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

                             THE LONG ARM OF CHINA:
                           EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM
                           WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
    =======================================================================

                                     HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               DECEMBER 13, 2017

                                   __________

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                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                        LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

       Senate                                   House

    MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Chairman       CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey,
    TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 Cochairman
    STEVE DAINES, Montana                ROBERT PITTENGER, North Carolina
    JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois
    TODD YOUNG, Indiana                  MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
    DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California         TIM WALZ, Minnesota
    JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon                 TED LIEU, California
    GARY PETERS, Michigan
    ANGUS KING, Maine

                         EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

                               Not yet appointed

                       Elyse B. Anderson, Staff Director

                     Paul B. Protic, Deputy Staff Director

                                      (ii)

                                 C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                                   Statements

                                                                       Page
    Opening Statement of Hon. Marco Rubio, a U.S. Senator from
      Florida; Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.     1
    Kalathil, Shanthi, Director of the International Forum for
      Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy
      (NED)..........................................................     4
    Tiffert, Glenn, Ph.D., an expert in modern Chinese legal history
      and a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
      Institution....................................................     6
    Richardson, Sophie, Ph.D., Director of China Research at Human
      Rights Watch...................................................     8
    Smith, Hon. Christopher, a U.S. Representative from New Jersey;
      Cochairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China........    20

                                    APPENDIX
                              Prepared Statements

    Kalathil, Shanthi................................................    34
    Tiffert, Glenn...................................................    38

    Rubio, Hon. Marco................................................    46
    Smith, Hon. Christopher..........................................    47

                      Questions and Answers for the Record

    Kalathil, Shanthi................................................    49
    Richardson, Sophie...............................................    51

                           Submissions for the Record

    Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence......................    56

    Witness Biographies..............................................    77

                                     (iii)

                             THE LONG ARM OF CHINA:
                           EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM
                          WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

                                  ----------

                          WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2017

                                Congressional-Executive
                                           Commission on China,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:55
    a.m., in Room 301, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator
    Marco Rubio, Chairman, presiding.
        Also present: Representative Christopher Smith, Senator
    Angus King, and Senator Steve Daines.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
     FLORIDA; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

        Chairman Rubio. Good morning. This is a hearing of the
    Congressional-Executive Commission on China. The title of this
    hearing is ``The Long Arm of China: Exporting Authoritarianism
    with Chinese Characteristics.''
        I apologize to the witnesses. It has been a pretty busy day
    this morning, and it is not even 11:00 yet.
        We are going to have one panel testifying today. The panel
    will feature Shanthi Kalathil, the Director of the
    International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National
    Endowment for Democracy (NED); Dr. Glenn Tiffert, an expert in
    modern Chinese legal history and a visiting fellow at Stanford
    University's Hoover Institution; and Dr. Sophie Richardson,
    Director of China Research at Human Rights Watch.
        I thank all of you for being here.
        Before we move to the topic at hand, I want to take a
    moment to recognize Ms. Deidre Jackson on the Commission's
    staff. After 38 years of government work, including nearly 16
    years at the Commission, this is her final hearing before
    retiring--hopefully to Florida.
        [Laughter.]
        Chairman Rubio. It will be at the end of this year.
        [Applause.]
        Chairman Rubio. We are very grateful to her for her
    faithful service and for her important contribution to this
    work.
        The focus of this hearing today is timely. This is an issue
    that merits greater attention from U.S. policymakers and that
    involves the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party, through
    its government, to conduct influence operations, which exist in
    free societies around the globe, and they are intended to
    censor critical discussion of China's history and human rights
    record and to intimidate critics of its repressive policies.
        Attempts by the Chinese Communist Party and the government
    to guide, buy, or coerce political influence and control
    discussion of sensitive topics are pervasive, and they pose
    serious challenges to the United States and our like-minded
    allies.
        The Commission convened a hearing looking at China's ``long
    arm'' in May of 2016, and the focus at that time was on
    individual stories from dissidents and rights defenders,
    journalists, family members of critics of the regime who shared
    alarming accounts of the intimidation, harassment, pressure and
    fear they felt as a result of their work. This was especially
    true for those who had family still living in China. This issue
    persists.
        Just recently, Chinese authorities reportedly detained over
    30 relatives of the U.S.-based Uyghur human rights activist
    Rebiya Kadeer, a frequent witness before this Commission. We
    will no doubt hear similar accounts when Dr. Richardson
    explores some of what Human Rights Watch documented in its
    recent report on China's interference at United Nations human
    rights mechanisms.
        Beyond that, we hope today to take a step back from
    individual accounts regarding China's ``long arm,'' and examine
    the broader issue of the Chinese Communist Party's influence
    around the world. What animates their efforts? What is their
    ultimate aim? What sectors or institutions are most vulnerable
    to this? And what can we do about it?
        Given the scope of this issue, we will only begin to
    scratch the surface here today. When examining these foreign
    influence operations, it is important we understand the
    Communist Party infrastructure that exists in support of this
    endeavor.
        The United Front Work Department is one of the Party
    agencies in charge of influence operations at home and abroad.
    The Chinese President elevated this entity's status in 2014,
    calling their work the ``magic weapon'' for the ``Chinese
    people's great rejuvenation.'' The UFWD is charged with
    promoting a positive view of China abroad and exporting the
    purported benefits of this authoritarian model.
        United Front officials and their agents, often operating
    under diplomatic cover as members of the Ministry of Foreign
    Affairs, develop relationships with politicians at the state,
    local and Federal level, and other high-profile or up-and-
    coming foreign and overseas Chinese individuals to--in the
    words of Wilson Center Global Fellow Anne-Marie Brady--
    ``influence, subvert, and if necessary, bypass the policies of
    their governments and promote the interests of the CCP
    globally.''
        A key element in this long-arm effort has focused on
    information technology and internet governance or sovereignty,
    asserting national control of the internet and social media
    platforms not only in recent domestic cyber legislation and
    development plans, but also at international gatherings.
        So we look forward to Ms. Kalathil's testimony, which will
    further explore this important dimension of the Chinese
    government's efforts.
        China has developed tools to surveil social media and
    mobile phone texting platforms and to disrupt overseas websites
    that contain content the government finds politically
    sensitive. Earlier this year it was reported that real-time
    censorship of instant messaging platforms is now taking place.
    Private group chats are censored without users' knowledge.
        As it relates to China's long arm, the University of
    Toronto's Citizen Lab, a human rights and information
    technology research center, reported in mid-January of this
    year on Chinese government censors' work to prevent Tibetans
    inside and outside of China from discussing the Dalai Lama's
    major religious teachings in India in January 2017.
        The Chinese government is also clearly targeting academia.
    The Party deems historical analysis and interpretation that do
    not hew to the Party's ideological and official story as
    dangerous and threatening to its legitimacy.
        Recent reports of the censorship of international scholarly
    journals illustrate the Chinese government's direct requests to
    censor international academic content, something which
    Professor Tiffert will address.
        Related to this is the proliferation of Confucius
    Institutes, and with them insidious curbs on academic freedom.
    These are a major concern, an area which CECC cochairman, our
    cochairman here, Congressman Smith, has been sounding the alarm
    on for some time.
        Chinese foreign investment and development, which is slated
    to reach record levels with the Belt and Road Initiative, is
    accompanied by a robust political agenda aimed in part at
    shaping new global norms on development, trade and even human
    rights.
        There is much more that has been publicly reported in just
    the last few months, and even more that will likely never be
    known. The academic whose scholarly paper provides background
    on the banned Chinese Democratic Party or other politically
    sensitive issues refused a visa to conduct research in China,
    or the Hollywood studio that has to shelve film scripts with a
    storyline involving China's abuse of the Tibetan people, the
    Washington think tank that puts out policy papers critical of
    legislative initiatives that would negatively impact the
    Chinese government, all the while never revealing their
    financial ties with senior Chinese officials, or the American
    internet company willing to censor content globally in order to
    obtain access to the Chinese market.
        There are endless scenarios. Some, I think, have happened,
    some are happening, and some will continue to happen. And it
    relates directly to Chinese foreign influence operations in
    both their scope and in their reach.
        There is an important growing body of research on this
    topic.
        So without objection, we will keep the hearing record open
    for 48 hours to submit some additional relevant materials in
    that regard, including the executive summary of an important
    report by the National Endowment for Democracy, ``Sharp Power:
    Rising Authoritarian Influence,'' which outlines in part
    China's influence operations in young democracies including two
    of them in our own hemisphere in Latin America.
        [The executive summary/introduction to the report appears
    in the appendix.]
        Chairman Rubio. Each year, the Commission releases an
    Annual Report which painstakingly documents human rights and
    rule of law developments in China. China's Great Firewall,
    rights violations in ethnic minority regions, harassment of
    rights defenders and lawyers, suppression of free speech,
    onerous restrictions on civil society, these are the shameful
    markings of an authoritarian, one-party state.
        But to the extent that the same authoritarian impulses
    animate the Chinese government's efforts abroad, it directly
    threatens our most deeply held values and our national
    interests.
        Chinese leaders are engaged in the long game and it is
    something that policymakers in the United States, and with our
    like-minded allies, must take seriously.
        Congressman Smith is not here in attendance. He is in the
    middle of a hearing in the House but will be with us shortly.
        I also welcome Senator King. Do you wish to say anything
    for the record at the opening? If not, then we are going to
    welcome our witnesses.
        I guess we will begin with you, Ms. Kalathil, and just work
    down the row. I thank you, and I apologize again for our late
    start. But as I said, it is 11:00 and it feels like it is 5:00.
        [Laughter.]
        Chairman Rubio. Thank you for being here, all of you.
        [The prepared statement of Senator Rubio appears in the
    appendix.]

     STATEMENT OF SHANTHI KALATHIL, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL FORUM
        FOR DEMOCRATIC STUDIES, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

        Ms. Kalathil. Great. Thank you, Chairman Rubio and Senator
    King.
        It is a great opportunity to speak to this important topic
    alongside such expert colleagues.
        Today I will address China's outwardly directed efforts to
    shape expression and communication globally and the negative
    implications this poses for democracies.
        Consider, to begin with, a metaphor sometimes invoked to
    explain China's domestic approach to the internet, that of the
    walled garden. The garden is not devoid of color. Indeed,
    certain flowers are cultivated and allowed to bloom profusely,
    while those plants deemed weeds are yanked out by the root. In
    this way is the space pruned to fit the preferences of the
    master gardener.
        While metaphors are always imperfect, this one does convey
    important ideas about how the CCP approaches China's
    information, media and technology sector. These ideas also have
    relevance for its international approach. I will just briefly
    touch on three key aspects here.
        First, the technology. The so-called ``Great Firewall'' is
    dependent on an increasingly advanced system of not just
    censorship but comprehensive surveillance. It is estimated that
    there are 170 million CCTV cameras in place, many now enhanced
    with facial recognition technology, and 400 million new cameras
    planned in the next three years.
        The Wall Street Journal reported last week on people
    detained for stray comments made on private chats on the WeChat
    messaging platform. Government authorities can now identify
    citizens on the street through facial recognition, monitor all
    online behavior, and identify potential or even future
    dissenters and troublemakers.
        Second, it is not only about the technology. Beijing relies
    on individuals, corporations and institutions for not just
    censorship and self-censorship but the proactive shaping of
    norms, narratives and attitudes.
        Underpinning all of this activity is the third aspect,
    Beijing's core economic bargain, which consists of preferential
    treatment and implicit prosperity for those who respect
    Beijing's so-called ``red lines,'' and punishment for those who
    do not. And while Chinese internet and technology companies
    have sometimes a not straightforward relationship with the
    Party, they certainly understand this bargain.
        This combination of aspects results in a system that
    curtails freedom, suppresses dissent, and manages public
    opinion, reliant not on any individual element but on a
    principle of redundancy built into every layer.
        Why is this domestic approach relevant to our topic today?
    Because it is becoming evident that the CCP, under Xi Jinping,
    is intent on encompassing the rest of the world within its
    walled garden.
        This isn't to say that China seeks to control every facet
    of communication or that it wants to impose its exact model of
    authoritarian governance everywhere. But it is increasingly
    true that Beijing's technology ambitions, combined with its
    attempts to determine on a global scale the parameters of
    acceptable speech and opinion with respect to China, pose clear
    threats to freedom of expression and democratic discourse
    outside its borders.
        So how does the Chinese government apply its gardening
    techniques internationally? First, while it cannot control the
    infrastructure and technology of the global internet, Chinese
    companies are actively building out key telecommunications
    infrastructure in developing countries, raising questions about
    security and dissemination of censorship capabilities.
        And if China succeeds in dominating the emerging global
    market for data-enabled objects--also known as the Internet of
    Things--its approach to embedded surveillance may become the
    norm in places with weak individual privacy protections.
        Meanwhile, the same Chinese tech giants mentioned in that
    Wall Street Journal story are taking stakes in the firms that
    provide key global apps and services. Just last Friday, it was
    reported that WeChat's parent company, Tencent, and Spotify had
    taken minority stakes in each other. This follows earlier
    Tencent acquisitions of minority stakes in Snap, the parent
    company of Snapchat, and Tesla.
        Artificial intelligence companies such as iFlyTek pioneer
    the surveillance aims of the government through the use of big
    data and weak Chinese privacy standards, while also entering
    into deals with industry leaders such as Volkswagen and others.
        It is reasonable to ask whether Chinese firms with global
    ambitions plan to follow the same explicit and/or unspoken
    Party dictates with respect to data-gathering, surveillance,
    and policing of ``sensitive'' communication abroad as they do
    at home.
        These technological advances also dovetail with Beijing's
    efforts to shape the internet and other future technologies
    through key internet governance bodies and discussions, as
    Chairman Rubio mentioned. The Chinese government's initially
    derided World Internet Conference in Wuzhen succeeded this year
    in attracting high-level Silicon Valley participation,
    including Apple CEO Tim Cook. Importantly, it established the
    optic that the world's leading technology firms have blessed
    China's approach to the internet.
        I will briefly touch on some of these other aspects, the
    second of which is that it is never only about the technology.
    The Chinese government has spent tens of billions of dollars to
    shape norms, narratives and attitudes in other countries,
    relying on the cultivation of relationships with individuals,
    educational and cultural institutions, and centers of policy
    influence.
        This is detailed in our new report on sharp power.
        Finally, underlying all of this is China's carrot-and-stick
    contract with the rest of the world. The global walled garden
    approach would not be possible were governments, universities,
    publishers, Hollywood, technology and other companies not roped
    into this implicit and sometimes explicit bargain.
        Therefore, it is both timely and necessary for democratic
    governments and civil society to be proactive in asserting why
    norms such as transparency, accountability, and pluralism are
    critical to their interests.
        I will reserve the rest of my suggestions on that front for
    the Q and A.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Rubio. Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Kalathil appears in the
    appendix.]
        Chairman Rubio. Dr. Tiffert, are you prepared? I think you
    are going to go next because he is closer to his PowerPoint.
    Thank you for being here.

      STATEMENT OF GLENN TIFFERT, Ph.D., VISITING FELLOW, HOOVER
                    INSTITUTION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

        Mr. Tiffert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished
    members of the Commission.
        I am very pleased to be invited to speak at today's
    hearing. I have long followed the Commission and the work that
    it does.
        In recent years, technology has supercharged the dark art
    of agitprop--that combination of political agitation and
    propaganda Russian revolutionaries gave to the world more than
    a century ago.
        While attention now centers on how its devotees have
    exploited social media to sow mistrust, intimidate, provoke and
    polarize, for China such chicanery is but one facet of a much
    more ambitious program.
        The Chinese Communist Party is leveraging its economic
    muscle and the technologies of the information age to pursue a
    distinctively Leninist path to soft power. It depicts public
    opinion as a battlefield upon which a highly disciplined
    political struggle must be waged and won.
        Inspired by Mao's call to use the past to serve the present
    and to make foreigners serve China, the CCP is furthermore
    quietly exporting its domestic censorship regime abroad,
    enlisting observers everywhere, often without their knowledge
    or consent in an alarming effort to sanitize the historical
    record and globalize its own competing narratives.
        Its timing is impeccable. Economic and technological
    disruptions to our information ecosystem are eroding our
    capacity to detect, much less combat, this information war.
        Motivated by thrift and efficiency, many universities, in
    particular, are shedding old volumes and outsourcing growing
    parts of their collections to online providers, trusting these
    providers to provide full replacement value and to guarantee
    the integrity of their products. Much can go wrong with that
    bargain, particularly since many of these providers are market-
    driven ventures subject to commercial pressures. They may
    adhere to different values, priorities, and standards of
    stewardship than traditional libraries and may be accountable
    to different constituencies.
        Furthermore, things can go spectacularly wrong when they
    confront the demands of a mercurial censorship regime and the
    authoritarian government behind it, as with the PRC.
        The providers who control those servers can silently alter
    our knowledge base without ever leaving their back offices,
    making one nondestructive edit after another, each propagating
    nearly instantaneously around the world.
        For censors, the possibilities are mouthwatering. Digital
    databases offer them dynamic fine-grained mastery over memory
    and identity. And in the case of China, they are capitalizing
    on this to engineer a pliable version of the past that can be
    tuned algorithmically to always serve the Party's present.
        As George Orwell once wrote, ``Who controls the past
    controls the future. Who controls the present controls the
    past.'' Consider, for instance, the dominant academic law
    journals published in the Mao-era PRC, which document the
    emergence of China's post-1949 legal system and the often
    savage debates that seized it. The online editions of these
    journals have been redacted in ways that distort the historical
    record but are largely invisible to the end user. The
    consequences are unsettling. The more faithful foreign scholars
    are to this adulterated source base and the sanitized reality
    it projects, the more they may be unwittingly serving China by
    promoting the agendas of the censors.
        Now what does this look like? I offer to you the first
    slide, an example of the table of contents from a leading
    Chinese law journal from the 1950s. On the left is the original
    scan of the original paper edition issued in the 1950s. To the
    right is the actual table of contents presented online.
        Now I've put red arrows to indicate the articles that are
    simply invisible. They're gone. They're missing from the online
    edition. This represents 30 of the journal's 72 pages,
    including the first 9 lead articles. They've vanished, been
    erased from the historical record.
        Using information technology, the Chinese government and
    its censors are sculpting this historical record in highly
    targeted ways, trimming away the inconvenient bits to produce
    exactly the shape they want.
        The stakes today are real. Consider, for example, Yang
    Zhaolong, one of the most brilliant legal minds of his
    generation. In the early Mao era, Yang and quite a few like him
    forcefully promoted a raft of concepts connected to the rule of
    law. But they paid a terrible price for making those arguments.
    Yang himself was branded a counterrevolutionary and spent 12
    years in prison.
        This presents very awkward background history for a regime
    that has, since, not only written the rule of law into its
    constitution, but also presents its policy of socialist rule of
    law with Chinese characteristics as a culmination of an
    originalist vision.
        And in these graphs I present to you the red lines indicate
    the historical record that has been erased from every issue of
    these journals over a period of several years. They have
    essentially eliminated the footprint of these individuals and
    the arguments they made in support of the rule of law
    historically in China.
        Now it's worth noting that the computational techniques I
    employed to analyze this censorship are doubled-edged weapons.
    They can be repurposed to automate and enhance the work of the
    censors.
        Simply by manipulating any of the parameters in my dataset,
    a censor can fabricate bespoke versions of the historical
    record, each exquisitely tuned to the requirements of the
    present. It's a very short hop, indeed, from the technologies
    that already dynamically filter our newsfeeds to the nightmare
    of Orwell's memory hole.
        This is an old-fashioned version of how they used to do
    that. This is a photo of the procession of Mao's funeral. One
    includes the Gang of Four. And then shortly after their arrest,
    the photo was reissued with the Gang of Four erased.
        To be clear, the censorship is directed foremost at
    controlling China's sense of itself. It is tendentiously
    distorting memory and identity. It is prejudicing China's
    possible futures and violating the trust of the people who use
    these sources.
        But insofar as we foreign observers are increasingly
    reliant on these censored sources and online providers, it's
    also enlisting us in the campaign to promote the Party's
    agenda. This is disinformation on a grand scale turbocharged by
    emerging technologies. And I expect that we will see much more
    of it around the world in coming years.
        Thank you very much.
        Chairman Rubio. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Tiffert appears in the
    appendix.]
        Chairman Rubio. Dr. Richardson.

     STATEMENT OF SOPHIE RICHARDSON, Ph.D., CHINA DIRECTOR, HUMAN
                              RIGHTS WATCH

        Ms. Richardson. Thank you, Chairman Rubio and Senator King.
    Many thanks for the timely hearing and for your principled and
    persistent leadership on human rights issues in China. We also
    want to thank you for your strong statement on International
    Human Rights Day and another excellent report.
        In January 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a
    keynote speech at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Although
    world leaders regularly give addresses there, few other
    occasions have seen the UN impose restrictions such as those
    instituted on this occasion.
        Before Xi's arrival, UN officials closed parking lots and
    meeting rooms, and sent home early many of the offices,
    approximately 3,000 staff. The UN also barred nongovernmental
    organizations from attending the speech.
        Just a few months later, in April, security officials at
    the UN headquarters, New York City, ejected from the premises
    Dolkun Isa, an ethnic Uyghur rights activist originally from
    China. Isa, who was accredited as an NGO participant, was
    attending a forum on indigenous issues when UN security
    confronted him and ordered him out of the building. No
    explanation was provided and Human Rights Watch queries to the
    UN spokesperson's office elicited no substantive information
    about the incident.
        The UN plays a crucial role in holding governments to their
    international human rights obligations and helping to protect
    human rights. And as a result, the UN's handling of these
    situations points to larger concerns about the treatment and
    protection of human rights activists critical of China as they
    seek to participate in UN efforts, and about China's attempts
    to thwart UN scrutiny of its own human rights record.
        Those mechanisms are intended to protect the rights of all,
    and they are now among the only means of redress for
    independent activists from the mainland. Taken individually,
    many of China's actions against NGOs might be viewed as an
    annoyance or an irritant. But taken together, they amount to
    what appears to be a systematic attempt to subvert the ability
    of the UN human rights system to confront abuses in China and
    beyond.
        As a UN member state and party to several human rights
    treaties, China engages with the UN human rights system. It is
    a member of the Human Rights Council, participates in reviews
    of its treaty compliance and universal periodic review process,
    and allows some, but not all, UN independent human rights
    experts to visit China.
        But even as it engages with those institutions, China has
    worked consistently and often aggressively to silence criticism
    of its human rights record before UN bodies, and has taken
    actions aimed at weakening some of the central mechanisms
    available there, which in turn poses a longer-term challenge to
    the integrity of the UN human rights system as a whole.
        In a September 2017 report, we detailed how Chinese
    officials have harassed activists, primarily those from China,
    by photographing and filming them on UN premises in violation
    of UN rules, and by restricting their travel to Geneva.
        Members of this commission need no reminding about the case
    of Cao Shunli.
        China has also used its membership on the UN's Economic and
    Social Council's NGO Committee to block NGOs critical of China
    from being granted UN accreditation, and it has sought to
    blacklist accredited activists.
        Behind the scenes, Chinese diplomats, in violation of UN
    rules, have contacted UN staff and experts on treaty bodies and
    special procedures, including behavior that has, at times,
    amounted to harassment and intimidation.
        China has also repeatedly sought to block or weaken UN
    resolutions on civil society, human rights defenders, and
    peaceful protests, including when they do not directly concern
    policy and practice in China.
        It has pushed back against efforts to strengthen some of
    the key mechanisms, notably, country-specific resolutions on
    grave situations like North Korea and Syria, and efforts to
    strengthen treaty-body reviews.
        During UN peacekeeping budget consultations earlier this
    year, China sought to slash funding for UN human rights
    officers who play a vital role in monitoring alleged human
    rights abuses in some of the world's most dangerous places.
        Since our report was released, Chinese officials in two
    separate UN sessions called out UN experts for raising
    individual cases from China, suggesting that doing so was a
    violation of their mandates.
        In September, China tied Saudi Arabia for the most mentions
    in an important UN report on reprisals by governments against
    activists who engage with UN human rights mechanisms.
        Recent Chinese efforts to spearhead UN initiatives such as
    presidential statements and resolutions at the Human Rights
    Council foreshadow a more active prominent role for China and
    give rise to concern about ways it will exercise its power.
        As a powerful P5 member of the UN Security Council, China
    has a particular weight on the Human Rights Council. It has
    played an influential role together with other members of self-
    proclaimed like-minded groups, many of whom have poor human
    rights records.
        China is not alone in its obstructionist tactics, but it
    should not become a powerful role model for others that hope to
    hobble UN human rights bodies.
        Many of China's actions are directly at cross purposes with
    UN efforts to improve its human rights system. And while UN
    officials have at times pushed back against improper Chinese
    pressure or steadfastly ignored it, in other instances they
    have capitulated or soft pedaled their concerns, presumably to
    avoid confrontation with China.
        Unless the UN and concerned governments can halt China's
    encroachments, the UN's ability to help protect rights around
    the globe is at risk, not only in Geneva.
        We have several recommendations for you, but I just want to
    highlight three very quickly.
        The first is that China's next review under the universal
    periodic review process is in 2018. We urge that the commission
    consider a letter to the Chinese Ambassador here spelling out
    the ways in which independent Chinese civil society should be
    able to participate in that process.
        In the context of U.S. support to UN Secretary Guterres's
    Reform Plan, we urge the UN to adopt the recommendations about
    China articulated in our report. But we also urge that Guterres
    himself call out China when it violates UN rules and urge
    Guterres to ensure that the UN is calling out China for its
    human rights violations.
        There are 24 different UN agencies in the mainland. Very
    few of them are willing to speak about human rights at all.
        Last, but not least, I think there is ample scope for this
    commission, for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and for
    the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to conduct vigorous
    research and public discussions into Chinese influence in the
    U.S., whether that is about the integrity of electoral systems,
    whether it is about academic freedom, whether it is about
    domestic media practices. I think all of these issues require
    further scrutiny.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Rubio. Thank you all for being here.
        Let me turn to Senator King. You were here early--if you
    have some questions.
        Senator King. I am assuming we can sort of go back and
    forth.
        Chairman Rubio. Yes. It's not very crowded right now.
        Senator King. I'm not sure who to address this to. I have a
    technical question.
        We all know that the Chinese censor the internet. How do
    they do it physically? Do they own the pipes? How does that
    censorship occur? Are they the owners of the distribution
    system?
        Dr. Tiffert.
        Mr. Tiffert. There are a handful of gateways that sit
    between the lines that enter China and the domestic Chinese
    internet. It is through those gateways that enter the country
    in various places, interconnects where they have very large
    server farms that are performing real-time analysis of the data
    going back and forth, filtering it, checking by protocols, by
    content. They lead the world in this.
        Senator King. But they are also censoring their own people.
        Mr. Tiffert. They are. That's right. And they do that at
    the level----
        Senator King. Through the control of the pipes?
        Mr. Tiffert. Yes. They do that at the level of the
    individual ISPs, the providers domestically who will filter
    data. And they also do that through the firms that deliver
    services who are required to adhere and enforce Party policy.
        For example, news sites, entertainment sites are required
    to implement any Party directives that come down to erase
    coverage of a particular topic or not to cover it at all.
        Senator King. Well, I cannot help but note that tomorrow
    our FCC is about to make a disastrous decision to essentially
    turn the control of the internet over to the owners of the
    pipes. It seems to me that makes it easier to censor and to
    control because--and what if a Chinese company took a
    significant ownership share in one of our large
    telecommunication companies?
        This decision that is being made tomorrow is terrible on a
    lot of levels. But it seems to me it makes it easier to censor
    the internet because you are getting the control away from the
    public, the FCC, the people--to the people who own the
    connections.
        Ms. Richardson. I will just add two quick points.
        I agree entirely with what Professor Tiffert has just said.
    Whenever we have done research on this topic, we have also
    found that companies, both Chinese and foreign ones, have
    voluntarily censored topics that they thought were problematic
    before they had even actually been asked to do so by any
    Chinese government authority.
        So we have long urged that companies should have to answer
    questions about whether they were actually asked to do these
    things, whether they were forced to comply with some real or
    perceived Chinese law, or whether they had done it voluntarily.
        Flip it around, and if you look at some of the Chinese
    companies that are now conducting business overseas, for
    example, Alipay. It is now offering services in Japan, not yet
    here, I think.
        But I think there are real questions to be asked about what
    happens when you click that ``accept the terms of service'' box
    because we know that Alipay and Alibaba aggregate data and hand
    it over to Chinese security forces. And if you are a person
    standing outside China, but you are using Alibaba services,
    does that mean that your information, too, is going back to the
    Ministry of Public Security?
        Senator King. It worries me that--one of the reasons it's
    so hard to censor our internet is it is so chaotic and
    decentralized. And by flipping that over, which we think is
    likely to happen tomorrow in one of the most wrongheaded
    decisions I have ever encountered, we are making it easier to
    have those kinds of controls.
        Any evidence of Chinese direct intervention or intention to
    intervene directly in our electoral process, a la the Russians?
        Everybody is shaking your heads. The record won't show head
    shakes.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Tiffert. I am not sure that there is any evidence that
    demonstrates that yet. Though it is something that people
    should be paying attention to.
        Senator King. Aren't there some recent incidents in
    Australia of direct intervention in the electoral process?
        Mr. Tiffert. Yes. And there's great concern in New Zealand
    as well.
        Senator King. Is there any reason to think it could not
    happen here?
        Mr. Tiffert. It's certainly a possibility.
        Chairman Rubio. Could I interject?
        This is an important point. So when you answer, no, I think
    what you are answering--and if I am wrong, please correct me. I
    don't want anybody to say that I am leading you in your answer
    because I want this to be--I want your views on this to be
    accurately reflected.
        The question was, how does it compare to Russian
    interference? And I think the answer you've given is there is
    no evidence that they're posting stuff on Twitter or Facebook
    for purposes of dividing the American people against each
    other.
        On the other hand, Senator King asked about Australia. What
    we have seen around the world--and you will correct me if I am
    wrong--is an effort to identify and nurture office holders,
    think tanks, opinion makers, journalists, academia, and
    encourage them both to enter in public service and even to
    rise.
        We've seen open source reports, for example, of outreach to
    local and state elected officials, perhaps anticipating that
    one day they will hold federal office. Or we've seen reports of
    implied threats to cut off access to the Chinese market for
    companies based in certain states unless those states'
    authorities are cooperative or make statements friendly towards
    their cause.
        So I would argue that is influence. I think it's different.
    I think it's softer, more subtle, more long term, but
    nevertheless, it reflects what we saw in Australia where a
    member of Parliament resigned after there were accusations made
    that not only had he tipped off a Chinese national of some
    alleged intelligence operation being conducted against him, but
    that he perhaps allegedly had received cash from a wealthy
    Chinese national, which he had used to pay off personal debts.
        Again, no evidence that that has occurred in the United
    States. But that level of influence--trying to play in the
    politics and nurture a view and individuals who hold views
    friendly to the narrative they're trying to put out. That you
    have seen evidence of.
        Mr. Tiffert. Absolutely. And I think in one sense what
    distinguishes the Chinese efforts to wield influence in the
    United States is that they are spending a great deal more money
    to do that. They have commercial advantages, so they're able
    through, for example, Confucius Institutes, to promote a
    particular view of China and to close out discussion of certain
    topics on campus. They are able to donate money to particular
    causes.
        Much of this is legal activity. They are able simply to
    wield influence because they can write checks. That is
    something that we didn't face as a country during the Cold War
    with the Soviet Union. Their pockets were not as deep.
        China is not necessarily appealing to hearts and minds.
    It's appealing to wallets.
        Ms. Kalathil. I would also add that in our recent report on
    sharp power, we explicitly looked at Chinese influence in young
    democracies and vulnerable democracies and found that through a
    number of different avenues, including through investment in
    the media, including through massive investment in people-to-
    people exchanges, the Chinese government is really promoting a
    certain narrative. And that narrative, of course, then enables
    it to achieve its own interests in various ways.
        So while it may be hard to point a finger at specific
    election-related issues or specific political meddling at the
    moment, there's no doubt that there are massive and extreme
    efforts to exert influence through a number of things that
    otherwise would have been seen as soft power, perhaps through a
    different lens.
        But when you consider that the aim of buying up media
    outlets, particularly Chinese language media outlets, but not
    limited to that, is really to shape a narrative and to
    constrain discourse about China in particular, rather than to
    open the discourse and to enable many different critical
    perspectives. And that also is a very long-term and pernicious
    form of influence.
        Senator King. This is really a clash of values in terms of
    open communication, free speech, and those kinds of things. It
    seems to me that there is a continuum.
        We have people-to-people programs. We bring students from
    other parts of the world here. We have various information
    about our country that has a--to use your term--a positive
    narrative. But at some point, the question is, where does
    puffery stop and--I don't know what the right word might be,
    but some kind of subversion begin?
        Let me ask a question. I've had recent information--a large
    number of Chinese students in America, making great
    contributions to our schools. I've known many of them, in
    graduate schools, undergraduate schools. Is there any evidence
    that the Chinese government is recruiting some of those
    students as agents--either gathering intelligence or otherwise
    malign activities in our country?
        Again, I see a lot of nods. You've got to speak up.
        Ms. Richardson. Yes, but I could take that and answer the
    last one a little bit.
        We have been doing some research for a couple of years on
    threats to academic freedom from the Chinese government outside
    China. And a piece of that has involved looking at the
    realities for students and scholars who are originally from the
    mainland on campuses in the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere.
        Certainly--it is not a new pathology that Chinese
    government officials want to know what those students and
    scholars are saying in classrooms. One does not have to have a
    perfect year-on-year dataset to say that it has gotten worse,
    but it's certainly a sufficiently real dynamic for people.
        For example, we have a graduate student who told us about
    something that he discussed in a closed seminar at a university
    here. Two days later, his parents got visited by the Ministry
    of Public Security in China asking why their kid had brought up
    these touchy topics that were embarrassing to China in a
    classroom in the U.S. So I think that surveillance is real.
        If I could just back up slightly to the previous question--
    I think there are a lot worse uses of resources than to try to
    replicate Professor Anne-Marie Brady's work with respect to the
    U.S. I think part of what's most extraordinary--this is the
    research that was done on New Zealand--about that paper is that
    it was all open source material, and nobody came out looking
    good.
        And it really did, I think, Senator King, get to the issue
    that you are talking about. That it's fine to have
    relationships, but at what point does that cross the line into
    trying to achieve a certain kind of political outcome?
        And I think that would not be hard to do. I think it's
    essential. You could certainly look at which members of
    Congress, for example, had their travel sponsored by different
    Chinese government entities, many of which, of course, don't
    necessarily have names that immediately convey that they are
    government entities.
        But I think it was reported by The Globe and Mail last week
    that the current Canadian Ambassador, who is fairly new in
    Beijing, had received the largest amount of money of any
    sitting MP in the previous government from Chinese government
    agencies to underwrite travel to China.
        I think these are hard questions that need to get asked
    about who is participating and what--and under what auspices.
    Forgive me if this is a slightly uncomfortable thing to say,
    but I think there are questions also to be asked about why
    there was a representative of the Republican National Committee
    at a meeting of political parties sponsored by the Chinese
    Communist Party in Beijing last week.
        I don't know. I have asked if somebody from the Democratic
    National Committee was there too, but there were
    representatives of the democratic political parties from all
    over the world. Again, not necessarily illegal, but I think it
    goes to legitimizing a political party that's anything but
    democratic.
        Senator King. Well, as Senator Rubio and I both know,
    serving on the Intelligence Committee, it's a short jump from
    supporting a candidate to trying to take out a candidate you
    don't like. And that is--of course, we have seen the Russians
    doing that around the world.
        And the question is--we are not there yet. Is that a
    likelihood? Is that a possibility? I think that is a reasonable
    concern.
        What's going on here--I call it geopolitical jujitsu, where
    you are using your opponent's strengths as also their
    weaknesses. Our strength is our openness, our free society, our
    First Amendment, our protected expression. And that's being
    used by our adversaries to undermine our system. It's kind of
    an ironic turn, using our own values against us.
        That's what's concerning to me because any country in the
    world could look at what the Russians did here in 2016, and
    say, wow, that worked. It was pretty cheap. And here's another
    avenue for influence.
        Chairman Rubio. Just to drill down on that point. There are
    different ways of influencing. There is the more frontal
    traditional approach that we have seen evidence of in 2016. And
    that involves the posting and the driving of certain
    information in order to exploit the existing divisions within a
    society in and of itself.
        And I have opined publicly that that's my view. That more
    than anything else, this was designed to create chaos within
    the political order in the United States and sow instability
    and ensure that the next president, whoever that was, inherited
    societal conflict and a political mess.
        What you are describing is different. It is changing the
    environment in which that debate is occurring, particularly as
    it relates to a particular country's worldview.
        And you all keep going back--and I think Dr. Tiffert, you
    talked about that in your opening statement. You described
    efforts to project a ``China model'' globally as an alternative
    to the liberal order which, for decades--since the end of World
    War II--was anchored by the United States.
        So I would ask all of you, if you can concisely, what is
    the narrative? What is this model? What is the message that
    they are pushing? In essence, what do they want us to accept as
    conventional wisdom about China and its role in the world and
    international norms in 10, 15, 20 years? What are they asking
    people to buy into?
        Ms. Kalathil. Well, I would briefly say that in this
    instance, it is instructive to look at the rhetoric surrounding
    China's Belt and Road Initiative. The key phrase that is
    attached to that initiative is ``community of common destiny.''
        I think it's notable that you talked about how
    authoritarian regimes are trying to use democracies' openness
    against them. They're also subverting the rhetoric of
    democracy. They are explicitly using terms like ``openness''
    and ``community'' and terms that seem to imply a sort of
    networked model of the world that is not unlike that pushed by
    the liberal international order over the last many years.
        The difference is that there is also, underlying all of
    this, a quite explicit message of noninterference and
    sovereignty. And that, of course, in China's case, fits
    directly into its worldview and how it would like other
    countries to treat it. And you see this also in its approach to
    internet governance. You see it in many of its different
    initiatives.
        But it's notable that--I would say China is not trying to
    say, be just like us. It is actually trying to use this very
    inclusive language to paint a picture that seems like a
    reasonable alternative to the liberal international order, one
    that appeals to small states, to countries that feel
    vulnerable, to those that feel that they might be safer or have
    more of a say in a multipolar world.
        It is this sort of approach that I think is actually new
    and more sophisticated and one that we actually have to think
    deeply about how to address.
        Ms. Richardson. Good morning, Mr. Smith.
        It's hard to improve on that.
        I will just give you one quick example. Last weekend the
    Chinese ministry for foreign affairs hosted a south-south
    cooperation on human rights gathering.
        The concluding document from that contained quite a bit of
    language that at first blush sounds sort of like UN language
    about human rights. It actually mentioned ``universality,''
    somewhat disingenuously, but at least the word was there.
        But it, like some of the Chinese government's other
    efforts, for example, in UN resolutions, again, sort of pushed
    the idea of sovereignty or national conditions, or with
    Chinese, or swap in another country's name, characteristics.
    Right? That always creates the opportunity for a state to opt
    out of or not have to yield to international standards.
        I think China is really seeking active partnership and
    global support for that idea, and at the same time, pointing to
    the U.S., and pointing to Brexit, and saying I think much more
    clearly and aggressively that electoral democracy doesn't work.
    It's a failure and that their system is superior.
        Mr. Tiffert. I would add to those excellent points also
    that China is doing a very good job of keeping its so-called
    ``alternative China model'' to the liberal international order
    deliberately vague so that different regimes can read into it
    what they choose to, simply as an alternative to what they
    might regard as having to respond to demands from western
    donors and western governments about things like human rights,
    transparency, reducing corruption, environmental protection,
    and other factors.
        For them it's a direct appeal to the elites that might be
    governing these already authoritarian or marginally democratic
    regimes. It works in their self-interest.
        To the extent that China is willing to bankroll economic
    development without the conditions attached that organizations
    like the World Bank might attach, then it's win-win for China
    and for the elites who govern these other countries.
        Chairman Rubio. And Congressman Smith has joined us. I am
    going to recognize him in a moment while he gets organized
    because I want to finish these thoughts and this is really at
    the core of what this hearing is about.
        A couple of things you have touched on. The first thing,
    you said it earlier in response to Senator King, is we--let me
    back up and say that we often are guilty of ascribing our
    domestic political attributes to foreign actors, right? Or
    foreign nations, other nations. We think to ourselves, this is
    what it means here, so this is what it must mean over there.
        So when the United States, whether it's McDonald's or Coca
    Cola, or Apple, or Facebook, go to another country, they are
    not there at the behest of the United States Government. They
    aren't even under the control of the United States Government.
        And oftentimes in academia, perhaps more often than not in
    many cases, they certainly are not under our control. In fact,
    many times they go abroad and are critical of their own country
    and vice versa, which is their right in a free society.
        One of the things we have heard from you today is that when
    you look at the toolbox, the influence toolbox that the Chinese
    Communist Party has in its government, all of these things are
    part of that toolbox. In essence, when you are engaging in
    commercial relationships with a Chinese company, potentially a
    large one, in essence you are not dealing with an independent
    multinational actor. You are dealing with an entity that grew
    large and is capable of operating because they are willing to
    be cooperative and in some cases, act as an agent on behalf of
    whatever it is that is being asked of them.
        And I think that poses threats up and down, from
    technological transfers, the embedding of information and
    technology that could ultimately wind up here in this country
    because somebody is using that equipment for our telecom
    networks, all the way to the information about what you buy on
    a certain website, or the credit card and biographical
    information. And that's a real important distinction.
        The other point that you talked about was kind of buying
    into the noninterference argument. Here is where we have a
    couple of examples of how this effort is bearing fruit in
    different parts of the world.
        We had a vote a couple--I guess back in the summer of this
    year in which Greece blocked a European Union statement at the
    United Nations criticizing China's human rights record. There
    was a lot of, ``What is that all about?''
        And then you looked further and you realized that China's
    COSCO Shipping--the owner of the world's fourth largest
    container fleet--had just taken a 51 percent stake in Greece's
    largest port last year.
        So, again, you tie those two things together, maybe they're
    related and maybe they're not. I believe that they are, but you
    start to see where the political angle of a large Chinese
    company--the economic angle, the economic power of a large
    Chinese conglomerate is able to wield influence over a smaller
    economy and how it votes at international forums.
        Then we have the issue of access to this large market that
    people are dying for. So, again, this is where you come into
    this absurd situation where the World Internet Conference is
    held in China, meant to promote China's vision of cyber
    sovereignty, which all of you have talked about. Basically, the
    governments all over the world should have the right to control
    what appears on the internet in their countries.
        The most confusing part of it all is that Apple CEO Tim
    Cook stood up at that conference and he celebrated China's
    vision of an open internet. He delivered the keynote speech on
    the opening day of that gathering. He wasn't there alone, by
    the way. He was joined by some of the other attendees from
    Google and Cisco.
        But the most ironic part about it is that in a written
    response to questions to our colleagues, Senator Leahy and
    Senator Cruz, back in June, or earlier this year--I don't
    remember the month, maybe it was back in November. Apple
    admitted that it had removed 674 VPN apps from its app store in
    China. These are tools that allow users, of course, to
    circumvent censorship by routing traffic through other
    countries. They said they were complying with local law. Skype
    was also removed from Apple's China store, as was reported by
    the New York Times.
        So, again, here's an example of a company, in my view, so
    desperate to have access to the Chinese marketplace that they
    are willing to follow the laws of that country even if those
    laws run counter to what the company's own standards are
    supposed to be.
        And a good example for the United States and for our
    people, how some of these individuals who like to come here and
    lecture us about free speech and human rights, and domestic
    problems, then go abroad and are fully cooperative on some
    grotesque violation of human rights because there is a lot of
    money to be made, and they don't want to offend their host
    country.
        Then the last thing I would point to before I turn it over
    to Congressman Smith is the story that we all are now aware of,
    of a University of Maryland valedictorian who experienced,
    after her commencement speech where she praised free speech in
    the U.S. as a breath of fresh air, she experienced this sort of
    onslaught of online attacks.
        In your written testimony, Ms. Kalathil, you wrote how the
    Chinese government fabricates about 448 million social media
    comments a year to inject certain narratives. But that is,
    unfortunately, not an isolated case.
        We have a number of others, and these are just a handful.
    An overseas university--this month, for example--this article
    is dated, but at some point a lecturer from Monash University
    in Australia was suspended after a Chinese student complained
    on Weibo of a classroom quiz that appeared to insult Chinese
    officials.
        In 2010, the University of Calgary announced that China's
    education ministry had removed it from the list of accredited
    overseas institutions. That came weeks after that University
    had awarded an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama.
        We saw how the University of California at San Diego
    prompted the local chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars
    Association to threaten ``tough measures to resolutely resist
    the school's unreasonable behavior'' because they had planned a
    speech by the Dalai Lama.
        So you start to see these are all evidence of the different
    tools in that toolbox, which leads me to my final question for
    all of you, and that is--well, my final question here because
    Congressman Smith has questions for you, too.
        Obviously, you are outspoken on this cause. All of you have
    done a significant amount of work. We have read some of the
    efforts that have been used to intimidate or otherwise.
        Are any of you willing to share any experiences you have
    had based on your work, whether it is efforts to discredit it,
    whether it is efforts to influence people against your opinion,
    or beyond? What have you experienced, if anything? Maybe you've
    experienced nothing. But what have you experienced as a result
    of the work you have done on this topic, and in particular,
    appearing at this hearing today?
        We often find that our witnesses in these hearings,
    especially if they are Chinese and have family back home, face
    consequences for that. But in your particular cases, have you
    ever faced anything that made you feel as if it was a result of
    your work on this topic?
        Mr. Tiffert. Personally, I have not to date within the
    United States. In China working on the topics that I work on, I
    come under significant pressure, and the informants and people
    that I speak to also do. I think that goes with the territory
    and it is well recognized among people who work on modern China
    and contemporary issues in China.
        I have to say that in the classroom I've not experienced
    any negative activity or any of the personal outrage that we
    have seen at other universities, say in Australia, to my
    teaching. I have been spared that.
        I have found Chinese students to be extremely thoughtful
    and even open-minded about issues that are passionately felt at
    home.
        But there definitely is the danger, and early career
    academics are highly conscious of this, that there is always
    the possibility that a minority might express unhappiness or
    outrage at something that is taught because it is different
    than the way they have been taught it. And that produces
    unwelcome controversy.
        And for faculty, because of the decline of tenure, faculty
    become risk averse. They do not want to cause controversy
    because they are also concerned that their universities may not
    adequately support them in the event that the Chinese Students
    and Scholars Association, or even a smaller group of students,
    take issue with something that happens in the classroom.
        So there is a self-censorship, a chilling of speech that
    occurs as well.
        Ms. Kalathil. Yes. I also have not personally experienced
    that, in particular. But I would concur with Dr. Tiffert's
    views. As I have taught classes, I think some of the Chinese
    students in my class are surprisingly willing to be open about
    their criticisms.
        And it would be, indeed, sad if pressure on them by the
    embassy, which I gather is starting to happen with more
    regularity, would constrain them from expressing their views in
    what is meant to be a free and open setting. That is a trend
    that I think would be quite terrible.
        Ms. Richardson. I can only recall maybe one or two
    conversations over the years, the dozen years I have been at
    Human Rights Watch, in which Chinese government officials said
    anything that might have risen to the level of being
    threatening. But certainly not anything that made me change my
    job.
        For us, the enormous challenge is about how we are able to
    do research and correctly calculating what threats to people
    who talk to us actually are. That has gotten more challenging
    over the years, ensuring the safety of the people that we have
    interviewed in the same way that--you were talking about the
    safety or what happens to people who have come and testified
    before you.
        Chairman Rubio. The Cochairman.

    STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM
     NEW JERSEY; COCHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON
                                 CHINA

        Cochairman Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First
    I want to thank you, again, for calling this hearing.
        I apologize for being late. We had a Foreign Affairs
    Committee meeting with Rex Tillerson behind closed doors that
    went on for almost two hours.
        I chaired it for a while and asked him some questions
    regarding China. It was about the redesign effort to reform the
    State Department's organization and operations, but it was also
    about issues and the interface between reorganization and
    foreign policy goals.
        Again, but I want to thank you, Chairman Rubio, because
    this is a really important hearing and part of a whole series
    of hearings you've put together. So I want to thank you for
    your tremendous leadership.
        I did thank Rex Tillerson for putting China on Tier 3 on
    the TIP Report. It is an egregious violator of trafficking. I
    wrote the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
        If ever there was a country that should have been on it
    every year, especially in recent years, it is China. The
    previous administration refused to do it. I held hearings to
    try to hold them to account for it.
        There was an automatic downgrade at one point, but that
    wasn't because of merit, but because they were on the watch
    list for too long. But this was made--and when you read the
    narrative, it couldn't be more clear that sex trafficking,
    labor trafficking are exploding in China.
        They are missing some 62 million females, girls, because of
    sex-selection abortion which is further driving the demand. And
    nobody likes to talk about that because it's not politically
    correct, but I will talk about it every day of the week. It is
    a heinous crime against gender, against women, and it now has
    another consequence and that is that it drives sex trafficking.
        I did have a hearing yesterday in my subcommittee on human
    rights--Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights, a
    really important hearing, in my opinion. We had two women--and
    I would appreciate your thoughts on this--who escaped from
    North Korea into China. They were trafficked. They made it back
    into North Korea and told how they were beaten, how they were
    just terribly mistreated, which violates the Refugee
    Convention, as you know so well, that China has ratified.
        There have been no consequences over the years for this
    gross violation of refoulement--I asked Rex Tillerson about
    that, and he is taking that back. I said, we need to raise it.
        We know that our Nikki Haley does raise this issue, but it
    needs to be a full court press in my humble opinion, to say
    China violates the refugee convention with impunity and it's
    time to end that. There needs to be a sanction. There needs to
    be a, certainly, lifting of voices.
        The Periodic Review comes up for China in November, I
    believe it is, of next year. But the NGO submissions begin in
    the spring. This commission ought to have a very strong
    statement--and it will, I am sure, under Mr. Rubio's
    leadership--to really make it clear that it's about time China
    was held to account. They have had the long reach of the
    Chinese dictatorship at the UN for far too long. They get a
    slap on the wrist, if that, by the Human Rights Council. And,
    obviously, China runs interference time and time again.
        So if you could maybe speak to the issue of these women,
    mostly, men too, but women who are trafficked, but then they
    are sent back in violation of that refugee convention.
        One other thing that was raised by Rex Tillerson, maybe I
    did say this, but I don't think I did. He talked about
    consolidating the dialogues--we have about two dozen dialogues
    with China at midlevel--to four major ones. When he outlined
    what they were, missing was a human rights dialogue. So I asked
    him about it, and he said that human rights would be integrated
    into the other dialogues.
        And I said, I appreciate that. We need a whole-of-
    government approach. But frankly, this ought to be on its own.
    Would you have a fifth dialogue at the highest levels on human
    rights so they know without any ambiguity the United States
    believes in the fundamental freedoms and human rights that we
    have enshrined in our Bill of Rights, and Universal Declaration
    of Human Rights, and so on and so forth?
        You might want to speak to that because I think that's
    important.
        On the World Internet Conference, I want to associate
    myself with the Chairman's remarks. In 2006, I began a series
    of hearings. The first one was with Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco,
    and Google. And I had all of the top people raise their hands
    and we swore them in, and for eight hours asked questions as to
    why they were enabling the censorship, why they were part of
    the apparatus of repression, and their answers were awful.
        And then when you see Tim Cook talking about, as Mr. Rubio
    said, the common future, it's an ominous continuing down that
    path of allowing this repression, this surveillance, this
    misuse of the internet by the Chinese dictatorship to repress
    its own people. You might want to speak to that.
        And then, finally, on the Confucius Institutes, we have had
    a number of hearings on this commission as well as in my
    subcommittee on the whole issue of the Confucius Institutes as
    a way--we call it academic malware--where there is an all-out
    attempt to, again, influence academia, students, Chinese
    students, but also American students, in a way that would give
    the Party line--and we have them in New Jersey. They're all
    over the country.
        Your thoughts on these Confucius Institutes. We all know
    that heads of colleges and universities are ever in search of
    more money and more programming. And if it comes free of
    charge, certainly it's an engraved invitation to say, come to
    our college or university. To me, it's an invitation for
    disinformation.
        So your thoughts on that.
        [The prepared statement of Representative Smith appears in
    the appendix.]
        Ms. Kalathil. Thank you, Cochairman Smith.
        I thought I would address one piece of what you brought up
    and also what Chairman Rubio addressed in the role of U.S. and
    other tech companies going to China and being complicit in
    practices that enable surveillance and censorship.
        One really fascinating development that's really just been
    in the last few years is the inversion of this typical frame.
    You've been holding hearings on this since 2006. We have all
    been very familiar with the behavior of some of the U.S. tech
    companies when they go to environments like China. There have
    been efforts to try to produce more transparency and
    accountability around their efforts there.
        What we are seeing now, however, is, due to the emergence
    of these Chinese internet and technology giants, including new
    artificial intelligence companies, that essential framework has
    been reversed. So that these companies, which have essentially
    been incubated in an environment where they must do what the
    Party says or they will not profit, are now large enough to
    begin investing overseas.
        So it's no longer simply about U.S. companies going to
    China and, perhaps, being complicit in censorship and
    surveillance. It's about what these really large Chinese
    internet companies are going to do as they expand globally, and
    will they bring aspects of the Chinese internet censorship and
    surveillance system with them.
        There are initial indications from research done by Citizen
    Lab, which was mentioned earlier, that at least with one test
    run, it was found that accounts that had been registered to
    WeChat, which is the largest private chat messaging platform,
    as well as mobile commerce, and a host of other things--when
    devices registered within China were brought outside China,
    they still were not able to access certain sites.
        And in addition, certain key words had been censored within
    chats without people knowing about it. There was no
    transparency about this censorship. The researchers were only
    able to determine this because they ran very specific tests on
    it.
        I think this is just the beginning of what could be a
    larger trend and one that we also should keep our eye on, in
    addition to trying to ensure that U.S. companies are not
    complicit in human rights violations.
        Thank you.
        Ms. Richardson. I'll try to tackle North Korea and the
    dialogues.
        Obviously, Human Rights Watch regularly calls out the
    Chinese government for violating the Refugee Convention,
    particularly with respect to North Koreans. I don't think China
    cares at all what we say about that.
        In a way, honestly, our bigger concern at the moment,
    particularly as, again, one doesn't have the perfect dataset
    from one year to the next, but we have tracked more cases of
    forced returns in the past year than in previous years.
        One of the upsides of technology is that it has given us
    much greater visibility into some of the cases of North Koreans
    in China who desperately need assistance.
        And at a time when the United Nations High Commissioner for
    Refugees can't/won't exercise its protection mandate--it has
    the mandate to go out and help those people. And it is
    effectively prevented from doing that. It is a much larger
    problem in Geneva than what is happening in the office in
    Beijing.
        But I think unless and until that problem for UNHCR can be
    fixed, the U.S. and other like-minded governments should come
    together to think about how to actually provide some protection
    to those people.
        Often when we raise that issue, actually ironically, one of
    the answers we get back is that nobody wants to encourage the
    further trafficking of North Koreans through China, as if
    assisting these people would somehow increase traffickers'
    business.
        In our standards, that's a second-order problem. You save
    people first. You keep them from being sent back to North
    Korea. That's the first-line obligation. And we need to see
    more governments willing to actually put a plan in place for
    that.
        On the topic of dialogues--we have talked about this a lot
    over the years. I think it's very important that the larger
    context be considered. We've always been of the view that the
    Chinese government does not really take other governments'
    interventions about human rights seriously unless it is coming
    from the absolute top all the way down through a system.
        I think in that sense, the President's trip was extremely
    problematic because he essentially showed up and said he
    thought that President Xi was doing a great job, which is going
    to make it extremely difficult for anybody further down in the
    system to effectively weigh in and not have their Chinese
    counterpart say, but your boss just said that our boss was
    doing a great job.
        The dialogues have been very problematic over the years
    because they are so contained and so siloed. I don't want it to
    fall off the agenda, obviously.
        The current framework of having only these four dialogues,
    in which we're told, but given no evidence that human rights
    issues have been raised or raised in an effective manner, I
    think, is extremely problematic.
        We have some ideas about what could be done instead. The--
    for example, shadow dialogues with independent civil society.
    This is something we recommended to the EU for years, as its
    dialogues have gotten boxed in. But I'd be happy to share some
    of our thinking about how to build this in in the current
    environment and make it relevant for human rights defenders
    from China.
        Cochairman Smith. If you could and make it a part of the
    record as well as convey to us.
        Ms. Richardson. Of course. Happy to.
        Cochairman Smith. You know, on your point before I go into
    the final, yesterday the testimony couldn't have been clearer.
        We had Bob King as our former Special Envoy testify. And he
    noted that the numbers had dropped from 3,000 making their way
    into South Korea to 1,500. That was in 2011.
        Last year and this year, it's even a slower pace. So Xi
    Jinping is actually further tightening the grip on those who
    successfully make it into South Korea, which is, again, a very,
    very horrible trend.
        Mr. Tiffert. I'd like to address the question of the World
    Internet Conference and Confucius Institutes.
        It seems to me that the United States is accustomed to
    dealing with or engaging with the world from a position of
    strength, not just comprehensive economic and military
    strength, but also a deep confidence of the enduring appeal of
    our values around the world. And that, particularly since the
    fall of the Berlin Wall, has produced a certain amount of
    complacency. We thought, game over.
        I don't think China ended the game. And I believe that we
    are now playing different games, and the United States needs to
    get its game back on.
        Our confidence about our strengths, our power, our soft
    power, not just our hard power, has produced a language of
    responsible stakeholding, convergence. They'll become more like
    us if we simply open our institutions to them and show them how
    fabulous we are.
        China is the first country, I think, this century to
    challenge that from a position of comprehensive strength. They
    are large. They are increasingly rich, increasingly militarily
    powerful.
        So we need to dig deep. Our way, I think, of dealing with a
    lot of these issues is to harden our own institutions, some of
    which are developing cracks--academia, the media, other
    institutions.
        China is exploiting those cracks, and it is doing it in
    ways that, well frankly, are brilliant. But our best response
    to these exploitations is to strengthen ourselves, to raise
    consciousness, to get our game back on, and to reinvest in
    ourselves.
        It is a question of values. Senator King raised this
    earlier. To the extent that we regard our engagement with them
    as purely transactional and disengage values from it, then Tim
    Cook can talk optimistically about a day when China may
    suddenly open up without having to confront the problem of the
    China of today.
        Cochairman Smith. And you know that is a continuation of
    Obama's strategy. I remember the Washington Post when the
    previous--not Xi Jinping--the previous premier was here, the
    Washington Post did a scathing editorial when he was asked
    about why Liu Xiaobo was not brought up; here you are with a
    Nobel Peace Prize winner, with the jailer sitting at a joint
    press conference, and President Obama said maybe they have a
    different system and they have a different culture, which I
    found to be very, very disturbing.
        Chinese people understand human rights. Look at Taiwan, how
    it has flourished and people who have suffered so much for
    their human rights by going to the Laogai and suffering
    repression.
        And the Post did a scathing editorial about that. So it's a
    continuation of egregiously flawed policy and mindset, in my
    opinion, which is why, again, we need to get human rights front
    and center, which is what this commission tries so valiantly to
    do under Mr. Rubio.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Rubio. Senator King.
        Senator King. I promise, Senator Rubio, a brief question,
    but it is a big one.
        There has been sort of an assumption through this hearing
    that the intentions of China are malign. I don't know whether
    that's true or not. Here is my question, and perhaps you can
    take it for the record and give me a little one-pager. What
    does China want? What are their goals? Is it military hegemony
    in the region? Is it simply a more powerful economy, richer
    people?
        There was a story this morning that they may buy a stake in
    Aramco in a private offering from Saudi Arabia. Is it access to
    resources? I don't think we really have time to delve into
    this, but I think it's an important question; what are their
    motivations behind all of this? Is it malign or is it simply
    self-interest defined as wanting to be the strongest economy in
    the world or certainly in the region? Do they have territorial
    ambitions?
        I think it's a question worth asking. I would appreciate
    your thoughts for the record.
        Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Rubio. Thank you. I guess before we wrap up I did
    want to give you all a chance to talk more in depth about the
    United Front Work Department, one of these agencies that seems
    to be the umbrella group for influence. Because it seems like
    there is always--look, information has always been valuable,
    right? And our approach to information has largely been to open
    up our political process here in the United States, to allow
    the world to watch it, and through our example, hopefully
    influence them and say, see, you can have a pluralistic society
    where people disagree about things, they argue about it, and in
    the end you can still govern.
        And we have been less than perfect, but in the process
    people have seen our imperfections. We have debated some
    substantial societal issues over the last 50 years, some of
    which seem to bring us to the point of collapse. Yet,
    nevertheless, our nation persevered.
        What has changed is the democratization of information, in
    essence, making it so diffuse, so easy to access from so many
    different sources on an hourly basis; it is a great positive.
    It has given us the opportunity for people all over the world
    to be quickly informed. It's also created the opportunity for
    people to be misinformed, and for information to be denied to
    them, or only certain information to be provided.
        So today, we continue with the existing model. And I am not
    arguing that we should change it. But you turn on the
    television and there is a station for every--no matter what
    your opinion is, there is a station out there prepared to
    confirm it.
        We have in the case of China, an entity or a government
    that has realized that this is a powerful weapon and that our
    openness creates a space to provide information over a
    substantial period of time in a slow and patient way to change
    the environment.
        It seems like this agency or department is at the tip of
    that spear. If you could just talk a little bit about who they
    are, what they do--but, ultimately, it seems to be that it is
    from there where all of these efforts emanate, whether it is
    sending people, influencing people, providing information--who
    are they? What's their purview? What do they do?
        Mr. Tiffert. I think the story has to begin with the
    history of the Chinese Communist Party as a hunted
    revolutionary movement over a century ago. They developed very
    keen strategies, helped by the Soviet Union, in fact, to
    cultivate allies among influential people in society to
    neutralize opposition to the point where they would get the
    upper hand.
        The United Front Work Department is the tip of that spear
    pointed out of China in order to cultivate friends and allies,
    influence people abroad. Basically, it's their Dale Carnegie
    strategy of making friends and influencing people, and doing it
    underground in a way that is nonobvious.
        It is a one-stop shop that coordinates national strategy
    for that purpose. The United Front Work Department is engaged
    with influencing foreign media, influencing foreign academia.
    There have been many people who carry, sort of, closet
    portfolios in the United Front Work Department who are working
    in Chinese news agencies.
        Their agenda, basically, is to reshape the international
    environment in order to make it friendlier to China and advance
    China's policy goals without seeming to act specifically as the
    state.
        Ms. Richardson. I will just add to that. I think many
    people outside China circles, frankly, plenty of people in them
    too, are not terribly aware of entities like the United Front
    Work Department.
        Look, to American or English-speaking political ears, it is
    a funny-sounding term. It almost sounds like a public works
    department, as if they took care of the pipes or something like
    that.
        I think there is not much recognition that the United Front
    Work Department and other things like the "peoples friendship
    associations," or patriotic fraternal associations are really
    at the end of the day wholly owned subsidiaries of either the
    Chinese government or the Party. They are not independent
    entities.
        There is also the reality that as the United Front Work
    Department approaches political parties or institutions around
    the world, it's not as if those institutions can then reach out
    to the alternatives to the United Front Work Department or to a
    different Chinese political party.
        They do not get options because those aren't permitted to
    exist. There is no rule that says just because you have met
    with the United Front Work Department, you now need to meet
    with somebody who is critical of the Chinese government. So I
    think as a vehicle, it is very powerful and there aren't other
    obvious voices to go out and to listen to.
        Ms. Kalathil. Just to add briefly to that, I think those
    are all very good points. I would also say that it is not only
    about the United Front Work Department, as we have probably
    demonstrated in our testimony today.
        To go back to a concept that I referred to in my testimony,
    I think--this was in respect to China's system of Internet
    control, that it really could be applied to its system of
    external influence, also. The idea is to have redundancy built
    into every layer.
        So it is not just about what the United Front Work
    Department is doing. It's also about joint ventures that are
    entered into with companies, particularly Hollywood or
    technology, other companies that shape the environment so that
    China can achieve its strategic interests. If we're not aware
    of that entire environment, I think we are also probably
    missing part of the puzzle.
        Chairman Rubio. I think you touched on just a couple little
    random notes I want to leave on the record so that they are
    clear that they were discussed today.
        The first is, as you just mentioned, entertainment and
    Hollywood. There have been multiple reports of--I alluded to it
    earlier--movie scripts, entertainment that was altered for
    purposes of ensuring that that product had access to the
    Chinese market.
        I've always got to chuckle, the reports that I read about
    the Chinese Communist Party were big fans of season one of
    House of Cards. They were not big fans of season two for
    different reasons.
        Again, I think the average person doesn't realize there are
    actually movies that are changed here in America because they
    want to make sure the script is something that doesn't cause it
    to not have access to this growing important market.
        So just the strategic use of its consumer power in and of
    itself could require everything from altering scripts to
    figuring out what they will require companies to put in these
    devices in case intelligence officials ever decide to turn it
    on.
        So when you see an American telecom carrier, or provider,
    or whatever--has signed a deal with a company that has the
    sponsorship and support of the Chinese Communist Party, you
    should assume that as part of that, you are inheriting
    something on this device that could potentially--whether it's
    on the network or on your device--make you individually
    vulnerable to surveillance at some point in the future.
        Again, something that we need to understand because our
    companies don't do that. You cannot go to them and say you must
    put stuff on your phone that allows us to listen to anybody we
    want anywhere we want when we tell you to. We have legal
    processes if that is even ever done.
        The second is I want to quote from a report--if it is not
    already, it may be redundant, but I want this full report to be
    included in the record without objection. It's a December
    2017--this month, from the National Endowment for Democracy
    about Latin America, an area that I spent a lot of time working
    on in the Foreign Relations Committee.
        [The full report can be found at https://www.ned.org/wp-
    content/uploads/2017/12/Sharp-Power-Rising-Authoritarian-
    Influence-Full-Report.pdf]
        Chairman Rubio. And I quote from it saying, ``Beijing
    strategy clearly targets Latin American elites, prominent
    regional leaders from multiple fields, including politicians,
    academics, journalists, former diplomats, current government
    officials, students, among others are subtly--that is the key
    word--subtly being enticed by the Chinese government through
    personal interaction with the ultimate purpose of gaining their
    support for China. As a result, many of these renowned and
    influential people have already become de facto ambassadors of
    the Chinese cause.'' And I would add de facto unwitting
    ambassadors. I don't think they know that they are targeted for
    this effort.
        To some extent, all countries try to do that. They try to
    convince you in one direction or another, but this is an
    orchestrated effort in a part of the world.
        It goes on to read, ``the people-to-people engagement,
    money is key. Free-of-charge trainings, exchange programs,
    scholarships in China have proven to be effective tools to
    engage Latin America's regional elites, an idea that was
    supported in 2016, by Xi Jinping, when he announced he would
    train 10,000 Latin Americans by 2020.
        ``The media and academia are two areas of priority
    attention for these efforts. Consequently, China is determined
    to promote cooperation of different kinds between media
    companies, universities, and think tanks both at the regional
    and country level. Education and culture are increasingly
    important in Beijing's toolkit as well.''
        And it almost leads me to feel like 50 years from now when
    historians write about this period of time, they're going to
    write that policymakers here were lulled to sleep on a bunch of
    matters while this massive effort was happening right
    underneath us. And we didn't even realize it.
        It is almost the analogy of the frog in the boiling pot.
    And if you throw it in the boiling pot, it jumps right out. But
    if you let it sit there as the water heats up, it never even
    notices it is being boiled to death.
        Another matter of interest that I want to make sure is
    noted is a Wall Street Journal article that reported Facebook
    is trying everything to reenter China, including developing
    censorship tools. I want the record to reflect that in an open
    hearing of the Intelligence Committee, I asked specifically
    about it, and the answer from the general counsel was--and I
    believe it was the general counsel--we comply with the laws of
    the countries that we operate in.
        So what that basically means is that Facebook, at least
    according to the information provided to us, was prepared to
    install censorship filters in order to get access to China and
    their market. And it's an important thing to remember as we
    move forward.
        I have a final question, and this really relates to the
    first point I was making. Just as they undertake those efforts
    in Latin America, I think there is evidence that those efforts
    exist here as well.
        And you all alluded to, a moment ago, about a
    representative of the RNC that was in China recently at a
    conference, some political parties. We know there is extensive
    travel, members of Congress and staff.
        I guess my question is, what can we better do to educate
    staffers on lobbyists or people-to-people exchange
    opportunities that are sponsored by, whether it is the United
    Front or its affiliated organizations or anyone?
        In essence, is it not incumbent upon--we are not going to
    prevent these trips--but is it not incumbent upon us to inform
    members of our staff and members of the House and Senate that
    when you go on these trips, here's why they do the trips, these
    are the kinds of things they do--by the way, they are not the
    only country in the world that does it. The Cuban government
    does this as well.
        But shouldn't there be something in place, a protocol in
    place where when you accept one of these trips from certain
    countries, you are made aware of the fact that these trips are
    not done the way Belgium does them, or somebody else does them?
    There is a rationale behind it, and that is to win you over to
    their narrative and to what they want policy to be.
        Ms. Richardson. I am happy to give you the affirmative,
    yes. There should be a protocol that does that.
        I agree that those trips should not be prevented, but
    people need to understand why they have been asked and how the
    Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese government will construe
    their accepting those offers.
        Mr. Tiffert. Absolutely. I would absolutely agree with
    that. There needs to be a tremendous amount of consciousness
    raising on the depth and sophistication of the influence
    operations that are going on in the United States.
        Beyond that, people who are invited to go should understand
    that they've probably been invited for very specific reasons,
    because of who they are, what their views might be, or where
    they sit in an organizational food chain in order to exercise
    that kind of influence that the Chinese government is hoping to
    have over them and potentially policymaking.
        Ms. Kalathil. I would just add, to step back and put it in
    the context of democracies in general, and particularly the
    emerging and vulnerable democracies that you referred to, in
    Latin America and elsewhere--there is a distinct lack of
    knowledge about China in many of these places, particularly in
    the countries of Latin America, in the countries that make up
    China's 16+1 initiative in Central and Eastern Europe.
        There is not that deep breadth of knowledge which is
    demonstrated by my fellow panelists here that can speak to
    these issues. So a lot of the time these people go into these
    exchanges with no context.
        So what I would like to see happen generally in democracies
    is for there to be more context and learning around this, more
    transparency. And perhaps some kind of, as you get through
    that, voluntary agreement to certain norms around whether it's
    exchanges or academic publishing or anything, but something
    that allows people to feel that they are not in it alone.
        So if you are a university that is being approached by a
    Chinese counterpart and asked to compromise your academic
    freedom, you can reach out to others and understand that
    there's a common understanding of what is and isn't beneficial
    to democracies in that regard.
        That, I think, would be a good first step.
        Chairman Rubio. A final quick question; we are running out
    of time.
        Are any of you aware of efforts, whether it's in academia
    or entertainment or anywhere for universities, for example, to
    come together and confront this threat to academic freedom,
    establish some level of standards about what they will and will
    not do in the universities, a collective effort to all
    affirmatively say, we don't care if you are going to deny us
    trips and access to the marketplace or even to students or to
    exchanges or the ability to have a campus on the mainland; we
    are not going to allow you to pressure and undermine academic
    freedom?
        Are you aware of any such efforts to create some sort of
    joint effort, whether it is in the entertainment industry or in
    academia?
        Mr. Tiffert. I think they are incipient. I hope that they
    continue and develop further. There are conversations that are
    beginning to happen along those lines, as consciousness about
    the breadth of influence operations is getting raised.
        We are nowhere near where we need to be, though.
        Ms. Richardson. Just by chance, I happened to spend Sunday
    morning with a group of China-focused academics. And this issue
    dominated our conversation, and I think it is fair to say there
    is enormous interest in having some sort of set of principles
    or a code of conduct.
        But I think there is also a recognition of how difficult it
    would be to get institutions to sign on to that for fears about
    loss of funding or the desires of fundraisers or administrators
    versus the interests of faculty. But I think there is momentum
    to capitalize on.
        Ms. Kalathil. And I have seen that incipient movement which
    I think is terrific. I do think that that is more likely to
    occur in institutions that already privilege certain types of
    democratic expression, such as university campuses or media
    organizations. In areas such as technology or entertainment
    companies, where the motive is to access China's market and
    there is no underlying value base there, I think that is much
    more difficult.
        Chairman Rubio. Well, then I'll close with these three very
    quick comments as a matter of personal privilege in this
    regard.
        The first is I hope my colleagues if they ever read this
    record, if it's ever reported what we are about to talk about
    here, what we have talked about today, realize that big
    companies, corporations, business interests, their obligation
    is to their shareholders, and/or owners to make money.
        China is an enormous marketplace, so they are driven by
    that. They are prepared to advocate for virtually anything that
    allows them access to that marketplace. Just because they have
    an English name and happen to be headquartered in the United
    States does not make them advocates of the principles that we
    need to balance as public policymakers.
        And we should be wary of that because oftentimes some of
    the strongest advocates for tyrannical regimes are the
    businesses and individuals that are making good money in that
    market due to their relationship with the current tyrannical
    government, and their basic argument is, don't mess it up.
    We've got a good thing going. We have lived through that with
    Russian sanctions, to some extent a little bit with Venezuela
    sanctions, and clearly when it comes to China, over and over
    again.
        Which leads me to my second point, and that is kind of a
    sense of frustration about this issue. The reaction to today's
    hearing will be one of two things: (1) largely ignored; or (2)
    the argument that we are paranoid, that this is paranoia. This
    is ridiculous. This is not at all what is happening.
        And, of course, that furthers the narrative that the
    Chinese Communist Party is always putting out, that we are just
    a small, poor country trying to just catch up to where you are.
    We are not any threat to you.
        But the first part of ignoring really bothers me because
    there will be a lot of coverage today about whatever the
    President or someone else tweeted this morning. Meanwhile, this
    extraordinary geopolitical issue that has incredible historical
    importance in a way that people will write and talk about for a
    century is happening right underneath us, and very few people
    realize it. And those that do would rather talk about whatever
    the outrage of the day is. I don't even know. I haven't gone
    online to see what it is.
        And the last point--and I always make this in these
    hearings because I want to be abundantly clear. This is not
    about the Chinese people. It is not even about China who we
    hope will emerge--it does not have to have our system of
    government, per se.
        There are all sorts of different ways to structure
    democracies. No one is more hopeful than we are, and me
    personally, to have a China that is a partner in the
    international community.
        Can you imagine what a China that respects human rights and
    the liberty and the dignity of all people, their own and others
    abroad, could do in partnership with the United States? The
    issues we could confront and solve.
        It would be an extraordinary development in human events if
    that were to occur. So this is in no way hostility towards the
    people.
        On the contrary I have respect for the achievements and the
    importance of Chinese culture and Chinese history, a nation
    that for almost all of human history has been the most
    important or one of the most important in the world, has made
    extraordinary contributions in the arts and the sciences, and
    learning, and academia.
        I want that potential and that history to be unleashed to
    change the world in a positive way. Unfortunately that is not
    what we see. What we see here on the behalf of the government
    and the Communist Party is an effort to roll back the advances
    towards human freedom that have been made over the last hundred
    years, or particularly since the end of the Second World War.
        And that's also important to communicate, because sometimes
    when we talk about China, it means in the minds of some that we
    are talking about the Chinese. And we are not. We are fully
    cognizant that in a nation that large with that many people,
    there are hundreds of millions of people who aspire to a
    different way forward, but simply do not have the way to
    advocate for it or are punished for advocating for it,
    sometimes even with their lives. So that is always important to
    leave clear on the record.
        So with that, the record for this hearing, as I said at the
    outset, is going to remain open for 48 hours so additional
    documents and information can be provided.
        I thank all of you for being here, for your patience. It's
    been a long hearing, but I think an important one.
        We are adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]

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

                                A P P E N D I X

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

                              Prepared Statements

                                  ----------

                     Prepared Statement of Shanthi Kalathil

                               december 13, 2017
        Chairman Rubio, Chairman Smith, distinguished Members of the
    Commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak to this important
    topic today. It is an honor to testify before this Commission alongside
    such expert colleagues.
        Today I will address China's outwardly directed efforts to shape
    expression and communication globally, and the negative implications
    this poses for democratic expression and discourse, even within
    democracies. In particular, I will discuss how the Chinese government
    directs and harnesses private sector activity in the Internet and
    technology space, as well its efforts to reshape global narratives
    through a range of influence activities that have typically been
    categorized as ``soft power.''
        To begin with, consider a metaphor sometimes invoked to explain
    China's domestic approach to the Internet, namely, that of the ``walled
    garden.'' The garden is not devoid of color: indeed, certain flowers
    are cultivated and allowed to bloom profusely, while those plants
    deemed weeds are yanked out by the root. In this way is the space
    pruned to fit the preferences of the master gardener.
        While metaphors are always imperfect, this one does convey
    important ideas about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approaches
    China's information, media and technology sector, ideas that also have
    relevance for its international approach. Three key aspects of its
    domestic ``walled garden'' approach are relevant here.
        First, the CCP has put the technology it needs into place. The so-
    called ``Great Firewall'' is dependent on an elaborately layered system
    of control, beginning with the technological and communications
    ``pipes'' themselves and extending to what is an increasingly advanced
    system of not just censorship but comprehensive surveillance. A recent
    BBC story noted that there are 170 million CCTV cameras in place, many
    enhanced with facial recognition technology, and an estimated 400
    million new cameras coming online in the next three years.i
    The Wall Street Journal reported last week about a man detained for a
    stray wisecrack made on a private chat on the WeChat messaging
    platform; government authorities can now identify citizens on the
    street through facial recognition, monitor all online behavior, and
    identify potential (or even future) dissenters and
    ``troublemakers.''ii For an example of this dystopian model
    taken to an extreme, look no further than the Chinese province of
    Xinjiang, where the government tests tools like iris recognition, and
    constant surveillance is a fact of daily life.iii
        Second, it is not simply about the technology. Beijing relies
    on individuals, corporations and institutions for not just censorship
    and self-censorship but the proactive shaping of norms, narratives and
    attitudes. For instance, the Chinese government places the
    responsibility on private sector companies as gatekeepers to monitor
    and circumscribe online activity, as well as on individual users to
    self-censor. In addition, as a recent study noted, the government
    fabricates roughly 448 million social media comments a year, injecting
    certain narrative elements into online chatter to distract or cheerlead
    in order to stop the spread of information that may spur collective
    action.iv One of the study's authors has described the
    overall approach as the three Fs: fear that induces self-censorship,
    friction that makes true information hard to find, and flooding of the
    information space with distraction or chaos.v
        Underpinning all of this activity is the third aspect:
    Beijing's core economic bargain, which consists of preferential
    treatment and implicit prosperity for those who respect Beijing's so-
    called ``red lines,'' and punishment for those who do not. Chinese
    Internet and technology companies, who are probing frontiers in mobile
    commerce, artificial intelligence, and a host of other areas, have with
    direct or indirect help from the state evolved into formidable
    behemoths with global ambitions. While their relationship with the
    Party is not always straightforward, they understand that staying on
    the CCP's good side (which includes reliable policing of communication
    and development of technologies that will benefit the state) will
    deliver tangible benefits, while getting crosswise might entail severe
    corporate and even personal penalties.
        The entire combination of these aspects is a complex system that
    curtails freedom, suppresses dissent, and manages public opinion,
    reliant not on any individual element but on a principle of redundancy
    built into every layer. Why is this domestic approach relevant to our
    topic today? Because it is becoming evident that the CCP under Xi
    Jinping is intent on encompassing the rest of the world within its
    ``walled garden.''
        This is not to say that China now attempts to control every facet
    of communication, or that it wants to impose its exact model of
    authoritarian governance everywhere. But it is increasingly true that
    Beijing's technology ambitions, combined with its attempts to determine
    on a global scale the parameters of ``acceptable'' speech and opinion
    with respect to China, pose clear threats to freedom of expression and
    democratic discourse outside its borders. Indeed, in 2015 Freedom
    House's China Media Bulletin estimated that since Xi came to power, the
    Chinese government had negatively affected freedom of expression
    outside China over 40 times in 17 different countries and institutions;
    that number has only increased since then.vi
        While Beijing obviously cannot muffle dissent and
    accountability across different countries in the same way it does at
    home, it does seek to apply its principal ``gardening'' techniques
    within the international sphere. First, while it cannot control the
    infrastructure and technology of the global Internet, Chinese companies
    are actively building out key telecommunications infrastructure in the
    developing world, particularly on the African continent, which has
    raised questions about security and the dissemination of censorship
    capabilities.vii In addition, if China succeeds in
    dominating the emerging global market for data-enabled objects (the
    ``Internet of Things''), as it seeks to do through its Internet Plus
    initiative, its approach to embedded surveillance may become the norm
    in places with weak individual privacy protection.
        Moreover, the same Chinese tech giants whose platforms enable the
    domestic surveillance described in last week's Wall Street Journal
    story are taking stakes in the firms that provide key global apps and
    services. Just last Friday, Tencent (the parent company of WeChat) and
    Spotify announced that they had taken minority stakes in each other,
    following earlier Tencent acquisitions of minority stakes in Snap (the
    parent company of Snapchat) and Tesla.viii Artificial
    intelligence companies such as iFlyTek pioneer the surveillance aims of
    the government through the use of big data and weak Chinese privacy
    standards, while also entering into deals with industry leaders such as
    Volkswagen and others.ix It is reasonable to ask whether
    Chinese firms with global ambitions plan to follow the same explicit
    and/or unspoken Party dictates with respect to data-gathering,
    surveillance and policing of ``sensitive'' communication abroad as they
    do at home.
        These technological advances dovetail with the government's efforts
    to shape the Internet and other future technologies through key
    Internet governance bodies and discussions. The Chinese government's
    initially derided attempt to direct this conversation, the recently
    concluded World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, succeeded this year in
    attracting high-level Silicon Valley participation. Importantly, it
    established the optic that the world's leading technology firms have
    blessed China's approach to the Internet.
        Second, as is the case within China's borders, it is never only
    about the technology. The Chinese government has spent tens of billions
    of dollars to shape norms, narratives and attitudes in other countries,
    relying on the cultivation of relationships with individuals,
    educational and cultural institutions, and centers of policy influence.
    Such efforts are not properly conceived of through the familiar concept
    of ``soft power,'' which is generally described as reliant on
    attraction and persuasion, but rather as ``sharp power,'' which is
    principally about distraction and manipulation, as argued in a new
    study released last week by the National Endowment for Democracy
    examining authoritarian influence in young democracies.x
        One of the clearest examples of this ``sharp power'' is the
    expanding network of Confucius Institutes, controversial due to their
    lack of transparency, disregard of key tenets of academic freedom, and
    ability to function as an arm of the Chinese state within academic
    campuses.xi Concerns have been raised about self-censorship
    on topics related to China in the realm of academic and other
    publishing worldwide, posing fundamental questions about freedom of
    expression in democracies.xii In addition, China's heavily
    funded people-to-people diplomacy exposes visitors from Africa and
    Latin America, as well as the young democracies in Central and Eastern
    Europe within the context of China's ``16+1'' initiative, to a
    carefully managed narrative about China's ``win-win'' approach, finding
    fertile ground in countries which lack the expertise to examine these
    messages and arguments critically.xiii
        Finally, underlying all of this is the unavoidable aspect of
    China's carrot-and-stick contract with the rest of the world. China's
    efforts to enclose the rest of the world within its walled garden would
    not have been feasible had not governments, universities, publishers,
    Hollywood and technology companies all been roped into this implicit
    and sometimes explicit bargain.xiv Apple CEO Tim Cook, one
    of the most high-level Silicon Valley participants at the recent Wuzhen
    conference, essentially underscored this point through his celebration
    of China's digital vision, paired with the company's earlier yanking of
    anti-censorship VPNs from its app store in China.xv
        Some might say that the Chinese government is simply pursuing
    its strategic and economic interests, like any other country. Even if
    views differ on this, it nonetheless behooves the international
    community to acknowledge that the values that inform Beijing's
    interests in this realm pose serious concerns for democratic norms and
    institutions around the world. It is therefore both timely and
    necessary for democratic governments and civil society to be proactive
    in asserting why norms such as transparency, accountability, and
    pluralism are critical to their interests, and to come up with fresh
    approaches to build resilience. First steps might include:
          Continuing to shine a light on the ways in which the
    Chinese government's media and technology initiatives, as well as
    ``sharp power'' influence activities, are impinging on democratic
    institutions outside China's borders. While this is now beginning to
    happen in some places, notably Australia and New Zealand, it is still
    the case that most democratic societies are not yet connecting all the
    dots, much less formulating nuanced responses that hew to core values.
          Facilitating democratic learning, particularly within
    countries without deep capacity to analyze China. Because the Chinese
    government constrains critical discourse about issues it considers
    sensitive, and these constraints are built into the fabric of its
    engagement with both state and non-state actors in young democracies in
    particular, genuine critical discourse about China may be lacking.
          Seeking transparency in agreements with Chinese state-
    affiliated institutions, such as Confucius Institutes and others.
    Particularly (but not only) when public funds in democracies are
    involved, civil society should insist on its right to understand
    whether fundamental issues such as freedom of expression are placed at
    risk.
          Collectively establishing mutually agreed informal norms
    and ``good practice'' within respective industries (such as publishing,
    academia, media, film, and technology) so that individual actors are
    not as susceptible as they are now to being picked off and pressured by
    the Chinese government or its surrogates. For instance, academic
    publishers in democratic settings might collectively agree to resist
    censoring materials that pertain to China, and so on. In the absence of
    such norms defending key democratic values, China will continue to set
    standards based on the CCP's restrictive understanding of these values.
        Thank you very much, and I look forward to answering your
    questions.

    _______________________________________________________________________
        i ``In Your Face: China's All-Seeing State,'' BBC, Dec.
    10, 2017. http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-42248056/in-your-
    face-china-s-all-seeing-state
        ii Eva Dou, ``Jailed for a Text: China's Censors Are
    Spying on Mobile Chat Groups,'' The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 7, 2017.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-for-a-text-chinas-censors-are-
    spying-on-mobile-chat-groups-1512665007
        iii Megha Rajagopalan, ``This is What a 21st Century
    Police State Really Looks Like,'' Buzzfeed News, October 17, 2017.
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/meghara/the-police-state-of-the-future-is-al
    ready-here?utm_term=.vpk2O30p2#.xtprQxJor
        iv Gary King, Jennifer Pan, Margaret E. Roberts, ``How
    the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic
    Distraction, not Engaged Argument,'' April 9, 2017. https://
    gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf
        v Joshua A. Tucker, Yannis Theocharis, Margaret E.
    Roberts, and Pablo Barbera, ``From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media
    and Democracy,'' Journal of Democracy Vol. 28, Issue 4, October 2017.
    https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/liberation-turmoil-social-
    media-and-democ
    racy
        vi Sarah Cook, ``Resisting Beijing's Global Media
    Influence,'' The Diplomat, December 10, 2015. http://thediplomat.com/
    2015/12/resisting-beijings-global-media-influence
        vii John Reed, ``Africa's Big Brother Lives in
    Beijing,'' Foreign Policy, July 30, 2013. http://foreignpolicy.com/
    2013/07/30/africas-big-brother-lives-in-beijing/
        viii Anna Nicolau, ``Tencent and Spotify Buy Minority
    Stakes in Each Other,'' The Financial Times, Dec. 8, 2017. https://
    www.ft.com/content/07ccf3e0-dc28-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482
        ix Paul Mozur and Keith Bradshaw, ``China's A.I.
    Advances Help Its Tech Industry, and State Security,'' The New York
    Times, December 3, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/busi
    ness/china-artificial-intelligence.html?_r=0
        x Christopher Walker, Jessica Ludwig, Juan Pablo
    Cardenal, Jacek Kucharczyk, Grigorij Meseznikov, and Gabriela
    Pleschova, ``Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence,''
    International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for
    Democracy, December 2017. https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/
    12/Sharp-Power-Rising-Authoritarian-Influence-Full-Report.pdf
        xi Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, ``The Meaning
    of Sharp Power: How Authoritarian States Project Influence,'' Foreign
    Affairs, Nov. 16, 2017. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/
    2017-11-16/meaning-sharp-power
        xii Ellie Bothwell, ``Chinese power `may lead to global
    academic censorship crisis,' '' Times Higher Education, December 7,
    2017. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chinese-power-may-lead-
    global-academic-censorship-crisis
        xiii Christopher Walker, Jessica Ludwig, Juan Pablo
    Cardenal, Jacek Kucharczyk, Grigorij Meseznikov, and Gabriela
    Pleschova, ``Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence,''
    International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for
    Democracy, December 2017. https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/
    12/Sharp-Power-Rising-Authoritarian-Influence-Full-Report.pdf
        xiv Shanthi Kalathil, ``Beyond the Great Firewall: How
    China Became a Global Information Power,'' Center for International
    Media Assistance, March 2017. https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-content/
    uploads/2017/03/CIMA-Beyond-the-Great-Firewall_150ppi-for-web.pdf
        xv Simon Denyer, ``Apple CEO backs China's vision of an
    `open' Internet as censorship reaches new heights,'' The Washington
    Post, December 4, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/
    wp/2017/12/04/apple-ceo-backs-chinas-vision-of-an-open-internet-as-
    censorship-reaches-new-heights/?utm_term=.51bcf207a356
                                     ______

                                     [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

     Prepared Statement of Hon. Marco Rubio, a U.S. Senator From Florida;
             Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China

                               december 13, 2017
        Good morning. This is a hearing of the Congressional-Executive
    Commission on China. The title of this hearing is ``The Long Arm of
    China: Exporting Authoritarianism with Chinese Characteristics.''
        We will have one panel testifying today. The panel will feature:
              Shanthi Kalathil: Director of the International Forum
            for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy
            (NED);
              Glenn Tiffert, Ph.D.: expert in modern Chinese legal
            history and visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
            Institution;
              Sophie Richardson, Ph.D.: Director of China Research
            at Human Rights Watch.
        Thank you all for being here.
        Before we move to the topic at hand, I want to take a moment to
    recognize Ms. Deidre Jackson on the Commission's staff. After 38 years
    of government work, including nearly 16 years at the Commission, this
    is her final hearing before retiring at the end of the year. We thank
    her for her faithful service and contribution to this important work.
        The focus of today's hearing is timely. This is an issue that
    merits greater attention from U.S. policymakers. Chinese government
    foreign influence operations, which exist in free societies around the
    globe, are intended to censor critical discussion of China's history
    and human rights record and to intimidate critics of its repressive
    policies. Attempts by the Chinese government to guide, buy, or coerce
    political influence and control discussion of ``sensitive'' topics are
    pervasive and pose serious challenges to the United States and our
    like-minded allies.
        The Commission convened a hearing looking at China's ``long arm''
    in May 2016--the focus at that time was on individual stories from
    dissidents and rights defenders, journalists and family members of
    critics of the regime who shared alarming accounts of the intimidation,
    harassment, pressure and fear they felt as a result of their work. This
    was especially true for those with family still living in China. These
    issues persist.
        Just recently, Chinese authorities reportedly detained around 30
    relatives of the U.S.-based Uyghur human rights advocate Rebiya
    Kadeer--a frequent witness before this Commission. We'll no doubt hear
    similar accounts when Dr. Richardson explores some of what Human Rights
    Watch documented in its recent report on China's interference in United
    Nations human rights mechanisms.
        Beyond that, we hope today to step back from individual accounts
    regarding China's long arm and examine the broader issue of Chinese
    Communist Party influence around the world. What animates their
    efforts? What is their ultimate aim? What sectors or institutions are
    most vulnerable? And what can we do about it? Given the scope of the
    issue, we will only begin to scratch the surface.
        When examining these foreign influence operations it is important
    that we understand the Communist Party infrastructure that exists in
    support of this endeavor.
        The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is one of the Party's
    agencies in charge of influence operations at home and abroad. Chinese
    President Xi Jinping elevated the UFWD's status in 2014, calling their
    work the ``magic weapon'' for the ``Chinese people's great
    rejuvenation.'' The UFWD is charged with promoting a ``positive'' view
    of China abroad and exporting the purported benefits of its
    authoritarian model.
        United Front officials and their agents, often operating under
    diplomatic cover as members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, develop
    relationships with politicians and other high-profile or up-and-coming
    foreign and overseas Chinese individuals to, in the words of Wilson
    Center Global Fellow Anne-Marie Brady, ``influence, subvert, and if
    necessary, bypass the policies of their governments and promote the
    interests of the CCP globally.'' A key element in these ``long arm''
    efforts has focused on information technology and Internet governance
    or ``sovereignty,'' asserting national control of the Internet and
    social media platforms not only in recent domestic cyber legislation
    and development plans but also at international gatherings.
        We look forward to Ms. Kalathil's testimony, which will further
    explore this important dimension of the Chinese government's efforts.
        China has developed tools to surveil social media and mobile phone
    texting platforms, and to disrupt overseas websites that contain
    content the government deems politically sensitive. Earlier this year
    it was reported that ``real-time'' censorship of instant messaging
    platforms is now taking place.
        Private group chats are censored without users' knowledge. As it
    relates to China's ``long arm,'' the University of Toronto's Citizen
    Lab--a human rights and information technology research center--
    reported in mid-January 2017 on Chinese government censors' work to
    prevent Tibetans inside and outside of China from discussing the Dalai
    Lama's major religious teaching in India in January 2017.
        The Chinese government is also clearly targeting academia. The
    Party deems historical analysis and interpretation that do not hew to
    the Party's ideological and official story as dangerous and threatening
    to its legitimacy. Recent reports of the censorship of international
    scholarly journals illustrate the Chinese government's direct requests
    to censor international academic content, something which Professor
    Tiffert will address.
        Related to this, the proliferation of Confucius Institutes, and
    with them insidious curbs on academic freedom, are a major concern--an
    area which CECC Cochairman Smith has been sounding the alarm on for
    some time.
        Chinese foreign investment and development, which is slated to
    reach record levels with the Belt and Road Initiative, is accompanied
    by a robust political agenda aimed in part at shaping new global norms
    on development, trade and even human rights. There is much more that
    has been publicly reported on in the last few months alone, and even
    more that we will likely never know:
          The academic whose scholarly paper provides background on
    the banned China Democracy Party or other politically sensitive issues
    refused a visa to conduct research in China;
          The Hollywood studio that shelves the film script with a
    storyline involving China's abuse of the Tibetan people;
          The Washington ``think tank'' that puts out policy papers
    critical of legislative initiatives that would negatively impact the
    Chinese government, all the while never revealing their financial ties
    with senior Chinese officials; or
          The American internet company willing to censor content
    globally in order to obtain access to the Chinese market.
        There are endless scenarios. And there is a growing body of
    important research on the topic.
        Without objection, we'll keep the hearing record open for 48 hours
    to submit some additional relevant materials in that regard, including
    the executive summary of an important report by the National Endowment
    for Democracy, ``Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence,'' which
    outlines in part China's influence operations in young democracies
    including two in our own hemisphere in Latin America.
        Each year, the Commission releases an Annual Report which
    painstakingly documents human rights and rule of law developments in
    China. China's Great Firewall, rights violations in ethnic minority
    regions, harassment of rights defenders and lawyers, suppression of
    free speech, onerous restrictions on civil society--these are the
    shameful markings of an authoritarian, one-party state.
        But to the extent that the same authoritarian impulses animate the
    Chinese government's efforts abroad, it directly threatens our most
    deeply held values and our national interests. Chinese leaders are
    engaged in the long game and it is something that policymakers in the
    U.S. and like-minded allies must take seriously.
        Please join me in welcoming our witnesses Ms. Shanthi Kalathil,
    Director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at NED, Dr.
    Glenn Tiffert, a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
    Institution and Dr. Sophie Richardson, China Director of Human Rights
    Watch.
                                     ______

      Prepared Statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S. Representative
      From New Jersey; Cochairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on
                                     China

                               december 13, 2017
        This hearing is the second in a series looking at China's foreign
    influence operations and the impact on universally recognized human
    rights. With the Congress and U.S. public focused on Russian influence
    operations, Chinese efforts have received little scrutiny and are not
    well understood. This must change.
        Attempts by the Chinese government to guide, buy, or coerce
    political influence, control discussion of ``sensitive'' topics, and
    export its authoritarian practices globally are widespread and
    pervasive.
        Long-time allies Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have been
    rocked by scandals involving Chinese sponsored influence operations
    targeting politicians, businesses, and academic institutions. Australia
    in particular is in the midst of a national crisis and all like-minded
    democratic allies should be supporting their efforts to root out those
    elements intended to corrupt or co-opt Australian political and
    academic institutions.
        All countries pursue soft power initiatives to promote a
    ``positive'' global image and build good will, but the Chinese
    government's use of technology, coercion, pressure, and the promise of
    market access is unprecedented and poses clear challenges to the
    freedoms of democratic societies.
        An example of Chinese rewards given to companies and individuals
    for abiding by the Chinese government's rules is the case of publisher
    Springer Nature, the world's largest academic book publisher. Springer
    Nature removed more than 1,000 articles from the websites of the
    ``Journal of Chinese Political Science'' and ``International Politics''
    in order to comply with China's censorship directives and was later
    ``rewarded'' for its censorship by signing a lucrative strategic
    partnership with the Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings.
        In addition to academic publishers, the Chinese government is going
    to school on college and universities. American institutions are being
    seduced by the promised infusion of much-needed wealth from China. But
    one always has to pay a price--play by China's rules, don't ruffle
    feathers and don't discuss or write about ``sensitive'' topics.
    Universities committed to academic freedom are bound to run into
    problems eventually.
        I have held two hearings on the threat to academic freedom posed by
    Confucius Institutes and the creation of U.S. campuses in China. We
    should all be for creative research partnerships and expanding
    educational opportunities for U.S. students, but not at the cost of
    fundamental freedoms. I have asked the Government Accountability Office
    (GAO) to investigate academic partnerships between the U.S. colleges
    and the Chinese government. The first report came out last Spring.
        The GAO is now in the process of conducting investigations of
    Confucius Institutes. I have written to all U.S. colleges with
    Confucius Institutes and asked them to make their contracts public and
    available for public inspection.
        Many foreign businesses in China have already faced similar
    dilemmas. Some, like Apple, which recently removed from its Chinese app
    store applications that help users bypass China's ``Great Firewall.''
    The networking site LinkedIn agreed to censor content and Facebook is
    promising to do the same in order to get access to the Chinese market.
        Chinese operations to curtail the activities of dissidents and
    critics of the Communist Party are also pervasive, troubling, and must
    be stopped. We have heard multiple stories from U.S. citizens and
    foreign nationals living in the U.S. about efforts to intimidate,
    censor, and silence them.
        The case of Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui is just the latest
    example of egregious behavior. High-ranking Chinese security ministry
    officials, in the U.S. on transit visas no less, met with Mr. Guo
    multiple times in order to threaten and convince him to leave the U.S.
        Chinese agents have repeatedly violated U.S. sovereignty and law
    according to the Wall Street Journal report on the incident. These
    incidents and those we will discuss today are just the tip of the
    iceberg.
        The Commission's 2017 Annual Report contains several
    recommendations to counter Chinese foreign influence operations--
    including expanding the mandate of the Foreign Agents Registration Act
    (FARA) to include Chinese government media organizations and think
    tanks, expanded Internet Freedom initiatives and efforts to counter
    Chinese propaganda and disinformation at the State Department. I
    encourage those interested to look at our recommendations.
        As we start to grapple with the scale and scope of Chinese
    influence operations, we will be looking for new legislative ideas and
    I hope our witnesses today can provide recommendations for the
    Commission's action.
        We must be clear from the outset that we support better relations
    with the people of China and the United States. The issues we are
    discussing here today are part of influence operations conducted by the
    Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government.
        President Xi Jinping, who has concentrated more power than any
    Chinese leader since Mao, is determined to make the world safe for
    authoritarianism. Beijing is intent on exporting its censorship regime,
    intimidating dissidents and their families, sanitizing history, and
    stifling critical discussion of its repressive policies.
        These actions pose direct threats to deeply held core values and
    fundamental freedoms enjoyed by all democratic societies. We must find
    ways to effectively and resolutely push back. Doing so should be a
    critical national interest.

                      Questions and Answers for the Record

    question for shanthi kalathil, director of the international forum for
       democratic studies at the national endowment for democracy, from
                                 senator daines
        Question. Ms. Kalathil, in your testimony, you reference a study
    that highlights the Chinese government posting over 400 million social
    media comments annually in an effort to influence political narratives
    and advance their interests. Chinese official media organizations have
    also bought space in U.S. and foreign newspapers to convey Beijing's
    preferred narrative on various issues. How effective are these Chinese
    government-sponsored efforts in shaping political discourse in foreign
    countries?
        Answer. My impression is that official media efforts, such as the
    ``China Watch'' inserts in the Washington Post and other newspapers,
    have not been hugely successful to date in influencing attitudes in
    other countries. Yet this is not the only strategy, or even the primary
    strategy, upon which the CCP relies to shape discourse. The Chinese
    government has invested truly vast resources and demonstrated serious
    commitment at the highest political levels to influencing the media and
    information space globally, focusing on what might be called the
    ``infrastructure'' of communication--not simply the pipes, but the
    nodes that shape and control how information flows around the world.
    This is accomplished through partnerships with foreign media companies;
    cultivating close or beneficial relationships with influential people/
    institutions in other countries (including academic publishers,
    entertainment companies, political actors and others) who have the
    power to proactively shape discourse in favor of Beijing or marginalize
    discourse that it considers troublesome; and exerting influence over
    the governance of communication at the ITU and other international
    forums.
                                     ______

    questions for shanthi kalathil, director of the international forum for
       democratic studies at the national endowment for democracy, from
                                 chairman rubio
        Question. As Chinese researchers continue to make technological
    advances that enable authorities to expand their surveillance powers,
    rights advocates worry that artificial intelligence is being used to
    carry out state suppression and erode privacy protections for Chinese
    citizens. Chinese security officials have made use of artificial
    intelligence, such as facial recognition technology and drones, to
    surveil and police individuals, particularly in the Xinjiang Uyghur
    Autonomous Region and Tibetan areas of China. At the Fourth World
    Internet Conference held in eastern China in early December, which was
    attended by Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Google chief executive
    Sundar Pichai, Chinese companies put such technology on full display. A
    Chinese anti-terrorism expert who spoke at a panel on terrorism at the
    conference described groups that speak out on behalf of Uyghur rights
    as terrorists, and said the Chinese government should try to push
    Twitter to change its terms of service to counteract such groups.
          As American companies and individuals engage with Chinese
    counterparts in cooperation on Internet forums and investment in
    artificial intelligence, what steps can the U.S. Government take to
    ensure that American companies adhere to the principles of free
    expression and avoid enabling mechanisms used by the Chinese state to
    repress its citizens? How can American Internet and technology
    companies stick to longstanding commitments to open communications
    while seeking to expand online forums in China?
        Answer. The international community has long assumed that American
    technology companies will by virtue of their very provenance promote
    and defend principles of free expression and avoid enabling repression
    when operating overseas. Sadly, this has not necessarily proven true in
    many cases, although there are instances in which companies have
    proactively taken steps to provide transparency about their actions
    (such as Google's transparency reports that highlight when governments
    have asked information to be removed from searches). These assumptions,
    then, need to be re-examined, such that these companies are directly
    asked about repression-enabling practices and strongly encouraged to
    voluntarily adopt more rigorous principles that hew to democratic norms
    when operating overseas. Such an effort occurred in the aftermath of
    the famous Yahoo! case in 2003, in which the company provided
    information to the Chinese authorities that led to the jailing of pro-
    democracy writers Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao. While the subsequent
    establishment of the Global Network Initiative and other initiatives
    has led to positive movement in this direction, the current moment
    requires reinvigorated attention to these issues and a renewed broader
    effort to hew to democratic principles.

        Question. Do you believe that a World Trade Organization dispute
    could be successfully used to challenge the Chinese government's
    discrimination against U.S. technology and media companies?
        Answer. While such remedies have been proposed in the past, to date
    they have not achieved significant progress. It is possible that
    renewed attention to this angle might result in greater success but
    only if the companies themselves also believe that this approach is
    worth the time and effort.

        Question. In your written testimony you mentioned the expanding
    network of Confucius Institutes around the world, including here in the
    United States, which, as you noted, are controversial at least in part
    because of ``their lack of transparency, disregard of key tenets of
    academic freedom, and ability to function as an arm of the Chinese
    state within academic campuses.'' What do you view as the greatest
    challenge posed by Confucius Institutes? Is greater U.S. Government
    oversight needed of Confucius Institutes?
        Answer. My view of the challenge posed by the Confucius Institutes
    is best summarized by a 2014 statement by the American Association of
    University Professors, which noted the CI role in advancing ``a state
    agenda in the recruitment and control of academic staff, in the choice
    of curriculum, and in the restriction of debate.'' At the very least,
    the simple prospect of greater oversight of Confucius Institutes might
    compel universities to be more forthcoming about the agreements signed
    with such institutions. There has only been one comprehensive report
    about the impact of Confucius Institutes within the U.S., and its fact-
    finding was hampered by an unwillingness on the part of universities to
    discuss their relationships with Confucius Institutes. Drawing
    attention to these issues in a public way might open up more debate and
    transparency, which would allow greater scrutiny and thus assessment of
    the true extent of the challenge. If, as CI supporters contend, these
    institutions serve an essentially benign cultural function, then they
    should welcome this transparency.

        Question. What can the U.S. Government do to overcome challenges
    from Chinese United Front organizations and activities that seek to co-
    opt U.S. interests in favor of Chinese political and economic
    interests?
        Answer. In all democracies, a range of tools should be brought to
    bear for making transparent foreign government efforts that weaken
    democratic institutions. In this way, neither China nor any other
    country need be singled out, but merely held to the same standard as
    all others. The challenge with United Front activities is that they
    have been largely mischaracterized (or ignored) from the beginning and
    have thus escaped scrutiny.

        Question. You suggested that certain industries (publishing,
    academia, film, technology, etc.) ought to band together to establish
    agreed-upon informal norms and ``good practice.''
          Are you aware of efforts already underway in that regard?
          What role, if any, can policymakers play in facilitating
    or supporting such efforts?
        Answer. Within academia, some are already calling for voluntary
    adherence to common democratic principles in such areas as academic
    publishing. Such efforts should be lauded and supported, as they face
    resistance from institutional structures conditioned to seek resources
    where they can. Within the context of the private sector, the Global
    Network Initiative is one effort providing a framework for
    international technology and telecommunications companies that is
    rooted in international standards, while also instilling a measure of
    accountability (through regular independent assessments performed as a
    condition of membership). It came about as a direct result of
    Congressional inquiry into the human rights implications of technology
    companies operating in China. While some may say that the GNI does not
    go far enough, it is one example of a voluntary process that seeks to
    implement some adherence to widely agreed human rights principles.
    There are other examples from the corporate social responsibility/
    business and human rights communities that may also be useful for
    entertainment companies and other private firms grappling with these
    challenges. Consistent attention to these issues by Congress serves as
    a useful impetus for such initiatives.
                                     ______

     questions for sophie richardson, director of china research at human
                       rights watch, from chairman rubio
        Question. The United Front Work system is not just about shaping
    the message or mobilizing friends, but also controlling the terms of
    engagement for how foreigners engage China and the Chinese Communist
    Party.
          How can the United States better protect and educate its
    citizens, including students, businesses, non-profit organizations,
    Congressional employees, and other government staff at local, state,
    and national levels against Chinese influence operations that seek to
    shape attitudes and perceptions according to Chinese national
    interests?
          How can the United States regain and maintain control of
    shaping the terms of engagement for U.S.-China bilateral relations in
    light of United Front operations? What are some mechanisms and tactics
    the U.S. Government can employ?
          How can local governments, civil society groups, and
    academic institutions counter Chinese United Front Work operations at
    local levels?
        Answer. A pressing priority for the U.S. and other democratic
    governments is to thoroughly assess the ways in which human rights are
    threatened by China's growing influence: are naturalized U.S. citizens
    from China being threatened in the U.S. by mainland officials? Are
    American universities changing their minds about commencement speakers
    on their campuses because those individuals are disliked by Beijing?
    Are local, state, or federal government agencies engaging with Chinese
    government officials who have been responsible for serious human rights
    violations in the mainland? An honest assessment would serve three
    purposes: (1) to provide an accurate picture of the nature and scope of
    national and local vulnerabilities, (2) to direct attention and
    resources to protecting those areas, and (3) to acknowledge that
    achieving this kind of influence is an explicit goal of the Chinese
    government and Chinese Communist Party. Such a study could be carried
    out at the request of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or other
    congressional bodies, and should include input from a variety of U.S.
    government sources, ranging from law enforcement to education
    officials, and drawing on federal, state, and local disclosure
    mechanisms.
        Legislators at the state and federal level should consider various
    responses: if, for example, public universities are accepting Confucius
    Institutes because they lack other resources for Chinese-language
    instruction, education authorities should recognize the risks to
    academic freedom and the institution's reputation and consider other
    budgetary solutions. Government officials who have any engagement with
    Chinese state or Communist Party entities could be required to disclose
    that information on a monthly or quarterly basis, with a view towards
    publishing it to promote greater transparency about those interactions.
    Congressional committees or bodies, such as the Congressional Executive
    Commission on China, could offer training seminars on the United Front
    Work Department, the International Liaison Department, friendship
    associations, and other Chinese state or Party agencies.
        With respect to reshaping the terms of engagement, we recommend
    that you consider the tactics outlined in my recent article ``How to
    Deal with China's Human Rights Abuses.'' It is of concern to Human
    Rights Watch that the current administration's overhaul of bilateral
    dialogues appears to relegate human rights to the margins; we urge that
    human rights be built into all bilateral dialogues implicating rights
    concerns, including law enforcement, counter-terrorism, and academic or
    ``people to people'' exchanges. We also strongly urge greater outreach
    by all branches of government to independent Chinese voices; there are
    now dozens of Chinese lawyers, scholars, and experts on all manner of
    topics who are outside China and independent of Beijing.

        Question. United Front-affiliated organizations, such as the China-
    U.S. Exchange Foundation and its domestic partner organizations, seek
    to actively lobby Congress and influence Congressional staff as well as
    state and local government officials through exchanges.
          How can the U.S. Congress better educate its staffers on
    lobbyists or ``people-to-people'' exchange opportunities sponsored by
    United Front-affiliated organizations, such as the China Association
    for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC), that seek to actively
    promote the Chinese Communist Party's political agenda?
          What can the U.S. Government do to overcome challenges
    from Chinese United Front organizations and activities that seek to co-
    opt U.S. interests in favor of Chinese political and economic
    interests?
          In your sphere of work, how have you encountered United
    Front-affiliated organizations or efforts, and to what extent should
    the U.S. Congress and Government be concerned about actively guarding
    against these efforts?
        Answer. Individual members, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
    and House Foreign Affairs Committee, the two China commissions, and the
    U.S.-China Working Group could provide seminars and other educational
    opportunities to their staff members regarding different Chinese
    influence agencies, and limit their ability to take money from or
    participate in activities sponsored by those groups, particularly with
    respect to travel to China. U.S. officials could be required to provide
    information regarding the nature of overtures from those agencies,
    their frequency, and who has responded positively to them could be
    published on an at least quarterly basis. Such knowledge and reporting
    requirements may significantly alter the scope of Beijing's efforts.
        The U.S. could also strengthen support to and increase funding for
    domestic programs and institutions that the Chinese government seeks to
    influence. For example, state and local authorities could increase
    funding to public schools and universities' Chinese language programs
    and China studies departments, and provide grants to ethnic Chinese
    civil society groups that are independent and self-organized, and
    support independent Chinese-language media.

        Question. Last week, on December 7, the Chinese government hosted a
    ``south-south'' human rights forum, during which Chinese officials
    claimed the benefits of China's ``human rights development path with
    Chinese characteristics.'' Can you discuss what this ``model'' consists
    of, and whether it meets the international human rights standards
    established by UN human rights instruments?
        Answer. China's ``model'' falls far short of established
    international human rights standards in several critical respects.
    First, it explicitly prioritizes state sovereignty over rights of the
    individual, and has been advanced at a time when China increasingly
    rejects the universality of human rights. This model would leave
    individuals living under abusive governments with no recourse to
    independent courts or institutions, like the UN's human rights
    mechanisms. Second, it explicitly prioritizes economic and social
    rights, particularly a vaguely worded ``right to development,'' over
    civil and political rights, effectively making the acquisition of an
    undefined level of development the precursor to consideration of rights
    like freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, or
    political participation. Third, rather than welcoming a broad, organic
    process of improving human rights in a given country, the model clearly
    puts the state at the center of these discussions, leaving little room
    for independent civil society to play a role other than the one the
    state explicitly allows.
        Lastly, as the final article of the December 2017 concluding
    statement makes clear, there is no room for established international
    human rights law in this model but rather vague, easily manipulated
    standards: ``In terms of human rights protection, there is no best way,
    only the better one. The satisfaction of the people is the ultimate
    criterion to test the rationality of human rights and the way to
    guarantee them. It is the responsibility of governments to continuously
    raise the level of human rights protection in accordance with the
    demands of their peoples.''
        Question. The Human Rights Watch Report mentions a resolution
    proposed by China at a June 2017 Human Rights Council session that
    asserts the ``importance of development in human rights.'' This
    resolution was adopted by a vote of 30 to 13. Why is the language of
    ``development'' critical to China's definition of human rights? Will
    the adoption of this language have any long-term impact on the Human
    Rights Council's work?
        Answer. China emphasizes development as a human right because it is
    the issue on which Beijing thinks it can most clearly demonstrate
    progress--longer life expectancy, higher per capita income, and
    millions of people lifted out of poverty. To the extent these are
    demonstrably true, they are of course laudable achievements, yet China
    consistently omits discussion of the less positive aspects of its
    economic development strategy, including rampant pollution, the
    appalling phenomenon of ``left-behind'' children, or the discriminatory
    hukou system that leaves domestic migrant workers unable to access
    state benefits.
        China's emphasis on development appears to be part of a broader
    strategy to insert its narrative into UN resolutions, promoting
    development and economic, social and cultural rights at the expense of
    civil and political rights, detracting attention from its systemic
    denials of freedom of expression and crackdown on human rights
    defenders and dissenting voices. The U.S., in its explanation of its
    vote on the development resolution, rightly expressed concern that
    China's text quotes key international instruments ``in a selective and
    imbalanced way that often omits key language that fully explains the
    relationship between human rights and development, or changes consensus
    language to materially alter its meaning,'' noting that ``these and
    other distortions of consensus language reinforce the incorrect message
    that development is a prerequisite for states fulfilling their human
    rights obligations--a message that is clearly inconsistent with states'
    commitments reflected in the VDPA [Vienna Declaration and Programme of
    Action].'' The European Union similarly expressed concern that ``the
    draft resolution introduced by China aims to construct an unhelpful
    narrative which would elevate the process of development above human
    rights.''
        We understand that at the upcoming session of the Human Rights
    Council in March 2018, China is proposing a similar initiative focused
    on promoting dialogue and cooperation at the expense of addressing
    serious human rights violations and protecting victims from abuse. It
    is important that states engage in these debates to resist efforts to
    distort the international human rights framework.

        Question. There are 24 UN agencies with a presence in China; the
    Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is not among
    them. Is the resident coordinator (the head of the country team) doing
    enough to help push the Chinese government on human rights, especially
    in light of the non-presence of OHCHR?
        Answer. The current resident coordinator is improving on his
    predecessors' performance with respect to human rights by taking some
    modest steps, including meeting with some human rights activists and
    disseminating information about UN human rights mechanisms such as the
    Universal Periodic Review. Yet, there is a great deal more his office
    could do: ensuring robust discussion of human rights issues in annual
    reports and the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), which
    typically only make superficial reference to the issue; providing a
    specific and platitude-free assessment of China's human rights
    situation in Chinese government-run discussions such as the December
    2017 ``South-South Forum on Human Rights''; making regular use of the
    UN's ``Rights Up Front'' strategy to convene regular discussions across
    those agencies about human rights developments in China. However,
    taking those steps is not solely a question of an individual resident
    coordinator's inclinations, but equally, if not more, a function of
    thoughtful, consistent support for such an approach at the highest
    levels of the UN. This in turn requires sustained, thoughtful support
    from powerful UN member states such as the U.S.

        Question. Are there realms other than the United Nations, such as
    INTERPOL, where you think there is reason to be concerned about Chinese
    government influence?
        Answer. Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about Interpol's
    ability to uphold its stated commitment to operating according to the
    Universal Declaration of Human Rights under the leadership of Chinese
    Vice-Minister for Public Security Meng Hongwei, who became the
    president of Interpol in November 2016. Human Rights Watch has also
    documented that China--against Interpol regulations--has issued
    politically motivated ``red notices''--alerts seeking the arrest and
    extradition of wanted people--against dissidents and others abroad whom
    China deemed problematic. China's record of arbitrary detention,
    torture, and enforced disappearance, as well as unlawful forced
    repatriation, raise concerns that those subject to Interpol red notices
    from China will be at risk of torture and other ill treatment. Most
    recently we have documented Chinese authorities' subjecting the family
    members in China of ``red notice'' individuals to forms of collective
    punishment--unlawfully punishing someone for the actions of another.
    The authorities have also pressured relatives to travel to the
    countries where red notice individuals live to persuade them to return
    to China. Other Interpol member states such as the U.S. could condition
    some of their financial support to the organization on its demonstrated
    commitment to human rights in its operations.
        Human Rights Watch has also tracked efforts by Chinese state-owned
    enterprises to lower labor standards in Zambia, which has strong laws
    protecting the rights to assembly and association; the sale of and
    training on surveillance technology made by ZTE, a large Chinese
    company, to Ethiopian authorities, who used that technology to repress
    peaceful criticism; and the potential for the Chinese-established Asian
    Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to replicate abusive practices of
    previous international development banks.
        Human Rights Watch has, since 2014, been researching threats to
    academic freedom outside China but resulting from Chinese government
    pressure. The abuses include: institutionally driven and self-imposed
    censorship to avoid irking Chinese authorities; and threats,
    harassment, and surveillance by Chinese authorities, and in some cases
    by Chinese students and scholars, of one another, and of those seen as
    critical of China. Given the number of mainland Chinese students in the
    U.S., and the positive interest on U.S. campuses in studying China, it
    is imperative that this realm of free expression be protected.
        Question. In May 2017, Human Rights Watch issued a report on a
    nationally searchable DNA database being built by Chinese police. Human
    Rights Watch raised concerns over a lack of meaningful privacy
    protections and a lack of consent for the collection of DNA and other
    personal information, particularly for Uyghurs. A May 2017 report
    published by the scientific journal Nature noted that police in the
    northwest region of Xinjiang had reportedly purchased eight sequencers
    produced by Thermo Fisher Scientific in Waltham, Massachusetts. These
    machines can be used to examine DNA and match DNA samples collected
    from a crime scene with individuals or their relatives listed in a
    database.
          Should U.S. officials be concerned about the sale of this
    type of equipment to Chinese security personnel? What steps, if any,
    should the U.S. Government take to ensure that equipment and technology
    produced in the United States is not transferred to countries where
    they will be used to carry out human rights violations?
        Answer. In follow-up research, Human Rights Watch determined that
    Xinjiang authorities are gathering DNA samples from all residents of
    the region between the ages of 12-65 under the guise of a free public
    health program.
        While Human Rights Watch does not have evidence of complicity in
    human rights violations by Thermo Fisher, its unwillingness to provide
    assurances that it has undertaken thorough due diligence measures to
    ensure that it is not enabling abuses is worrying. The US should, as a
    matter of urgency, undertake a review of all U.S.-based companies
    manufacturing surveillance technology in, and/or selling surveillance
    technology to, China to ensure that existing export control standards
    and ``dual use'' loopholes are not enabling abuses.
        The U.S., including through congressional committees, could also
    convene a panel of experts to focus on surveillance technologies and
    take advice on whether it is necessary to revise export controls.

        Question. The U.S. Embassy and U.S. companies have set up a working
    group to engage with China's Belt and Road Initiative and provide a
    forum for U.S. exporters to introduce their products and services. At a
    forum on the Belt and Road Initiative hosted by the Chinese government
    in Beijing in May 2017, Matthew Pottinger, senior director for Asia at
    the National Security Council, expressed support for the initiative but
    also raised concerns about transparency in the bidding process and
    other issues.
        Answer. Our primary concerns regarding the ``One Belt, One Road''
    initiative include how the project may further undermine an already
    highly abusive environment in Xinjiang, that many of the Central Asian
    governments involved in the project have poor human rights track
    records, particularly with major infrastructure projects, whether AIIB
    members--even ones with strong protections in place for peaceful
    expression--will tolerate public criticism of China, and whether those
    who protest peacefully against One Belt, One Road projects will be
    allowed an opportunity for meaningful engagement, be ignored, or be
    imprisoned.
        Private companies involved in One Belt, One Road projects should
    recognize they have a responsibility to carry out effective human
    rights due diligence, as outlined in the United Nations Guiding
    Principles on Business and Human Rights. Companies should assess human
    rights risks and take effective steps to mitigate or avoid those risks.
    Companies also have a responsibility to ensure that people who claim to
    experience abuses have access to appropriate remedies. Potential
    financiers, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank,
    should keep in mind their own responsibility to respect human rights as
    they invest in One Belt, One Road.
        If all One Belt, One Road participants aspire to respect human
    rights, the project could be truly transformative. But that will
    require dedicated commitment to community consultation, respect for
    peaceful protest, openness to reject or change projects in response to
    community concerns, and genuine commitment to transparency. Many
    participating governments do not seem particularly inclined to respond
    in such a manner to such challenges. Whether higher standards prevail
    should be the key test of One Belt, One Road's long-term impact.

        Question. As American companies, including General Electric, invest
    in projects related to the Belt and Road Initiative, what steps, if
    any, should U.S. officials take to ensure such investment complies with
    international human rights standards? What steps can American companies
    themselves put in place to ensure compliance with human rights norms?
        Answer. See answer above for guidance on the human rights standards
    for corporations.

        Question. Under newly revised implementing regulations for its
    counterespionage law, China's State Council has expanded state powers
    to punish Chinese and foreign individuals for offenses the Chinese
    government deems threatening to its national security or ``social
    stability.'' Under the new rules, Chinese state security authorities
    can bar foreigners from entering China if they are ``likely to engage
    in activities that might endanger national security.'' Foreigners can
    also be prevented from leaving China for a period of time, or can be
    deported for ``harming national security.'' Foreign individuals or
    groups who ``fabricate or distort facts'' can also be penalized. Human
    rights organizations and governments have raised concerns that Chinese
    national security legislation is enabling Chinese authorities to target
    rights advocates and dissidents who criticize the CCP or advocate
    political reform.
          What steps could the United States and other governments
    take to provide protection for Americans engaged in China-related civil
    society, advocacy, and academic work, in order to prevent them from
    potentially being punished under these regulations? How might the
    United States and other countries seek to protect Americans' Chinese
    counterparts from being punished for engaging in peaceful civil
    society, advocacy, or academic efforts?
        Answer. The U.S. government--through the White House, State
    Department, and members of Congress and congressional committees--
    should forcefully and publicly speak in defense of this work generally
    and with respect to specific groups and individuals. U.S. officials
    should also regularly remind Chinese authorities of its obligations
    under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, particularly in
    light of the ongoing arbitrary detention of European and Taiwanese
    citizens. Doing so not only helps those who have been silenced or
    detained, but is also of assistance to other countries seeking the
    freedom of their nationals.
        The U.S. could also consider funding, through the State Department
    and foundations such as the National Endowment for Democracy,
    innovative work by independent Chinese civil society outside the
    country if doing so in the mainland proves too risky; it could consider
    doing so in collaboration with other like-minded groups. Engaging a
    broad cross-section of Chinese in the U.S.--whether they are U.S.-born
    or naturalized; whether they are scholars or dissidents--will help the
    U.S. push back against the Chinese government's efforts to paint U.S.
    concerns as biased or racist.

        Question. The Commission has followed closely troubling
    developments related to China's relatively new Overseas NGO Management
    Law. We've received anecdotal accounts of U.S. foundations, during the
    application process being asked to provide information to Chinese
    authorities on their activities in the U.S., including research that
    relates to China, despite the fact that none of that research is
    occurring in China, or involves funds or other resources being
    transferred to or within China.
          Have you heard similar accounts?
          What are the implications?
        Answer. We have not heard of such inquiries in the context of the
    FNGO Management Law, but have documented Chinese government inquiries
    about the origins, perceived political affiliations, funders, and other
    details of foreign NGOs in other countries and via the UN's ECOSOC
    accreditation process for NGOs. The net effect of these efforts by
    Beijing is to ensure that even groups working outside China are aware
    that their work is being tracked, and, in the case of seeking ECOSOC
    accreditation, that such status can be delayed for years at a time for
    undertaking work Beijing does not like.

                           Submissions for the Record

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                              Witness Biographies

        The Long Arm of China: Exporting Authoritarianism with Chinese
                                Characteristics

                               december 13, 2017
        Shanthi Kalathil, Director, International Forum for Democratic
    Studies, National Endowment for Democracy
        Shanthi Kalathil is Director of the International Forum for
    Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. Previously
    a Senior Democracy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International
    Development (USAID) and a regular consultant for the World Bank, the
    Aspen Institute, and others, she has written or edited numerous policy
    and scholarly publications. She co-authored ``Open Networks, Closed
    Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule,'' a widely
    cited work that examined the Internet and authoritarian regimes. She is
    a former Hong Kong-based staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal
    Asia. She lectures on international relations in the information age at
    Georgetown University. She received a B.A. in Communications from the
    University of California at Berkeley and a M.Sc. in Comparative
    Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

        Glenn Tiffert, Ph.D., Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford
    University
        Glenn Tiffert is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at
    Stanford University. From 2015-2017, he was the Distinguished
    Postdoctoral Fellow in Residence at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for
    Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He has taught at UC-
    Berkeley, Harvard, UCLA, and University of Michigan. He recently issued
    a paper that identifies systemic digital censorship of essays from two
    prominent Chinese law journals from the 1950s, which has obstructed
    contemporary understanding of the debates about rule of law and
    jurisprudence early in the Communist era. Moreover, the paper
    demonstrates empirically how the increasing reliance by scholars
    outside of China on filtered Chinese databases inadvertently empowers
    the Chinese government to export its domestic censorship mechanisms
    abroad. Professor Tiffert earned his Ph.D. in History from the
    University of California at Berkeley.

        Sophie Richardson, Ph.D., China Director, Human Rights Watch
        Sophie Richardson serves as the China Director at Human Rights
    Watch. A graduate of the University of Virginia, the Hopkins-Nanjing
    Program, and Oberlin College, she is the author of numerous articles on
    domestic Chinese political reform, democratization, and human rights in
    Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
    She has testified before the European Parliament and the U.S. Senate
    and House of Representatives. She has provided commentary to the BBC,
    CNN, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, National Public
    Radio, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington
    Post. Dr. Richardson is the author of ``China, Cambodia, and the Five
    Principles of Peaceful Coexistence'' (Columbia University Press, Dec.
    2009), an in-depth examination of China's foreign policy since the 1954
    Geneva Conference, including rare interviews with policymakers.

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