    [House Hearing, 115 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                         THE TRAGIC CASE OF LIU XIAOBO

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
                            GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
                          INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 JULY 14, 2017

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 115-45

                                   __________

            Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
                                      or
                           http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
                                        ______

                             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    26-226PDF                     WASHINGTON : 2017
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
      For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing
      Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800;
             DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC,
                              Washington, DC 20402-0001

                                     ______

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                     EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
    CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
    ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida         BRAD SHERMAN, California
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
    STEVE CHABOT, Ohio                   ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
    JOE WILSON, South Carolina           GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
    MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas             THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
    TED POE, Texas                       KAREN BASS, California
    DARRELL E. ISSA, California          WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts
    TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania             DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island
    JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina          AMI BERA, California
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
    PAUL COOK, California                TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
    SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
    RON DeSANTIS, Florida                ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
    MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina         BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
    TED S. YOHO, Florida                 DINA TITUS, Nevada
    ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois             NORMA J. TORRES, California
    LEE M. ZELDIN, New York              BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER, Illinois
    DANIEL M. DONOVAN, Jr., New York     THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York
    F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.,         ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
        Wisconsin                        TED LIEU, California
    ANN WAGNER, Missouri
    BRIAN J. MAST, Florida
    FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
    BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
    THOMAS A. GARRETT, Jr., Virginia

         Amy Porter, Chief of Staff      Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director

                   Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
                                     ------

        Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
                          International Organizations

                   CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
    MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina         KAREN BASS, California
    DANIEL M. DONOVAN, Jr., New York     AMI BERA, California
    F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.,         JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
        Wisconsin                        THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York
    THOMAS A. GARRETT, Jr., Virginia

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                                   WITNESSES

    Yang Jianli, Ph.D., president, Initiatives for China.............     4
    Mr. Jared Genser, founder, Freedom Now...........................    23
    Perry Link, Ph.D., chancellorial chair for innovative teaching,
      University of California, Riverside............................    29

              LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

    Yang Jianli, Ph.D.: Prepared statement...........................     7
    Mr. Jared Genser: Prepared statement.............................    26
    Perry Link, Ph.D.: Prepared statement............................    32

                                    APPENDIX

    Hearing notice...................................................    54
    Hearing minutes..................................................    55

                         THE TRAGIC CASE OF LIU XIAOBO

                                  ----------

                             FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2017

                           House of Representatives,

                     Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,

             Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,

                         Committee on Foreign Affairs,

                                Washington, DC.

        The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m., in
    room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
    Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order, and good
    morning to everyone.
        Liu Xiaobo's premature death was a jarring shock to
    everyone who admired this champion of freedom and democracy. We
    mourn his loss because it is a tragic loss for his wife,
    family, and friends, and a catastrophic loss for China and
    really the entire world.
        We owe Liu Xiaobo a debt of gratitude because he
    demonstrated that the noble idea of democracy and due process,
    liberty, and the rule of law are not foreign ideas to China.
    They are universal principles that beat strongly in the hearts
    of people everywhere, from New Jersey to California, to the
    Nineveh Plain, to Iraq, from Poland to Peru, from Burma to
    Beijing.
        We owe Liu Xiaobo a debt of gratitude because he reminded
    us that the desire for democracy and human rights is shared by
    everyone because each person is endowed by the Creator with
    inalienable rights.
        The Chinese Communist Party has tried to curtail his ideas,
    they call them dangerous and subversive, and they seek to
    silence, censor, and repress them. Yet they live on in the
    hearts of untold millions of Chinese people.
        With Liu Xiaobo's death we also reminded of the words of
    Dr. Martin Luther King who said, ``Injustice anywhere is a
    threat to justice everywhere.'' We should all agree that what
    was done to Liu Xiaobo and his wife Xia was a grave injustice.
        Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment in 2009 became a death sentence.
    The blame for this should lie squarely on the Chinese
    Government, and for his death, they alone, should be held
    accountable. Liu Xiaobo was the first Nobel Peace Prize winner
    to die in state custody since Carl von Ossietzky died after
    being held in a Nazi concentration camp.
        Two days ago, we heard the Chinese Government complaining
    that it was stabbed in the back by those expecting it to deal
    quickly with its client state of North Korea. How shameful it
    is to play the victim card while the victim of their own
    repression lay dying.
        No nation should be judged entirely by crimes of the past,
    but this crime, the death and silencing of Liu Xiaobo, should
    follow the Chinese Communist Party like an unwashable permanent
    stain. We must never forget Liu Xiaobo's enduring
    contributions, whether during the Tiananmen massacre where he
    helped save the lives of many students, or with Charter 08, the
    treatise urging political and legal reforms in China based on
    constitutional principles.
        We must not forget Liu Xiaobo. We must advance and preserve
    his legacy and repeatedly confront the Chinese Communist Party
    with his ideas and his memory. In this time of need, we must
    signal the Congress' unanimous support for Liu Xiaobo's family,
    his wife Xia, and all those bravely standing up for human
    rights and liberty in China.
        I was invited by Liu Xiaobo's family to attend the 2010
    Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. It was a moving ceremony. The now
    famous empty chair, and we have a photograph of that over on my
    right, speaks volumes of the Chinese Communist Party's abiding
    fear that human rights and democracy will undermine its power.
        I will always remember the words of Liu Xiaobo's speech
    that day--of course not given in Oslo--about the importance of
    pressing for human rights. ``Freedom of expression,'' he said,
    ``is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity,
    and the mother of truth. To strangle freedom of speech is to
    trample on human rights, stifle humanity, and suppress truth.''
        He also expressed his hopes for China's future. He said,
    ``I firmly believe that China's political progress will not
    stop. And I, Liu Xiaobo, filled with optimism, look forward to
    the advent of a future free China. For there is no force that
    can put an end to the human quest for freedom, and China will
    be in the end will become a nation ruled by law where human
    rights reign supreme.''
        Liu Xiaobo would, sadly, never see a free China. Chinese
    authorities have gone to great lengths to stifle his ideas and
    those who followed him. In recent years, the government of
    President Xi Jinping has engaged in an extraordinary assault on
    the rule of law, human rights, ethnic minority groups, and
    civil society. As China's economic and military power grows,
    more and more countries will be afraid to raise subjects that
    the Chinese Communist Party wants to make taboo.
        The U.S. stands alone, inadequate as its efforts are at
    times, in its willingness to keep on raising human rights
    issues that need to be raised. The U.S. cannot lightly shrug
    off the mantle of being democracy's defender no matter how
    heavy that mantle may become.
        It is tempting to be pessimistic about China's future and
    the future of U.S.-China relations. But I am not pessimistic,
    and taking a cue from Liu Xiaobo, none of us should be.
    Constant repression has not dimmed the desire of the Chinese
    people for freedom and reform, and, of course, that is
    attributed to the great work of Liu Xiaobo.
        Nevertheless, the U.S. cannot be morally neutral or silent
    in the face of the Chinese Government's repression of
    fundamental freedoms. Human rights are not a secondary
    interest, but one critically linked to all issues in China,
    including U.S. economic and security interests.
        The U.S. must not shy away from meeting with China's other
    Nobel Laureate, the Dalai Lama, or other dissidents. We must
    use congressionally authorized sanctions to hold Chinese
    officials accountable for torture and gross abuses, including
    those proscribed in the International Religious Freedom Act
    and, of course, the Global Magnitsky Act.
        We must connect Internet and press freedoms as both
    economic and human rights priorities. And we must demand
    repeatedly and clearly that unconditional release of political
    prisoners is in the interest of a better U.S.-China
    relationship.
        I believe that someday China will be free, someday the
    people of China will be able to enjoy all of their God-given
    rights, and a nation of free Chinese women and men will honor
    and celebrate Liu Xiaobo as a hero. He will be honored along
    with others like him who have sacrificed so much and for so
    long for freedom.
        I yield to my distinguished ranking member, Karen Bass.
        Ms. Bass. I want to thank our witnesses for joining us
    today. I extend my condolences to Liu Xiaobo's family and
    friends on his recent passing.
        Chairman Smith, you have long been a champion, as
    demonstrated by your actions over the years and today.
        The loss of Liu Xiaobo has once again brought attention to
    the issues of human rights in China. Tragically, his
    imprisonment and passing is a reminder of the importance of
    monitoring the treatment of those who have been imprisoned or
    who have lost their lives fighting for freedom, freedoms like
    the freedom of religion, speech, press, and the right of people
    to peacefully assemble, as well as the often-implied freedom of
    association.
        Central to those freedoms is the freedom to petition the
    government for a redress of grievances. Liu Xiaobo spent the
    final months of his life appealing to the Chinese Government to
    allow him to leave China to receive cancer treatment, and even
    in his final request he was denied.
        He could have lived a quiet life as an academic, a scholar,
    a writer, but instead he decided to challenge the status quo
    and actively engage in efforts for democratic reform. He leaves
    behind the embers of democratic principles that will be fanned
    by generations to come.
        I yield.
        Mr. Smith. I thank my good friend for her comments.
        I would like to now recognize our very distinguished panel,
    beginning with Yang Jianli, who was born in Shandong Province
    in northern China and graduated from college at the age of 19.
    A rising star in the Chinese Communist Party, Yang Jianli
    quickly became disenchanted by the corruption and duplicity he
    witnessed in the Communist system.
        He left China to pursue a career in mathematics at UC
    Berkeley. In 1989, at the age of 26, his fellow graduate
    students at Berkeley elected him to go back to Beijing in
    support of their counterparts in China who were demonstrating
    for democracy in Tiananmen Square. After escaping the gruesome
    massacre, he dedicated his entire life in promoting a peaceful
    democratization.
        He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley. But
    of significance, when he returned to China in 2002 he was put
    in prison for 5 years. Upon his release he founded Initiatives
    for China. So he knows the inside of a gulag.
        And we thank him for being here, especially with the loss
    of his brother-in-law. And he will be going to that funeral
    right after here. He wanted to be here so badly.
        We will then hear from Jared Genser, the founder of Freedom
    Now and managing director of Perseus Strategies. Previously,
    Jared was a partner in government affairs at DLA Piper. He is a
    visiting fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. His
    human rights clients have included Vaclav Havel, Aung San Suu
    Kyi, Liu Xiaobo, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel.
        He holds a B.S. From Cornell and a master's in public
    policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at
    Harvard. He got his J.D. cum laude from the University of
    Michigan Law School.
        He is an author of ``The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary
    Detention: Commentary and Guide to Practice,'' and he is a co-
    editor of ``The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of
    Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Times.''
        And I want to thank him for his tenacious leadership for
    Liu Xiaobo and other wonderful and leading dissidents around
    the world.
        Then we will hear from Perry Link, who is professor
    emeritus of East Asian studies at Princeton University and
    chair for Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of
    California at Riverside. He has published widely on modern
    Chinese language, literature, and popular thought. As a member
    of the Princeton China Initiative, Human Rights Watch Asia, and
    other groups that support human rights, he has authored many,
    many books, and he has testified here in the past as well.
        I would like to go to Dr. Yang.

      STATEMENT OF YANG JIANLI, PH.D., PRESIDENT, INITIATIVES FOR
                                 CHINA

        Mr. Yang. Chairman Smith and Ranking Member, I had a
    sleepless night. At this grievous moment I would like to thank
    you for holding this critical hearing. It is critical for us to
    discuss how we can still lend a helping hand to assist Liu
    Xiaobo and his family and how we can fight to honor the legacy
    of his courage and sacrifice.
        Liu Xiaobo's tragedy represents the tragedies of many human
    rights activists in China, but it is also unique in its own
    way. In all of the Nobel Peace Prize history there have only
    been three jailed laureates, but among them Liu Xiaobo is the
    most tragic one.
        Liu Xiaobo had been held incommunicado since December 2008
    until he became terminally ill and was eventually allowed a
    visit by a German doctor and an American doctor after the pleas
    to Xi Jinping from both President Trump and German Chancellor
    Merkel.
        During his entire imprisonment he was not allowed even to
    talk about any current events with his wife Liu Xia during her
    visits, nor the persecutions Liu Xia and her family suffered.
    Even on his deathbed he had no freedom to leave his last words.
    Now that he is gone, the world will never know.
        Liu Xiaobo's cancer was diagnosed on May 23 during an
    emergency hospital visit because of internal bleeding. And
    since then he had been hospitalized in the First Hospital of
    China Medical University in Shenyang, Liaoning Province.
    However, the news of his late stage cancer was not leaked out
    until late June.
        During this time his tumor enlarged from 5 to 6 cm to 11 to
    12 cm. It is reported that Liu Xiaobo had two CT tests last
    year. How can two tests--two tests--fail to reveal Liu Xiaobo's
    fairly large liver cancer tumors? Many, including myself,
    suspect that the Chinese officials intentionally concealed this
    information. This is why they have been withholding his medical
    records. These records are classified as a top state secret.
        I strongly believe that the Chinese regime deliberately
    chose not to treat Liu Xiaobo's cancer earlier. As early as
    2010, Liu Xiaobo was suspected of suffering from hepatitis B.
    His lawyers had been petitioning the government to grant him
    medical parole. But the Chinese authorities never allowed him
    proper diagnosis and treatment.
        In China it is not doctors, but the party officials to
    decide whether to grant medical parole. In other words, medical
    parole in China is a political, not a medical decision.
        In Liu Xiaobo's case, it was up to China's top leaders to
    decide. The denial of medical care led to Liu Xiaobo's advanced
    liver cancer and at its core was a disguised death sentence.
        When Liu Xiaobo's worsening condition became public, human
    rights activists, 150 Nobel laureates, and world leaders called
    for Liu Xiaobo's immediate release and medical treatment
    overseas. Liu Xiaobo himself also expressed his wish to seek
    medical treatment abroad and to die in a free place.
        Unfortunately, the Chinese regime carelessly disregarded
    these requests. After persecuting him for so many years, the
    regime still did not even hesitate to crush his final wish.
        I believe the reason that the Chinese regime denied Liu
    Xiaobo's wish and the world's appeal to allow him medical
    treatment abroad and to die in a free place is that it fears
    that the truth of its ruthless persecution will come to light.
    The world media would focus on Liu Xiaobo and the regime's lies
    would be exposed. More and more people in China would see the
    true nature of this one-party state. The government would lose
    control.
        No doubt, the Chinese Communist regime is responsible for
    Liu Xiaobo's death. However, the world's democracies'
    appeasement policy toward China's human rights abuses has made
    them accomplices of Liu Xiaobo's slow murder.
        If the world continues to acquiesce to China's aggression
    against its own people, engaging it without any moral clarity,
    Liu Xiaobo's tragedy will repeat.
        Mr. Chairman, the U.S. can and should do more to help Liu
    Xiaobo and his family. We should urge the Trump administration
    to make it a high priority to urge China to grant Liu Xia full
    control over any funeral arrangements for her late husband and
    to help Liu Xia to leave China for a country of her choosing.
        The U.S. should implement country-specific and tougher
    sanctions against those personally responsible for Liu Xiaobo's
    death. The U.S. should use the Global Magnitsky Act as a tool
    to sanction them, banning them from travelling in the U.S., and
    freezing their assets in this country, and also encourage its
    allies to do the same. It should also consider trade sanctions.
        In addition, the U.S. can honor Liu Xiaobo's life and
    legacy by passing legislation to permanently rename the street
    in front of China's Embassy in Washington, DC, as Liu Xiaobo
    Plaza.
        To fight for the ideals of human rights and democracy Liu
    Xiaobo give up his career, he gave up his freedom, and now he
    has given up his life. But we cannot give up on him. We have to
    seek justice for his death at the hands of China's regime, and
    we have to preserve the legacy of Liu Xiaobo's struggle for a
    democratic, free China.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Yang follows:]

        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                  ----------

        Mr. Smith. Dr. Yang, thank you for your eloquent and moving
    and enlightened recommendations and testimony.
        Mr. Genser.

          STATEMENT OF MR. JARED GENSER, FOUNDER, FREEDOM NOW

        Mr. Genser. Thanks so much, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
    Bass. It is with a heavy heart and after a tragic day yesterday
    that I appear before you this morning.
        Undoubtedly, Yang Jianli and Perry Link, who were friends
    with Liu Xiaobo, will be able to bring to life who he was as a
    person and will be able to speak better than me to his life and
    to his legacy. Sadly, I never met Liu Xiaobo, and now I never
    will.
        The intersection of my life with Liu Xiaobo came only after
    he had been convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison for
    inciting subversion of state power. I was introduced to Liu Xia
    by my friend and colleague Yang Jianli.
        It was Jianli, among many others, who 20 years ago inspired
    me to become a human rights lawyer, as we helped organize the
    protest against Jiang Zemin when he visited Harvard in the fall
    of 1997. And 5 years later I served as Jianli's lawyer when he
    was detained in China and faced a death sentence on the
    pretextual charge of being a spy for Taiwan. It was in mid-2010
    that I was introduced by Jianli to Liu Xia.
        What I can uniquely speak about today, however, is the
    brutality of the Chinese Government and its fear of change, for
    I have seen through the intense and unrelenting persecution of
    Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia some of the most horrific, callous, and
    inhuman acts that go beyond the power of an ordinary and normal
    person's power of imagination.
        Over the summer of 2010 I got to know Liu Xia as we began
    preparing to take her husband's case to the United Nations. As
    the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize approached that year
    it was rumored he was on the short list, and Liu Xia and I
    discussed if it made more sense for her to travel abroad to
    fight for her husband's freedom or to remain in China. Despite
    the concerns I expressed to her that she would not likely
    remain free if Liu won the prize, she told me unequivocally,
    ``My place is in China with my husband.''
        Shortly after he was announced as the recipient of the
    prize in October 2010, the security cordon came down and she
    was placed under house arrest, and she has been held without
    charge or trial ever since.
        I had the tremendous privilege and honor to represent the
    Lius in Oslo and to sit in the front row as the prize was
    presented to the empty chair. But I know and I knew on that day
    that the prize was awarded that getting them both out would be
    a virtually impossible task.
        For myself, while I expected her ability to communicate or
    travel to be restricted, I never could have imagined how much
    the Chinese Government would punish Liu Xia for the crime of
    being married to her husband.
        She was held in a one-bedroom apartment in Beijing, one of
    the most popular cities in the world, and for the first several
    years virtually incommunicado, with a security guard posted
    outside of her door and security at the front of the building
    to turn people away. She had no telephone, no Internet access,
    and was only able to see her parents once a month and was taken
    to see Liu Xiaobo once a month. She suffered severe depression
    and had a heart attack.
        On a handful of occasions journalists broke through the
    security cordon, captured brief images of her, clearly in
    intense agony. To punish her for these incidents the Chinese
    Government prosecuted her brother Liu Hui on bogus economic
    crimes charges and sentenced him to 11 years in prison, and he
    served some 2 years-plus in jail. She was captured by one
    journalist and she was taken to his trial crying out, ``Tell
    the world I am not free.''
        In her latter years under house arrest and with her own
    health deteriorating rapidly, she was allowed to be in touch
    with a very small number of friends, but the pressure on her
    was unrelenting.
        We don't know anything, anything at all, about how Liu
    Xiaobo has been treated in prison. The last time he said
    anything that was reported publicly was when he was sentenced
    to prison in December 2009. All we know is that he was held in
    extended solitary confinement throughout this time, which
    constitutes torture under international law, and we know that
    Liu Xia was able to visit him monthly, and we know that with
    all of its resources at the disposal of the Chinese Government
    it neglected his medical care so much so that it had no idea he
    had liver cancer until it had reached Stage 4 and was terminal.
        As the Lius' counsel I fought their cases aggressively in
    every forum that I could find. We took their cases to the U.N.
    Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and in response to our
    submission, the Chinese Government remarked regarding Liu Xia's
    detention, regarding her Kafkaesque existence, that she was
    ``under no legal restriction.''
        That was perhaps actually literally true. She had been held
    actually illegally without charge or trial now for almost 7
    years. The U.N. found that they were both held arbitrarily and
    in violation of international law.
        We secured a letter from 134 Nobel laureates urging
    President Xi to let them go, which was joined by 450,000 people
    around the world whose petitions we had delivered to a half
    dozen Chinese Embassies. And we published countless op-eds,
    testified before parliaments, held candlelight vigils, and did
    everything possible to persuade governments around the world to
    act.
        In the last few weeks we have seen President Xi and the
    Chinese Government at its worst.
        First, their leaders were pressured not to tell anybody
    about Liu Xiaobo's cancer diagnosis.
        Second, when they were able to make it public they were
    held virtually incommunicado at the hospital.
        Third, the Chinese Government flagrantly lied about his
    conditions to the international community to justify him not
    being able to travel abroad for medical treatment.
        Fourth, after a German and American doctor found he would
    have actually been able to travel abroad and there were
    treatments that could have extended his life for several weeks,
    the Chinese hospital published a statement asserting that the
    doctors, those foreign doctors, had actually said that he had
    gotten excellent care and was too sick to travel abroad.
        Once the foreign doctors put out their own statement
    refuting what the Chinese hospital said, the government
    retreated back to telling the international community not to
    interfere with its internal affairs.
        And fifth, as if Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia had not suffered
    enough, in his dying days not only were family and friends
    denied the ability to visit and to tell him good-bye, but they
    were never even allowed to be alone with each other. The entire
    time, a Chinese security official was with them around the
    clock. And in the end, President Xi showed no humanity and no
    mercy.
        If this is how China treats its most famous political
    prisoner, it is self-evident that the brutality of the Chinese
    Government in repressing its own population is as complete as
    it is unapologetic. Truly anything can be justified in the name
    of the greater good.
        Yet despite the tragedy that Liu's freedom has come from
    his death, it is clear today that the Chinese Government has
    lost. Liu's ideas and his dreams will persist, spread, and will
    one day come to fruition. And his courage and his sacrifice for
    his country will inspire millions of Chinese activists and
    dissidents to persevere until China has become the multiparty
    democracy that Liu knew to his core was within its people's
    grasps.
        So what do we do from here? The work is clearly not done in
    so many different respects. First and most immediately, the
    world must rescue Liu Xia. She must immediately be allowed to
    have open communication with the outside world, and her wishes
    for the burial of her husband and relocation of herself and her
    family must be fully honored. Given Xia is under ``no legal
    restriction,'' this should be easy to achieve.
        Second, the world must never forget Liu Xiaobo and what he
    stood for. I would urge all freedom-loving countries around the
    world, starting with the United States, to rename the street in
    front of the Chinese Embassy Liu Xiaobo Plaza. The Chinese
    Government is literally erasing him from existence in China. If
    you type his name in Chinese in the WeChat program online, for
    example, his name is instantly erased. The Chinese Government
    should never be allowed to forget Liu Xiaobo.
        And finally, the best way to honor the legacy of Liu Xiaobo
    would be for the United States and so many other countries
    around the world to stand in solidarity with the Chinese
    people's struggle for freedom, democracy, and human rights.
        As I noted before, the last time the world heard from Liu
    was in a statement released his by his counsel on December 25,
    2009, right after he was sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment.
    Liu said, ``I have long been aware that when an independent
    intellectual stands up to an autocratic state step one toward
    freedom is often a step into prison. Now I am taking that step,
    and true freedom is that much nearer.''
        It is tragic that Liu was only free when his soul left his
    body, but the legacy he left behind will never be forgotten.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Genser follows:]

       [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                  ----------

        Mr. Smith. Mr. Genser, thank you very much.
        Dr. Link.

        STATEMENT OF PERRY LINK, PH.D., CHANCELLORIAL CHAIR FOR
        INNOVATIVE TEACHING, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

        Mr. Link. I would like to join my fellow witnesses in
    congratulating Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass,
    Representative Suozzi, and everyone on this committee, not only
    for this session, but for the many sessions you have done in
    the past and I hope will continue to do in the future. They
    truly are important.
        In order to challenge a repressive regime like the one in
    China today, a regime that demands comprehensive control of
    society and resorts to extreme brutality if it perceives a
    threat to itself, a person needs to make a judgment that
    speaking the truth is more important than personal safety.
    Dozens of Chinese in recent decades have accepted those stakes,
    have persisted in speaking honestly in public, and have
    suffered dire consequences.
        Liu Xiaobo stood out within this courageous group because
    of his truly unusual determination. He went to prison four
    times, yet none of the punishments deflected him in the
    slightest from his view of the truth or from his willingness to
    express it.
        Three related events during the years 2008 to 2010 turned
    him into China's most prominent dissident.
        One was his sponsorship of the citizen's manifesto called
    Charter 08, which is the only public document since the
    Communist revolution in 1949 that calls for an end to one-party
    rule.
        Second is the 11-year prison sentence that was the
    consequence of having worked on that charter. And third was the
    2010 Nobel Peace Prize, which came as a consequence of the
    prison sentence. So you can see there is a chain of causality
    there.
        Intellectually, Liu was one of those unusual people who
    could look at human life from the broadest of perspectives and
    reason about it from first principles. His keen intellect
    noticed things that others only look at but don't see. He was
    deeply erudite on a variety of topics in history and
    literature, both Eastern and Western, ancient and modern.
        His remarkable habit of writing free from fear was so
    natural and routine that it seemed almost genetic, almost
    something that he himself could not stop. Most Chinese writers
    today, including many of the best ones, write with political
    caution in the backs of their minds and with a shadow hovering
    over their fingers as they pass across a keyboard. How should I
    couch things? What topics should I not touch? What indirection
    should I use?
        Liu Xiaobo did none of this. With him, it was all there.
    What he thought, we got.
        The combination of Charter 08 and the Nobel Prize seemed
    for a time to open an alternative for China, a new alternative.
    Chinese citizens had long been accustomed to the periodic
    alternations between more liberal, so-called, and more
    conservative, so-called, tendencies within Communist rule, as
    if those limits described how far one could think.
        But Charter 08 removed the blinkers and showed that there
    could be another way to be a modern Chinese. It was hard to
    find Chinese people who disagreed with the charter once they
    read it, and this potential for contagion was clearly the
    reason why the regime suppressed it.
        Today, the severe tightening of controls on Chinese society
    that has come during the last few years under the rule of Xi
    Jinping has pushed China in the opposite direction from what
    the charter stood for, and the question, therefore, arises, is
    the charter dead? Was the effort in vain?
        This question is difficult, but my answer would be no. The
    movement has been crushed, but its ideas have not been. The
    government's assiduous, unremitting, and very expensive efforts
    to repress anything that resembles the ideas in Charter 08 is
    evidence enough that the men who rule are quite aware of the
    continuing potential of the ideas to spread.
        Liu Xiaobo has been compared to Nelson Mandela, Vaclav
    Havel, and Aung San Suu Kyi, each of whom who accepted prison
    as the price for conceiving and pursuing more humane governance
    in their homelands. But Mandela, Havel, and Suu Kyi all lived
    to see release from the beastly regimes that repressed them,
    and Liu Xiaobo did not.
        Does this mean his place in history will fall short of
    theirs? Is success of a movement necessary in order for its
    leader to be viewed as heroic? Perhaps so.
        It may be useful, though, to compare Liu Xiaobo and China's
    President Xi Jinping for a moment. The two men differ in age by
    only 2 years. During Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution both
    missed school and were banished to remote places. Xi Jinping
    used the time to begin building a resume that would allow him,
    by riding the coattails of his elite Communist father, to vie
    one day for supreme power. Liu Xiaobo used the same time to
    read on his own and learn to think for himself. One of them
    mastered the skullduggery and sycophancy that a person needs in
    order to rise within a closed bureaucracy. The other of them
    learned to challenge received wisdom of every kind, keeping for
    himself only the ideas that could pass the test of rigorous
    independent examination by himself. For one of them, value was
    measured by power and position. For the other, by moral worth.
        Today, after their final standoff, one of them has ``won,''
    the other has ``lost.'' But 200 years from now who will
    remember the names of the tyrants who sent Mandela and Havel
    and Suu Kyi to jail? Will the glint of Liu Xiaobo's incisive
    intellect be remembered or the cardboard mediocrity of Xi
    Jinping's?
        I have just a few extra comments on his final days.
        Before Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer in a prison ward in
    a Shenyang hospital, he asked for safe passage for himself, his
    wife, and his brother-in-law to go to Germany or the U.S. The
    two Western governments agreed, but the Chinese Government,
    saying Liu was already receiving the best possible medical care
    and was too weak to travel, did not.
        Until then Liu had always rejected suggestions that he
    leave China, primarily because dissidents who leave China lose
    credibility back home. Moreover, Liu had made it his personal
    mission to show exactly what happens, right to the last detail,
    when an independent thinker confronts an authoritarian regime.
        We do not know why he changed his position in his last few
    days, but we can guess that the reasons, and I have two
    guesses. One is the obvious one, that he was critically ill and
    transfer abroad might have been the only chance, however
    slight, to save his life.
        Second, and I think this is really the more likely, he knew
    that his death was imminent and wanted to spend the last of his
    energies to help his beloved and long-suffering wife Liu Xia,
    who has been held under house arrest for the last 7 years even
    though formally charged with nothing and who has had bouts of
    severe depression.
        But if Liu's reasoning cannot be known, and now it cannot
    be, there can be no doubt whatever about the reasoning of his
    captors. Their concerns had little to do with medical care one
    way or the other and much to do with preventing Liu Xiaobo from
    speaking his mind one last time.
        What did he see as he lay dying for a world in which
    China's beastly dictatorship continues to grow? China's rulers
    are no doubt relieved to see that the answers to that question
    are now, with his very life, sealed in eternity.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Link follows:]

      [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                  ----------

        Mr. Smith. Dr. Link, thank you so very much for that
    eloquent and heartfelt message.
        We are privileged on the subcommittee to be joined by
    Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has been tenacious in her advocacy for
    Liu Xiaobo and other dissidents in the People's Republic of
    China.
        I would like to yield such time as you like to consume.
        Ms. Pelosi. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is such a
    sad day for all of us who were so hopeful that we could have
    seen an opportunity for medical care to be given to Liu Xiaobo
    in the last days of his life to extend his life, the life of
    this great man.
        I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your ongoing, consistent,
    persistent advocacy for human rights throughout the world, and
    particularly in this case in China. You and I have worked on
    these issues for decades. Your staff said to me, ``You are now
    sitting on the Republican side.'' When it comes to these issues
    there is no side. We have always worked in a very strong
    bipartisan way, and I have always saluted your leadership, as
    well as our colleague Frank Wolf from Virginia, who was also
    very relentless.
        I have seen Dr. Yang's testimony and Mr. Genser's testimony
    and heard Dr. Link's beautiful statement, as well. I just
    wanted to make a statement for the record.
        I just was being interviewed over in the Capitol for a
    statement on this, and what I partially said was: The world
    grieves the loss of Liu Xiaobo, one of the great moral voices
    of our time. His clarion call for democracy and human rights in
    China represented the best hopes of humankind. His courage
    became a poignant symbol for freedom-loving people across the
    globe.
        Liu Xiaobo's death is a tragedy and a deep affront to the
    basic notions of justice and human dignity. The role that poor
    medical care in prison played in his death and the cruelty of
    confining a dying man in captivity away from his family and
    friends should disturb us all. His arrest for the so-called
    crime of putting his political views into writing is a sobering
    reminder of China's shameful disregard for basic freedoms.
        The world is a bleaker place for this crushing loss, but we
    must continue to carry forward Liu Xiaobo's legacy. America
    must honor its moral duty to speak out in defense of the many
    journalists, human rights lawyers, democracy advocates, and
    religious freedom advocates unjustly and unfairly lost in jail
    simply for aspiring to a more free and hopeful future.
        If we do not speak out for human rights in China because of
    commercial interest [audio malfunction in hearing room.].
        Two weeks ago, I was pleased to join Congressman Chris
    Smith, co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on
    China, as the House overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan
    resolution calling for the unconditional release of both Liu
    Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia. We strongly hoped that China would
    heed the call to free Liu Xia for unjust house arrest and will
    allow her to travel wherever she may choose.
        I just want to join Dr. Link in his comments about Liu Xia.
    Reading from Liu Xiaobo's Nobel lecture in absentia on December
    10, 2010, he said in this: ``If I may be permitted to say so,
    the most fortunate experience of these past 20 years has been
    the selfless love I have received from my wife Liu Xia. She
    could not be present as observer in the court today,'' he was
    talking about the court. ``But I want to say to you, my dear,
    that I firmly believe your love for me will remain the same as
    it has always been.''
        More things, but, ``Your love is the sunlight that leaps
    over high walls and penetrates the iron bars of my prison
    window, stroking every inch of my skin, warming every cell of
    my body, allowing me to always keep peace, openness, and
    brightness in my heart. Even if I were crushed into powder I
    would still use my ashes to embrace you.''
        I think that he has given us our direction. We must work
    very hard to protect Liu Xia, hopefully to bring her and
    brother-in-law of Liu Xiaobo out of China. I will take my
    guidance from Chairman Smith. We talked about a number of ways
    to honor the memory of Liu Xiaobo and to honor his love of his
    wife.
        I am particularly happy that Congresswoman Karen Bass is
    with us today. She is a person who respects the dignity and
    worth of every person. She works hard for children in our own
    country and is a supporter of the dignity and worth of people
    throughout the world.
        Thank you, Congresswoman Bass, for making this a priority
    for us.
        And, again, under your leadership, Mr. Chairman, you will
    give me some guidance as to what you think the best path is to
    go, but I will close by saying: May Liu Xiaobo life and legacy
    continue to inspire all who strive for justice and democracy.
    May his memory be a blessing to us all. And may his family take
    some solace in knowing that the whole world mourns with them.
        And, Dr. Link, I don't think it is going to take 200 years.
    I think right now and very soon the contribution, the legacy of
    Liu Xiaobo will certainly eclipse the authoritarians of China.
        With that, I thank the chairman and yield back.
        Mr. Smith. Leader Pelosi, thank you very much for your
    eloquent----
        Ms. Pelosi. I am honored that the chairman----
        Mr. Smith. And we are joined by the full committee
    chairman, the distinguished Ed Royce.
        Mr. Royce. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much, and
    Leader Pelosi.
        It is a sad day. Yesterday was a very sad day. A sad day
    for human rights. I was deeply saddened to learn of Nobel Prize
    Laureate Liu Xiaobo's tragic passing. I think the world mourns.
    Our thoughts are with his loved ones, especially his widow, Liu
    Xia, who has been under house arrest now since 2010.
        Liu was a prolific writer. He was an academic. He dedicated
    his life to giving voice to the oppressed. And he did this by
    calling for his government to grant more freedom to the Chinese
    people.
        He was imprisoned multiple times, and he was imprisoned for
    his peaceful protests for human rights and for democracy in
    China. It happened first during Tiananmen Square in 1989 and
    later for releasing the Charter 08 manifesto in 2009, which
    articulated the need for reforms in China. Those reforms, it
    was his intent, would achieve the rule of law, would achieve
    freedom of press and speech and religion.
        He was an inspiration to all of us. Liu's efforts were not
    in vain. His sacrifice and death while in the custody of the
    Chinese Government, while serving an unjustified 11-year prison
    sentence, has shined a light on the sad state of human rights
    in China.
        As we take stock of these sad events, we should remember
    that there are prisoners of conscience in China and around the
    world who continue to need our support. Let us be part of his
    legacy. May the bravery of Liu Xiaobo inspire us to seek their
    freedom also.
        And thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you, Chairman Royce.
        And, again, thank you, Leader Pelosi. We were together in
    Oslo.
        Ms. Pelosi. What an honor.
        Mr. Smith. And what an honor. And what a heartbreak this
    is. Hopefully, Liu Xiaobo's death will be a global pivot to
    human rights in China, and we certainly have to do our part in
    doing that.
        Mr. Suozzi.
        Mr. Suozzi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know we are very
    rushed for time because we have to go over for votes.
        But I just wanted to say, Dr. Yang, my condolences to you.
        Mr. Genser and Dr. Link, thank you so much for your life's
    work and for your testimony, as well.
        It is hard to imagine when we are in this air-conditioned
    room that is so august and in this setting to think of the
    suffering that went on in his life and now goes on in his
    wife's life and in so many other people's lives, from cancer to
    depression and heart attacks and suffering. And this is going
    on all over the world right now in people who are trying to
    fight for human rights and fight for human dignity throughout
    the world.
        And his life is such an inspiration to me and I know to so
    many other others, and we are so grateful to all of you for
    helping to bring notice to this important message.
        You know, China right now is trying to participate in the
    modern world through its economy. But economic improvement is
    not a substitute for respect for human dignity and human
    rights.
        And I want the chairman to know and the ranking member to
    know and the leader to know that I will do everything I can to
    work with them to support efforts to make sure that this life
    was not a life in vain.
        So thank you so much for everything that you do.
        [Speaking foreign language.]
        Mr. Smith. Thank you.
        We will take a brief recess. We have votes on the floor. It
    is actually on zero, so we are going to have to run, but we
    will be right back.
        [Recess.]
        Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will resume its sitting.
        And, Dr. Yang, I know you do have to go to the funeral of
    your brother-in-law. And, again, my greatest sympathies to you
    and your family. But, please.
        Mr. Yang. I have a few further points to make, then I can
    leave.
        Mr. Chairman, Liu Xiaobo represents the best of what China
    can be, in death as well as in life. He possesses a moral
    authority that his persecutors can only envy. His legacy of
    love, just as in courage, will surely far outlive the deeds of
    those who persecuted him.
        Liu Xiaobo was a major leader of the 1989 democracy
    movement. He shouldered moral and political responsibility
    after Tiananmen Square, continued to fight inside China for its
    constitutional democracy while many left the country and even
    left the movement.
        He shared the suffering of his compatriots and made great
    sacrifices for them. He is a saint. His spirit will be an
    uplifting and unifying force that will inspire more people of
    China to fight to realize his dream, indeed the common dream of
    Chinese people.
        To the world, he represents the universal values that all
    democracies embrace and the unwavering struggle of unfree
    people for freedom. Liu Xiaobo is a representative of ideas
    that resonate with millions of people all over the world.
        But it is a sad and disturbing fact that many leaders of
    the free world, who themselves hold democracy and human rights
    in high regard, have been less willing to stand up for those
    rights for the benefit of others. If this became a widely
    accepted fashion and continued, the democratic way and the
    security of the free people would eventually be in jeopardy.
        Today I cannot help asking, what kind of a government would
    refuse to grant the final wish of such a peaceful, kind of man
    as Liu Xiaobo, a man who sincerely believes that he has no
    enemies, to die as a free man, to die with dignity? What kind
    of a government would not even allow him the last moment of
    being with his beloved wife without surveillance?
        This is a totally morally bankrupted regime. Dealing with
    such a regime, one must have moral clarity. There is a lot of
    talking about engaging with China, yes, no one can avoid
    engaging with China. But democracies must engage China
    comprehensively. Democracies must engage this brutal face of
    this regime and must not look the other way when human rights
    tragedies take place. The Chinese Government can never be
    considered a true trusted peer on the global stage until they
    address their egregious human rights violations.
        The tragic passing of Liu Xiaobo gives us a stronger sense
    of urgency to help other dissidents. I am afraid that more
    human rights activists will languish and disappear in China's
    prisons: Wang Bingzhang, Hu Shigen, Zhu Yufu, Ilham Tohti,
    Tashi Wangchuk, Wang Quanzhang, Jiang Tianyong, Tang Jingling,
    Wu Gan, Guo Feixiong, Liu Xianbin, Chen Wei, Zhang Haitao, the
    list goes on.
        If American advocacy for human rights and justice is to
    mean anything at all, the U.S. Government must do more to
    support these political prisoners and to hold accountable the
    government and the individuals who so brazenly abuse their
    fundamental rights.
        We all hoped that Liu Xiaobo would one day complete his
    unjust prison sentence and then have more time to share his
    passion and energy for human rights and dignity; and also,
    perhaps, one day to have time to enjoy for himself the fruits
    of freedom. But instead he is gone.
        To close, I want to share with you the beautiful words of
    Martin Luther King, Jr., which he delivered in a speech in
    Memphis, Tennessee, on the evening before his own death:

            Well, I don't know what will happen now. We have got
            some difficult days ahead. But it really does not
            matter with me now, because I have been to the
            mountaintop and I don't mind.
              Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.
            Longevity has its place. But I am not concerned about
            that now. I just want to do God's will. And he has
            allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I have looked
            over, and I have seen the promised land. I may not get
            there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we,
            as a people, will get to the promised land.

        Thank you.
        Mr. Smith. Dr. Yang, thank you for your passion and
    precision and how we present. It is just couldn't be clearer
    the stark difference between the gross evil of what is done by
    the leadership of the PRC and a man of light of Liu Xiaobo's
    character.
        So thank you for your--all three of you--thank you for
    bearing witness to the noble truth of this man and what he
    stood for.
        I note again, Dr. Yang, in your testimony you pointed out
    that the denial of medical care led to Liu Xiaobo's liver
    cancer, and it was at its core a disguised death sentence. To
    not treat, certainly no early detection, and as you point out
    in your testimony, as far as back as 2010 Liu Xiaobo was
    suspected of suffering from hepatitis B.
        His lawyers--and, Mr. Genser, you spoke about this many
    times--petitioned the government and kept asking to grant him A
    medical parole to get the healthcare, the health attention that
    he needed rather than languishing in a horrific jail cell.
        I think the other story that needs to be told by the media
    globally is this whole death sentence. It wasn't like he got
    Johns Hopkins-like medical care or Sloan Kettering-grade
    medical care. He was ignored. The evidence clearly suggests
    that they did nothing or very little. And to deny his request
    to go to Germany or to here to get the kind of care he needs
    and to turn that down shows a barbarity that just needs to be
    confronted aggressively.
        Like I said earlier, I think this needs to be the pivot to
    human rights in his legacy, of course, but because there are so
    many others still suffering horribly in laogai and throughout
    the Chinese concentration camp system.
        And when Xi Jinping goes to Davos and talks about
    transparency and openness, it is a cruel joke. And I am glad
    that the administration did put China on Tier 3 for its
    egregious abuses with regards to sex and labor trafficking.
    Magnitsky needs to be full throttled in its implementation to
    hold individuals to account.
        The International Religious Freedom Act, which has China as
    a country of particular concern, or CPC country, carries with
    it at least 18 prescribed sanctions that can be very, very
    potent if utilized. They have not been. There has to be a
    response to this the likes of which we have never seen before.
        As you said so eloquently, Dr. Yang, a disguised death
    sentence. For what? For peacefully asking for fundamental
    freedoms and human rights.
        So if any of you would like to comment on this lack of
    medical attention, which is appalling, please do. And I do have
    some other questions. But any other points you would like to
    make, as well, we would like to receive.
        Mr. Yang. Mr. Chairman, I have to leave right now.
        Mr. Genser. I do want to build on Global Magnitsky. And my
    view is--and I will work on this myself--is I would like to put
    together a comprehensive list of everybody who was responsible
    for Liu Xiaobo's arrest, trial, imprisonment, and care, or lack
    thereof, from the prosecutor, to the judge, to the person who
    ran his prison, to the hospital where he died.
        It seems to me that we can put together a list of a dozen
    or 15 names of people that are directly responsible for what
    happened to him. And that should be among a number of different
    things that are done to send a very clear message about where
    the United States stands in regards to those who are actually
    responsible.
        There will be no justice and accountability, of course, for
    anybody in China. But there needs to be some measure of justice
    and accountability for Liu Xiaobo as part of his legacy and to
    send a very clear signal about there being consequences to
    decisions that are being made at all levels of government in
    China. So that is what I would just have to say on Global
    Magnitsky.
        Mr. Link. It is worth noting, I think, that the pattern of
    having political prisoners die in prison in China is a pattern.
    It is not just that Liu Xiaobo was the first one. A few years
    ago a woman named Cao Shunli, who is not nearly as famous as he
    is, was ground to death. She disappeared about September 15 on
    her way to go to Geneva for a report on human rights in China.
    The police took her into prison. And she was released 6 months
    later in a coma, given to her family after it was clear that
    she would not live but not wanting her to die in prison because
    the regime is afraid of that black eye on its record.
        I would like to make another point, though, as we remember
    this man. I think it is important that we--and by ``we,'' I
    mean the whole world--recognize him as a world-class person,
    not just a China person. We China scholars have the problem, I
    think, of thinking that he speaks for China, and he is talking
    about Chinese human rights, and we are dealing with the Chinese
    Government. And all of that is true. But he speaks to the whole
    world.
        In my statement a moment ago, I referred to Mandela and
    Havel and Aung San Suu Kyi, all of whom are viewed as world-
    class upholders of freedom and human rights, and he should be
    too.
        I noticed on the PBS television program that announced his
    death last night, I was waiting to see which China scholar
    would come on and talk about it. But they didn't have a China
    scholar. They had a man from India who represented Amnesty
    International, and I thought that was wonderful. Because the
    point is he speaks for all of humanity, not just Chinese
    humanity.
        And in that connection, I think it is good that this
    subcommittee is on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
    and International Organizations. That is a very good step
    toward saying what Liu Xiaobo stood for is universal human
    rights, not just China.
        Mr. Smith. Let me ask you, Dr. Link. You have testified
    before, and I appreciate your testimony you have provided us on
    the whole university, the 12 campuses--like NYU, for example,
    Kean College--in China, on Mainland China, and then all the
    Confucius centers?
        Has there been any response over the last 2 weeks. We
    passed a resolution--I authored it, it was cosponsored by
    Leader Pelosi, so it was totally and absolutely bipartisan, and
    it passed unanimously in the House 2 weeks ago--calling for Liu
    Xiaobo and his wife and family to be able to come here or
    wherever they would like to go for medical treatment.
        Have we heard anything on those campuses or at the
    Confucius centers about the life and the tremendous legacy and
    the work of Liu Xiaobo.
        Mr. Link. The Confucius centers are on living, breathing,
    U.S. campuses. So it is certain that some people on those
    campuses notice these things and support them.
        I haven't done a survey of what the Confucius Institute's
    leaders themselves have done, but I feel very confident in
    saying, no, they wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. They
    get money from the Hanban in China. And without it being in
    written form, know that there are certain things you just don't
    do. You don't entertain the Dalai Lama or Liu Xiaobo or the
    Falun Gong problem or Tibet or Xinjao or the Beijing massacre.
    There is a list of about two dozen utterly untouchable topics
    that Confucius Institutes just don't observe.
        Mr. Smith. My hope is--and we will, as the Congressional-
    Executive Commission on China, which I also co-chair with Marco
    Rubio--I think it would be very timely for us to write them and
    ask them to raise the issue of Liu Xiaobo's widow, Liu Xia. You
    know, NYU Shanghai campus, and I did speak there a little over
    a year ago, on human rights. And, of course, Liu Xiaobo was one
    of the first things I said there.
        But they have, I think, an obligation, I would say a moral
    duty to speak out, because they tell us that they have academic
    freedom and the ability to speak in an unfettered way. And you
    are right. There are economic interests intertwined. But the
    hope would be that America's voice--and I would say not just
    America, a universally important, universally recognized human
    rights voice needs to be articulated now.
        There needs to be a pivot to human rights. The old days
    have to be over of just thinking that backdoor diplomacy and
    mentioning it, you know, under your breath is going to work. It
    is not going to work. It has not worked.
        We had a number of women testify here before our
    subcommittee just recently, all the wives of human rights
    lawyers who have been detained pursuant to that crackdown by Xi
    Jinping. And to hear them tell their stories about, you know,
    their husbands, and them, because they suffer equally. The
    idealism is just breathtaking. And yet they are in prison.
        Same way with the five daughters hearing that we had of all
    of those young Chinese daughters who couldn't even get a
    meeting with President Obama. And they pleaded with us to tell
    him, please let us talk to him face-to-face, he has two
    daughters, he will understand. They never got the meeting. And
    they were articulate and they were daughters that just spoke
    out so articulately and bravely on behalf of their dads who are
    suffering like Gao Zhisheng and others.
        So I think that is something we need to do, is to get at
    least these U.S. universities, which should or used to be
    beacons of academic freedom and human rights and inquiry, to
    raise the issue of Liu Xiaobo's widow, and the work and legacy
    of Liu Xiaobo himself, and Charter 08, the great manifesto.
        Mr. Link. I think it is a brilliant idea to have you or
    others in the Congress write to all of the American campuses,
    especially the prestigious ones who have accepted Confucius
    Institutes, first asking the question, saying, a Nobel Peace
    Prize winner has died in police custody in China, surely, this
    is a topic worth note. What has your institute done about it?
    And then go on to ask the question, what are your plans for
    helping the wife?
        Mr. Smith. Thank you, Dr. Link.
        Mr. Garrett.
        Mr. Garrett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And thank you for convening this meeting.
        And my apologies, candidly, to our guests. The timing is
    not the best. But, obviously, it coincides with this tragic
    loss of the life of a vocal leader for human rights around the
    world.
        It strikes me that the balance that the United States
    maintains with China is an interesting one, that we might be to
    a greater extent than perhaps in any era in recent history
    rivals. And yet we are arguably codependent upon one another
    economically and globally.
        The paramount interest of our office, and I think my
    constituents, based on my listening, is that there would be
    peace and stability and that there would be a fundamental right
    to an opportunity extended to people within the Fifth District
    of Virginia, the United States, and, candidly, globally. And
    pardon me if I don't do service to Liu Xiaobo's name.
        But when a person of this magnitude exercises the moral
    courage which we have witnessed in this country through the
    statements and actions of people like Patrick Henry and Martin
    Luther King, Barbara Johns and Abraham Lincoln, it is, indeed,
    as you say, something that should be taken note of by the
    world. While folks of my political ilk might sometimes find
    fault with some of the selections of the Nobel Committee, I
    think they could have found no more appropriate recipient than
    Liu Xiaobo.
        And one of the things that I have crusaded for as a member
    of the statehouse and now the Congress is a greater awareness
    by Americans of who Barbara Johns was. She was a 16-year-old
    girl who led a student walkout in Farmville, Virginia, in the
    early 1950s, which really sparked the civil rights movement in
    Virginia, and did so at the imperilment of her own life, and
    that of others, and did so at a time when at a similar age I
    was concerned with popping zits and whether or not I could get
    a prom date.
        And so sometimes I wonder what we do well here, what we can
    accomplish here. But, to this end, I would say, Congressman
    Smith, gentlemen, folks in the room, that the more people we
    can get to go to Google and type in Liu Xiaobo's name and
    understand what he did in the face of the odds in which he did
    it, the more Liu Xiaobos there will be.
        I guess, to the extent that we can help, I commend you on
    raising the awareness and teaching about folks who we might not
    agree with on every single piece of subject matter, but who
    stand for fundamental truths that no one who is an America can
    deny, and that is that all people are created equal and endowed
    by their Creator with certain rights.
        And so I suppose I will take my time here to query both of
    you. What, again, within the purview of the legislative branch
    of the United States Federal Government we can do to ensure
    that his legacy doesn't die with his physical body, to insist
    that an important trade partner and member of the world
    community, China, understands that we give a damn--pardon me--
    and to encourage greater freedom and opportunity across the
    globe, and do so wherever practical and possible without bombs
    and bullets and missiles and rockets, but brave men and women
    who are willing to stand up in the face of potential
    imprisonment or worse.
        So I would offer first Mr. Genser the floor for
    suggestions. What can we do within the purview of Article I to
    help perpetuate the legacy of this great leader to convey to
    our Chinese partners that we care, that we will not sit by idly
    as members of, say, for example, the Falun Gong, are imprisoned
    on the eve of what was supposed to be a meeting with U.S.
    leadership? What can we do to abate my fear that when spouses
    of imprisoned dissidents show up before this committee they
    have only made their family's circumstance worse?
        Mr. Genser. Thanks, Congressman Garrett, for your remarks,
    with which I fully agree, and your commitment to human rights,
    as well. Let me just mention a couple of things that I think
    are important that the Congress could be particularly involved
    in helping.
        The first, of course, and most importantly, is to help get
    Liu Xia and her brother out of China as rapidly as possible. We
    need to restore access to them and then confirm their wishes
    and get them out. And that should be a top priority.
        And I think that pressure by having this hearing today,
    pressure by moving a bill that is focused on Liu Xia and her
    brother, we have also been talking about a private Member's
    bill that would give them legal permanent resident status
    immediately upon arriving in the United States, these are
    things that Congress can do. So that would be number one.
        Number two, Liu Xiaobo Plaza, renaming the street in front
    of the Chinese Embassy for Liu Xiaobo, I think, is a way that
    the United States and governments all over the world--I am
    sure, we will be campaigning for this--for all countries in the
    world to rename the streets in front of the Chinese Embassy Liu
    Xiaobo Plaza. This is something that, obviously, has to go
    through the Congress, and then go to the President for
    signature.
        Number three, justice and accountability. And I was just
    mentioning, as well, having a list of those responsible for Liu
    Xiaobo and Liu Xia's deaths, to have the Congress advocating to
    have them sanctioned under Global Magnitsky and to make clear
    that this is why they are being sanctioned.
        And then let me just step back broadly and make a final
    point, which is something that--I have spent my career as a
    human rights lawyer fighting for the freedom of prisoners of
    conscience. I spent 5 years Aung San Suu Kyi's international
    counsel. I have represented more than 40 prisoners of
    conscience over my career and founded Freedom Now, my NGO, on
    whose board I sit, which has a full-time staff in Washington
    and London to work on these cases.
        One of the things I think the U.S. needs to do more
    directly, and I think the Congress could play a key role in a
    legislative context, is to focus our foreign policy on the
    world's prisoners of conscience. Because it seems to me that we
    have annual human rights reports, and that is really good, and
    prisoners of conscience are kind of a narrow piece of it, but a
    more focused set of activities for the United States to focus
    on prisoners of conscience.
        Because what we have found historically--and we were
    talking about a lot of different, obviously, names, people like
    Havel, people like Mandela--is that the prisoners of conscience
    of today are the leaders of their countries tomorrow, and that
    for the United States to stand in solidarity with homegrown
    pro-democracy activists, not the United States imposing our
    values or our form of government onto others, but embracing
    those that within their own countries see the value of
    democracy, the value of human freedom, and to systematically as
    part of our foreign policy and engaging with every country in
    the world, any country that is persecuting prisoners of
    conscience, our engagement with that country, not just from the
    State Department or the National Security Council, but from
    every agency, can be focused on a list of names that would be
    raised, focused on training Foreign Service Officers to do
    these kinds of things, focused on reporting requirements for
    the State Department about what is being done to help these
    people.
        What is interesting is that if you look at the case of
    Natan Sharansky, who of course was a Soviet dissident, whose
    wife, Avital, met with President Reagan, a mentor of mine in my
    career, Irwin Cotler, was his counsel and had a chance to talk
    to Gorbachev about, ``Why did you release Natan Sharansky?''
        And what Gorbachev said was really telling, and I think
    really, really important, which was to say that, ``Well, I
    didn't know who this guy Natan Sharansky was until I was''--
    many years before he became the President of the Soviet Union
    he was Minister of Agriculture. And he came to the United
    States on some kind of agricultural exchange and discussion
    about, well, agricultural issues. And, yet, on the U.S. side,
    our Agriculture Secretary raised to him Natan Sharansky's name
    in a meeting about agriculture.
        And one of the first things he did when he became
    President, he told my friend and mentor, Irwin Cotler, was to
    ask the secret police, the KGB, for the file of Natan
    Sharansky, because he had heard about this in many meetings
    with U.S. Government officials over and over and over again.
    And it was like, why is the Agriculture Secretary doing this?
    And he looked at the file and he was like, well, this makes no
    sense, why is this guy in jail? And ultimately he was released.
        And so, to me, that is an important lesson for the United
    States, that prisoners of conscience and helping people of this
    sort isn't just the responsibility of some narrow Assistant
    Secretary for Democracy, Labor, and Human Rights to be raising,
    but that it has to be part and parcel and central to U.S.
    foreign policy as a strategic tactic to be regularly deployed
    to try to advance human freedom around the world.
        So let me conclude with that.
        Mr. Garrett. So to some degree the Sharansky case was
    almost a ``ye have not because ye ask not.''
        Mr. Genser. Right.
        Mr. Garrett. One thing that I probably unintelligently
    voiced my frustration with, and I have only been here for a
    short time, is that I don't feel that we have synergy between
    the executive and the legislative as it relates to working
    together. We have worked on the release of some prisoners of
    conscience, particularly in the southern Nuba Mountain regions
    of the Republic of Sudan, and I almost feel like the State
    Department wants to know why I care.
        God bless the good men and women there, but we should be
    working together to advance the same goals. And wherever any
    human being is held prisoner based on beliefs, unless those
    beliefs advocate violence against other humans, why can't we
    all agree on that, right?
        So thank you immensely, and I would love to speak to you
    briefly after the hearing about what you do, because I think we
    might be able to help to the same, I think, admirable goal.
        The only thing that I have been able to do in 6 months here
    that I can take pride in and take to my grave is help affect
    the release of individuals held because of their beliefs,
    right? It is hard to pass a bill. But when you tell somebody
    the United States of America is looking and cares about some
    formerly nameless individual in prison because of their faith
    or their actions of humanity toward another and something
    happens, then you go, maybe this is all worth it. Thanks for
    what you do.
        Dr. Link, what else, within the context of the legislative
    role of the Article I constitutional underpinnings of this body
    should we be doing that we are not doing? And, by the way, I
    texted my legislative director during your comments to get us
    on the bill that is out there as it relates to the plaza, the
    Liu Xiaobo Plaza.
        Mr. Link. Let me add my voice to the chorus that says that
    the Liu Xiaobo Plaza is a great idea. I really strongly endorse
    that, and also endorse what my colleague Jared Genser said in
    some more detail about focus of foreign policy on prisoners of
    conscience.
        I think it is often perceived that we do that because it
    makes us feel better. And that is good. We should feel better.
    It is right to do the right thing and we are better people for
    doing it. But what he has pointed out is that it is also an
    investment in practical terms in a better world, because these
    people that we are helping emerge--Havel did, Mandela did, Aung
    San Suu Kyi did, Liu Xiaobo can't, but there are more--it is a
    good investment from a practical point of view.
        I would add a third, which Jared sort of mentioned, but I
    would put it this way, and that is the bully pulpit is a good
    thing to use. It sounds like we are just pontificating,
    preaching and so on, and that there might be backlash. But I
    think that is not right. Even the leaders, even the oppressors
    in China, at another level, know that democracy and human
    rights are a good thing. Watch the way they put the word
    democracy in their own rhetoric. Stalin, Lenin, said they had
    democratic centralism. Mao Zedong said it was democratic
    centralism. North Korea, the most repugnant state on the face
    of the globe today, calls itself the Democratic People's
    Republic of Korea.
        There is a two-leveledness in the psychology of the
    oppressors. They want it both ways. On the surface, okay, the
    West is bad, the West's values are not universal, and they are
    oppressing us, and so on. But I am going to send my daughter to
    Harvard. Xi Jinping's daughter went there. Send them money.
        I am from California. The Los Angeles area is full of
    communities that are built on money--probably corrupt money--
    shipped from China that the privileged elite in China wants to
    ship abroad. They send their kids to go to U.S. schools more
    and more and more.
        So what does this say? Does this say that they hate Western
    values? No. It is a rivalrous feeling. And at one level they
    say, we are all against you. But at another level, we are
    sending our children and our money to your country for
    safekeeping.
        So that gives us a platform on which to say, without
    apology, democracy, freedom, human rights are good things. And
    they may say on the surface, no, no, no, no, no, that is
    Western imperialism. Underneath, they know it is not. A lot of
    them know it is not.
        Therefore, I think what I have just called the bully
    pulpit, when our officials go to the G20 meetings, when they go
    to the United Nations, or through VOA and Radio Free Asia,
    don't be embarrassed to put our values out there. There is more
    to them than the tyrants in China want to admit.
        Mr. Garrett. Thank you, Dr. Link.
        I would beg the chairman's indulgence for another question
    that is tangentially related and not directly related. But your
    comments have got the wheels turning a little bit.
        There is some call from various sectors to, in order to
    exert pressure on the Chinese to exert pressure on North Korea,
    consider rolling back admissions of Chinese students to U.S.
    universities.
        My immediate reaction is that we don't have a Sisi in Egypt
    if there is not a period of learning and experiencing American
    culture, that we don't have any number of leaders abroad who
    have turned out to be pretty good allies if they hadn't spent
    time here in the United States. So there is back-end value to
    having the children, even of the Chinese ruling class, in
    American institutions.
        Having said that, the secondary argument is there is a
    rivalry, there is a need for engineers and software developers
    and expertise, and there is a competitive nature to it whether
    we like it or not. And our institutions are producing the young
    women and men who are beating us at our own game, if you will.
        I would love your opinion on the idea that somehow denying
    access to our universities might advance goals as it relates to
    human rights and stability and safety on the Korean Peninsula
    and as it relates to geopolitical stability and security, which
    might manifest itself differently based on the regions from
    which our excellent young students might matriculate. This is
    an opinion question. There are no wrong answers.
        Mr. Link. As a broad principle, I would say that it is good
    for us to take the children of anybody if they are smart enough
    to get through the universities and do well, and that the long-
    range effect of a U.S. education on the children of the Chinese
    elite is a good thing. And I work in the university.
        I make certain exceptions for that though. About a week ago
    a Wall Street Journal columnist named Bill McGurn called me up,
    and he asked me what I thought of targeting the offspring of
    the super elite in China and denying them visas to come to
    Harvard and Stanford and Chicago as a method of getting
    leverage for China to cooperate on North Korea. And I said, I
    think that is a good idea.
        So there is an exception there to my broader principle. And
    I would just say I make that exception because it is well known
    that we have no good options on North Korea. And if you bomb
    and attack, that is going to wreak havoc. It is going to
    destroy the city of Seoul. If you just do what we have done for
    the last three decades, which is to cross your fingers and hope
    for the best, that is not working either.
        What can we do? China, of course, can play a key role. That
    would be the way to really bring pressure on the North Korean
    regime. But China won't. I think the Chinese leadership likes
    their position of being able to waffle and have us constantly
    begging them to help, and they say they will, but then they
    don't, and so on. That is their endgame. They like that.
        So when Bill McGurn asked me is this a way to get the top
    leaders' attention in a very personal way, I said yes. And I
    would make that exception.
        Mr. Garrett. Thank you.
        And, Mr. Genser, if you have any comments to that, I would
    welcome them. I don't want to freeze you out here.
        Mr. Genser. I agree with Perry on this. I think as a
    strategic question overall, I think the more that we can expose
    foreigners to U.S. universities the more that our system of
    government, the system, the free market, our values, will be
    transmitted.
        But you look at certain countries in the world and their
    leaders send their kids to the United States, and you may have
    a different take on it. So, for example, let's take Iran. It
    was reported in the media about 1 year, 1\1/2\ years ago, that
    the woman who was actually the spokesperson for the students
    who took the U.S. Embassy in 1979, Masoumeh Ebtekar, who was
    referred to as Mary back then as the spokeswoman, her son is
    getting his Ph.D. in California. And she is the sitting Vice
    President of Iran and the head of their EPA and has been an
    unrepentant person with respect to everything relating to the
    United States and including her role in taking American
    hostages.
        Do I think it is a good idea to allow someone like that to
    have their child educated in the United States? Not really. My
    view is that while ordinarily I would never want to punish a
    child for the sins of his or her father or mother, in a case
    like that, where the person is a sitting senior leader and is
    an unrepentant hostage taker, I don't think that we should be
    opening up our borders freely to people like that.
        And I would note, as well, that among my other clients are
    Siamak and Baquer Namazi, two American citizen hostages in
    Iran, two of four currently. And so Iran isn't just
    historically having taken hostages, but it is doing so today.
    And the current Government of Iran, and particularly the
    Revolutionary Guard Corps, are responsible for that.
        So it does seem to me that one needs to be smart about this
    and not just go with a big hammer and say, well, let's just not
    let people in. But I think that strategically the United States
    can definitely use access to our university system to send
    targeted messages in the right way and in the right time.
        Mr. Garrett. So, Mr. Chairman, I will wrap up.
        So, in conclusion, I would ask the yes-or-no question, the
    succinct summary of what you said is, if we target specific
    individuals and paint with a very narrow brush, that there can
    be an effective outcome. If we paint with a broad brush and
    essentially say, we are not going to have students from country
    X, it is probably deleterious to our long-term desires.
        Mr. Genser. Yes.
        Mr. Link. Correct.
        Mr. Garrett. Thank you guys immensely. And, again, Mr.
    Genser, if you will stick around for a little bit, I would be
    grateful.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Garrett. And I will
    just conclude and then ask if you have any final statements
    that you would like to make before we end the hearing.
        Just for the record, Senator Cruz's bill to rename
    International Drive Liu Xiaobo Plaza has been hotlined in the
    Senate. Unfortunately, it has a couple of holds on it, and that
    is the way the Senate works. One member can hold up a bill. But
    it is being actively pursued there.
        And Mark Meadows, a member of our subcommittee, has
    introduced H.R. 2537 to rename Liu Xiaobo Plaza. And our hope
    is as soon as that can get approved, the better. And I am very
    proud to be one of the cosponsors, following his lead on that.
        Just one brief point about a whole-of-government approach.
    We recently enacted the Frank Wolf International Religious
    Freedom Act, and one of the main parts of that legislation was
    to have a whole-of-government approach so that you don't get a
    human rights dialogue that becomes a means unto an end, where
    it is like a cul-de-sac, you know, everyone talks, everybody
    leaves, there is no connection to anything else.
        We need the U.S. Trade Representative, we need people in
    the military, particularly when there is a government-to-
    government contact of some kind, to almost, as you pointed out
    with the Agriculture Secretary and Natan Sharansky, or
    agriculture officials, that they realize that every time they
    turn around a group of noble dissidents are being named as
    being high priority to the United States. When you don't do
    that, that speaks volumes as well.
        So that Religious Freedom Act also has prisoners lists by
    country, which I think has been long overlooked. Some of the
    dissidents in the political sphere get good mention by the
    Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which is good.
    But, again, it often stops there.
        So we need this whole-of-government approach so that
    everyone--and that would go for Members of Congress as well,
    that when we travel we don't go to China and fail to bring up--
    particularly if you meet with a leader--the names, and the more
    specific, the better.
        I will never forget Frank Wolf and I met with Li Peng back
    in the 1990s. And our delegation, he and I, and our staff, were
    merged with a trade delegation. Thankfully, we got the seats
    closest to Li Peng, Premier, and we raised the issues
    specifically of names, Tiananmen Square names, went through
    religious freedom, forced abortion. We laid out a human rights
    case. He sat there almost bewildered. Who let these two guys
    in? But the whole discussion was about that.
        The next day he met with another group from America, and he
    launched into a tirade about democracy and how they protect
    democracy, and he was all-on defensive mode, because they have
    much to be ashamed of.
        These are willful acts they have taken. What they did to
    Liu Xiaobo, what they continue to do to his wife, is by design,
    not by default. And so we need to hold them to account. And my
    hope is that this new administration will do a whole-of-
    government approach.
        And, lastly, I learned a lesson from Wei Jingsheng when he
    was briefly let out of prison to procure the 2000 Olympics for
    China. They eventually got it in 2008, but they wanted it in
    2000. A high value political prisoner, father of the Democracy
    Wall movement who spent 18 years in prison. He went back in
    after we met and had dinner together--not right away, but when
    they didn't get the 2000 Olympics.
        He said, everybody in America and in policymaking around
    the world need to understand that when you kowtow they beat us
    more in the prison. It follows right through into the prison
    cell itself, and those who administer torture and other
    horrible misdeeds against prisoners.
        When you are tough, predictable, look them in the eyes and
    say, we know what you are doing, we know what you have been
    doing to Liu Xiaobo all these years, and you bring it up every
    time, they beat us less and they treat us better. And people do
    get out of prison. They often go on parole, but they are at
    least home.
        And so, again, this pivot to human rights in China that the
    horrific death, death sentence of Liu Xiaobo, is now that the
    Western governments led by the United States need to say, now
    we are all in, in the legacy and in the great pioneering work
    that was done by Liu Xiaobo.
        So if you would like to conclude, or if Mr. Garrett wants
    to conclude with any statement, I would just yield to my
    friends at the witness table.
        Mr. Link. I will tell one anecdote to reinforce the point
    you just made. My wife is Chinese, and she was a protester in
    the 1989 events and was sent to a labor camp for 3 years. And
    she had also studied law. And she looked up the law, and it
    says in the law of the labor camps that you can labor only 8
    hours a day and they were having to labor 14 hours a day. So
    she said, no, I am only going to do 8 hours a day.
        And so the prison authorities organized a group of other
    prisoners to beat her. And they did. And this was terrible. She
    suffered beatings.
        She snuck out a note via another prisoner who was leaving
    to her mother. Her mother told Human Rights Watch in New York.
    Human Rights Watch publicized her case, and immediately the
    beatings stopped, and she only had to work 8 hours a day.
        Mr. Genser. I will end with an anecdote that is a tragic
    anecdote, but a reason, I think, for further motivation for us
    to proceed full force on all of these issues, which is that
    over the years I have been in touch with many human rights
    lawyers in China and worked with many of them as well. And
    obviously I can't provide any names here publicly. But there
    have been a number of human rights lawyers I know that have
    been vigorously interrogated by Chinese authorities, beaten and
    treated very badly, some of whom, of course, have been sent to
    prison, others not.
        But, unfortunately, Liu Xiaobo's name has been invoked by
    the torturers in torturing individual people in China in recent
    years. And this is when they are trying to persuade a human
    rights lawyer who maybe hasn't been as aggressive yet, as
    somebody like a Gao Zhisheng, where as they are beating them,
    they say, this is pointless, you are never going to succeed
    standing up to the one-party system.
        And look at the case of Liu Xiaobo, the world's only
    imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and we are holding his
    wife with impunity, right? The world knows who he is and can't
    do anything about it. What hope do you have of standing up to
    our Government? You should just give up right now.
        And this is the refrain that the torturers use as they
    torture people, or certain people, in China. And to me this is
    both unsurprising and equally horrific at the same time. But
    this only reaffirms why we need to do everything humanly
    possible to keep Liu Xiaobo's memory alive and to stand in
    solidarity with the prisoners of conscience whose names Yang
    Jianli was mentioning earlier, as well as the countless
    hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of others we don't
    really even know that are suffering.
        We can't let the anonymous prisoner of conscience be
    forgotten in China because they will do whatever they would
    like to them. And I think that the case of Liu Xiaobo will also
    be remembered, I think in the best sense, for being, hopefully,
    a line in the sand where the international community is able to
    say to China, enough, enough.
        We are mutually interdependent, as I think Congressman
    Garrett was saying, on trade, on intellectual property, on
    North Korea, around all the things we have to work on. And
    China can't afford to walk away from its relationship with the
    United States because it gets angry with the United States for
    raising human rights. It isn't going to happen under any
    circumstance. And they are not going to dump our trillion
    dollars-plus of Treasuries either, because they are smart and
    they do not want to lose a lot of money.
        So they are forced to deal with us on human rights. And why
    the international community has engaged in so much self-
    censorship, to me, boggles my mind.
        I also agree--I just want to conclude by noting what
    Chairman Smith was saying about these human rights dialogues. I
    have always joked that, based on friends of mine who have been
    on them on the U.S. side, and I have heard stories about how
    they go, that these actually aren't human rights dialogues.
    They are really human rights sequential monologues.
        And maybe the Congress could force the administration to
    call them that, right? We are no longer going to have human
    rights dialogues with China. We are going to require them to be
    publicly labeled human rights sequential monologues if we are
    going to keep doing them. Because it is not like either side is
    giving anything. And the Chinese side, especially, is just
    giving speeches that are prepared and aren't able to do
    anything at all.
        So I also, as well, want to conclude by thanking
    particularly Chairman Smith. I am obviously also grateful for
    Mr. Garrett, but particularly Chairman Smith for your
    commitment over decades on China human rights. You have just
    been indefatigable, relentless, and are such an extraordinary
    champion here in the Congress on China rights issues, along
    with Leader Pelosi and others.
        But the fact that this subcommittee is so focused on China
    and so focused on human rights more broadly, I don't know what
    we would do without you, Mr. Chairman, being here and your
    leadership. And so it is always a pleasure to appear before
    you. And thank you for everything you are doing as well.
        Mr. Garrett. Thank you.
        You know, you keep stay saying stuff that makes me want to
    say more stuff. So I apologize.
        It is so frustrating. And so earlier, I believe, the IRGC
    was mentioned in the context of Iran and some of, what, the
    four Americans currently being held by that regime, which
    obviously as soon as they released a certain subset of
    Americans found some more Americans to hold.
        And it strikes me that the regime is undergirded,
    obviously--and we are taking about Iran, not China now, but we
    are on the same subject, which is global human rights--by the
    perpetuation of the IRGC, and specifically the Quds Force
    thereof. Any group of people willing to shoot their brothers
    and sisters in the face in the street is a difficult obstacle
    to overcome when you choose to exercise peaceful means of
    protest for expanded human rights.
        But what you said that sort of struck a vein was that the
    Chinese are not going to turn their backs and walk away from us
    because they are frustrated that we have discussed human
    rights. So, too, I would argue that if you remove the money
    that supports the IRGC, which supports the Quds subset thereof,
    and arguably Hezbollah globally, that you will see a climate
    wherein things like the Green Revolution are more likely to be
    successful.
        And so I will take this opportunity to chide the nameless
    masses who are more concerned with losing money by virtue of
    the termination of trade relationships with entities like the
    IRGC, or in some instances even China, than they are with
    people who have done more to perpetuate human rights and
    individual dignity and honor than they ever will, that if we
    stood up with a unified voice and said to the world, you can do
    business with the United States of America or the IRGC, for
    example, that the world would choose to do business with the
    United States of America. And millions of good Iranian people
    who yearn to have self-determination and freedom and wish to
    exercise tolerance toward their brothers and sisters could be
    the leaders therein.
        So keep doing what you are doing. I think the reason there
    is no more hue and cry, candidly, is because folks like Chris
    Smith, who have been at this for years, folks like Frank Wolf,
    who is somebody I genuinely admire, were unable to get the
    message to a broad enough subset. But there is nothing in
    Washington, DC, that I can find that transcends political
    partisanship like the concept that every human being is
    entitled to a basic level of dignity and self-determination.
        And I think we can do things. I really do. But I think we
    need to make hard choices and say, you know what, this revenue
    today, this money today, this business opportunity today will
    be there tomorrow, but right now we need to say no because
    there are greater things at stake.
        So I thank you all for what you do. It is an honor to sit
    here next to you. And, hopefully, we can get more people aware
    of circumstances like these. Because I think without ever
    dropping a bomb or firing a gun we can bring change that frees
    human beings who have an inherent, God-given, in my opinion,
    right, to self-determination and freedom.
        Thank you immensely, and I look forward to working with you
    all in the future.
        Thank you, Chairman Smith.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much, Mr. Garrett, for your
    very eloquent summation and your questioning.
        Let me just, if I could, ask you all to join me in a moment
    of prayerful silence for Liu Xiaobo.
        [Moment of silence observed.]
        Mr. Smith. The hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:39 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                A P P E N D I X

                                  ----------

                      Material Submitted for the Record

             [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                     [all]