the last 2\1/
2\ years. Let me make that clear.
The fact that we have this unbelievable trade deficit and,
secondly, the purchasing of our debt, I too feel that it ought
to stop. I was opposed to it in the first place. That's why I
was opposed to PNTR. My record is clear. You can look it up. I
don't know the records of others who speak against the tyranny
of China and what the record is. I hope it's the same as mine.
The fact that the Human Rights Council, I think, has to be
strengthened. The Human Rights Council for the second term of
it, it's been in for two kind of quadrenniums, first started
with the U.S. nonparticipation and there were a number of
recommendations made to change the manner in which the Human
Rights Council functioned before you could get elected simply
by your block of countries.
Now you have to get a world-wide consensus, therefore,
eliminating some that could get the approval just by being in
their own bat. My point was with the Human Rights Council is
that we should have been participating in it from its inception
because if you're sitting in an organization where you have no
say, then who is there to counteract the terrible things that
have been said during the first term of the Human Rights
Council and the fact that just several weeks ago the Human
Rights Council actually had a resolution against Syria where
they are asking Syria to come up with justifications.
For the first time a Middle East country that has been
doing terrible things like many of them have been doing for
decades have been challenged by the Human Rights Council. I'm
sure that's because the United States is there and had been
able to raise the voice and actually got a unanimous vote on
the condemnation of Syria in the manner in which they are
treating their people. I think that is a giant step in the
right direction and I hope it's the beginning of more equity
and balance in the Human Rights Council as we move forward.
Also the question of torture that we hear happening so much
in China. It's a horrible thing but then I get questioned about
enhanced interrogation, ``What does that mean? Water boarding,
what is that?'' Other countries say, ``You do some things and
we do things,'' therefore, try to make a moral equivalent which
there is none.
I think we ought to be very careful of the policies that we
have as a nation and defend as we go in and certainly
criticize, as we ought to, other countries that do horrible
things to their people. I think that we have a tremendous
amount of work to do. We need to really put the economic
pressure on China.
It makes no sense that if it were not for the United
States, China would still be in the development stage and not
the economic power that they are today. We need to look in the
mirror to find out who helped create this situation of a nation
that has strong legs and is moving forward. I have total
concerns about the human rights violations. We ought to be
firmer as we deal with them.
I do have a question, Mr. Mosher. You suggested that you
think it's best that the U.N. Population Fund withdraw from
China. Are there any positive things that in your opinion have
happened? I haven't followed the work of that agency in China
or other parts of the world but are there any positive things
and if, indeed, they withdraw would that make things better in
that area or do you just think that perhaps because they are
unable to function, the way they ought to, they should simply
withdraw?
Mr. Mosher. Given that it's 2011 and given that the U.N.
Population Fund has been in China, as I mentioned, since 1979,
I think we've given the organization a reasonable length of
time to try and affect positive change in China.
I have read the UNFPA reports regarding China. They claim
that in some respects they have moderated the Chinese program,
but if you look at China's economic advances, if you look at
the increasing urbanization and industrialization and the
length and the years of education that people spend in school,
those are sufficient to account for the decrease in the birth
rate to the increased use of contraceptives to all of the other
things that the UNFPA would lay claim to.
Of course, that raises the larger point of the population
control program in China in the first place which, of course,
is a Western borrowing because the overpopulation crises, as
some call it, myth as others would call it, originated in the
West and was imported into China in 1979 when the Chinese
Government became convinced that they would not be able to
modernize unless they drastically reduced the birth rate of
their population.
I think 30 years down the road we can see the fact that
China has eliminated 400 million of the most productive
enterprising, energetic people the world has ever known from
their population is probably not a good thing. It's not a good
thing for social stability in China. The Chinese Government
claims to be very concerned about it's not a good thing because
of the imbalance in the sex ratio and the tens of millions of
young men who are buying brides because they cannot woo them.
There simply aren't enough women to go around.
The social consequence of the one-child policy, no less
than the economic consequences of the one-child policy, are
proving devastating. China will have a nationwide labor
shortage within the next 2 years as a result of this policy and
the shortage of young people going into the workforce.
The role that the U.N. Population Fund has played in
encouraging that policy in buying computers for the State
Family Planning Commission so they can set targets for
population growth shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the
importance of human beings both in China and around the world.
I do not think that the organization has played a positive role
in China. I think it has encouraged the one-child policy in
fundamental ways.
It has certainly acted as a cheerleader for the policy
internationally and given important political cover to the
Chinese Government. When the Chinese people complain about
being restricted to one child, the Chinese Government can say,
``Well, it's not just our policy. It's a policy that is
supported by this prestigious international organization at the
U.N., the U.N. Population Fund.''
That, in turn, has stymied the legitimate call for the
Chinese people to reassert control over there own fundamental
right to decide how many children they should have, or not have
as the case may be.
Mr. Payne. Also on the question--thank you very much--on
your statement that you feel that adoptions should be ended.
Could you explain that a little bit more? You feel it would be
better for a family to take a child who might have a better
situation and you think it should end.
Mr. Mosher. Mr. Ranking Member, I have always encouraged
adoptions from China of girls primarily, but also of
handicapped little girls and boys because the death rates in
Chinese orphanages are very high. Even the children that
survive, of course, are stunted in some way developmentally
because of the lack of human contact and love and compassion.
Giving them a new life here is something that I have always
encouraged.
But the thought that these children are not simply
abandoned but have been taken by force from their parents and
sold to a state-run orphanage which in turn, in effect, sells
them to adoptive couples is intolerable. I think it would be
intolerable for American couples who are considering adoption
as well. How heavy would it lay on your heart the thought that
the child you got and opened your home and your heart to was
actually abducted from her parents instead of being abandoned.
I think until we get to the bottom of this----
Mr. Payne. Do you think that the average adoptee is aware
of the fact that they feel that child has been abducted and so
forth? I mean, in your opinion.
Mr. Mosher. I think the reports are just beginning to come
out but the reports are of a piece with the kinds of abuses
we've seen caused by the one-child policy in other areas, the
buy and selling of women across national borders, the rising
bride prices in China.
You would think as women became scarce that their value
would go up, that their status in society would rise as they
became more scarce. Instead, women in China are being treated
more and more like a commodity. That's not just women. It's
little girls. It's baby girls. There is now in China the
resurgence of a traditional practice called bringing in a
little daughter-in-law.
Because of the shortage of little girls in China, because
of the future shortage of brides that will translate into, you
have couples now looking for a bride for their son when their
son is 3 and 4 years old.
They will bring in a 2- or 3-year-old little girl and they
will raise her as their little daughter-in-law. When she
reaches marriageable age she will be married to their son. You
know, it is a violation of the right of that girl to determine
for herself her life's path. Her path is determined when she
can hardly walk her dog.
Mr. Payne. There is no question that China is going to have
a very, very serious problem, as has been already indicated, in
the future not only because they are going to have this big
disproportion of men who will become restless, and will become
ornery. There will be increased idle time for recreation. There
are going to be less things to do. They are not going to be
able to have a spouse and be married so you find the negatives
come in.
You find gambling increasing. You find drinking increasing.
You find brawls on weekends where there is nothing else to do.
There is going to be a very, very serious problem in China in
the future. I hope the authorities understand that their policy
is just--I mean, it's going to be serious. It's going to be a
situation, in my opinion, that they are going to be unable to
control. I couldn't agree with you more on the fact that this
policy needs to end.
Ms. Worden, there are, as we know, a number of problems in
China. I wonder if you could prioritize what you think would be
the areas we should move more aggressively on or if you had a
way to prioritize civil rights or political and minority
rights, you know, political prisoners release, criminal law
reform, Internet freedom, religious freedom, Tibet autonomy,
rights of minorities. Don't forget the Uyghurs. I wanted to
make sure I got them in. Where would you suggest if we tried to
hone in on a couple of issues?
Ms. Worden. That's an excellent but very challenging
question, indeed. I think that particularly in light of the
current crackdown the issues that I discussed in my testimony--
the disappearances, torture, also arbitrary, detention, all of
these, of course, are fundamental human rights. These are
really the very core.
Freedom of expression, of course, is another. It's really
hard, I think, to prioritize. I'm very encouraged to hear about
the set of hearings of which, I guess, this is the inaugural
one. I'm certainly more than happy to brainstorm about certain
issues.
As you know, I formerly was with the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China. I think the work they do is
excellent. I think if you consult their Web site and the annual
report, there will also be some ideas, but they don't
prioritize. If I may, I did want to mention a few things. You
had mentioned Tibet and I know today the hearing is not
targeted toward that issue but I did want to, if I may, just
raise two thoughts, two recommendations.
As I imagine you know, the State Department has been trying
for quite a while to get a consulate in Lhasa. I would just
encourage you all to support that as a priority. The post is
extremely important to improve reporting on the situation in
Tibetan areas and to provide services to Americans.
The closest consulate is in Chengdu which is hundreds of
miles away. As you know, both Tibet and Xinjiang have been
essentially cordoned off so I think we should really try to
enhance our efforts to have a presence in that part of China,
as well as pushing the Chinese Government to insist on
unrestricted diplomatic and journalist access to both Tibet and
Xinjiang.
Mr. Payne. As a matter of fact, the Dalai Llama is going to
be in my town all weekend. We have the Newark Peace Summit in
New Jersey. I'll have the privilege to speak there tomorrow if
I get out of here today. We are very pleased with that.
I just wonder, Mr. Kine, have you had any conversation with
the business people since it seems like, although you are with
Human Rights Watch, many of your articles appear in the
financial publications. What do they say about--I mean, do they
feel any guilt like criticism to them, for example, the fact
the U.N. isn't doing all they can in China and, therefore, we
should really make that clear and highlight that? What about
our businessmen, our Fortune 500 and all that stuff? Growing up
that sounded so good and right. That's where you want to be. I
mean, what do they say?
Mr. Kine. Thank you very much, Mr. Ranking Member. That's a
great question. I would answer it this way. I think probably
the sustaining myth of corporate America's engagement with
China over the last 30 years, the idea is that as China is more
engaged with the world economy through investment and contacts
with the U.S. firms, then it will logically over time result in
a kinder, gentler Chinese regime that respects universal rights
and freedoms.
That view has obviously taken a beating, literally and
figuratively, in the last few months. You see more and more
expressions of disquiet amongst foreign investors in China
about the direction of Chinese policy and concern about this
erosion in rule of law. There are perceptions that the Chinese
Government is not living up to its World Trade Organization
commitments, for example.
I would also add that one of the problems is that in terms
of foreign firms and U.S. firms engagement with China is to a
large extent depending on the sector there has been at least an
implicit recognition or assumption that they need to do
business in a way in China that they can't do at home. There
needs to be a certain amount of ethical or moral sacrifices in
order to do business. It must be done the Chinese way.
What's interesting is that we saw last year that Google
took that on and said, ``We will no longer buy into that. We
will no longer do business the Chinese way. We will no longer
self-censor our searches'' which was an excellent example. It's
interesting that Google still does business in China. It has a
healthy footprint in China.
What's disconcerting is that Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing
search engines in China still do self-censorship. They have not
learned this lesson. I think another very ominous development
is within the last 2 or 3 weeks we've had a lobbyist for
Facebook say on record that it's concerned that in certain
countries it won't be able to--it's not willing or won't be
able to provide the type of free content and expression that it
does in other countries, particularly the United States.
In certain circumstances perhaps Facebook has allowed its
content to be too free which is indicating at a time when
Facebook is perhaps in conversations with a Chinese partner for
finally accessing the Chinese market is sending a signal about
how it wants to do business.
I just want to make two final comments about this. I think
a specific interest and concern of the U.S. business community
in China is something called the law on guarding state secrets.
The state secrecy law is probably one of the most dangerously
ambiguous laws on any country's books.
There is currently a U.S. citizen, Mr. Xue Feng, who is
serving an 11-year prison term for buying on the open market,
transparently, legally a database about China's petroleum
industry and then finding out retroactively that according to
the law that it was ``secret.''
He was reportedly the subject of torture while in custody
and is now serving an 11-year prison sentence for buying and
accessing material that in any free country would be easily and
readily available.
The second thing I want to say is a good example. In 2009
the Chinese Government tried to roll out something called the
Green Dam Software Initiative in which they were going to
require all manufacturers of computers to China, foreign and
domestic, to install something called the Green Dam Software
Filter.
Now, experts recognize that this Green Dam Software Filter
could also be used to filter out content which went beyond
concerns such as pornography and illegal content. What happened
is we saw something unprecedented in China. We saw Commerce,
USTR, trade associations, and individual companies get up and
say, ``We can't do this. We're not willing to do this.'' Guess
what? Within a month the Chinese Government blinked and said,
``We won't do this.''
So what's the example? If foreign investors including the
U.S. business community with support of the U.S. Government,
with support of international trade associations, if the
pressure against initiatives which are against universal rights
and freedoms, if that pressure is sustained and if it is broad-
based and it's coherent, it can have impact. Thank you.
Mr. Payne. Thank you all very much. I appreciate your
testimony.
Mr. Wu. I'll just say a little bit about Cisco.
Mr. Payne. Yes.
Mr. Wu. Well, China had a national project so-called Golden
Shield security systems from 2000 and 2005 to set up an
Internet system, the whole Internet system, including from the
patrol car to the station and the local station to the
supervision station.
Cisco signed many contracts with the Public Security
Department to support the national project so-called Golden
Shield. Today it's almost done. The whole project, the
government said, cost more than $6 billion. We don't know
exactly how many contracts there are between Chinese security
department and Cisco. In a number of articles the Chinese
Government said, ``We very much appreciate Cisco's
cooperation.''
Particularly today, Chinese issued a charge against Nobel
Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. He was sentenced to 11 years
there. The verdict named our Web site, and this Web site,
Observe China--to which Liu Xiaobo sent more than 200, maybe
300 articles to our Web site, and Chinese picked three articles
as a charge, Liu Xiaobo's so-called intent to subvert the
government. Well, I think it is very clear that the Chinese
Government really has the ability to do so because they have
Cisco's support.
Unfortunately, last December when I was in Oslo
participating in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Chinese
dissident Liu Xiaobo, Cisco's CEO John Chambers was there--
because Cisco is a major sponsor for the Nobel Peace Prize,
which issued an award to China's Liu Xiaobo.
Two faces. Okay? They support the Nobel Peace Prize and
sign a contract with Chinese security. I don't know what's
going on but I do remember last year IBM apologized to German
Jewish because 60 years ago IBM sold calculators to Germany's
Hitler regime and 60 years later IBM apologized.
I do believe sooner or later Cisco will apologize to all
the Chinese citizens because they sell the router and the
equipment. They told the Chinese very clearly, ``We can save
your police power.'' Well, this is an American entrepreneur.
They really have to do something different. Thank you.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much. I couldn't agree with you
more.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Let me just conclude
unless anyone else has any further statements. You've been an
outstanding panel. As I indicated, this is the first of a
series of hearings. We will have another Internet hearing, for
example. You might recall, because many of you were here, we
had Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google all testify.
It's been an ongoing conversation with them on what they
can do to disassociate themselves from the censorship and
putting personally identifiable information outside the reach
of the secret police in China or any Internet restricting
country.
Your point, Mr. Wu, is so well taken with regards to the
enabling of dictatorship. I opened up that first hearing with a
book that I had just read called ``IBM and the Holocaust'' and
it talked about how they enabled the Gestapo to find Jews
throughout Europe in order to send them to Auschwitz and other
terrible camps.
Let me also just make a point for the record. I wish Mr.
Payne was still here but it ought to be noted that MFN was
restored in 1980 under Jimmy Carter, retained during the Reagan
and Bush administrations. President Clinton wisely linked most
favored nation status with human rights but sadly, and
regrettably, it was an empty promise because within 1 year he
had completely shredded his own executive order.
In my opinion, and I believe this passionately, that was
the year we lost--it was May 1994, May 26th to be exact. I
actually did a press conference that is still on the archives
of CSPAN, as is David Bonior's press conference and former
Speaker Pelosi. We all said basically the same thing, that this
is a major setback for all human rights across the board and
that the dictatorship has taken the measure of the U.S. and
found us wanting and that profits trumped human rights.
I would also point out for the record that PNTR, which I
also vigorously oppose, permanent normal trading relations went
into effect and was signed by President Clinton in October
2000. Republicans and Democrats both voted for that
legislation. Congressman Levin was referenced earlier by Mr.
Wei Jingsheng.
But hopefully, the experiment ``if we just trade more, they
will matriculate from a dictatorship to a human rights
respecting country'' has been shattered because that is a myth
and myths sometimes die slow, long, painful deaths. My hope is
that more people will realize that it's time to look at
engagement that has linkages to a penalty phase to hold
countries to account.
Would anyone like to add anything further before we
adjourn? If not, I thank you again and this hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:02 p.m. the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing RecordNotice deg.
Material submitted for the record by Mr. Phelim Kine, Asia researcher,
Human Rights Watch
Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights