[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
URGING CHINA'S PRESIDENT XI JINPING TO STOP STATE SPONSORED HUMAN
RIGHTS ABUSES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 18, 2015
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
House
Senate
CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Cochairman
ROBERT PITTENGER, North Carolina TOM COTTON, Arkansas
TRENT FRANKS, Arizona STEVE DAINES, Montana
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
TIM WALZ, Minnesota BEN SASSE, Nebraska
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
MICHAEL HONDA, California DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
TED LIEU, California JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
GARY PETERS, Michigan
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
CHRISTOPHER P. LU, Department of Labor
SARAH SEWALL, Department of State
STEFAN M. SELIG, Department of Commerce
DANIEL R. RUSSEL, Department of State
TOM MALINOWSKI, Department of State
Paul B. Protic, Staff Director
Elyse B. Anderson, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Statements
Page
Opening Statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S.
Representative from New Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China.................................. 1
Cotton, Hon. Tom., a U.S. Senator from Arkansas.................. 3
Pittenger, Hon. Robert, a U.S. Representative from North Carolina 5
Teng Biao, a well-known Chinese human rights lawyer, a Harvard
University Law School Visiting Fellow, and Co-founder, the Open
Constitution Initiative........................................ 7
Xiao Qiang, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, China Digital Times..... 9
Yang Jianli, President, Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for
China.......................................................... 11
Wei Jingsheng, Chairman, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition.... 13
Hoshur, Shohret, Journalist reporting news in China's Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region for Radio Free Asia................... 14
Gutmann, Ethan, China analyst and author of ``The Slaughter: Mass
Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to its
Dissident Problem''............................................ 16
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Teng Biao........................................................ 34
Xiao Qiang....................................................... 35
Yang Jianli...................................................... 37
Wei Jingsheng.................................................... 49
Hoshur, Shohret.................................................. 51
Gutmann, Ethan................................................... 53
Smith, Hon. Christopher, a U.S. Representative from New Jersey;
Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.......... 54
Rubio, Hon. Marco, a U.S. Senator from Florida; Cochairman,
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.................... 56
Submission for the Record
Witness Biographies.............................................. 57
URGING CHINA'S PRESIDENT XI JINPING TO
STOP STATE-SPONSORED HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
----------
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2015
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m.,
in room HVC 210, Capitol Visitor Center, Representative
Christopher Smith, Chairman, presiding.
Also present: Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Robert
Pittenger.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S.
REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-
EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Chairman Smith. The Commission will come to order. And I
want to begin first by welcoming each and every one of you
here--Senator Tom Cotton, who is a member of the Commission, a
former Member of the House now serving with great distinction
over on the Senate side and, of course, Commissioner Pittenger,
who is also a totally dedicated human rights advocate. And I
want to thank him for his leadership on all issues related to
China, but also religious freedom around the world.
I will give a very brief opening statement, then yield to
my distinguished colleagues for any comments they might have.
On July 10, police came for lawyer Wang Yu. Her arrest was
the first in what became a massive crackdown on China's human
rights defenders. Wang Yu was one of China's brightest and
bravest lawyers. She chose to represent clients in sensitive
cases, such as Uyghur professor Ilham Tohti and Falun Gong
practitioners.
Police later swept up her husband and others who worked at
their Beijing law firm. What originally looked like a targeted
attack on one law firm quickly became a coordinated hunt for
human rights lawyers and legal staff across 19 Chinese
provinces.
Over the next few weeks, over 300 human rights lawyers and
legal staff were detained. Of that number, around 27 remain
incarcerated and 10 face charges of committing national
security crimes.
Li Heping and Zhang Kai, two lawyers well known to this
Congress and other parliamentarians around the world, were
``disappeared'' in this crackdown. They remain missing and are
reportedly denied access to family or legal counsel. Zhang Kai
was arrested the night before a planned meeting with U.S.
Ambassador-at-Large Rabbi David Saperstein.
These detentions were lawless; they were brutal and
shocking. Sadly, they are not without precedent in China.
President Xi comes to the United States next week, at a time
when his government is staging an extraordinary assault on the
rule of law, human rights and civil society.
Under Xi's leadership, the Chinese Government has pushed
through new laws and draft legislation that would legitimize
political, religious, and ethnic repression, further curtail
civil liberties, and expand censorship of the Internet.
China also continues its coercive population control
policies. The one-child-per-couple policy will mark its 35th
anniversary next week. That's 35 years of telling couples that
their family--what they must look like, 35 years of forced and
coercive abortions and sterilizations, 35 years of children
viewed by the state as excess baggage from the day that they
were conceived, 35 years where brothers and sisters are
illegal.
This policy is unacceptable. It is hated by the people. It
is tragic and it is absolutely wrong. We urge President Xi to
do the right thing and end China's horrific population control
policies forever.
The NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders says President Xi
has, ``overseen one of the most repressive periods in the post-
Mao Zedong era.''
The CECC, whose annual report will be officially released
in three weeks, will conclude that the Chinese Government's
efforts to, ``silence dissent, suppress human rights advocacy,
and control civil society are broader in scope than any other
period documented since the Commission started issuing its
annual reports beginning in 2002.''
China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea for the
title of world's worst violators of human rights. The hope that
President Xi would be different, a different type of leader,
has been completely destroyed.
Nonetheless, despite the torture and arrests, despite the
harassment and censorship, the black jails and failed promises,
the continued growth of trafficking--particularly sex
trafficking, rights advocates, civil society activists, and
religious believers continue to grow in prestige and social
influence in China.
Persecution has not silenced them, at least not at this
moment. It has not dimmed their hope for a different kind of
China Dream that embraces human rights, freedom, and democracy.
U.S. policy must be geared to protect China's rights
defenders and religious communities and its women, especially
against coercive population control, and nurture China's civil
society, its work, and those committed to the rule of law and
fundamental freedoms.
The United States cannot be morally neutral in this regard.
We cannot be silent in the face of the Chinese Government's
repression. We must show leadership and resolve, because only
the United States has the power and prestige to stand up to
China's intransience.
U.S.-China relations would be stronger and more stable if
people like Wang Yu or Li Heping and Zhang Kai were in
positions of leadership in the Chinese Government.
Washington is preparing to roll out the red carpet, as we
all know, next week for President Xi and his delegation. Toasts
will be made, statements will be exchanged, with a lot of happy
faces and, again, it is important that the issues of human
rights and democracy and the rule of law be raised in a
profound and public way by the President, and all others with
whom President Xi will meet.
If Obama fails to raise human rights prominently, as he has
failed to do in the past, it is a diplomatic win for Xi
Jinping. If economic and security interests grab all of the
headlines, China's freedom advocates will despair. If there is
no price to be paid for China's increased lawlessness and
repression, it is a loss for everyone who is committed to
freedom and rights.
We can no longer afford to separate human rights from our
other interests in China. That has gone on for far too long.
Human rights cannot be considered a separate track with
discussions and negotiations in one room, totally disconnected
from U.S. foreign policy. It needs to be integrated at all
levels.
Surprisingly, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry
Paulson agrees with this assessment. Mr. Paulson is not known
as a passionate defender of human rights, but in his latest
book, ''Dealing With China,'' he says that the United States
must not shy away from ``shining a light on human rights
problems, because nothing good happens in the dark.''
He says the United States must push for greater
transparency, the free flow of information and better adherence
to universal standards in China, not only because they
represent universal values, but because they are critical parts
of U.S. economic interests.
It is increasingly clear that there is a direct link
between China's domestic human rights problems and the security
and prosperity of the United States. The health of our economy
and environment, the safety of our food and drug supplies, the
security of our investments and personal information in
cyberspace, and the stability of the Pacific region will depend
on China's complying with international law, allowing the free
flow of news and information, complying with its WTO
obligations and protecting the basic rights of its citizens.
President Obama must shine a bright light on China's human
rights abuses. He must raise issues about the South China Sea
and what is happening with regard to the Chinese military's
expansionist ambitions, and he must use all of our diplomatic
tools, including sanctions if necessary, to demonstrate our
resolve on these important issues.
I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague,
Commissioner, also Senator, Cotton.
STATEMENT OF HON. TOM COTTON, A U.S. SENATOR FROM ARKANSAS
Senator Cotton. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith. Thank
you for your years of leadership on this and so many other
critical human rights issues.
I want to thank the witnesses today, not only for taking
the time to testify, but for the work you do to shine a light
on the dire human rights situation in China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in the United
States next week. His handlers have clearly crafted his
schedule to project a modern and dignified image of Xi's role,
but I see no evidence of modernity or dignity. I only see a
parade of stark contrasts, shameful juxtapositions and bitter
ironies.
Xi's first stop will be a technology conference that China
has organized in Seattle. Leaders of companies such as
Facebook, Microsoft, and Google are expected to attend.
In Seattle, these tech titans will share pleasantries with
Xi. But in China, their companies can't deliver information to
the Chinese people because of Beijing's Great Firewall. And
Xi's government uses that leverage to pressure tech companies
into arrangements to censor content.
In Seattle, Xi will talk about expanding trade and
technology, but in China he's depriving NGOs, journalists, and
civil rights activists access to the Internet technology,
fearful that they will organize amongst themselves, share
information, and undermine the authoritarian regime.
Xi will also visit Boeing's factory in Everett, WA. In
Everett, he'll no doubt praise the efficiency of the factory,
operated by American workers who enjoy labor rights and
workplace protections. But in China, labor organizers stand a
good chance of being abducted, severely beaten, and left for
dead a mile outside a city, as happened to Chinese labor
advocate Peng Jiayong.
In Everett, Xi will see that all workers are skilled
adults, but in China authorities ignore child-labor laws,
leaving 13-year-olds like Li Youbin to die after working slave-
labor shifts in harrowing conditions.
Xi will then travel to New York City, where he will chair a
global leaders meeting on gender equality and women's
empowerment at the United Nations.
In New York, Xi will praise international roadmaps toward
gender equality, but in China, women are subjected to forced
abortions, mandated sterilization, and mass implantation of
birth control devices, all to advance Xi's population control
policies.
In New York, Xi will urge other nations to commit to
efforts to empower women, but in China Xi's regime arrests
female lawyers and women's rights activists like Wang Yu.
In New York, Xi will purport to stand in judgment over
other nations on women's rights, but in China prison guards
raped and abused Li Ruirui. She was being held in an extralegal
detention center for dissidents, or it is referred to as a
``black jail.''
Unfortunately, her story is not unique. The grand majority
of detainees in so-called ``black jails'' are women, and they
are at constant risk of rape and abuse by the regime's thugs.
The highlight of Xi's trip, of course, will be Washington,
DC, a meeting and state dinner with President Obama. Xi and
President Obama will hold a press conference where Xi will see
a number of journalists representing a free press corps.
But in China, his regime arrests journalists who publish
inconvenient information. After a stay in jail, the government
parades the reporters before cameras to confess their supposed
crimes.
Xi and the President will have a private meeting, perhaps
over tea. But in China, being invited for tea has a very
different meaning. It is code among civil society activists for
being summoned by state security services to be interrogated,
intimidated, and put on notice that the government is watching
you.
During the state dinner, Xi will enjoy the sweetest of
meats and the finest of wines in stately environs of the White
House. But in China, Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, was
imprisoned in a dark cell for years and allowed only a slice of
bread and a piece of cabbage each day. He was also tortured
with cigarette butts, electrified wires, and toothpicks rammed
into his genitals.
Among Gao's crimes was his defense of persecuted religious
groups--Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and practitioners of
Falun Gong. These believers are constant targets of government
surveillance, imprisonment, torture, and forcible medication.
President Obama is welcoming Xi to the United States in the
grandest diplomatic fashion. But as they sit next to each other
in that state dinner, I hope President Obama recognizes what is
perhaps the starkest irony of Xi's trip to the United States.
If President Obama had lived his life not in the United
States but in China, as a Christian, a community organizer, a
civil rights lawyer, and a constitutional law professor, he
would not be enjoying a grand fete with Xi Jinping. President
Obama most likely would be in prison, or much, much worse.
Chairman Smith. Thank you very much, Senator Cotton, for
that very eloquent statement.
Mr. Pittenger?
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT PITTENGER, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM
NORTH CAROLINA
Representative Pittenger. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for
allowing me to make an opening statement and for participating
in this important hearing.
Thank you, as well, to our witnesses for appearing here
today.
China is among one of the world's greatest powers, but its
rise has come at a spectacular cost--the rights of its people.
Now, America has her own faults. America is dealing with
crime. We deal with violence, with drugs, with racial issues.
Notwithstanding that, but as we address our own concerns, we
must have an honest dialogue with the Chinese leadership.
There is little question of China's frequent, systemic
violations of human rights. Their thinly veiled offenses
against freedom of the press, expression, religion, and speech,
as well as their focused attacks on international entities and
human rights advocates, paint a picture of a stifling and
oftentimes terrifying life for the Chinese people.
We must not turn a blind eye to these horrific acts. Among
other initiatives in Congress, and as part of this Commission,
I am proud sponsor of H.R. 343, which expresses strong outrage
regarding reports of China's systemic, state-sanctioned organ
harvesting to non-consenting prisoners of conscience.
While these efforts are important, President Xi Jinping's
upcoming visit to the White House presents a unique opportunity
for President Obama to become a champion for human rights and
freedoms of conscience for the Chinese people.
It is imperative that President Obama use every available
opportunity to discuss these issues with President Xi Jinping.
The United States must remain committed to the human rights of
all peoples and hold our counterparts around the world
accountable to their violations.
We must promote human rights and fair treatment for all in
China and across the world.
I am grateful to those who will offer testimony today, and
I yield back.
Mr. Chairman, your respect for this Commission, I do have a
plane I have got to catch, and I regret that. But I offer my
deep commitment to each of you in this cause.
Chairman Smith. Well, thank you very much, Commissioner
Pittenger, and I do hope--and I know you will--take the
testimony to read, because the testimony is devastating.
Representative Pittenger. Yes.
Chairman Smith. Thank you.
I would like to introduce our distinguished witnesses,
beginning first with Dr. Teng Biao, who is a well-known human
rights lawyer, visiting fellow at Harvard University Law
School, and co-founder of the Open Constitution Initiatives.
Dr. Teng holds a Ph.D. from Peking University Law School, and
has been a visiting scholar at Yale Law School.
As a human rights lawyer, Dr. Teng is a promoter of the
Rights Defense Movement and co-initiator of the New Citizens
Movement in China. In 2003, he was one of the three Doctors of
Law who complained to the National People's Congress about the
unconstitutional detentions of internal migrants. And of
course, Dr. Teng is involved in so much more.
A full bio for all of you will be made a part of the
record, without objection.
We will then hear from Xiao Qiang, who is the founder and
editor-in-chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual Chinese
news website. He is an adjunct professor at the School of
Information at the Graduate School of Journalism at the
University of California at Berkeley. He is also the principal
investigator of the Counter-Power Lab, an interdisciplinary
faculty-student research group focusing on technology and the
free flow of information in cyberspace based in the School of
Information at Berkeley.
We will then hear from Yang Jianli, who is the president of
Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for China. Dr. Yang is a
scholar and democracy activist internationally recognized for
his efforts to promote democracy in China.
He has been involved in the pro-democracy movement in China
since the 1980s and was forced to flee China in 1989, after the
Tiananmen Square Massacre. Dr. Yang returned to China to
support the labor movement and was imprisoned by Chinese
authorities for espionage and illegal entry.
Following his release in 2007, he founded Initiatives for
China, a non-governmental organization that promotes China's
peaceful transition to democracy.
We will then hear from Wei Jingsheng, a long-time leader
for the opposition against the Chinese Government dictatorship.
He was sentenced to jail twice for a total of more than 18
years due to his pro-democracy activities, particularly the
Democracy Wall.
After his exile to the United States in 1997, he founded
and has been the chairman of the Overseas Chinese Democracy
Coalition, which is an umbrella organization for many Chinese
democracy groups, with members in over a dozen countries.
He is also president of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation and
president of the Asia Democracy Alliance. And I would note
parenthetically, in the early 1990s, soon after Tiananmen
Square, on one of my many trips to China, I traveled, visited,
had dinner with Wei Jingsheng.
He was let out of prison in order to get the 2000 Olympics.
He was that high of a political prisoner asset to the Chinese
Government. They thought if they let out Wei Jingsheng, they
were more likely to get the 2000 Olympics.
They did not get it and they rearrested him, but we had
dinner and he went back to not only being jailed, but also
being very harshly treated, including multiple beatings.
We will then hear from Shohret Hoshur, who is a journalist
reporting on news in China's Xingjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
for Radio Free Asia, where he has worked since 2007.
He began his career in 1989 in China's far west as a TV
reporter. In 1994, Chinese authorities condemned two of his
editorials as subversive, forcing him to flee his homeland.
As stated in the New York Times profile, ``His accounts of
violence in his homeland are among the few reliable sources of
information about incidents in a part of China that the
government has sought to hide from the international
community.''
We will then hear from Ethan Gutmann, who is an award-
winning China analyst and human rights investigator and the
author of ``The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting and
China's Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem'' and ``Losing
the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and
Betrayal.''
Currently based in London, Mr. Gutmann has been associated
with several Washington think tanks over the years, including
the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the Free
Congress Research and Education Foundation and the Brookings
Institution.
I would like to now turn it to Dr. Teng.
STATEMENT OF TENG BIAO, A WELL-KNOWN CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS
LAWYER, A HARVARD UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL VISITING FELLOW, AND
CO-FOUNDER, THE OPEN CONSTITUTION INITIATIVE
Mr. Teng. Thank you.
Since July this year, at least 300 lawyers have been
kidnapped, arrested, disappeared, or intimidated. Most of them
are my friends. This ongoing persecution of rights lawyers is
only a small part of Xi Jinping's comprehensive crackdown on
civil society.
Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, at least 2,000
human rights defenders have been detained or sentenced,
including Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti and his students. Also
detained were journalist Gao Yu, lawyer Xu Zhiyong, Pu
Zhiqiang, Tang Jingling, Li Heping, Sui Muqing, Zhang Kai, Wang
Quanzhang, Wang Yu, rights defender Guo Feixiong, Liu Ping,
Zhang Shengyu, Su Changlan, and dissidents Qin Yongmin, Zhang
Lin, Jang Lijun, Hu Shigen, Yu Shiwen, and some prisoners of
conscience that are in custody, like Cao Shunli and Tenzin
Deleg Rinpoche.
Obviously, after torture or inhumane treatment in Zhejiang
and other provinces, government destroyed thousands of church
buildings, arrested pastors and Christians, and demolished the
crosses. Falun Gong practitioners were detained or sent to
legal education centers, a kind of extra-legal detention. Many
of them have been tortured to death. Other small religious
groups are persecuted after the government has listed them as
evil cults.
Many NGOs have been shut down, like Gongmeng--the Open
Constitution Initiative. Even those NGOs focusing on the
environment, women's rights, LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgendered], or citizen libraries are not allowed to work.
The Communist Party made new regulations or policies on
education and ideology, more censorship on Internet, textbooks,
publishing, and traditional media.
The Communist Party authorities, with their excessive
violence, have created hostility, division, and despair in
Xinjiang and Tibet.
In Xinjiang, many protests were labeled as terrorist
attacks; thus, many Uyghur people were shot dead without any
necessity or legal basis. In Tibet, the number of self-
immolations has been 147. Seventy-nine self-immolations
happened since November 2012, since Xi came into office. Some
family members of the self-immolators were even detained or
sentenced.
Why is Xi Jinping purging the rights activists? Xi Jinping
is somebody living in the 1960s. He never accepts the idea of
liberal democracy or constitutionalism or human rights.
What he has been doing, and is going to do, is maintain the
Communist Party's monopoly of power. He will not tolerate any
challenge to the one-party rule. The Communist Party never
stops its punishment on activists, but Xi has a much lower
threshold of prisons.
But the deep reason is located in the whole political and
social situation. China has become the second-largest economy
in the world. China is flexing its muscles by military parades,
AIIB [Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank], and a new message
on the South China Sea by tearing up the promise of Hong Kong's
autonomy. Also by detaining Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo,
disappearing the Panchen Lama, arresting more and more rights
activists.
But the Party's attempts to project confidence cannot
disguise its panic. It is beset by economic strife, antagonism
between officials and the people, widespread corruption,
environmental and ecological disasters, unrest in Xinjiang and
Tibet, and its own sense of ideological crisis.
Compared with all of these things, the rights lawyers and
civil society activists are gaining in prestige, influence, and
organizational capacity. Since 2003, more and more people
joined in the Rights Defense Movement. Human rights lawyers
defend civil rights, challenge the abuse of power, and promote
rule of law in China.
People organize more and more NGOs, working on various
rights of the unprivileged people. Bloggers and writers
criticize the comments or disseminate its information on
sensitive events.
Activists initiated New Citizens Movement or Southern
Street Movement to demand political rights. People gather
privately to commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre.
Xi Jinping is coming here soon, while the human rights
situation is deteriorating in China. ``The day we see the truth
and cease to speak is the day we begin to die,'' Martin Luther
King, Jr., once said. We should not keep silent when so many
Chinese people are suffering the atrocities of the Communist
Party.
History of the Nazis will repeat itself when people choose
to do nothing when Xi Jinping is going toward Hitler. Those who
welcome Xi Jinping without raising human rights issues are
helpers of the dictator.
I recommend that the U.S. Congress pass an act on China's
human rights, making sure that U.S. companies and universities
comment on the government's organizations, not involving human
rights violations when dealing with China, making sure that
perpetrators are being prevented from entering the United
States.
Thank you very much for your support of human rights and
freedom.
Chairman Smith. Thank you so very much for your testimony,
and we will wait for questions until after everyone has
completed.
Mr. Xiao?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Teng appears in the
appendix.]
STATEMENT OF XIAO QIANG, FOUNDER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, CHINA
DIGITAL TIMES
Mr. Xiao. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really am grateful for
you, congressman, that for so many years you have been
upholding human rights in this position, and you are a great
friend of Chinese people.
My own work is on China's state censorship, particularly on
the Internet censorship, suppression of the media and freedom
of expression in general.
Today I want to point out two examples. One is about
domestic censorship; one is about the Internet censoring at the
border of China.
China has the world's largest number of Internet users,
estimated at 641 million to date. After President Xi Jinping
took power in 2012, he framed the Internet as a battlefield for
ideological control and appointed himself head of a top-level
Internet security committee. He also established the State
Internet Information Office. Later on, it was renamed
Cyberspace Administration of China, and it continues to
intensify restrictions and controls on Internet freedom.
In the past two and a half years, Xi's administration has
not only expanded its crackdown on freedom of expression and
freedom of the press, it has also launched a ferocious assault
on civil society. My respected colleague, Dr. Teng Biao, just
gave a comprehensive list of that crackdown.
These violations of fundamental rights and freedoms also
have been well documented by international human rights
organizations. For example, Freedom House's annual report,
``Freedom on the Net,'' details China's restriction of Internet
freedom by blocking and filtering access to international
websites, censoring online content and violating users' rights.
I recommend Freedom House's excellent report to the Commission.
China Digital Times, my own work, closely follows the
interplay of the censorship, activism, and emerging public
opinion of the Chinese Internet. In particular, we collect and
translate many of the censorship directives the Party sends to
the state media and Internet companies. We also aggregate
breaking news deemed sensitive by state censors.
During the last 12 years, the China Digital Times team has
published over 2,600 such censorship directives and, using
these directives, has pieced together how the Chinese
Government restricts Internet freedom. Here I am just going to
share one example with the Commission.
On September 7, 2015, the Chinese Communist Party's Central
Propaganda Department issued a classified document marked as
Notice Number 320 for the year 2015. In other words, until this
day this year, they had already issued 320 of such notices.
This document instructs state media to report positively on
the economy. Here is one excerpt of this document:
The focus for the month of September will be strengthening
economic propaganda and guiding public opinion, as well as
overall planning for domestic- and foreign-facing propaganda
and Internet propaganda, in order to take the next step in
promoting the discourse on China's bright economic future and
the superiority of China's system, as well as stabilizing
expectations and inspiring confidence.
In fact, both state and independent media have been
pressured to keep economic reporting upbeat and to downplay the
stock market crash last month. A directive from August 25
required Chinese websites to delete specific essays about the
crash, while in June another directive instructed TV and radio
stations to, ``rationally lead market expectations to prevent
inappropriate reports from causing the market to spike or
crash.''
The Central Government did not stop at issuing Internet
censorship and propaganda instructions. In August, Caijing
reporter Wang Xiaolu confessed on CCTV to, ``causing panic and
disorder,'' with a negative story on the stock market slump.
In this case, the Chinese Government is persecuting and
prosecuting Chinese citizens, to quote H.R. 491, for ``posting
or transmitting peaceful political, religious, or ideological
opinion or belief via the Internet.''
Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I also would like
to recommend another remarkable report, ``China's Great
Cannon,'' published by Toronto University's Citizen Lab. The
Great Cannon is an attacking tool used to launch distributed
denial-of-service attacks on websites by intercepting massive
amounts of Web traffic and redirecting it to targeted websites.
The first deployment of the Great Cannon was in late March
2015, targeting two specific users of the San Francisco-based
code-sharing site GitHub; The New York Times' Chinese mirror
site, and another anti-censorship organization, GreatFire.org.
Based on this weapon's network position across different
Chinese Internet service providers and on similarities of its
source code to the Great Firewall, the researchers at Citizen
Lab and the International Computer Science Institute based in
Berkeley believe there is compelling evidence that the Chinese
Government operates this Great Cannon.
In other words, the Chinese Government is not only
deliberately blocking, filtering, and censoring online
information based on the expression of political, religious,
and ideological opinion in China, it is also using technology
to disrupt Internet traffic and commercial infrastructures
beyond its borders.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Commission for holding
this important public hearing on human rights in China days
before Chinese President Xi Jinping's first state visit to the
United States.
I urge President Xi Jinping to stop his repressive policies
and practices. The Chinese people want and deserve more access
to information and the Internet, and greater freedom to express
their views. Chinese people desire and demand greater
protection of human rights in their political, social,
economic, and cultural life.
I urge President Obama to engage President Xi on Internet
freedom, press freedom, and freedom of expression in their
meetings, not only raising concerns, but also insisting
publicly that future political and economic relations be
dependent on the Chinese Government demonstrating improvements
in upholding human rights.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Smith. Mr. Xiao, thank you so very much for your
leadership on many issues, but that one in particular with
regard to the Internet.
Dr. Yang?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Xiao appears in the
appendix.]
STATEMENT OF YANG JIANLI, PRESIDENT, INITIATIVES FOR CHINA/
CITIZEN POWER FOR CHINA
Mr. Yang. Mr. Chairman and the members of the Commission.
Thank you for holding this important hearing. Twenty-six years
ago, after the Tiananmen Massacre, we came to Washington, DC,
to plead with the U.S. Government to link China's most-
favorite-nation [MFN] status with its human rights record.
Without such a link, we argued that trading with China would be
like a blood transfusion to the Communist regime, making it
more aggressive while harming the interests of American and
Chinese people.
But our warning fell on deaf ears. After a lengthy debate,
the U.S. Government decided to grant permanent MFN to China,
contending that economic growth would automatically bring
democracy to that country.
With money and technologies pouring in from the United
States and other Western countries and their free markets wide
open for Chinese-made goods, the Chinese Communist regime not
only survived the 1989 crisis, it catapulted into the 21st
century. The country's explosive economic growth has brought it
from near the bottom of the world in GDP per capita to the
second-largest economy in the world. But democracy remains yet
only a far-fetched dream.
Worse, today the Xi Jinping regime, as you have already
heard from two of my colleagues and will hear from other fellow
panelists, has launched numerous assaults in the past two
decades against China's civil society on a scale and with
ferocity making Xi Jinping China's worst leader in 20 years in
terms of human rights record.
China uses its economic power, gained with the help of the
West, to build a formidable, fully modernized military that has
reached every corner of the Earth. With this unprecedented
power, China is now forcefully demanding a rewrite of
international norms and rules. China wants to create a new
international order threatening regional and world peace, with
its dominance in the Asian-Pacific region as the centerpiece.
What went wrong with the American engagement policy? In my
view, the failure lies primarily in the lack of moral and
strategic clarity in its design and implementation. The origin
of the error can trace back to the early 1970s, when then-
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, claiming that by
integrating Beijing into the international community
economically and politically, China would behave responsibly
and abide by international norms and rules.
This amoral, geopolitical, and short-term pragmatic
strategy fails to comprehend the evil nature and hegemonic
ambition of the Communist regime, as reiterated recently in Xi
Jinping's China Dream of a great red empire, to replace the
Western civilization with the so-called ``China Model.''
Washington policymakers also failed to understand that
economic growth may be a necessary condition, but not a
sufficient one for cultivating democracy. Consequently, this
policy has fundamentally undermined America's national
interests and security.
The alternative is to engage China with a moral and a
strategic compass. China under the CCP's rule cannot rise
peacefully, and its transition to a democratic country that
respects human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and
religion, is in everyone's best interest, including China's
own.
China's totalitarian regime has hijacked 1.3 billion
Chinese people, imposing a political system on them by force
and coercion and running the country like a slave owner of the
past. It has obliterated their self-governance and controlled
the people's lives without their consent.
To support this regime is both morally corrupt and
strategically stupid. Like Frankenstein's monster, China is now
seeking revenge against its creator, the West. It will
destabilize and endanger the world, for the China Model, better
called the Chinese disease, like the Black Plague, has spread
and infected the international community. But most people in
the world are not aware of it, and many are being fooled to
believe it is the future.
Now, it is time for the United States to begin the era of
an engaged China with moral and strategic clarity. To begin,
the Congress should pass a China Democracy Act. It would be
binding legislation flatly stating congressional judgment that
the enhancement of human rights and democratic values in China
is decidedly in America's national interest.
That would preclude the currently widespread but inaccurate
claim that Congress must abandon on one hand its claim to
support a universal value of human rights and on the other hand
America's national interest.
The bill also would require a report from the President to
Congress every year on how any government-approved policy or
action during the prior 12 months has strengthened or weakened
human rights and the democratic values in China.
All federal departments of a government should have to
report on what they are doing to foster democracy in China by
advancing human rights and the rule of the law there. The Act
also would put them on notice to take no action, adopt no
policy, and implement no program that would undercut the
democracy movement or weaken human rights in China.
Such a China Democracy Act would give us a better idea of
what success we have had so far, what costs have been, and how
we should increase or deploy financial resources to promote
democracy and human rights.
If America expressly commits to strengthening those ideals
and visibly implements that commitment, it will allow the
people of China and indeed of the rest of the world to see that
the words of Americans' promises to support liberty everywhere
are fully matched by its deeds.
Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Dr. Yang, thank you so very much. And
without objection, your full statement, which is very
extensive, will be made a part of the record, as well as all of
our witnesses'.
I would like now to welcome Wei Jingsheng.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Yang appears in the
appendix.]
STATEMENT OF WEI JINGSHENG, CHAIRMAN, OVERSEAS CHINESE
DEMOCRACY COALITION
Mr. Wei [through interpreter]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
After Xi Jinping took over power, much illegal government
behavior that existed in the past is even more widely used now
and is becoming the norm. I am only going to talk about one
example; that is, the illegal detention in the name of
residential surveillance.
In early 1994, after I met with Representative Chris Smith
and then-Senator John Kerry and before my meeting with then-
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the Chinese police
illegally detained me for as long as 18 months.
According to China's Criminal Procedure Law, subpoenas
cannot exceed three times in a row. After I was detained for
three days, I asked them, either come up with a legitimate
arrest certificate or release me.
They said the Procuratorate would not give them the arrest
warrant, while their superiors ordered them not to release me,
so they would use residential surveillance, which does not need
the approval of the Procuratorate. Further, they did not have
to notify the family in accordance with the law, with no time
limit.
I said, this is illegal detention. They replied, the
highest authorities in the government had approved this
conduct, and they were just executing it with no
responsibilities. As far as I was not detained in the prisons
and detention centers, that would be counted as residential
surveillance.
Nineteen months later, when they put me on trial, I
requested them to count 18 months of residential surveillance
as part of my sentences. However, the court answered explicitly
that because there was no legal basis for this period, the 18
months cannot be credited into my sentence.
According to the clear statement in China's Criminal
Procedural, that would be called illegal detention, yet that
illegal detention was a detention that was approved by the
highest authorities in the Chinese Government.
This kind of illegal detention is now being widely used as
jurisprudence in China. It is not only being used against
political dissidents, but also widely used against any Chinese
citizens which the officials are dissatisfied with.
Any level of the government can take advantage of this form
of detention to illegally hold citizens they dislike and then
implement torture for the deposition they want. This
residential surveillance forms the legal basis for Xi Jinping
to maintain the one-party dictatorship, and then carry out his
personal dictatorship.
On the basis of this illegal residential surveillance, the
Chinese Communist Party launched the so-called ``double
designated system.'' The purpose is to force illegal detention
of certain Communist Party members with restricted personal
freedom by the Central Commission of the Discipline Inspection
of the Chinese Communist Party.
What this illegal detention covers includes the top
leadership of the Chinese Government and the Communist Party,
even the Politburo Standing Committee, which only has seven
members. That is to say, except for Xi Jinping, all people have
the possibility to be illegally detained, including American
citizens in China. This is a downright personal dictatorship.
I suggest that when President Obama meets with Chairman Xi
Jinping, he should make restoring the rule of law, abiding by
the law, abolishing all forms of illegal detention and torture
one of the main themes of their negotiations, rather than
perfunctory generalities of human rights.
When Xi Jinping visits the U.S. Congress, the lawmakers
should also apply pressure to Xi Jinping on these issues in
order to promote human rights in China as well as to protect
hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens in China and their
rights and their interests.
Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you so very much, Mr. Wei.
I would like to now invite Mr. Shohret Hoshur to provide
his testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wei appears in the
appendix.]
STATEMENT OF SHOHRET HOSHUR, JOURNALIST REPORTING NEWS IN
CHINA'S XINJIANG UYGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION FOR RADIO FREE ASIA
Mr. Hoshur. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to speak
at this hearing on Xi Jinping's visit.
I am going to speak about my situation and my family's. For
the sake of expediency, my translator will read my statement in
English.
Mr. Hoshur [through interpreter]. I came to the United
States in 1999, almost five years after leaving my homeland in
China's far western Uyghur region in 1994. The journey that
took me away from my family did not begin by choice. I left to
escape the wrath of local Chinese authorities who deemed two of
my writings for local Uyghur-language newspapers as subversive.
I was a journalist for Qorghas Radio and Television, a
local media outlet in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
when I decided to write two pieces about Beijing's harsh
oppression of Uyghurs.
The choice I made then upon leaving China, as now, was to
never give up being a reporter covering the Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region. To give that up would mean that a remote
part of the world and its people, the Uyghurs, would lose one
of their only lifelines to reliable news and information about
what is happening in their own neighborhoods and communities.
When I began working for Radio Free Asia in 2007, it was a
great opportunity to continue work that is badly needed, but it
was also an opportunity seized by Chinese authorities as they
began to harass my family.
As my reports for RFA began to be heard by Uyghurs
listening on shortwave radio and reading my stories on the Web,
authorities wasted little time in making it clear to my
family--and to me--that they would one day pay a price for my
journalism.
For the next several years, as China ramped up its security
clampdown in Xinjiang, violence intensified and grew more
frequent. But China's state-controlled media rarely reported on
these deadly incidents. Radio Free Asia disclosed the majority,
often through my reports.
The threats against my family--and, by way of my family,
me--became more frequent and grave during this period. They
culminated last year when all three of my brothers were jailed.
My younger brother, Tudaxun, was detained in April before being
tried in court and sentences to five years in prison. He was
charged with endangering state security.
My two other brothers, Rexim and Shawket, talked with me
about Tudaxun's situation on the phone in June. I tried to
comfort them when they grew understandably emotional. I told
them that in time the situation might improve.
The next month, in July, a Chinese daily newspaper, the
Global Times, ran a story attacking Radio Free Asia for its
coverage of violence in Xinjiang. Though I wasn't named, the
article cited my June phone call with my brothers, which had
been intercepted by state surveillance.
In August 2014, local authorities also detained Rexim and
Shawket. Their families have not seen them since. They were
later charged with leaking state secrets--I believe, largely in
connection with that phone call with me in June.
They were also charged with endangering state security.
When it became clear that the authorities were not going to
release them, I reached out with the help of RFA to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, which issued a press release
about my brothers' situation in January 2015.
The case received wide attention in global media and
interest here from the U.S. Government. Their families and my
sister were informed of their cases being reopened by
authorities--hopeful news in China, where a prosecutorial
office almost never calls for the reopening of a case submitted
by police.
But our hopes soon dimmed when it became obvious, despite
this development, that my brothers were to remain behind bars.
Eventually, after the postponing of several court dates that
came after inquiries from the U.S. Department of State to
Chinese officials in the embassy here in Washington and
overseas in Beijing, their separate trials were finally held
this past August at the Urumqi Intermediate Court.
They now await their verdicts, which the judge told their
lawyers would be issued by the Chinese Political and Law
Council, Zhengfawei. These could come in two months, putting
them after President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington.
Today I am here to ask for officials in the U.S.
Government--my government--and the administration to raise this
case with President Xi next week. My family only wants to be
left alone, free from persecution by local authorities. They
want to live their lives as citizens of a country that respects
their wish to be husbands and fathers looking after their
families.
I know my case is not unique. Many of my colleagues at
Radio Free Asia with relatives in China also have faced
retribution and harassment. But I hope my testimony today helps
to ensure that the United States will continue stand up for
people like me who came to this country in hope of having the
freedom and rights we did not have in our homelands.
Thank you.
Chairman Smith. Thank you very, very much.
We will now go to Mr. Gutmann.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hoshur appears in the
appendix.]
STATEMENT OF ETHAN GUTMANN, CHINA ANALYST AND AUTHOR OF ``THE
SLAUGHTER: MASS KILLINGS, ORGAN HARVESTING, AND CHINA'S SECRET
SOLUTION TO ITS DISSIDENT PROBLEM''
Mr. Gutmann. Thank you for inviting me to participate in
this profoundly important hearing.
In order to piece together the story of how mass organ
harvesting of prisoners of conscience evolved in China, I spoke
with medical professionals, Chinese law enforcement, and over
100 refugees. My interviews began in 2006 and my book, ``The
Slaughter,'' was published last year.
Now, I was not the first to examine this issue in depth.
That distinction belongs to David Kilgour and David Matas, the
authors of the seminal ``Bloody Harvest'' report of 2006.
Nor will I be the last. The World Organization To
Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a group of Chinese
investigators scattered throughout the world, have just
completed their own study.
Based on our collective evidence, here is a brief timeline
of what we know.
In 1994, the first live organ harvest of death-row
prisoners was performed on the execution grounds of Xinjiang,
in northwest China. In 1997, following the Ghulja massacre, the
first political prisoners, Uyghur activists, were harvested on
behalf of high-ranking Chinese Communist Party cadres.
In 1999, Chinese State Security launched its largest action
of scale since the Cultural Revolution: the eradication of
Falun Gong. In 2000, hospitals across China began ramping up
their facilities to what would become an unprecedented
explosion in China's transplant activity. And by the end of
that year, well over 1 million Falun Gong practitioners were
incarcerated in labor camps, detention centers, psychiatric
facilities, and ``black jails.''
By 2001, Chinese military hospitals were unambiguously
targeting select Falun Gong prisoners for organ harvesting.
By 2003, the first Tibetans were being targeted as well. By
the end of 2005, China's transplant apparatus had increased so
dramatically that a tissue-matched organ could be located
within two weeks for any foreign organ tourist with cash on
hand.
While the execution of death-row prisoners, hardened
criminals, supplied some of the organs, the majority were
extracted from Falun Gong practitioners, and this was a fact
that was not even being kept all that secret from the prison
population, visiting foreign surgeons, or potential customers.
Kilgour and Matas estimate 41,500 transplants were sourced from
Falun Gong between 2000 to 2005. I estimate 65,000 Falun Gong
practitioners were murdered for their organs from 2000 to 2008.
The World Organization To Investigate the Persecution of Falun
Gong believes the numbers are more likely in the hundreds of
thousands.
In early 2006, the Epoch Times revealed the first
allegations of the organ harvesting of Falun Gong and was
following by the Kilgour-Matas report.
By 2008, many analysts, and I was among them, assumed that
the Chinese state would stop harvesting prisoners of conscience
for fear of international condemnation during the Beijing
Olympics. Yet the physical examination of Falun Gong prisoners
for their retail organs actually showed a slight uptick.
In 2012, Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai's right-hand man, attempted
to defect at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu. Two weeks later,
the World Organization To Investigate the Persecution of Falun
Gong revealed that Wang had personally received a prestigious
award for overseeing thousands of organ extractions and
transplants. Fatally exposed, Chinese medical authorities
declared to the Western press that they would cease organ
harvesting of death-row prisoners over the next five years. Yet
no mention was made of prisoners of conscience, and third-party
verification was rejected.
It is during this period from 2012 to the present day, even
as the Chinese medical authorities spoke publicly of shortages
due to relying on voluntary organ donation, that a very strange
anomaly occurs. While China's hospitals have maintained strict
Internet silence on their transplant activities since 2006, the
hiring of transplant teams at many of the most notorious
hospitals for harvesting prisoners of conscience is actually on
the increase. In a handful of hospitals--for example, Beijing
309 Military Hospital--it is practically exponential.
Witness accounts shed some light on this mystery. One spoke
to me about 500 Falun Gong prisoners having been examined for
their organs in a single day--the largest cattle call that I
know of. A Western doctor was recently assured by a Chinese
military hospital surgeon that prisoners are still being
slaughtered for their organs. And Falun Gong practitioners
across China's provinces have described police forcibly
administering blood tests and DNA cheek swabs--not in prison,
not in a detention center, but in their homes.
I cannot supply a death count for House Christians,
Uyghurs, and Tibetans, but if I had to make an estimate on
Falun Gong, I would double my previous numbers. I am sure the
World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
would go much further. Either way, two points are clear:
The official number of Chinese transplants per year,
10,000, is a fiction; the real number is likely three times
that. And the serious public declarations by the Chinese
medical establishment of a new ethical environment for
transplantation is simply a privacy shield to murder prisoners
of conscience.
What can we do? We are not the moral arbitrators of this
tragedy, but neither is the World Health Organization or the
Transplantation Society. The moral authority belongs to
families across China who have lost loved ones. Until we can
hear their voices, we need at a minimum to follow our
convictions.
I am not a lawyer, but in my layman's understanding,
medical privacy ends when there is a gunshot involved. Why then
do we adhere to strict medical privacy when there is an organ
sourced in China? Why can't we even make a proper estimate of
how many Americans received transplants in China? Why do we
have to make guesses based on a humorous, feel-good account
like ``Larry's Kidney? ''
This is an obscenity. For an American to go to China for an
organ in 2015 is to participate in an ongoing crime against
humanity. So I ask you to remove our privacy shield. And until
the Chinese state offers the full and comprehensive accounting
that the world demands, I ask you to follow the example of two
very small but brave countries--Israel and, now just recently,
Taiwan--and ban organ tourism to China.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gutmann appears in the
appendix.]
Chairman Smith. Thank you very much.
I would like to now yield to Commissioner Cotton for any
questions he might have.
Senator Cotton. Thank you all for your very powerful
testimony. I would like to start by exploring the trajectory of
state-sponsored human rights abuses under Xi Jinping and my
office's conversations with Freedom House. They have indicated
that under Xi, China's oppression has worsened across 13 of 17
categories.
It sounds as if many, if not all of you, would agree. Some
of you have said it is as bad as it has been in 20 to 26 years.
I would like to ask why. Why do you think China's human rights
record has deteriorated so badly under Xi's regime?
And we can just start with Dr. Teng and maybe move down the
panel.
Mr. Teng. Briefly, two points. First, Xi Jinping is
different from other Party leaders. He never accepted the
Western ideas of human rights or democracy. And he is a
princeling and he wants to keep the one-party rule.
Second, what Xi and the Communist Party is facing is the
comprehensive crisis, the political crisis within the Party,
the social crisis, the conflicts between the people and the
local governments, and the environmental crisis and the growing
civil society.
So he is so nervous about the possible color revolution,
and he must feel that if he does not issue the severe crackdown
on the human rights movement or the civil society, he may lose
control and the Communist Party may lose power.
Thank you.
Senator Cotton. Mr. Wei?
Mr. Wei. I think that the most important reason is because
the 30-year period of reform led by Deng and followed by Jiang
Zemin and Hu Jintao has reached an end. And China is right now
in a crisis, both in politics and the economy.
When Xi came into power, he faced a choice, whether he
should continue the road and heading to the road of the former
Soviet Union and Taiwan, evolving China into a democracy, or
returning back to the era of Mao. It seems like he chose the
road to Mao.
So the two years' rule by Xi Jinping can best be
characterized as a Mao-style ruling of China. But obviously
there is resistance from all directions. But one thing is sure;
he is facing another choice.
The moment for President Obama to put some pressure on Xi
Jinping could lead to some surprise.
Senator Cotton. Mr. Yang?
Mr. Yang. We all know Xi Jinping is a second generation of
their revolutionary--Communist and revolutionaries. And he came
into power with a very strong sense, much stronger sense than
his predecessors, that he must do everything possible to keep
the Red Empire.
Because coming into power made the atmosphere in which
everybody thought he would be the last one, last emperor. So he
tried to do everything against the wave.
And two things can topple the regime. One, corruption,
which is internal. The other is democratization. So once he
came into power, he actually did two things inside China. One,
anti-corruption, but it is selective. Mainly it is for
consolidating his power, cleansing his competitor, power
competitor in the power struggle.
And as he is doing this, he is really, really worried that
people will join in. Because people have great hatred against
those corrupt officials. And of course, he understands opening
up freedom of speech, of press and let people join in would be
the best way to curb corruption in the power, but he would not
do it, because he is very careful not to let the people's power
grow, which can also topple the regime.
So another reason, I think, ever since Xi Jinping became
the ruler of China, the human rights record has been
deteriorating. It is the Western democracies; we have to find
some wrong policies toward China.
Ever since Obama became president, he stopped the old
practice which each of his predecessors had done, ever since
the Tiananmen Massacre. That is release the prisoners in
whatever meeting with China's leaders and press China to
release these prisoners. I just gave you one example. He has
stopped this practice.
Let us give China a very clear signal that he would not
care so much as others about human rights situation in China.
And on her first trip to China as Secretary of State, Hillary
Clinton said clearly, publicly, openly that the human rights
issue cannot interfere with other issues, you know, the United
States will have cooperation with China.
So this message has been the wrong message. The Chinese
leaders now understand better than they used to in the 1990s
about how the game is being played in this country. If you do
not match your words with your deeds, they know how to play
with you.
So they know you are sincere, so they can do whatever they
do. I think largely the China human rights record is so bad,
largely because of an appeasement policy from Western countries
like the United States.
Thank you.
Senator Cotton. Thank you.
I'd like to follow up that question with one other
question--Mr. Wei alluded to this--is the growing economic
crisis in China, particularly over the last three months as the
Chinese Government has made extraordinary efforts to intervene
in their marketplaces, to apparent failure time and time again.
Unlike our country, where an economic crisis may turn a
person or a party out of office, in China, given their self-
proclaimed ability to manage the economy, this could lead to a
political crisis that questions the legitimacy of the entire
regime.
I would like to hear your perspectives on what this
economic and perhaps political crisis could mean for the coming
future of the human rights condition in China.
Mr. Xiao. I am interested that you raised this question
with the concept of legitimacy, because this is indeed a rising
concern in the Chinese society, both on public opinion and
apparently among the Chinese leadership, that I quote recent--
it was the first time Xi Jinping, the right-hand man, Wang
Qishan, also Standing Committee member, in the public speech,
first time for the Chinese Communist leaders mentioned the word
legitimacy.
He self-volunteered to answer the question, the legitimacy
of Chinese Communist Party rule in China, and he simply said,
because in his historical choice of people.
That, obviously, did not answer the question, because as
Internet and public opinion emerges, simply say well, even we
have chosen you, but that was 60 years ago. Have we given any
other chances to choose again? Other countries choose every
four years, maybe, and we never had another chance.
This legitimacy question is relating to the bankruptcy of
the ideological control of the Communist Party, and that can be
watched clearly on the Internet. There is more and more--
despite all the censorship and the propaganda, there are more
and more people aware that the fundamental questions of who the
government represents, of what a taxpayer's rights are, and
what is rule of law and an integral system of freedom of
expression. And these even--linking to the question of
legitimacy of Communist Party rule.
So when the ideological control is weakened and then there
is economic downturn, or slowdown, and then that could lead the
political crisis.
But I want to add one more thing, which is how the Party
will address this question of legitimacy if the economic growth
is not strong enough to support it. The answer is simple, but
it could be terrifying, which is extreme nationalism.
And history has told us--that it is not hard to imagine
that in order to deflect a crisis of legitimacy particularly
and the ruler, particular dictators will use the nationalism to
indicate the extreme--and even creating crisis and external
issues and conflict in order to consolidate the internal
support and a repression.
Mr. Yang. Just to follow up Xiao Qiang's comment--sorry,
Mr. Wei--I agree with him. So as China--CCP's rule in China has
had two sources of illegitimacy. One, fast economic growth,
which is now in question. The other one is nationalism.
When China's economy now has taken a downturn, the regime
automatically will choose to mobilize more nationalism, the
sentiment among the ordinary people. So this is the time they
need an external enemy most.
In other words, it is a critical moment for the United
States to come up with the right foreign policy toward China.
It is a critical moment.
Mr. Wei. Mr. Xi is facing a major problem in economy,
especially after the crash of the stock market which resulted
in a lot of people's dissatisfaction.
On the other field of his anti-corruption campaign, he is
doing too much. His personal initiative is creating a lot of
backlashes from the class of high-ranking officials, thus a
political crisis.
So he is facing a choice. One choice is to still push ahead
on the hardline strategy which will soon bring him much more
problems and a collapse is possible.
The other possibility for him to choose is to yield to the
people, to the bureaucracy, and to foreign powers so that he
can peacefully go on.
It seems to be the right moment for the United States to
put on some pressure to demand some human rights improvement.
Actually, I would guess he might be thinking to do so, but he
needs some reasonable excuse.
Obviously, in his trip to the United States he will ask
cooperation from the United States in the economic field, then
the United States could make its own demand on him. That is not
a bad thing for the United States either.
So if we put some effort into pushing him to human rights
improvement, the result can be beneficial to both sides.
Senator Cotton. Thank you all for your insightful answers
and for your compelling testimony, and thank you most
importantly for the bravery of your advocacy for the rights of
all men and women and children living in China.
Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Smith. Thank you.
And before I go to my questions, I want to thank Senator
Cotton for being here and most importantly for his service. He
served in both Afghanistan as a combat veteran and Iraq, five
years in active duty, received the Bronze Star. He graduated
from Harvard University Law School, and first served in the
House for a brief stint and then jumped over to the big house
in the U.S. Senate. And we are just delighted as a Commission
to have his expertise and incisiveness on this Commission. So
thank you, Senator. We really appreciate it.
I would like to go to some questions now, if I could,
beginning first, Dr. Yang. You mentioned, and I think very
appropriately, that 26 years ago you strongly admonished
Congress, the President, to link human rights with MFN and
trade and to make it very clear and unambiguous to Beijing.
I traveled soon after Tiananmen Square, got into Beijing
Prison Number One, where concentration camp-looking
incarcerated individuals, 40 of them from Tiananmen Square,
were being held, and was told that they are all eating all that
they could possibly want. It was one big Potemkin village. And
then a couple of years later, I met with Wei Jingsheng when he
was let out briefly, but then was rearrested.
We did not listen. As you point out, it fell on deaf ears.
First with Bush One and then, I think infamously, with Bill
Clinton. Bill Clinton seemed to get it. He linked most-favored-
nation status with human rights and then gave it a year. We had
the votes, we believe, in the House and Senate to strip MFN
from the People's Republic of China, but primarily because of
Tiananmen Square and the ongoing crackdown. And then the
President first linked and then delinked.
And I think, as you pointed out, they look at our words,
but they especially look at our actions. And when they are
inconsistent, when they are compromised, when they are
hypocritical, claiming human rights and then saying, on a
Friday afternoon, which is when he delinked it, May 26, 1994,
everybody in this building, almost like today--at the end of
the day on a Friday, people do tend to head back to their home
districts--he delinked.
And the news cycle was over. I did a press conference, C-
SPAN carried it and said, ``We have chosen profits over human
rights. It is to the detriment of every Chinese man, woman, and
child, but also to ourselves.''
Every area of human rights will probably--and they have, as
I said--and I was not the only one; you and others said it--
will deteriorate, including the one-child-per-couple policy,
religious freedom, and all the others.
And yet today you are suggesting that there might be an
opportunity; it is not too late. And I would ask you, if you
would, to elaborate on that a bit.
You know, we are looking at Xi Jinping as someone who
admires the excesses of Mao Zedong and seeks to emulate him in
some way. That is frightening in the extreme, for the Chinese
people who suffer so horribly under his cruel boot.
Let me also ask a few other questions and then I'll yield
for answers, if I could.
The big issue of the summit, the reason why this hearing is
being held today. We are not in session Monday or Tuesday.
Wednesday the Pope will be coming in, and Xi--we have a great
man coming in and then a man who has committed atrocities
against his own people by the name of Xi Jinping.
I would hope, and I would make the appeal, as did the
Washington Post, that at Lafayette Park, those who gather in
peaceful protest be given that opportunity to express
themselves. We, as a Commission, join you in asking the White
House.
I hope they don't hide behind a Secret Service analysis
that might have a political aspect to it, make it not happen
because Xi won't like it. I've been at the White House for
protests against others who have been there. Why not allow
this? Because certainly Lafayette Park is sufficiently far
enough away to--there is a large buffer zone.
But that presence, that witness for human rights and
democracy needs to be there. And I would appeal to the
President, and we are appealing to the President to intervene
and make sure that happens.
I would point out, and I am worried, Wei Jingsheng, in his
statement, talked about, and I thought he phrased it so well,
that rather than the perfunctory generalities of human rights,
when he meets with the President and Xi Jinping, it ought to be
all about restoring the rule of law, abiding by the law,
abolishing all forms of illegal detention and torture as main
themes of their negotiations.
Well, we could hope, but I am not holding my breath. And I
think that is tragic; that the President of the United States,
who has won the Nobel Peace Prize, does not, in a bold but
civil tone, promote the agenda of human rights with Xi Jinping.
And publicly, the fact that Liu Xiaobo remains
incarcerated, his wife suffering in the way that she is, and
thousands and thousands of other political and democracy
activists and religious prisoners, is an atrocity. A Nobel
Peace Prize winner at the White House, Obama should at least
raise the cases of Liu Xiaobo and many others.
I would remind my colleagues and our witnesses--and this is
a revelation into priorities--we had a hearing some years ago
that we called the ``Five Daughters.'' We had the five
daughters--you all might remember it. It was a great hearing.
Five of the daughters of dissidents, including Gao Zhisheng
testified. And at the end of their testimony, they asked the
President, ``we would like to meet with you to talk about our
dads.''
And one of the girls, young women, said, ``He is the father
of two girls, two young daughters whom he loves dearly--he will
get it. He will understand it.''
We tried for months to get a meeting with the President of
the United States--not with me; I will never get that, and that
is the way it goes--but for these five daughters. Fifteen
minutes, and we got word back that he did not have the time.
If you say you do not have the time for something, you have
not stated a fact; you have stated a priority. And the priority
was not to meet with these five extraordinary young women.
So we make that appeal again to meet with the five
daughters, to meet with a group of dissidents, the people at
this table, all of you, eyeball to eyeball with the President
to talk about what you know and have such profound information
concerning the human rights situation, whether it be among the
Uyghurs, the Falun Gong, all the different aspects that you
have brought to this table today. So that is a missed
opportunity.
Let me just ask Mr. Xiao, we had hearings about a decade
ago, a little less than a decade ago, on Google, Microsoft,
Cisco, and Yahoo!--on their complicity in censorship and
surveillance. You remember it quite well. You helped us with
that back then.
And I swore all of them in. We asked them questions and
they said they were just following Chinese law as they were
surveilling the good people of China as they went on the
Internet.
We know that Google is returning to China, and it has
agreed to allow censorship. They are right back into enabling a
dictatorship. And they also have to keep their user information
in China which allows, as we saw with Yahoo! when they were
there, in Shi Tao the ability to round up the dissidents just
by going to the databases.
I thought Yahoo!, which has left, did the right thing in
Vietnam when they put those servers, those vaults of
information, outside the reach of the Vietnamese Government,
which also does that kind of misuse of names and Internet and
the like.
So if you can speak to that issue of what is happening. We
know Baidu is doing a lot and others that have probably crowded
out the Googles of this world, but they are going back now,
Google, Google Play, and that is very disturbing, in my
opinion.
And I am worried about Facebook. When they all start, for
the sake of making money, conforming to these aggressive,
enhanced rules of surveillance, I think they are worse now than
they were 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago. I think that is certain.
That is some opening questions. I do have a few more, and
so if you could begin with those.
Mr. Yang. Thank you for your question. I remember the day
President Clinton reversed the policy dealing with human
rights, the MFN vis-a-vis human rights. That was the beginning
of what I call the year of engagement without moral and
strategic clarity.
And I describe it as compartmentalization of U.S. policy
toward China, one opposing another, and people automatically
naturally will choose not to care for human rights because it
is difficult. The cause--is difficult.
So the fact is that everybody tries not to touch this issue
when they have a meeting with Chinese leaders or engage with
China. That is how the disaster began.
I think it is never too late to correct this mistake. And,
now I think it is time to end the year of engagement with China
without moral and strategic clarity and begin the year of
engagement with moral and strategic clarity.
First off, we must have integration of a policy throughout
our dealings with China. Everything has to come together.
Engagement with China, whoever does it, whichever
government organization or department, must take care of human
rights. So this is the first thing we must call for.
And I remember Senator Rubio issued a statement on the 26th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. He said clearly that he
supports integration of U.S. policy toward China; you cannot
pit human rights against other policy issues. I fully agree
with that.
In my opening remarks, I called for a China Democracy Act
which is a law that clearly states it is in this country's
interest to advance human rights and democracy in China.
China's government has tried very hard to distract people
like us, the China Democracy Movement, with a claim of American
policy providing secret assistance to us. I wish that were the
case, but there is no such thing.
So why such a thing is important? Because it usually takes
four things to be present at the same time for a transition to
take place in an autocratic society.
One is a robust, generous discontent with the regime, which
is now lacking in China, according to the report today. You can
see it very clearly.
Another is cracks in the top leadership, which is going to
happen. It is happening, so I do not want to talk about it now.
The third is a viable democracy movement, an opposition
movement, which we try very hard to build up. And if U.S. and
other strong democracies have such a policy to help us build a
viable democracy movement, that is vitally important.
The fourth thing is international recognition of the moment
of transition. In 26 years, we have the first three, but not
the international recognition. The moment has come, so we lost
the opportunity. So I think it is very important.
The Obama administration has sent too many wrong messages
to the dictator in China. This time, again, it is very
alarming. And I am one of the organizers of the 25th rally in
Lafayette Park. In two meetings with the Park Service, they
could not confirm with us whether we will be able to use the
park to have our rally.
And I have organized in past years many, many rallies in
that very place. There was no restriction whatsoever. But this
time it is different. I do not know how long we have to wait to
get a confirmation either way.
But this is the wrong message again. It is not a small
matter. It is a terrible message, and that means that the Obama
administration can even do the things like restricting the
freedom of expression in this country. That is a wrong message.
So it is unacceptable, actually, if Xi Jinping returns to
China without having received a clear message from President
Obama or from Congress or from the people of this country that
he will not have the full trust of this government, of the
people of United States, if he continues to mistreat his own
people.
Thank you.
Mr. Xiao. I will respond to your second question. But
actually, I also want to say a few things about your first
question, because--and also Senator Cotton before, in his
eloquent opening speech, also mentioned those points. I thought
it was excellent.
The point is that President Obama himself, he is a father
of daughters and he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He is a
constitutional lawyer, and he also is a Christian and--et
cetera.
If anyone, it should be him to feel more empathetic and
feel the gross violations under the Xi Jinping administration,
and with all these concrete examples right in front of him.
So I really hope that personal message can be driven to him
and it can be reflected in his personal meeting at Xi Jinping's
state visit.
The second point is about the technology companies, the
U.S. technology companies--Google and Yahoo! and Microsoft--
Google in particular, because it generates lots of attention,
that when they withdraw from China and now are thinking about
returning to the Chinese market.
I do believe it is out of the reason for making money as a
company that is a commercial decision because, as I mentioned
in my testimony, Chinese Internet users have been growing so
large for commercial companies they are hard to ignore that
market potential.
However, the particular information and communication
technologies for companies like Google is not just a commercial
technology; it has implications in human rights and freedom of
expression. And/or the other way, that it can enable the
dictators, the repressive regimes, to violate further the human
rights of their own people. Therefore, for those technology
companies, there is a lot more at stake for human rights.
I was, as Congressman Smith mentioned at the hearing when
those executives of companies were making decisions--both in
China and relating to human rights. And I remember the
Congressman's words at that time, asking them powerful
questions, thinking about the human dignity, the human rights
in relation to its moneymaking. I remember how uncomfortable
those executives were in their seats, sitting right next to me.
Yes, this has been 10 years or so, and history will
continue. It is the CEO of Google himself last year who wrote
an article saying the censorship, Internet censorship,
eventually will be obsolete. And actually, he did not say
eventually; he said in 10 years. Because he believed technology
will surpass that.
Coming from the CEO of Google, I believe he said that with
some kind of confidence and understanding of--the technology
turns.
However, they are returning to China, becoming part of the
group of American leading-technology companies dealing with the
Chinese regime, also telling us that they are looking at the
short-term benefit, commercial benefit, much over the longer
obligations and trend.
So let me finish in this way. Maybe the business concerns
their bottom line, but it is up to the government, it is up to
the people, to hold the basic moral principle of human dignity
and freedom. The American Congress passing the Internet Freedom
Act and those kinds of laws and being an instrument can help us
to protect the human rights through those technology transfers
and exchanges and trade and curb the potential damage of the
human rights violation, if those American companies engage
inside of China.
So I believe that kind of action from the government, from
the Congress, is absolutely essential and critical.
Chairman Smith. As you know, we have introduced the Global
Online Freedom Act, but it has run into an enormous amount of
opposition. But we will continue fighting for it, and I thank
you for that.
I would like to ask Mr. Hoshur, if I could, has the
situation changed for the Uyghurs in China since Xi Jinping
came to power, and if so, how?
Mr. Hoshur. Thank you for this good question. I was
actually thinking about it myself and was going to speak about
the situation of Uyghurs.
Since Xi Jinping came to power, the situation in the region
has been worsening with the number of violent events taking
place.
Each time with the chance of power in China, Uyghur people
are very hopeful for positive changes. But unfortunately, the
Uyghurs in the region, they have not seen any positive changes.
Instead, they see the very harsh crackdowns on the activities.
In particular, they were talking about corruption, but the
corruption is not the main concern for Uyghur people. The main
concern is the hard oppression of the people.
What is the other very important issue? It is the execution
of prisoners and the sentencing of political prisoners and
executing the people, the protesters, extrajudicial killings.
Even with the example of my brothers being currently held,
and this is all reflecting Xi Jinping's policies and harshness.
Chairman Smith. I would like to ask Mr. Gutmann, do you
think the U.S. Government reporting on the issue of organ
harvesting has been sufficient? Have you found receptivity to
your research at the U.S. Department of State? And what would
be your recommendations to the U.S. Government and Congress on
how to combat the problem of organ tourism?
Mr. Gutmann. The first thing I would like to see is that
the Department of State tell us exactly what Wang LiJun said
during the 24 hours he was in the Chengdu consulate. I think
everybody knows that something went on, and that he talked
about organ harvesting. There cannot be any real question of
this. But we don't really know what was said.
Now, my theory--and I think it is an operating theory
throughout Washington, really--is that he basically said yes,
we have been doing this for some time. That he basically made
some sort of confession. If that is not true, the State
Department should tell us so. This is really important
information. This is critical.
The rest of that question I see as just typical
bureaucratic inertia in Washington. And I understand that.
If I can take the question to the current situation,
following on what Wei Jingsheng was saying about how this is
the time, with the Chinese economy on the ropes, this is the
time to push on human rights. I have mixed feelings about this.
One of the interesting things about being an outsider is
that I can observe what is going on within the Falun Gong
community and see the debates that go on in that community.
There are two views right now about Xi Jinping and his
leadership. One is the hope-springs-eternal side: Xi has
possibilities, Bo Xilai is in jail, Zhou Yongkang is gone,
Jiang Zemin is subject to lawsuits, and the whole ``Dead Hand''
faction is under attack. And they see all kinds of
possibilities in this, and the feeling is that if the U.S.
Government would just push, then we could get some answers.
There is another view, which I think is more aligned with
this report that I was showing you: Xi is expanding organ
harvesting, and the facts on the ground seem to bear that out.
Now there is also a synthesis view which I subscribe to: It
is not the crime; it is the coverup. That is always the
problem, yes? And we do have a coverup going on, and that can
be more lethal. Think about it in extreme terms--when
concentration camps were about to be overrun by Allied
soldiers, the Nazis would kill prisoners and burn the place
down. So for people in the Laogai System, this is actually a
very dangerous time.
Obviously that includes Uyghurs. We have seen the level of
enforced disappearances of the Uyghur community go up. It is
another exponential curve.
Yet my view is ultimately a little different than any of
these views. It is a very pessimistic view. This is a
structural problem within the Chinese Communist Party. They
will keep repeating these kinds of atrocities, and it is not
the crime, but the coverup, and so it does not matter really
who is in power, because they are always dealing with the last
coverup. So it does not matter if Xi would like to end the
persecution of the Falun Gong and Uyghurs and Tibetans. He
cannot, because there are too many skeletons in the closet.
And in that case, if that is true, then maybe the answer
for Washington is, perhaps the best we can do is to at least
limit our own moral decay in these areas.
Take the Google situation--I have always argued that Google
should not be in China. Google should be out of China.
Cisco should have been completely banned from China. They
should have been held to terms for what they did: surveillance,
and they actually were assisting with a database that was used
to arrest Falun Gong practitioners.
But the same is true here, in the medical field. We are
allowing this to just go on. We are allowing doctors--there are
doctors in the transplantation society who are considering
starting joint ventures in China. Yet this is a line the West
cannot cross. That is my view. At least we can get to that. We
cannot agree on everything when it comes to China, not in
Washington, but we can agree on some basic moral principles.
And these are basic moral principles. We sense that we are
crossing a line. We know we are involved in some terrible way
with the kinds of atrocities that have been described here
today.
Chairman Smith. If I could ask Dr. Teng, you laid out the
fact that many of those who have been incarcerated are your
friends. You said that Xi Jinping will not tolerate any
challenge to the one-party rule. he is living in the 1960s, and
the purge of the rights activists is awful, but it is getting
worse.
Has the U.S. Government really weighed in on this, from the
State Department, U.S. Ambassador in Beijing, the Assistant
Secretary for Asian Affairs and, of course, the President and
Vice President? Have they spoken out in a way that has been
heard by Beijing that this matters to us?
I have always believed that human rights defenders, if they
are eviscerated by a dictatorship, where would the people go
then? There are religious people who fill in that gap and that
role, but defenders are using the rule of law to the best of
their ability.
I remember in the Soviet Union, the Helsinki Final Act
activists were raising international law, particularly the
Helsinki Final Act, from Vaclav Havel, and I was in
Czechoslovakia and met with people who were part of Charter
77--they had a lot more lawyers. Some were clergy, the priests;
some were lawyers.
I was even in a prison camp, Beijing Prison Camp 35. And
there was a man named Mikhail Koznikov who was a Helsinki human
rights lawyer. And the Soviet officials did not know how to
deal with him. He was citing chapter and verse.
And so human rights defenders are really a first, second,
and third line of defense. And when they are being purged
systematically, there has to be an absolute, robust counter-
push on the part of democracies, including and especially the
United States.
Are we doing that, as a country? Is Obama doing it? State
Department?
Mr. Teng. Thank you. I know many international human rights
organizations and the media have a lot of reports on the
crackdown on rights lawyers and American State Department and--
Canada and many other countries have also issued some
statements on this.
And we really appreciate it, and it is good even though we
have not seen any direct consequence of this statement of
attitude.
So I want to say first what the international community
should do. It is not to say something, but do something up to
that, do something directly and indirectly to give pressure to
the Chinese Government to make sure these political prisoners
are not tortured, make sure the Chinese abide by its own laws
and regulations.
And second, what Xi Jinping and the Communist Party is
doing not only harms Chinese people, but is harming the free
world, harming the United States.
For example, Yahoo!, Cisco, Google, what they have been
doing may be violating the freedom of expression. In California
and other areas, Chinese dissidents were attacked by Chinese
Government-hired hooligans.
The Confucian Institutes and the Federations of Chinese
Scholars and Students have done a lot to influence academic
freedom negatively, and so many other things that the Communist
Party tried their best to sell its value to the world.
So the United States really should do something to protect
its own freedom, and that is Obama and the Congress should not
keep silent when meeting Xi Jinping.
Chairman Smith. Anyone who would like to answer, if there
is. Do you perceive a link?
First of all, we invited you here because you are world-
renowned, world-class human rights activists, people who have,
by your work, by your study, by your academic endeavors have
made a huge difference. So when you speak, this Commission and,
by extension, the Congress, hears you.
Is there a link between human rights abuse, the
deteriorating situation with regard to democracy, the crackdown
on the human rights defenders and the growing animosity of
China toward its neighbors, including the United States, but
especially Japan and other countries that are in proximity to
it?
The work or the expansionism that we see going on in the
South China Sea, the linkages with North Korea, especially with
Iran, which is on a tear to get a nuclear weapon and under
President Obama's agreement I think it is inevitable that they
will get a nuclear weapon. It is a matter of when--and not if.
It was not a well-honed--this is not the discussion for here
and now; we have had numerous hearings on that.
But they are in league with rogue nations everywhere, and
teaching a bad governance model, but especially in the region,
the threat of war by either miscalculation or by design. Your
thoughts on that as human rights continually race to the
bottom, like I said at the beginning, with North Korea.
And if you would add to your answers, it is outrageous that
Xi Jinping will be at the United Nations on September 27
speaking about gender quality and equal rights for women when,
in China, the Chinese women and girls are discriminated against
like no other group of people in the world.
I have been working and combating the one-child-per-couple
policy since I first learned about it in my second term in 1983
and offered numerous amendments to defund those organizations
that aid and abet these atrocities against women.
This is the 55th hearing that I have chaired on human
rights abuse in China. We have had exclusive hearings just
focused on the one-child-per-couple policy, we heard stories
from women who were forcibly aborted.
As you all know, China today has more suicides of women
than any other country in the world, and the CDC, the Centers
for Disease Control, in Beijing estimates 600 women per day--
per day, not week or month--per day, commit suicide.
Well, when a member of the People's Congress was here
visiting, I raised those issues with her and she went right
into denial mode and ended the meeting. It was a meeting of the
Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, and said, we
cannot prove this. So I went and got the documentation and put
it in her hands, and that was the end of that meeting. Her name
is Fu. And she was very, very upset. I said, you are waging war
against your own women.
Now, the consequences from a human rights' point of view,
from the breakup of the family and the military consequences of
having more men--and who knows what the number is, tens of
millions of more men than women--40 to 50 million men will
never marry between now and 2020 because of the extermination
of the girl child while in the womb through a course of
population control and abortion.
You are only allowed one. There is a boy preference, and
all of you know that.
But I think our Pentagon, I think our State Department,
misses by a mile the implications for China remaining not at
war and not in a dire strait because of the demographic
nightmare that they are experiencing.
One last point, and you might want to comment on this. I am
the prime sponsor of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Every year a TIP [Trafficking in Persons] Report comes out. We
have minimum standards of government complicity.
The administration this year, again in a bogus way, gave a
higher grade--they failed to recognize the explosion of sex
trafficking in China, much of it attributable to the missing
daughters of China and men who cannot find wives, and this
disparity. And it is only going to get worse as that disparity
continues.
And yet Xi Jinping in a week will be at the United Nations
talking about equal rights for women when he ought to be at The
Hague being held for crimes against humanity and crimes against
women for what he has done and continues to do to his own
women.
I do not know if Obama will mention it. I am not even sure
he has ever mentioned it, and that is a missed opportunity.
So if you would touch on some of these issues, if you
would, as we conclude the hearing. But I think Wei Jingsheng,
when I first met with him, he talked about the security issues
and how we so misunderstand the intentions of the
dictatorship--not the Chinese people, but the dictatorship and
the animosities that have festered for years that go back to
the Opium Wars, certainly Japan during their horrible
atrocities committed against the Chinese people in World War
II, all of that has festered.
Now you have a disparity of boys and girls. Nicholas
Eberstadt, the famous AEI [American Enterprise Institute]
demographer, wrote a fascinating piece about what is to become
of a country that is increasingly male and increasingly older?
The economy, how does that continue when you have too few
people supporting an elderly population and they all happen to
be disproportionately guys?
So if you could--any comments you might want on that, and
anything else you would like to say before we conclude the
hearing.
Yes?
Mr. Gutmann. I have just a very brief point which I think
illustrates the global effect--a very direct effect.
We know that Chinese surgeons have been going down to
Vietnam. It is not clear who the invitation came from or
whether they invited themselves, but we know they have trained
several Vietnam hospitals in organ harvesting. And they have
opened up a transplant industry in Vietnam that did not exist
before.
Now, a couple of months ago, we learned that ISIS, or ISIL
if you prefer, has been harvesting the organs of their
political prisoners. This is true. And this is simply evil
unchecked. Because evil not remarked on will surely spread, and
that is exactly what we are seeing in this case.
Mr. Wei. I would talk about two issues. One is about the
possibility of war. Not many observed but it is a fact the
Chinese Communist Party is very good at constructing personal
credit by war. Many Chinese generals today are still speaking
of what Deng Xiaoping did in 1979 to have the war with Vietnam
and built his authority quickly.
At this moment, Xi Jinping is facing major problems in
political and economic areas, and he is thinking about using
war to resolve his crisis inside of China. If we cannot do
anything to push him for the improvement of human rights in
China, and if we do not see major improvement on economic
issues, he may choose a war.
I think that he personally should have already realized
that his way toward Mao has failed, and now he has only two
choices: Either he will yield more rights to the people or
start another war.
So we should remind Mr. Obama, if he wants to leave some
historical mark, the best thing he should do is push Xi Jinping
to improve human rights. Xi Jinping might consider to improve
human rights, but he needs some exterior push.
Mr. Yang. I have a few final comments. Number one, any
leader cannot be trusted if he or she mistreats his or her own
people, history has repeatedly told us thus far.
Another comment is that Xi Jinping's state visit actually
provides a unique opportunity for President Obama to leave a
legacy, as Mr. Wei just mentioned. And he is a Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate. He must remember there is another one. As we
speak, he is languishing in a Chinese prison.
And when we talk about women, his wife Liu Xia has been
under house arrest for almost five years, ever since the
announcement was made that her husband won the Nobel Peace
Prize. So this is another woman who has been persecuted. It is
just another example.
And I think an important issue still remains how you match
your words with deeds. Lip service does not do much. And the
Chinese leaders and the Chinese understand the game.
When you just provide lip service, they do not take it
seriously. And very likely, after Xi Jinping leaves, returns to
China, President Obama and the White House will release a
statement saying how the human rights issue was raised during
the meeting. We express our concern. Who knows? Who knows?
Now what we want President Obama to do is openly commit
himself. We want him to openly do the things that he should do
so that people can hold him accountable.
It is time to bring diplomacy from dark to light.
Thank you.
Chairman Smith. I want to thank each and every one of you
for your expert testimony, for your passion for human rights
and democracy, and it really has helped this Commission know
exactly where we are and what we ought to be doing, and I thank
you for that.
Then without objection, a statement by Cochairman Senator
Rubio will be made a part of the record, his opening comments,
so ordered. And again, I want to thank you again for being here
today.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon at 4:07 p.m. the hearing was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Teng Biao
Why Xi Jinping is Purging China's Rights Activists
september 18, 2015
Since July 9 2015, nearly 30 human rights lawyers have been
kidnapped or arrested, most of them are my close friends. At least 300
lawyers or activists have been questioned or released after a short
detention.
This ongoing persecution is only a small part of Xi Jinping's
comprehensive crackdown on civil society. Since Xi came to power in
late 2012, at least 2000 human rights defenders have been detained or
sentenced, including Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti and his students,
Journalist Gao Yu, lawyer Xu Zhiyong, Pu Zhiqiang, Tang Jingling, Li
Heping, Sui Muqing, Zhang Kai, Wang Quanzhang, Wang Yu, rights defender
Guo Feixiong, Liu Ping, Zhang Shengyu, Su Changlan, dissident Qin
Yongmin, Zhang Lin, Jiang Lijun, Hu Shigen, Yu Shiwen, Pastor Zhang
Shaojie, etc. Some prisoners of conscience died in detention, obviously
out of torture or inhuman treatment, like Cao Shunli and Tenzin Delek
Rinpoche.
In Zhejiang and other provinces, government destroyed thousands of
church buildings, arrested pastors and Christians, demolished the
crosses. Falungong practitioners were detained or sent to legal
education centers, a kind of extra-legal detentions--many of them have
been tortured to death. Other small religious groups are persecuted
after the government listed them as evil cults.
Many NGOs have been shut down, like Gongmeng (the Open Constitution
Initiative). Even many NGOs focusing on Environment, women's rights,
LGBT, labor rights or citizen libraries are not allowed to work.
The CCP made new regulations or policies on high education and
ideology. More censorship on internet, textbooks, publishings and
traditional media. Document No.9. Seven don't talk. Mass line. Military
parade. Fundamentalist Communism--Xi seems to be very keen on bringing
back Maoist style discourse and cult of personality.
The Chinese communist authorities, with their excessive violence,
have created hostility, division and despair in Xinjiang and Tibet. In
Xinjiang, many protests were labelled as terrorist attacks thus many
Uyghur people were shot dead without any necessity and legal basis. In
Tibet, the number of self-immolation has been 147, and 126 Tibetans
have lost their lives. 79 self-immolations happened since November of
2012 when Xi came into office. Some family members of the self-
immolators were even detained or sentenced.
Why Xi is purging the rights activist?
Xi is somebody living in 1960s. He never accepts the ideas of
liberal democracy or constitutionalism or human rights. What he has
been doing and is going to do, is to maintain the CCP's monopoly of
power. He will not tolerate any challenge to the one party rule. CCP
never stops its punishment on activists, but Xi has a much lower
threshold of prisons.
But the deep reason locates in the whole political and social
situation.
China has become the second largest economy in the world. China is
flexing its muscles by military parade, AIIB, and new message on South
China Sea. By tearing up the promise of Hong Kong's autonomy. Also by
detaining Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, disappearing Panchen Lama,
arresting more and more rights activists. But isn't there a profound
dread lurking behind this barbarism?
The party's attempts to project confidence do little to disguise
its panic: It is beset by economic strife, antagonism between officials
and the people, widespread corruption, environmental and ecological
disasters, unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet, and its own sense of
ideological crisis. The party no longer has the ability to carry out
the frantic, Mao-style mobilizations of the past. Its ideology has lost
all attraction, and the public's frustration with the party is growing.
People are more willing to criticize the regime in public, and the
spread of access to the Internet has stunted the effect of the party's
inculcation, thought work and propaganda. The stock market's recent
crash and the tragic Tianjin blast led even the middle class to fury
and disappointment. Wang qishan's recent talk on legitimacy exactly
reflects the CCP's anxiety of its lack of legitimacy. The recycling of
old slogans, the shutting of NGOs, the arrest of dissidents and
enhanced controls on the spread of information--all of it is a sign of
the party's deep fear of a color revolution.
Compared with all of this, the rights lawyer and civil society
activists are gaining in prestige, influence and communications and
organizational capacity. Since 2003, more and more people joined in the
Rights Defense Movement. Human rights lawyers defend civil rights,
challenge the abuse of power and promote rule of law though taking
political cases or sensitive cases. People organize more and more NGOs,
working on various rights of the unprivileged people. Bloggers and
writers write articles to criticize the government, or disseminate
information on sensitive events. Activists initiate New Citizens
Movement and South Street Movement to demand political rights. People
gather privately to commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre. The Rights
Defense Movement tends to be more organized and politicalized, gaining
more support and respects from the general public.
These are the reasons why Xi decided to purge the rights activists
and destroy the growing civil society. But this crackdown won't silence
the rights lawyers and defenders, and it won't stop the march toward
human rights and dignity in China. Rights lawyers will rise from the
ashes with an even deeper sense of their historical responsibility.
Xi is coming here soon. Does Xi and the party wish to relive the
nightmare of lawlessness during the Culture Revolution? When will he
release China's prisoners of conscience? When will this ruthless
suppression of freedom end? Will the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics be
another human rights disaster, like the 2008 Beijing Olympics were? We
ought to ask him.
'The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to
die' . Martin Luther King Jr. once said. We should not keep silence
when so many Chinese people are suffering the atrocities of CCP.
History of Nazi will repeat itself when people choose to do nothing
when Xi Jinping is going toward Hitler. Those who welcome Xi Jinping
without raising human rights issue are helpers of the dictator.
______
Prepared Statement of Xiao Qiang
september 18, 2015
Mr. Chairman, Respected Members of the Commission,
My name is Xiao Qiang. I am the founder and chief editor of China
Digital Times, a bilingual China news website. I am also an adjunct
professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of
Information, where my current research focuses on mapping political
discourses in Chinese cyberspace, measuring state censorship and
control of the Internet, and developing cloud-based technologies to
break through that censorship. It is my privilege to testify in front
of this commission again.
Mr. Chairman, China has the world's largest number of Internet
users, estimated at 641 million to date. After President Xi Jinping
took power in 2012, he framed the Internet as a battlefield for
ideological control and appointed himself head of a top-level Internet
security committee. He also established the State Internet Information
Office (renamed the Cyberspace Administration of China), and continues
to intensify restrictions and controls on the Internet freedom.
In the past two and a half years, Xi's administration has not only
expanded its crackdown on freedom of expression and freedom of the
press, it has also launched a ferocious assault on civil society. These
violations of fundamental rights and freedoms have been well documented
by international human rights organizations.
For example, Freedom House's annual report ``Freedom on the Net''
details China's restrictions of Internet freedom by blocking and
filtering access to international websites, censoring online content,
and violating users' rights. I recommend Freedom House's excellent
report to the Commission.
``World Press Freedom Index 2015,'' published by Paris-based
Reporters Without Borders, ranks China 176th out of 180 countries.
China Digital Times closely follows the interplay of censorship,
activism, and emerging public opinion on the Chinese Internet. In
particular, we collect and translate many of the censorship directives
the Party sends to state media and Internet companies. We also
aggregate breaking news deemed ``sensitive'' by state censors.
During the last twelve years, the China Digital Times team has
published over 2,600 such censorship directives, and using these
directives has pieced together how the Chinese government restricts
Internet freedom. Here are a few recent examples to illustrate these
controls.
1. From September 8, 2015, on Tibet, issued by the Cyberspace
Administration of China:
All websites may follow coverage of the 50th anniversary of the
founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Please take care to
tidy up negative and harmful information related to the news.
You may close the comments section on major stories.
2. On September 7, 2015, the Chinese Communist Party's Central
Propaganda Department issued a classified document, marked as notice
number 320 for the year 2015. This document instructs state media to to
report positively on the economy. Here is one excerpt from this
document:
The focus for the month of September will be strengthening
economic propaganda and guiding public opinion, as well as
overall planning for domestic- and foreign-facing propaganda
and Internet propaganda, in order to take the next step in
promoting the discourse on China's bright economic future and
the superiority of China's system, as well as stabilizing
expectations and inspiring confidence.
In fact, both state and independent media have been pressured to keep
economic reporting upbeat and to downplay the stock market crash last
month as well as slumps earlier in the summer. A directive from August
25 requires that Chinese websites delete specific essays about the
crash, while in June the State Administration of Press, Publication,
Radio, Film, and Television instructed TV and radio stations to
``rationally lead market expectations to prevent inappropriate reports
from causing the market to spike or crash.''
The central government did not stopped at issuing internal censorship
and propaganda instructions. In August, Caijing reporter Wang Xiaolu
confessed on CCTV to ``causing panic and disorder'' with a negative
story on the stock market slump.
3. From September 3, 2015, concerning the military parade in Beijing,
issued by the Central Propaganda Department:
Do not hype or comment on those high leaders of major Western
countries who are not attending the September 3 military parade
commemorating the 70th anniversary of the victory in the war
against Japan.
4. On August 12, 2015, a chemical explosion in the port city of
Tianjin left at least 173 dead and nearly 800 injured. China Digital
Times collected a number of censorship instructions issued to state
media and Internet companies regarding the accident, including the
following from the Cyberspace Administration of China:
Standard sources must be used regarding the explosions in
Tianjin's Tanggu Open Economic Zone. Use only copy from Xinhua
and authoritative departments and media. Websites cannot
privately gather information on the accident, and when
publishing news cannot add individual interpretation without
authorization. Do not make live broadcasts.
5. In July, almost 200 lawyers and activists were questioned or taken
into custody. The state media calls this an operation against
``conspirators'' who are ``colluding with petitioners to disturb social
order and to reach their goals with ulterior motives.''
Here is one censorship directive issued by the Cyberspace
Administration of China on July 14, 2015:
All websites must, without exception, use as the standard
official and authoritative media reports with regards to the
detention of trouble-making lawyers by the relevant
departments. Personnel must take care to find and delete
harmful information; do not repost news from non-standard
sources.
In this case, the Chinese government is persecuting and prosecuting
Chinese citizens, to quote H. R. 491, for ``posting or transmitting
peaceful political, religious, or ideological opinion or belief via the
Internet.''
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commission, I also would like to
recommend the remarkable report, ``China's Great Cannon,'' published by
Toronto University's Citizen Lab. The Great Cannon is an attack tool
used to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks on websites by
intercepting massive amounts of web traffic and redirecting it to
targeted websites. That is to say, it ``weaponizes'' unwitting Internet
users from around the world in order to overwhelm the servers of the
targeted sites.
The first deployment of the Great Cannon was in late March 2015,
targeting two specific users of the San Francisco-based code sharing
site Github: the New York Times' Chinese mirror site, and the anti-
censorship organisation GreatFire.org.
Based on this weapon's network position across different Chinese
Internet service providers and on similarities in its source code to
the Great Firewall, the researchers at Citizen Lab and the
International Computer Science Institute ``believe there is compelling
evidence that the Chinese government operates the GC [Great Cannon].''
In other words, the Chinese government is not only deliberately
blocking, filtering, and censoring online information based on the
expression of political, religious, or ideological opinion or belief
within China; it is also using technology to disrupt Internet traffic
and commercial infrastructure beyond its borders.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Commission for holding this
important public hearing on human rights in China, days before the
Chinese president Xi Jinping's first state visit to the United States.
I urge President Xi Jinping to stop his repressive policies and
practices. The Chinese people want and deserve more access to
information and the Internet, and greater freedom to express their
views. Chinese people desire and demand greater protection of human
rights in their political, social, economic, and cultural life.
I urge President Obama to engage President Xi on Internet freedom,
press freedom, and freedom of expression in their meetings, not only
raising concerns, but also insisting that future political and economic
relationships be dependent on the Chinese government demonstrating
improvements in upholding human rights.
______
Prepared Statement of Yang Jianli
september 18, 2015
Part One. Engaging China with Moral and Strategic Clarity
Part Two. Xi Jinping's Foolish ``Confidence'' Leads to Unstoppable
Decline
Part Three. 64 Questions for Xi Jinping
Part One--Engaging China with Moral and Strategic Clarity
26 years ago, after the bloody massacre in Beijing in 1989, we came
to Washington DC to plea the U.S. government to impose an economic
sanction against the China Communist regime, in particular, to link
China's most favorite nation (MFN) status with human rights. We argued
that continuing the normal trade with China would like a blood
transfusion to the Communist regime, making it more aggressive and
harming the interests of both American and Chinese people.
But our warning fell on deaf ears. After a lengthy debate, the U.S.
government decided to continue its engagement policy, granting
permanent MFN to China and contending economic growth would eventually
bring democracy to the country.
Today, with money and technologies pouring in from the U.S. and
other Western countries, with their free markets wide open for the
Chinese-made goods, the Chinese Communist regime not only survived the
1989 crisis, it has catapulted into the 21st century. The country's
explosive economic growth has brought it from near the bottom of the
world in GDP per capita to become the number two economy in the world;
but democracy remains yet a far-fetched dream.
The Chinese Communist regime has instead grown into a
Frankenstein's monster, terrorizing peoples both domestically and
internationally.
China uses its economic power gained with the help of the West to
build a formidable, fully modernized military, that has reached every
corner of the earth. With this unprecedented power, China is now
forcefully demanding a re-write of international norms and rules. China
wants to create a new international order with Beijing's dominance in
the Asia-Pacific region as the centerpiece. This new order has
threatened world peace and the current balance of power put into place
since the World War II.
What went wrong with the America's engagement policy?
In our view, the failure lies primarily lacked any moral and
strategic clarity in its design and implementation.
The origin of the error can trace back to the early 1970s when then
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger claiming that by integrating Beijing
into the international community economically and politically, China
would behave responsibly, abiding by international norms and rules.
This amoral, geo-political and short-term pragmatic strategy fails
to see the evil nature and hegemonic ambition of the communist regime
as reiterated in President Xi Jinping's ``China Dream'' of a great red
empire, to replace the western civilization with its socialist
civilization.
Washington Policy makers also fail to understand that economic
growth may be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, for
cultivating democracy. Consequently, this policy has fundamentally
undermined America's national interests and security.
The alternative is to engage China with a moral strategic compass:
China under the Chinese Communist Party's rule cannot rise peacefully,
and its transition to a democratic country that respects human rights,
rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, is in everyone's best
interest, including China's own. In other words, the U.S. must push for
a peaceful regime change in China.
The reason for this is simple:
To support China's totalitarian regime, a regime that ruthlessly
represses its own people, denies universal values to justify its
dictatorship, and that challenges the existing international order to
seek its dominance, is both morally corrupt and strategically stupid.
Like Frankenstein's monster, China is now seeking revenge against
its creator--the West. It will destabilize and endanger the world, for
the so-called China model, an amoral and monstrous political system and
the corrupt way of life, like the black plague, has been spread and
infected the international community, and will eventually ruin it, but
most people in the world are not aware of it, and many even being
fooled to believe it is the future.
China's communists has hijacked 1.3 billion Chinese people,
imposing a political system on them by force and coercion, running the
country like a slave-owner of the past, obliterating their self-
governance, and controlling their life without their consent. To
continue support of this anti-humanity regime runs contrary to
universal values and international law to which America has long been
committed.
While many policymakers in Washington have now realized that it is
time to get tough on China, some still elude that the present and
future conflicts between the US and China can be managed. Our view is,
without China's democratization, the US and China will unavoidably
collide, because the two countries' strategic goals are fundamentally
different and core interests are uncompromisable.
The only way to prevent future wars with China is to pursue its
democratic transformation now.
To start, the Congress should pass a China Democracy Act, directing
the Federal government and all its agencies to make democracy and human
rights advocacy as the core policy when engaging China, and requires
the President to report to the Congress every year on the specific
successes.
The engagement policy allowed and even encouraged too many
government departments to assist China just for engagement sake, and
with no regard to any effort to promote political reform and freedom.
The act will serve as America's grand strategy on China, and the
government will take coordinated actions to achieve the goal.
But is a peaceful regime change possible in China?
Absolutely. Despite restrictions, the Internet and free flow of
information have changed China, particular the younger generations.
Civic society is awakening; religions are flourishing, with rapidly
increasing number of believers; the rising middle class, as well as
disadvantaged groups, are longing for a political system that ensures
equal opportunity and fairness for all. Even the upper class wants rule
of law to protect their wealth, because without it no one is safe in
China.
China's power elite knows this insecurity very well. The recent
anti-corruption campaign under President Xi Jinping has turned into a
life-or-death power struggle among the regime's power elites, which has
split the regime. The power elite face the choice of either destroying
each other or find a Godfather-type solution where they give up their
gangster way of life and become legitimate via a constitutional
democracy. With sufficient pressure from the international community
and from within, such a transformation is not entirely unlikely.
Immanuel Kant and modern-day social science has shown that
democracies are less disposed to go to war with each other. Long-
lasting peace and friendship between the U.S. and China means that
China must transition to a democracy.
If the U.S. takes no action, we worry that China will continue down
the perilous path of achieving its world dominance through militarism
and aggression, which easily lead to another war that the world can not
afford.
Part Two--Xi Jinping's Foolish ``Confidence'' Leads to Unstoppable
Decline
Prelude/Introduction
China's disastrous stock storm and unprecedented crackdown on
defenders of human rights have been well recorded during my three-year
observations of the Xi Jinping Administration.
Since taking over top leadership in China, Xi Jinping has become a
crusader in both political and economic arenas with aims to consolidate
personal power and create a personal cult. From within the Party to his
broad social life, inside officialdom and in the market, from the
Mainland to the Hong Kong Island - what Xi has achieved are four
``triumphs'': power overwhelming anticorruption, political power
overwhelming market forces, ``One nation'' state overwhelming the ``two
systems,'' and party's will overwhelming the rule of law. With these
milestones, Xi Jinping has thus become an icon of ``Red Guards Ruling
China.''
Over the last three years, particularly this past year, Xi Jinping
has exposed clearly the spare ribs of his administration whenever he
lifted his fist to show off his power, with his reputation on the
decline, time and again. China's public security forces stormed the
markets under hisorders in a bid to save the crashing stocks.
Naturally, people wonder--how can anyone stop the decline of the
reputation of the regime? Despite the superficial power of Xi's four
``triumphs'' and his willfulness, people are spotting cracks of the
iron curtain and sensing the fear of losing power on the part of the
top leadership under pseudo self-confidence.
Looking back at the economic and political conditions when Xi took
power, and comparing them to those under his predecessor Hu Jintao, we
did not notice many fundamental differences, with only one worthy
note--people overwhelmingly felt across all walks of life in the
country, including those insiders, that Xi Jinping might be the last
emperor of the Communist dynasty. Thus, a dying regime's destiny is in
his hands. With this sense spreading, Xi Jinping had an apparently
strong sense of mission of saving the Party and Communist Dynasty, and
even tried to restore its vigorous authority before drifting away,
leaving a legacy of being a savior. Under such a political tone, the
fear of losing personal power, its legitimacy, and eroding base have
been among his constant and main themes and its variations, unless Xi
wants to change fundamental political system.
During the tenure of Hu Jintao and his premier Wen Jiabao, China
experienced the climax of what ``power leads to corruption'' means
during the last decade, with many extreme cases on record. The past
three years indicates that Xi Jinping administration has, and shall
continue to show why fear of losing power not only leads to corruption
but makes those in power mad and insanely ferocious. No matter how
reluctant Xi Jinping is, being the last emperor of the Communist regime
may well be his destiny. All extreme syndromes of a dying regime make
China the spectacular stage of extravagance and brutality.
To date, many political analysts are still wondering about Xi's
political logic and motivations, and they debate about them. However,
based on my observation of Xi's three-year performance sense his taking
power, I have come to conclude that his bare bones nature was exposed
despite layers of disguise. With my glimpse into the so-called mystery
of the administration formulating his personal cult for two years, I
can say XI presented himself before civil society a cult propaganda.
Now we, the opposition, and the rest of the world, shall not be puzzled
about his agenda, and need to exam XI Jinping from a different
perspective.
1.
Xi Jinping seems destined to experience a turbulent tenure, unlike
that of his predecessor Hu Jintao, due to the strings of a political
dramas abruptly unveiled on the eve of his taking power. Yet, I believe
it is just a heavy punch that brought good luck for Xi Jinping during
his first two years. And that punch on the face of Wang Lijun,
municipal security chief in Chong Qing was like a gift of blessing from
Bo Xilai, then Party chief of Chong Qing, in southwestern China, who
was believed to be fighting for his spot on the all-powerful Politburo
Standing Committee. Then Xi Jinping adopted a strategy to retreat for a
better bargaining position in power struggle just before the 18th Party
Congress--and it worked like magic. Xi's acts skillfully held the
critical ``private part'' of the power structure of the Communist
regime hostage to bargain with an upper hand, as if the whole system
dysfunctional and failed to respond appropriately to the unexpected
incident, particularly, during this non-emergency state of power
struggle. It was just this incident that helped Xi Jinping consolidated
all the power much faster than his two predecessors during his first
few years. After such a round of struggle, a minimal worthy fight, Xi
has got rid of all potential direct rivals within the Party.
So far, Xi has successfully avoided the awkward and weak position
his predecessor Hu Jintao found himself in, in terms of power
consolidation. This proves one of my views on Communist senior
officialdom--that anyone, given the position and opportunity, can
become a high-caliber handler in power struggle, just because, they
have all been engaged and practicing the power struggle, trial and
error, all their life, accumulating extraordinary wealth of
experiences. And in addition, China's rich history of emperor politics
in the past several thousand years provides historical examples from
which power grabbers can borrow. In a closed power structure, anyone on
a vantage position may not need to be particularly bright or clever to
succeed.
Chinese politics by nature has been long filled with risks. And
complicated power manipulation in China makes outsiders unable to
comprehend these risks. In the very beginning of his tenure, Xi Jinping
had actually experienced a quite comfortable period given the mixed and
often negative social reactions to Bo Xilai's notorious performance. He
appealed the ``glory'' of Mao era in the form of chanting the oldies
and (illegally) cracking down the ``underground gangs.'' This provided
perfect timing for Xi Jinping to restart the long-due political reforms
for a new round of vital social development, if Xi intended to curb the
coming back of the extreme left-wing. But the fact of the matter was,
Xi took over the banner of the disgraced Bo Xilai, in disguise of
swinging between the left and right, and ended up embracing
dictatorship in alignment with the left-wing, and with omnipotence.
It is critical for us to understand that Xi Jinping is the party
chief, not a democratically elected head of state. Xi, being not only
the son (literally) of Xi Zhongxun (one of the revolutionary elders,
famous for his open mindedness), but the captain of the Communist
cruise (pirate) ship, and therefore, Xi had, to begin with, to keep
balance of power among those surrounding him, consolidating power
within the party to maintain his stable leadership position. From this
position, and his logic, Xi must take the path of ``political
correctness'' to minimize potential risks. Xi's ``red gene'' confines
his moves. The so-called ``Red gene'' still exists in the once-
marginalized groups of Party apparatchiks and group of bootlickers
during the market-oriented reform era, who obviously survived and now
being revived by Xi Jinping, who has become their master and great
leader. Naturally, when Xi Jinping has gradually become a de facto
descendent of the disgraced Bo Xilai's left-wing, these bootlickers are
responsible to their masters and upper social elites, and they test the
psychological tolerance of the general public by offering flattery
remarks and praise hymns to Xi Jinping, while at the same time, state
machinery increasingly tightened control of expression, and in curbing
thought, politicizing almost everything in China.
Since taking office, Xi Jinping has intensified crackdown on
opinion leaders of civil society, in the name of curbing ``gossip
mongering,'' and the regime shamelessly utilized paid online bloggers,
party-anointed writers in huge amounts to monitor domestic web-sphere,
overwhelmed by brainwashing campaigns, highlighting Zhou Xiaoping-style
official gossipers, just for the purpose of misleading the general
public, to align with Party lines and catchy phrases.
Now the general public has become coldly silent. Their silence is
much quieter than that of the silence of Hu Jintao era. Now we also
know the reasons - suppression of Qing Huohuo, Xue Manzi, among others,
arrests being made to crack down Xu Zhiyong, Guo Yushan, Gao Yu, Pu
Zhiqiang, Guo Feixiong, Wu Gan, Wan Yu, etc. and even worse, the gun-
down of innocent people like Xu Chunhe . . .
2.
The era under Hu Jintao, along with his premier Wen Jiabao,
experienced all-around social, economic and political crisis in China,
and saw no progressive moves to address the issues. It was labeled
``muddling along with a bomb on a timer.'' When in power, Hu Jintao and
Wen Jiabao were eager to pass such a bomb onto the next successor, and
retreat peacefully in retirement. Xi Jinping, on the other hand,
exposed a strong intention even in the very beginning of his term. Xi
seems not to getting the ``bomb'' onto his successor, nor did he ever
try to defuse such a bomb. Instead, XI Jinping wanted to make an even
more powerful bomb, the Xi-style one, to destroy the inherited bombs,
all in one.
The bomb in the hands of Hu-Wen Administration then was made within
the Party itself - amid unprecedented epidemic corruption of government
officials and party apparatchiks, and the social crisis caused by crony
capitalism with Chinese characteristics in which the government
officials and business elites have joined hand in hand in shameless and
cruel exploitation of the voiceless public. Such a horrific matter of
fact has been universally acknowledged including Xi Jinping himself,
who must be more alert to the urgency than anyone else because of his
self-claimed destiny to save the Party and the Communist regime from
the unstoppable collapse. Naturally, overwhelming anti-corruption has
been a main driving force of his administration since its start. For a
newly installed ruler like Xi Jinping, who has embodied aggressive
agendas, to consolidate personal power dominates his operations. His
other goal is to disable potential rivals who tried in vain to steal
power away from him, in the name of anti-corruption. With power
grabbing being a constant struggle for Xi Jinping, social crisis caused
by corruption receive relatively less attention as it is less of a
headache for him.
What's more, the Communist Party, as a whole system, is totally
corrupted, anti-corruption is a de facto anti-Party itself. Xi Jinping
certainly would not act like conducting suicide bombing against his own
Party. XI never intends to push his Party for a fundamental change of
system. Then anti-corruption features selective targets from the very
start, serving his purpose to consolidate his personal power. Now that
power struggle and anti-corruption have jointly moved his agenda into a
``be or not to be'' situation in which the Party and the regime need to
answer. It is an integral part of political power struggle to have
anti-corruption move forward just for his own political interests.
Lack of legitimacy has been raised when the ongoing anticorruption
campaigns target certain selected groups, because none of the elements
inside the Party are intrinsically clean. ``Why me, not him? '' they
ask. Therefore, its legitimacy has been challenged after the New York
Times reporter Michael Forsythe reported on the family wealth of Xi
Jinping. As anti-corruption has been utilized for power struggle, those
party factions and individuals under investigation or fallen officials
of this struggle shall not lay down their arms. Strings of events
highlight this ongoing internal struggle, such as the New York Times
stories (there must be internal ``Deep Throat'' within the Party
feeding information to the media), war of words between politically
well-connected wealthy businessman Guo Wengui (who fled China) and his
rivals on mainland China, to the mystery of the missing (believed to
have fled to U.S., in hiding, perhaps in process of seeking political
asylum) Ling Wancheng who is believed to have possession of lots of top
classified information about the Communist regime (this wealthy
businessman is a brother of Ling Jihua, then top aid to Hu Jintao),
among some of the high-profile cases. All these dramas reveal that
rivals within the top tier of the Communist Party hold in possession of
vital, classified top security information as powerful as a nuclear
device to destroy any other internal competitors. Therefore, for Xi
Jinping, the ideal mode would be to maintain a kind of power balance,
like ``nuclear deterrent'' for his anti-corruption campaigns, drifting
away from his ``nuclear war'' style against his rivals in the first few
years.
On the economy, which has been experiencing slowdown since last
year, the communist regime realizes its potential social crisis looming
overhead because it is believe that legitimacy only depends on high
growth of the economy, as it was in the past decades. Under current
political environment, Xi Jinping's anti-corruption could face
overwhelming challenges from his rivals, given any crisis arising soon.
In the power struggle of the Communist Party of China, fabricating
crimes is a well-known game serving for any power players. Xi Jinping's
crimes are prominent, readily available to the advantage of his rivals.
As Xi himself knows this much better than any layman on the street, he
has switched his anti-corruption back to the mode of ``old norm'' under
the ``new norm'' economic situations.
To address a more fundamental issue regarding its legitimacy of the
ruling Communist Party, Xi Jinping tried to bet his hope on the success
of his anti-corruption campaign, which, on the contrary, has drifted
away in the opposite direction, for its own inherent logic. Such a
high-profile show earned him nothing more than some scattered hurrays
from the disengaged, innocent grassroots. In other words, Xi Jinping is
facing his own Catch-22, because anti-corruption means anti-Party
itself. What's next, will Xi have to reheat his cold, half-cooked rice
meal?
3.
It may be too early to conclude that Xi Jinping will be a flash in
a pan, just like then the ``great leader'' Hua Guofeng (who helped
topple the Mao's wife and her ``Gang of Four''). Xi's power struggle
and his temporary triumphs over his rivals so far reminds people of
those television episodes adapted from a historical novel authored by
Er Yuehe. As Xi has delivered too many awe-inspiring performances, for
example, Xi recently cited ``house rule'' in place of rule of law,
depending on informers and his own imperial-appointed special envoys,
usually undercover, to carry out his anti-corruption campaigns. All
these dirty games are just like the same old, already disappeared
Chinese dynasties. The very nature of his imperial-style actions
indicates Xi Jinping's political thinking and mindset which are so
backward as imperial palace coup of the old days. It must be
acknowledged that politics is never merely about power or power
struggle. More essential contents do exist beyond rim of power struggle
in politics. What can be said about Xi is that he is a doomed
politician based on his performances up to date, which clearly bears
the symptom of a dying political system.
It is as easy as ABC to list challenges facing the Xi
Administration: ethnic issues in Tibet and Xin Jiang Autonomous
Regions, universal ballot in Hong Kong, maritime disputes in East and
South China Seas, housing bubble, stock market turbulence, overwhelming
debts, increasing pressure on currency exchange rate, rising
unemployment, difficult job market facing graduating college students,
rights abuses, massive rights self-defenders, and huge number of mass-
incidents involving protesters and demonstrators, all across the
country, etc., and etc.
Ironically, we see a ``self-confident'' Xi Jinping wearing on the
track of a superficially robust Communist Party with its so-called
``three confidences'' theory. Xi seems to have good reasons to have
such ``confidence,'' just from the perspective of a inflated powerful
political party. Therefore, he has been aggressive on all sides.
On Hong Kong, the Communist Cabinet, through its State Council
Information Office, issued a white paper on The Practice of the ``One
Country, Two Systems'' Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region, in June of 2014, stating that ``As a unitary state, China's
central government has comprehensive jurisdiction over all local
administrative regions, including the HKSAR. The high degree of
autonomy of HKSAR is not an inherent power, but one that comes solely
from the authorization by the central leadership.'' Furthermore, ``(it
is necessary to stay alert to) prevent and repel the attempt made by a
very small number of people who act in collusion with outside forces to
interfere with the implementation of ``one country, two systems'' in
Hong Kong.'' Such aggressive rhetoric pronounced just before the
schedule referendum in the middle of June initiated by grassroots
``Occupy Central'' movement was indeed intended to suppress the growing
popular demand for a ``universal suffrage'' in Hong Kong. As a result,
local populace was thus angered and mobilized to support ``Occupy
Central.'' This foolish communist move further led to the fiasco at the
Hong Long Legislature ballot on June 18, defeating the central
government proposal for a fake democracy in selecting its Chief
Executive in Hong Kong by a stunning 28 to 8, to the surprise of many
observers.
Xi Jinping has been so aggressive to take actions suppressing civil
society in China. Xi's predecessors normally were defensive in dealing
with domestic dissidents over the past two decades since Tiananmen
Massacre in 1989. The Communist regime realized its disillusion of the
Communist ideology that has been put aside by the general populace, as
well as its own ruling class. However, all Communist rulers, such as
Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, has been rights abusers when
they had to deal with and eventually cracked down dissidents, including
the underground Library Democratic Party (1992), open fight for
registration of a newly established Democratic Party (1998), Falungong
activists (1999), Charter '08 signatory movement (2008). These
ferocious crackdowns severely violated the legitimate rights of the
Chinese citizens. Such suppression reflects an overwhelming fear of the
Communist regime for losing its control of power, and would definitely
show no mercy or any hesitation to take immediate action to curb any
dissidents. A recent example was the crackdown on ``Jasmine Movement''
in 2011, which was seen as instinct of any authoritarian regime, and
perhaps under the directive of then Vice President Xi Jinping. After Xi
became the top leader, he has conducted series of suppression, much
more severe than ever, leading to large-scale arrests of rights defense
lawyers before the 25th commemoration of Tiananmen Massacre (1989), and
hundreds of cases of detention and arrests of human rights lawyer
(2014).
From these campaigns, we can see the difference between the Xi
regime and his predecessors in dealing with dissidents. Xi has been
more aggressive in demonizing grassroots opinion leaders. This backward
step was the result of directives from Xi Jinping regime under the
self-blown ``Three Confidences'' in defiance of historic current. It is
a worthy note that Xi Jinping has been more relentless to suppress
relatives and family members of those involved dissidents, even after
he took down his political rival Zhou Yongkong whose suppression
machinery had earned him not only the title ``Szar,'' but also billions
of dollars in personal and family wealth.
With more than 200 human rights activists and defense lawyers under
attack, the ``Great Leader'' Xi Jinping anchored as a high tightrope
walker amid skyrocketing stock markets that crashed his reputation,
perhaps his self-confidence. The Chinese stock market itself is a
government-run scam, with little real link to China's real economy.
When it rose so dramatically by the end of 2014, that Chinese official
media admitted that such a stock phenomenon was propped up by
government policy ONLY. So many naive, often first-time stock buyers
believed that this was the high time for Xin Jinping regime to start
distributing ``bonuses.'' In May 2015 the official Party mouthpiece,
the People's Daily and the state news agency Xinhua jointly bragged
``New Beginning of a Bull Market.'' What a beautiful sovereign scam!
Soon after the holy hymn came the crash of 1700 points on Shanghai
Index, as flashy as it was rising. Now the Big Brother again
confidently heavy handed the markets, with a string of confidence-
building measures, like freezing IPOs, handing over tons of cash for
mandatory purchase of stocks by large brokers, even worse, dispatching
security agents to ``investigate'' any short-selling manipulation, in
collaboration with ``foreign forces.'' All these efforts failed to
drive any rebounding effect, thus prompting financial crisis and regime
crisis in the face of the Xi regime. Now his image of omnipotence is in
crisis again, following his humiliating defeat of Hong Kong ballot plan
at local legislature on June 18.
In the meantime, we now see the spectacular omnipotence of the
Communist regime's power organs--this time, on stock market, the
security agents are performing a role in full swing to save the stock
market, again under the directive of Xi Jinping, demanding that ``No
sale but purchase only'' in plain language exposed on official
websites. Xi's omnipotent measures cost dearly, not only in term of
money, more importantly, the confidence in the Chinese stock markets,
because people now see clearly what is left out is nothing about market
forces but market of power games, the white-knuckled political power
intervention in market. What is left in the market is billions of
dollars sovereign fund, drifting along, with no sense of destination,
while millions of tiny ordinary stock buyers are left holding the bag.
It is the government who has successfully turned a ``Reform Bull'' into
a monster sucker of ordinary people's lifelines. This intervention has
one more byproduct, that is, the Xi regime has been under great
restraint in dealing with other urgent economic and social issues after
its billions of dollars fund being held like a hostage on the
dysfunctional Chinese stock market.
From my observations in the course of nearly three years, I see a
very clear choice made by Xi Jinping who prioritizes stabilizing his
regime, and takes decisive measures to achieve his political goals. His
overall strategy is to demanding obedience, curbing limited freedom,
avoiding discussing any inherent flaws in its fundamental system, and
strengthening control of thoughts and expressions. In addition, he
brags of ethics and morality.
Let's examine several cases in hand, such as corruption, crashing
stock markets, among others, which are organically produced by the
Communist regime itself, and as a inevitable results of its political
and economic systems. Xi's answers are far from addressing these
fundamental issues, rather trying to seek answers from the same old
stuffs, like a late Party apparatchik named Jiao Yulu, and even worse,
Xi resorted to ridiculous intervention demanding certain social groups
to buy-into the stocks, which naturally worsened the disastrous
situation. With no clue in dealing with the complicated market economic
function, like stocks, Xi believes in his only magician recipe, or
wrong description, i.e., too much power, omnipotent power of an
authoritarian regime, to make him look like omnipotent. His nonsense
running a government with lack of transparency has already driven
people of conscience to adopt ``non-cooperation'' strategy to engage in
a underground movement, even among his officialdom, not to mention, the
general populace. Similarly, in Hong Hong, those pro-Beijing
legislators achieved their unwanted results on the local Legislature
floor this past June, when a bunch of the robot members failed to cast
their ballots due to what was later nicknamed awaiting ``Uncle (Liu
Huang) Fa'' who failed to show up on the floor because of illness on
June 18, thus dooming their attempted fake democracy scheme.
I must point out that I particularly chose the special incidents
like Hong Kong's failed ballot, suppression of rights defenders, and
government intervention in stock markets, just for the pure sake of Xi
Jinping's mindset and his regime after successfully consolidating his
power. In other words, we can see clearly that Xi Jinping has
successfully destroyed the limited elements of democracy, rule of law
and free market in China, in a systematic, aggressive way. XI pushed
his ``One Country'' regime to abuse the ``Two Systems'' in Hong Kong.
Xi applied his Party will to replace rule of law, and infringed the
principles of market with his state power. All these episodes present
clear images of Xi's historic backward step in China.
4.
For a while, Xi Jinping seems to have won support from the general
populace, for two reasons, one is the anti-corruption campaigns, and
the other propping-up stock prices. Now you see his once bubbling stock
market has become a hot potato, bearing his infamous trademark of
``Uncle/Papa XI.'' Regarding his anti-corruption, ordinary people have
gradually changed their minds, a subtle process though. Anti-corruption
has brought no tangible benefits to the mass, who, on the contrary,
have to bear rising costs of gas, highway tolls, and rising retirement
age, etc., and etc. When Xi positions himself against democracy, free
market, and rule of law, he would never have the real courage to take
on corruption. And now we are perhaps on the brink of experiencing a
backward step, after his short-lived anti-corruption show. This will
also lead to huge increase of dissatisfaction of the discontent public
who was once pumped with high-hope for a somehow clean government that
serves the interests of the people.
In today's China, economic problems looming large before our eyes
include increasing gap between the rich and the poor, and the
systematic bottleneck in dealing with these problems. Now is the high
time for Xi to make choices. What Xi has been pushing so far is to
pouring funds to feed the state-owned enterprises (``SOEs''),
strengthened by the paramount presence of the Party in these SOEs. Xi
also has taken steps to pressure NGOs, from virtual space to real life,
demanding real name registration as a new norm. We can predict that the
above development and Xi's follow-up measures, such as anti-corruption
which has brought nothing tangible for the general populace, but tax
collection outpaced GDP growth rate. To share minimal benefit with
ordinary people out of the pockets of elites has tuned out to be
unbearably painful.
Regarding wealth (re)distribution in China, power has the final
say, and ordinary people have always been ignored, powerless. When
economic slowdown gets worse, so does widening gap between the rich and
the poor. It is just the people on the bottom of the social ladder that
suffers most in hard times. Social unrest shall flourish. For those
elites who have insiders' economic intelligence understand where the
future troubles will be arising. Therefore, we believe that Xi
Jinping's reckless performance so far has been a warming-up for the
future disasters, in case he loses control. This can be demonstrated by
his policy making, i.e. he has been utilizing all available resources
to further control all social sectors. Does he know by doing so he has
presented himself and his regime as the enemy of the people? Surely, he
does, and he does not have the power or political will to reverse the
course.
We noticed that Xi Jinping has utilized the similar tactics against
civil society as he did to his rivals and corrupted officials.
Technically, this works well to a certain degree, which in turn poses
the serious problems. Few of these suppressed civil leaders never
surrender, nor are they lonely in fighting against injustices in China.
They are never like those lonely corrupted officials who have been
isolated from the Chinese society, politically and psychologically,
indulged in abusing their positions. Economy works on its own,
following its own rules. Now we have a rather clear idea of how Xi
Jinping has been haunted by nightmares when he tried to trap pocket
money from the general populace to pump into the low-efficient, often
scandal-rocked, scam-filled companies listed on the stock markets, and
more importantly, Xi tried to release huge amounts of local government
debts with stolen money through their stock scams.
Crackdown on rights defenders has not produced any effective
intimation among dissidents, nor has it silenced them. Hong Kong ballot
issues shall continue haunting the Communist regime in the years to
come. Paid gossip-mongers and other propaganda machinery have failed to
achieve their goals, prompting civil society to adopt more subtle
measures to counter the regime, in more coordinated ways. Power, no
matter how powerful, cannot overpower the human spirit, despite ups and
downs, when huge numbers of the voiceless in desperate situation, begin
forming invisible power, and they shall be prevail in the end. This is
what I believe in. And that is also my prediction for the future.
Part Three--64 Questions for Xi Jinping
i.
1. Mr. Xi Jinping, as chief of Party, State and the Military, from
where do you get your paycheck? From the Party, or government, or
military? Are all the budgets for the Party, Government and the
military collected from taxpayers?
2. You have consistently emphasized that the PLA cannot be
nationalized, because it belongs to the Party. If so, then why is the
army paid by government budget, which come from taxpayers?
3. Why is the Communist Party and its organs at all levels, which
are said to be social groups, then still paid by the taxpayers?
4. As a whole, how much does the Communist Party cost to taxpayers?
5. How much of the taxpayers' money did you spend on the 9/3
military parade? How much will the 2022 Winter Olympics cost taxpayers?
6. DO you believe that the Chinese taxpayers (citizens) have the
right to know where their tax money has gone or will be spent? Do you
think Chinese taxpayers are entitled to get involved in the decision-
making process regarding their tax money?
ii.
7. With great stride, you even risk losing life in a potential coup
to carry out anti-corruption campaigns. Why then do you order your
subordinates of the Communist Party to make public their private family
wealth? As world history proves that officials' announcement of their
private wealth is one of the most effective mechanisms to curb
corruption, why have you punished citizens demanding such announcement?
8. In addition, freedom of expression, press freedom, and open
competition among different political parties for public offices are
effective mechanisms in fighting against corruption. So if you are
genuine about concerns of anti-corruption, why don't you let these
freedoms flourish?
9. Why don't you let citizens get involved in your anti-corruption
campaigns? Some people comment that in today's China, anti-corruption
is tantamount to anti-the Party (CPC). Is that true?
10. Do you believe that epidemic corruption of the Communist Party
comes as a result of individual members' corruption and degeneration?
Do you think their corruption correlates to the authoritarian system?
After your taking down an impressive number of ``Tigers,'' how can you
assure that your newly appointed officials will not follow suit and
also become corrupted? Do you think you have more orders than your
predecessors such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao to restrain subordinates
themselves from corruption? Except for this, are you any different from
those two predecessors?
11. Do you think that such a large-scale number of Communist
members of your party are influenced by Western bourgeoisie ideology?
How do you explain that in Western governmental systems where they
receive total Western education their level of corruption is much less?
12. Can the Chinese taxpayers/citizens learn the facts about your
family wealth? Is it true information revealed in the report by the New
York Times report about your family wealth? Are you planning to take
legal actions against the NYT?
iii.
13. Do you still believe in the validity of the ``Resolution on
Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of
the. People's Republic of China'' on June 27, 1981, in which the Great
Cultural Revolution was totally negated and labeled as ``A Decade of
Turmoil.'' Your statement suggests that the first thirty years of
history (1949-1979) cannot be used to negate the subsequent thirty
years (1979-2009). Does this statement apply to the Cultural
Revolution? What's your view about the Cultural Revolution?
14. After the Communist Party seized power in China, it saw the
great famine, great turmoil, and horrific massacre. Do you know the
number of abnormal and unexpected deaths that happened in China over
the period of 66 years (since 1949)? What do you think are the causes
of these tragedies? Over a half century since its occurrence, is it
possible to announce the archived data of those deaths during the great
famine in early 1960's?
15. As your family, including your father and yourself, experienced
suppression and injustices and persecution both during and before the
Cultural Revolution, what kind of lessons have been learned from your
experiences?
16. After Bo Xilai was arrested, there were people who believed
that you do not agree to his Chongqing Path in the name of Chanting Red
Old Melodies and Oppressing the gangsters. But it turned out to be
otherwise. Is it only corruption that led Bo Xilai to a disgraceful
fall? What is your view on Bo Xilai's practice of ``Chanting and
Oppressing''?
17. Since your taking power, China's central television has aired a
series of public confession of the ``crimes'' by suspects (before they
were justifiably defended in court. Is this practice a kind of
renaissance of the Cultural Revolution?
18. After taking power, you have established and led a number of
so-called ``small groups.'' Are you worried about making ``mistakes''
like what Mao Zedong did after consolidating overwhelming power? Do you
think your personal power needs some checks? Are there any effective
checks in place?
19. After you came to power, there were people who proposed
eliminating the influence of Western Culture, particularly the
foundation and principles of Western social sciences and humanities.
Now if without any importing Western concepts, does China ever produce
its own political science, sociology, economics, among other
fundamental social sciences? Does Marxism and Leninism belong to
Western thoughts and ideology? If you cancel or stop these western
social sciences, what kind of new ones do you have to replace them? Are
you going to switch back to the Mao-Mode of ``high institutions of
science and engineering'' as Mao himself did?
iv.
20. Now we see that you depend on the so-called social stability
maintaining a system inherited from Hu Jintao and Zhou Yongkang and
suppressing human rights lawyers and other dissidents. Do you believe
that Zhou Yongkang has made great contributions to maintaining the
Communist system?
21. Can you explain or elaborate on the So-called ``7-NOs'' that
was said of originally your ideas. Were these approved by the Central
Committee of the Communist Party? Can you explain reasons for pushing
the ``7-NOs'' (including universal values, press freedom, civil
society, civil rights, historical mistakes in Communist Party rein,
crony capitalism, and judicial independence)?
22. What kind of ``state secrets'' were leaked in the article by
Gao Yu, a famous journalist in her 70's? What kind of harm did her
writing cause to citizens? Or is it a crime if her writing helps
Chinese citizens learn what they are entitled to know?
23. Liu Xiaobo has been sentenced to 11 years on the basis of his 6
pieces of writing. Do you think his sentence was based on his
legitimate freedom of expression? Liu Xiaobo's sentence terminates on
June 22, 2020. If you ate still in power, will you let him be freed
then? In your opinion, what are the differences among the political
environment in which Liu Xiaobo, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Mohandas
Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. experienced?
24. Since this past July 10, more than 100 human rigths lawyers,
and activists have been detained, arrested, disappeared, and harassed.
Most were released later, with a small number still in custody. We know
such a campaign is conducted under the unified order. Who is
responsible for this campaign? What kind of orders have you issued?
25. Are you going to stop suppressing Falungong during your tenure?
What is your view on the global movement by Falun Gong to persecute
Jiang Zemin?
26. During the Hu Jintao-era, official data shows that China's
expenditure for maintaining social stability surpassed that for
national defense. Is it still the same under your administration? If
not, have you decreased your expenditures for social maintaining
projects or increased national defense budget?
v.
27. Do you think the June 4 movement was a violent anti-
revolutionary turmoil? Or was it a civil disorder? Or just a political
turmoil? Did you agree that it is acceptable to send tanks and machine
guns to suppress peaceful students and civilians?
28. Do you support your father's position against suppressing
students on Tiananmen Square?
29. If there were students coming to Tiananmen Square for peaceful
demonstration and protest, are you going to adopt the same measures as
the CPC did 26 years ago? If not, what are you going to do?
30. Why has the Communist regime been working hard to cover the
truth of the Tiananmen Massacre in June 1989?
31. ``Tankman'' is well known throughout the world, and is said to
be Wang Weilin. What is his real identity? What is his status now? Why
has he simply disappeared?
32. Do you support or oppose the abrupt actions in 1987 to remove
Hu Yaobang from his position of the Secretary-General of the so-called
``Democratic Life Session''?
33. Before your taking over the position of Secretary-General of
the Communist Party, rumors spread that you were to reverse the Party
decision on 1989 student movement. What is the possibility of that
happening?
vi.
34. Seventy years ago, both Japan and Germany pushed patriotism and
nationalism. As you commemorated the victory of Anti-Japanese War and
Anti-Fascism, you similarly emphasized both patriotism and nationalism,
on the same platform as the Nazi-German military parade. Have you
noticed the inherent identical problems?
35. In the Nazi-era, Hitler allowed his subjects on the street to
watch from their balcony and even on roofs of buildings, why have you
banned such viewer-rights in Beijing? None of the world leaders has
banned everything else to serve their military parade, such as shutdown
of stock markets, factories, hospitals, air flights, vehicles, schools,
as well as no entertainment on TV, can you image anything more fascist
than your behavior?
36. In your speech on September 3 military parade, you shrewdly
avoided touching historical details of China's anti-Japanese war and
anti-Fascism. We cannot forget the rivalry between the KMT and
Communist party in China at the time, and that between freedom and
democracy and authoritarian Communism. It was just these debates of the
two ideologies that delayed the final triumph over Fascism. Following
surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan, civil war in China broke out
between KMT and the Communist party, followed by the Korea War, and
Vietnam war. Apparently, you did not follow Mao's suit to express
appreciation of Japanese aggression in China that helped bring the
Communist Party to power. You did not define the historic issue of
leadership of genuine resistance against Japanese aggression, either by
KMT or the Communist Party. What's your view on the role of the
Communist Party of China during the Cold War? Any reflections?
37. How come the KMT veterans who fought against Japanese
aggression and Communist forces during the Civil War have never
received any benefits to support their lives? Even following your
rhetoric that these veterans were wrong in the civil war fighting by
against Communist forces, they deserve amnesty based on their 30-year
long humiliation, as victims of slaughter, forced labor camps, custody,
and family members who suffered from the mistreatment. Given their role
in anti-Japanese aggression, these veterans deserve some recognition
from the regime, yet none has been offered. How can the regime present
the most basic fairness and humanity?
38. What's your view on the fallout of Lien Chan (Taiwan's former
vice president) when he returned from your military parade to Taiwan
where even the pro-reunification allies showed no respect for him
39. How come most of the WWII anti-Fascism allies did not join you
for the military parade on September 3?
40. Do you think patriotism and (communist)Party-love are of the
same issue?
vii.
41. In dealing with maritime disputes with neighboring countries,
the international community is concerned about your regime becoming
more militaristic. What is your view on the role of armed forces when
addressing the disputes?
42. China's propaganda insists on promoting China's soft power,
however, when universal values, press freedom and civil society, among
other principles that are universally acceptable, are prohibited from
public discussion in China, then, what can you utilize to present your
soft power if not for the opening wallets, and therefore, how can you
persuade global community to learn from you, to give you a nod?
43. Ling Jihua, a former senior official and chief of staff in the
Communist Party's headquarters, has been under custody, and his brother
Ling Wancheng has fled China, now living in America. Your
administration dispatched officers, as well as his daughter, to urge
him to return, even coercing him to comply, which is illegal here in
the United States. Without any legal agreement between the two
governments, China sent its law enforcement officers to try to catch
some one in the US. What are your comments
44. USA or Russia--which one is likely to be China's long-term
ally, and why?
45. How many family members of your officials, including most
senior-level (sitting and retired) have migrated to the USA, Canada,
Australia, Japan, and European countries? And what about their ill-
gotten wealth? Do you have accurate information about them? Do you
think USA and other countries know this information? In other words,
China's senior leadership and their subordinates and family members,
along with their records of corruption, are all in the hand of these
countries. How can you afford confrontation with them? Not to mention,
in military conflicts. Can you bear the consequences? Your hard-line
rhetoric seems to fool your domestic audience does it not?
46. China's leaders, including you, often meet with protests and
demonstration by the Chinese citizens wherever such a visit happens.
Why is that?
viii.
47. You often emphasized the ``new norm'' for the Chinese business
community and ordinary people when the economy slows down. Meanwhile,
government forces helped prop up stock prices, and in cracking down on
``short-selling'' following the market plunge, which had been reported
by commentators and journalists, these voices have been silenced with
arrests and those investment institutions and individuals threatened
against any possible short-selling. Do you think this kind of scheme
would work and save the stock markets?
48. Your government have finally found CaiJing journalist Li Xiaolu
as a scapegoat for the recent stock market crisis and forced him to
confess on CCTV. If Li Xiaolu had the capacity to short-sell the
Chinese stocks with his mere reporting, then he is supposed to replace
Premier Li Keqiang, given such a potential. What do you think?
49. On the 3rd plenary session of the 18th Party Congress, you
promised to let market forces play a leading, even decisive role, how
do you explain the government's hand intervening in economic issues in
a more aggressively manner?
50. China's state banks possess huge bad debts. Are they loans to
the state-owned enterprises, local governments, or private businesses?
51. Is Household Registration Law a kind systematic discrimination?
One ``People's Deputy'' in rural areas represents four times the number
of a population than that of the urban areas, i.e., political rights of
villagers equals a quarter of those in urban communities. Isn't that
blatant political discrimination? Migrant workers in cities pay their
taxes, then why can they be denied any public services, such as their
children's rights to attend local public schools?
52. China's public services don't match its tax collection. Thus,
its fragile, limited social security cannot support the general mass
with affordable healthcare, basic schooling, aging care, yet
ironically, your administration still call itself a socialist country.
How can this be the case when the country's citizens cannot be provided
these basic, necessary social services?
53. As the Secretary General of the Communist Party of China, do
you mean to realize the communism in China when you talk about your
``China Dream? ''
ix.
54. While visiting Russia, you said that only felt tall if the
shoes fit, as rhetoric to hinder international community
``interference'' in the political system on your side. Why didn't you
say this inside China? Does this mean you fear people's choice of an
appropriate system to fit their own needs?
55. Why don't you let Tibetans, Urghurs, Mongolians, and Hong Kong
residents to tell you if their shoes fit their feet, and in doing so,
you know well in your heart that they will achieve genuine self-rule in
their autonomous regions?
56. You must know that His Holiness the Dalai Lama deserves high
regards in global community. Do you think those who respect the Dalai
Lama intend to confront China? Will you invite the Dalai Lama to a
pilgrimage to Mount Wutai (Wutaishan)?
57. Why can't the Uyghurs keep their beards and whiskers? As you
mentioned in your speech on military parade, the Communist ancestor was
a man with great beard, so why do you comment on his spectacular beard?
58. In the past 5 years, more than 140 Tibetans have died of self-
immolation. What do you know of the reasons? If you really believe in
Marxism or Confucius, dare you engage in self-immolation if you are
encouraged to do so?
59. The Communists of China claim to be atheists. Then why do you
and your government insist in intervening in the reincarnation of a
Living Budda in Tibetan Buddhism?
60. Why has the Communist Party chief Xia Baolong of Zhejiang
province ordered demolition of more than 1,500 churches and crosses in
that province?
x.
61. In your first article published by the People's Daily on
December 7, 1984, entitled ''Young and middle-aged cadres must respect
the oldies'' you said that the generational exchange of guards in power
should be cooperation and replacement. ``Respecting the old'' is a
prerequisite for cooperation, while the latter is the foundation for
replacement. In contrast, the People's Daily recently published a piece
saying ``cool off'' like tea after guests leaving, referring that those
officials after retirement should not interfere with the sitting
leadership. What's your current view on the old comrades? Do you think
the elders like Jiang Zemin has become a hindrance on your path to
power? The late Deng Xiaoping toppled the tenure of two chiefs of the
Communist Party, committed the Tiananmen Massacre (the crime of
slaughtering innocent people) in June 1989, followed by his ``Southern
Inspection Tour'' in 1992. All these are perfect examples that
demonstrate a consistent interference by the elders in China's
politics. Why didn't you oppose him?
62. Are you willing to follow suit of Chiang Ching-kuo to end a ban
of political parties, and open up to freedom of the press, embracing
constitutional democracy and the rule of law? Or are you in tune with
your wife's famous song ``Dynasty'' which echoes the old regime that
those founders pass on their dynasties to their offspring, i.e., in
your case, RED Siblings like you and those offspring of the first
Communist leadership taking control of China under communist rule. Some
people say you worship Mao Zedong and Vladimir Putin. If so, do you
want to become a lifetime leader
63. If drawing a comparison between Mao Zedong thought and those of
your father, which influenced you the most
64. What is your ultimate goal? Multiple choice: A. To achieve
ultimate personal power to make sure no obstacle or challenge exists
while in power. B. To ride high, and maintain the Communist rule in the
hands of red siblings. C. To seek appropriate opportunities to achieve
a peaceful political evolution for China to look up to the most
advanced countries for democracy. D. To restore the mental outlook of
Mao-style leadership, and even surpass Mao himself and your
predecessors.
______
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Prepared Statement of Shohret Hoshur
september 18, 2015
Chairman Christopher Smith, Co-chairman Marco Rubio and Commission
Members, thank you for inviting me to testify this afternoon at today's
hearing, ``Urging China's President Xi Jinping to Stop State-Sponsored
Human Rights Abuses.'' I am a U.S. citizen, a resident of the
Commonwealth of Virginia, and a journalist for Radio Free Asia, a
private, nonprofit corporation that broadcasts news and information to
listeners in Asian countries where full, accurate, and timely news
reports are unavailable, including China.
I came to the United States in 1999, almost five years after
leaving my homeland in China's far western Uyghur region in 1994. The
journey that took me away from my family did not begin by choice. I
left to escape the wrath of local Chinese authorities who deemed two of
my writings for local Uyghur-language newspapers as subversive. I was a
journalist for Qorghas Radio and Television, a local media outlet in
the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, when I decided to write two
pieces about Beijing's harsh oppression of Uyghurs.
The choice I made then, upon leaving China, as now, was to never
give up being a reporter covering the XUAR. To give that up would mean
that a remote part of the world and its people--the Uyghurs--would lose
one of their only lifelines to reliable news and information about
what's happening in their own neighborhoods and communities. When I
began working for Radio Free Asia in 2007, it was a great opportunity
to continue work that is badly needed. But it was also an opportunity
seized by Chinese authorities as they began to harass my family. At
first it was questions for my brothers, my sister, and my mother,
asking them about my whereabouts after I left. But as my reports for
RFA began to be heard by Uyghurs listening on shortwave radio and
reading my stories on the web, authorities wasted little time in making
it clear to my family--and to me--that they would one day pay a price
for my journalism.
In September 2009, following the broadcast of my report on the
death of a jailed Uyghur torture victim, local authorities from my
native Qorghas County visited my family in person. They forced my
brothers to call me and demand that I leave my job at RFA. They told
them that if I continued my work, they were in danger. In 2009,
authorities linked my report on a violent incident between migrant
ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese at a factory in Shaoguan to the unrest
that erupted in July in the XUAR capitol city of Urumqi, which became
known as the Urumqi Uprising.
For the next several years, as China ramped up its security
clampdown in Xinjiang, violence intensified and grew more frequent. But
China's state-controlled media rarely reported on these deadly
incidents. Radio Free Asia disclosed the majority, often through my
reports.
The threats--against my family, and, by way of my family, me--
became more frequent and grave during this period. They culminated last
year when all three of my brothers were jailed. My younger brother
Tudaxun was detained in April before being tried in court and sentenced
to five years in prison. He was charged with ``endangering state
security.'' My two other brothers, Rexim and Shawket, talked with me
about Tudaxun's situation on the phone in June. I tried to comfort them
when they grew understandably emotional. I told them that in time, the
situation might improve. The next month, in July, a Chinese daily
newspaper The Global Times ran a story attacking Radio Free Asia for
its coverage of violence in Xinjiang. Though I wasn't named, the
article cited my June phone call with my brothers, which had been
intercepted by state surveillance.
In August 2014, local authorities also detained Rexim and Shawket.
Their families have not seen them since. They were later charged with
``leaking state secrets''--I believe largely in connection with that
phone call with me in June. They were also charged with ``endangering
state security.'' When it became clear that the authorities were not
going to release them, I reached out with the help of RFA to the
Committee to Protect Journalists, which issued a press release about my
brothers' situation in January 2015. The case received wide attention
in global media and interest here from the U.S. government. Their
families and my sister were informed of their cases being reopened by
authorities--hopeful news in China where a prosecutorial office almost
never calls for the re-opening of a case submitted by police.
But our hopes soon dimmed when it became obvious, despite this
development, that my brothers were to remain behind bars. Eventually,
after the postponing of several court dates that came after inquiries
from the U.S. Department of State to Chinese officials in the embassy
here in Washington and overseas in Beijing, their separate trials were
finally held this past August at the Urumqi Intermediate Court. They
now await their verdicts, which the judge told their lawyers would be
issued by the Chinese Political and Law Council (``Zhengfawei''). These
could come in two months, putting them after President Xi Jinping's
state visit to Washington.
I am grateful for the attention and concern my family's case has
received in the global press from fellow journalists--particularly from
The Washington Post and The New York Times and among human rights
groups, U.S. officials, and members of Congress. We have worked with
Senator Rubio and Senator Warner to raise this issue with State
Department. This week on Monday (Sept. 14, 2015) I met with U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom
Malinowski. He assured me that there is serious concern about my case
throughout the department.
But despite these efforts--and despite the sincere concern, for
which I feel fortunate--my brothers remain in jail. The suffering
continues for my mother, my sister, and of course my brothers'
families. Their families are fatherless and without their husbands, and
now basically without income. My 76-year-old mother worries.
For me, one thing is certain, I cannot give up my work at Radio
Free Asia. As tensions and violence have escalated in the XUAR, the
Uyghur people yearn for trustworthy news.
Today, I am here to ask for officials in the U.S. government--my
government--and the Administration to raise this case with President Xi
next week. My family only wants to be left alone, free from persecution
by local authorities. They want to live their lives as citizens of a
country that respects their wish to be husbands and fathers, looking
after their families. I know my case is not unique. Many of my
colleagues at Radio Free Asia with relatives in China also have faced
retribution and harassment. But I hope my testimony today helps to
ensure that the United States will continue to stand up for people like
me who came to this country in hope of having the freedom and rights we
didn't have in our homelands.
______
Prepared Statement of Ethan Gutmann
The Anatomy of Mass Murder: China's Unfinished Harvest of Prisoners of
Conscience
september 18, 2015
Thank you.
In order to piece together the story of how mass organ harvesting
of prisoners of conscience evolved in China, I spoke with medical
professionals, Chinese law enforcement, and over 100 refugees. My
interviews began in 2006. My book, The Slaughter, was published last
year.
I was not the first to examine this issue in depth. That
distinction belongs to David Kilgour and David Matas, the authors of
the seminal Bloody Harvest report of 2006.
Nor will I be the last. The World Organization to Investigate the
Persecution of Falun Gong, a group of Chinese investigators scattered
throughout the world, have just completed their own study.
Based on our collective evidence (and I have included three short
excerpts from each of these reports that I request be entered into the
record), here is a brief timeline of what we know:
In 1994, the first live organ harvests of death-row prisoners were
performed on the execution grounds of Xinjiang in Northwest China.
In 1997, following the ``Ghulja massacre,'' the first political
prisoners, Uyghur activists, were harvested on behalf of high-ranking
Chinese Communist Party cadres.
In 1999, Chinese State Security launched its largest action of
scale since the Cultural Revolution: the eradication of Falun Gong.
In 2000, hospitals across China began ramping up their facilities
for what would become an unprecedented explosion in China's transplant
activity. And by the end of that year, well over one million Falun Gong
practitioners were incarcerated in labor camps, detention centers,
psychiatric facilities, and black jails.
By 2001, Chinese military hospitals were unambiguously targeting
select Falun Gong prisoners for harvesting.
By 2003, the first Tibetans were being targeted as well.
By the end of 2005, China's transplant apparatus had increased so
dramatically that a tissue-matched organ could be located within two
weeks for any foreign organ tourist with cash. While the execution of
death-row prisoners--hardened criminals--supplied some of the organs,
the majority were extracted from Falun Gong practitioners--a fact that
wasn't even being kept all that secret from the prisoner population,
visiting foreign surgeons, or potential customers.
Kilgour and Matas estimate 41,500 transplants were sourced from
Falun Gong from 2000 to 2005. I estimate 65,000 Falun Gong
practitioners were murdered for their organs from 2000 to 2008. The
World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
believes the numbers are more likely in the hundreds of thousands.
In early 2006, the Epoch Times revealed the first allegations of
the organ harvesting of Falun Gong and was followed by the Kilgour-
Matas report.
By 2008, many analysts--I was among them--assumed that the Chinese
State would stop harvesting prisoners of conscience for fear of
international condemnation during the Beijing Olympics. Yet the
physical examination of Falun Gong prisoners for their retail organs
actually showed a slight uptick.
In 2012, Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai's right-hand man, attempted to defect
at the US Consulate in Chengdu. Two weeks later the World Organization
to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong revealed that Wang had
personally received a prestigious award for overseeing thousands of
organ extractions and transplants. Fatally exposed, Chinese medical
authorities declared to the Western press that they would cease organ
harvesting of death-row prisoners over the next five years. Yet no
mention was made of prisoners of conscience and third-party
verification was rejected.
It is during this period, from 2012 to the present day--even as
Chinese medical authorities spoke publicly of shortages due to relying
on voluntary organ donation--that a very strange anomaly occurs. While
China's hospitals have maintained strict Internet silence on their
transplant activities since 2006, the hiring of transplant teams at
many of the most notorious hospitals for harvesting prisoners of
conscience is actually on the increase. In a handful of hospitals--for
example, Beijing 309 military hospital--it's practically exponential.
Witness accounts shed light on the mystery. One spoke to me about
over 500 Falun Gong prisoners having been examined for their organs in
a single day--the largest cattle call that I know of. A Western doctor
was recently assured by a Chinese military hospital surgeon that
prisoners are still being slaughtered for organs. And Falun Gong
practitioners across China's provinces have described police forcibly
administering blood tests and DNA cheek swabs--not in prison, not in a
detention center, but in their homes.
I can't supply a death count for House Christians, Uyghurs and
Tibetans. But if I had to make an estimate on Falun Gong, I would
double my previous numbers. I'm sure the World Organization to
Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong would go much further. Either
way, two points are clear:
The official number of Chinese transplants per year--
10,000--is a fiction. The real number is likely three times
that.
And the serial public declarations by the Chinese
medical establishment of a new ethical environment for
transplantation is simply a privacy shield to murder of
prisoners of conscience.
What can we do? We are not the moral arbitrators of this tragedy.
But neither is the World Health Organization or the Transplantation
Society. The moral authority belongs to the families across China who
have lost loved ones. Until we can hear their voices, we need, at a
minimum, to follow our convictions.
I'm not a lawyer, but in my layman's understanding, medical privacy
ends when there is a gunshot involved. Why then do we adhere to strict
medical privacy when there is an organ sourced in China? Why can't we
even make a proper estimate of how many Americans received transplants
in China? Why do we have to make guesses based on a humorous, feel-
good, account like Larry's Kidney?
This is an obscenity; for an American to go to China for an organ
in 2015 is to participate in an ongoing crime against humanity.
So I ask you to remove our privacy shield. And until the Chinese
State offers the full and comprehensive accounting that the world
demands, I ask you to follow the example of two very small but brave
countries--Israel and now, just recently, Taiwan--and ban organ tourism
to China.
Thank you.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S. Representative
From New Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China
september 18, 2015
On July 10, police came for lawyer Wang Yu. Her arrest was the
first in what became a massive crackdown on China's human rights
defenders. Wang Yu was one of China's brightest and bravest lawyers.
She chose to represent clients in ``sensitive cases,'' such as Uyghur
professor Ilham Tohti and Falun Gong practitioners. Police later swept
up her husband and others who worked at their Beijing law firm. What
originally looked like a targeted attack on one law firm quickly became
a coordinated hunt for human-rights lawyers and legal staff across 19
Chinese provinces. Over the next few weeks over 300 were detained. Of
that number around 27 remain incarcerated and 10 face charges of
committing national security crimes.
Li Heping and Zhang Kai, two lawyers well-known to the Congress and
other Parliamentarians around the world--were ``disappeared'' in this
crackdown. They remain missing and are reportedly denied access to
family or legal counsel. Zhang Kai was arrested the night before a
planned meeting with U.S. Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom
David Saperstein.
These detentions were lawless, brutal, and shocking. Sadly, they
are not without precedent in China. President Xi comes to the U.S. next
week at a time when his government is staging an extraordinary assault
on the rule of law, human rights, and civil society. Under Xi's
leadership, the Chinese government has pushed through new laws and
draft legislation that would legitimize political, religious, and
ethnic repression, further curtail civil liberties, and expand
censorship of the Internet.
China also continues its coercive population control policies. The
``One Child Policy'' will mark its 35th anniversary next week. That's
35 years of telling couples what their families must look like; thirty-
five years of forced and coerced abortions and sterilizations; thirty-
five years of children viewed by the state as ``excess baggage'' from
the day they were conceived. This policy is unacceptable, it is hated,
it is tragic, and it is wrong. We urge President Xi to do the right
thing and end China's horrific population control policies forever.
The NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders says President Xi has
``overseen one of the most repressive periods in the post-Mao era.''
The CECC, whose Annual Report will be officially released in three
weeks, will conclude that the Chinese government's efforts ``to silence
dissent, suppress human rights advocacy, and control civil society are
broader in scope than any other period documented since the Commission
started issuing Annual Reports in 2002.''
China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea for the title of
world's worst violators of human rights. The hope that President Xi
would be a different type of Chinese leader has been completely
destroyed.
Nonetheless, despite the torture and arrests, despite the
harassment and censorship, despite the ``black jails'' and failed
promises--rights advocates, civil society activists, and religious
believers continue to grow in prestige and social influence in China.
Persecution has not silenced them--at least not at this moment. It has
not dimmed their hope for a different kind of ``China Dream'' that
embraces human rights, freedom, and democracy.
U.S. policy must be geared to protect China's rights defenders and
religious communities, nurture China's civil society, and work with
those committed to the rule of law and fundamental freedoms.
The U.S. cannot be morally neutral in this regard. We cannot be
silent in the face of the Chinese government's repression. We must show
leadership and resolve because only the U.S. has the power and prestige
to stand up to China's intransigence. U.S.-China relations would be
stronger and more stable if people like Wang Yu, Li Heping and Zhang
Kai were in positions of leadership in the Chinese government.
Washington is preparing to roll out the red carpet next week for
President Xi and his delegation. Toasts will be made, statements will
be exchanged, and the highly symbolic gesture of a state visit will
give President Xi a much-needed boost of legitimacy at home.
If President Obama fails raise human rights prominently and
publicly--it is a diplomatic win for Xi Jinping. If economic and
security interests grab all the headlines, China's freedom advocates
will despair. If there is no price paid for China's lawlessness and
repression, it is a loss for everyone who is committed to freedom and
rights.
We can no longer afford to separate human rights from our other
interests in China. Human rights can't be considered a separate track
in negotiations, but integrated at all levels of engagement.
Surprisingly, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson agrees
with this assessment. Mr. Paulson is not known as a passionate defender
of human rights, but in his latest book ``Dealing With China'' he says
that the U.S. must not shy away from ``shining a light on human rights
problems, because nothing good happens in the dark.'' He says the U.S.
must push for greater transparency, the free flow of information, and
better adherence to universal standards in China--not only because they
represent universal values but because they are critical parts of U.S.
economic interests in China.
It is increasingly clear that there is direct link between China's
domestic human rights problems and the security and prosperity of the
United States. The health of the U.S. economy and environment, the
safety of our food and drug supplies, the security of our investments
and personal information in cyberspace, and the stability of the
Pacific region will depend on China complying with international law,
allowing the free flow of news and information, complying with its WTO
obligations, and protecting the basic rights of Chinese citizens,
including the fundamental freedoms of religion, expression, assembly,
and association.
President Obama must ``shine a light'' on China's human rights
abuses. He must make clear to President Xi that the suppression of
rights defenders, ethnic minorities, and civil society will adversely
affect U.S-China relations. And, he must use all the diplomatic tools
available, including sanctions if necessary, to demonstrate that human
rights protections are a critical interest of the United States.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Marco Rubio, a U.S. Senator From Florida;
Cochairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China
september 18, 2015
Events in China have garnered significant media attention in recent
months. From wildly fluctuating markets which have directly impacted
American businesses and families, to unprecedented cyberattacks on
government networks which compromised the personal data of millions of
Americans--China is in the news.
These issues, along with China's continued aggression in the South
China Sea will most assuredly be on the agenda during the upcoming
State Visit of Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary
Xi Jinping next week. Whether the Obama administration will be able to
secure meaningful progress on any of these fronts remains to be seen,
although if previous rounds of cordial dialogue are any indication, the
prospects are bleak.
In addition to these myriad issues is China's grave and
deteriorating human rights landscape--a particularly intractable area
in our bilateral relations, and one which has worsened significantly on
this administration's watch.
The past year alone has been marked by further erosion of rule of
law, tightening restrictions on civil society and outright attacks on
human rights defenders and political dissidents. In its forthcoming
annual report the Congressional-Executive Commission on China will
document efforts to muzzle dissent and suppress human rights advocacy
that are broader in scope than any other period since the Commission
started issuing Annual Reports in 2002.
We've seen human rights lawyers disappeared, churches demolished
and crosses torn down and Tibetan Buddhist monks setting themselves
aflame in desperation at the oppression experienced by their people.
These are realities in Xi Jinping's China.
While President Xi is greeted with a 21-gun salute, a prominent
human rights lawyer is unaccounted for, his whereabouts unknown after
being taken into custody by the Public Security Bureau. While President
Xi is wined and dined in the White House, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
languishes in prison.
The CECC is featuring stories like these, and many others, through
the ``Free China's Heroes'' initiative in the days leading up to Xi's
visit. We are profiling the cases of individual prisoners of conscience
in an effort to put a human face on the suffering that has accompanied
Xi Jinping's ascent to power.
Too often the Obama administration wants credit for ``raising human
rights''--but passing mentions and diminished significance in the
broader bilateral agenda provides little solace to the brave men and
women who face unimaginable obstacles and hardship for daring to claim
their most basic human rights.
At the very least President Obama should meet with U.S.-based
Chinese dissidents and activists before the state visit--even invite
several of them to attend the state dinner.
They represent the future of China. They are writers and lawyers.
They are activists and students. They have democratic aspirations and
dreams for their country that do not include harassment, abuse and
imprisonment.
It's time for America to get back on the right side of history--to
stand with the oppressed not the oppressor.
Submission for the Record
----------
Urging China's President Xi Jinping To Stop State-Sponsored Human
Rights Abuses
september 18, 2015
Witness Biographies
Teng Biao, Chinese human rights lawyer, a Harvard University Law
School Visiting Fellow, and Co-founder, the Open Constitution
Initiative
Teng Biao is a well-known human rights lawyer, Visiting Fellow at
Harvard University Law School, and the Co-founder of the Open
Constitution Initiatives. Dr. Teng Biao holds a Ph.D. from Peking
University Law School and has been a visiting scholar at Yale Law
School. He is interested in the research on human rights, judicial
systems, constitutionalism, and social movements. As a human rights
lawyer, Teng is a promoter of the Rights Defense Movement and a co-
initiator of the New Citizens' Movement in China. In 2003, he was one
of the ``Three Doctors of Law'' who complained to the National People's
Congress about unconstitutional detentions of internal migrants in the
widely known ``Sun Zhigang Case.'' Since then, Teng Biao has provided
counsel in numerous other human rights cases, including those of rural
rights advocate Chen Guangcheng, rights defender Hu Jia, the religious
freedom case of Cai Zhuohua and Wang Bo, and numerous death penalty
cases.
Xiao Qiang, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, China Digital Times
Xiao Qiang is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital
Times, a bi-lingual China news website. He is an adjunct professor at
the School of Information and the Graduate School of Journalism (2003 -
2011), at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the
Principal Investigator of the Counter-Power Lab, an interdisciplinary
faculty-student research group focusing on technology and free flow of
information in cyberspace, based in the School of Information, UC
Berkeley. Xiao became a full-time human rights activist after the
Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 and was the Executive Director of the NGO
Human Rights in China from 1991 to 2002. Xiao is a recipient of the
MacArthur Fellowship in 2001 and in January 2015, he was named to
Foreign Policy magazine's Pacific Power Index, a list of ``50 people
shaping the future of the U.S.-China relationship.''
Yang Jianli, President, Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for
China
Yang Jianli is President of Initiatives for China/ Citizen Power
for China. Dr. Yang is a scholar and democracy activist internationally
recognized for his efforts to promote democracy in China. He has been
involved in the pro-democracy movement in China since the 1980s and was
forced to flee China in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He
holds PhDs in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley
and in political economy and government from Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government. In 2002, Dr. Yang returned to China to
support the labor movement and was imprisoned by Chinese authorities
for espionage and illegal entry. Following his release 2007, he founded
Initiatives for China, a non-governmental organization that promotes
China's peaceful transition to democracy. In March, 2010, Dr. Yang co-
chaired the Committee on Internet Freedom at the Geneva Human Rights
and Democracy Summit.
Wei Jingsheng, Chairman, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition
Wei Jingsheng is a long-time leader for the opposition against the
Chinese Communist dictatorship. He was sentenced to jail twice for a
total of more than 18 years due to his democracy activities, including
a ground breaking and well publicized essay he wrote in 1978: ``the
Fifth Modernization--Democracy''. He is a winner of numerous human
rights awards and the author of the book ``Courage to Stand Alone--
letters from Prison and Other Writings''. After his exile to the USA in
1997, he founded and has been the chairman of the Overseas Chinese
Democracy Coalition (OCDC) which is an umbrella organization for many
Chinese democracy groups, with members over dozens of countries. He is
also the president for the Wei Jingsheng Foundation, and the president
of the Asia Democracy Alliance.
Shohret Hoshur, Journalist reporting news in China's Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region for Radio Free Asia
Shohret Hoshur is a journalist reporting on news in China's
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for Radio Free Asia, where he has
worked since 2007. He began his career in 1989 in China's far west as a
TV reporter. In 1994, Chinese authorities condemned two of his
editorials as subversive, forcing him to flee his homeland. As stated
in a New York Times profile, ``[h]is accounts of violence in his
homeland are among the few reliable sources of information about
incidents in a part of China that the government has sought to hide
from international scrutiny.'' He graduated from Xinjiang University in
1987 with a degree in Uyghur literature. Shohret is now a U.S. citizen
residing in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife.
Ethan Gutmann, China analyst and author of ``The Slaughter: Mass
Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to Its
Dissident Problem
Ethan Gutmann is an award-winning China analyst and human-rights
investigator and is the author of The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ
Harvesting, and China's Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem
(Prometheus, 2014) and Losing the New China: A Story of American
Commerce, Desire and Betrayal (Encounter Books, 2004). He has written
widely on China issues for publications such as the Asian Wall Street
Journal, Investor's Business Daily, the Weekly Standard, National
Review, and World Affairs Journal. Currently based in London, Gutmann
has also been associated with several Washington think-tanks over the
years, including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Free
Congress Research and Education Foundation, and the Brookings
Institution.