[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]





                     THE DISMANTLING OF HONG KONG'S
                             CIVIL SOCIETY

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

                                HEARING

                               before the

              CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             JULY 12, 2022

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China



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                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

48-169 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2023












              CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS


Senate                               House 
                                    
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon, Chair          JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts,  
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California                 Co-chair
MARCO RUBIO, Florida                 CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             THOMAS SUOZZI, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey
STEVE DAINES, Montana                BRIAN MAST, Florida
ANGUS KING, Maine                    VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan
                                     JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
                                     MICHELLE STEEL, California

                     EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

                           Not yet appointed

                      Matt Squeri, Staff Director

                   Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director

                                  (ii)







                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                               Statements

                                                                   Page
Opening Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley, a U.S. Senator from 
  Oregon; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.....     1
Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern, a U.S. Representative from 
  Massachusetts; Co-chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on 
  China..........................................................     2
Statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from New 
  Jersey.........................................................     3
Statement of Patrick Poon, visiting researcher, Institute of 
  Comparative Law, Meiji University..............................     6
Statement of Fermi Wong, founder and former executive director, 
  Unison.........................................................     9
Statement of Cheong Ching, veteran journalist....................    11
Statement of Samuel Bickett, American lawyer and activist; 
  Fellow, Georgetown Center for Asian Law........................    13

                                APPENDIX
                          Prepared Statements

Poon, Patrick....................................................    31
Wong, Fermi......................................................    32
Ching, Cheong....................................................    35
Bickett, Samuel..................................................    37

Merkley, Hon. Jeff...............................................    40
McGovern, Hon. James P...........................................    41

                       Submissions for the Record

List of journalists and press freedom defenders arrested in Hong 
  Kong, submitted by Senator Ossoff..............................    43
CECC staff research report, ``Hong Kong Prosecutors Play a Key 
  Role in Carrying Out Political Prosecution''...................    45
CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form..........................    56
Witness Biographies..............................................    57

                                 (iii)






 
                     THE DISMANTLING OF HONG KONG'S
                             CIVIL SOCIETY

                              ----------                              


                         TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2022

                            Congressional-Executive
                                       Commission on China,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The hearing was held from 10:00 a.m. to 11:47 a.m., room 
562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., and via 
WebEx, Senator Jeff Merkley, Chair, Congressional-Executive 
Commission on China, presiding.
    Also present: Representative James P. McGovern, Co-chair, 
Congressional-Executive Commission on China; Senator Jon Ossoff 
and Representative Chris Smith.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF MERKLEY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 
   OREGON; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

    Chair Merkley. Good morning. Today's hearing of the 
Congressional-Executive Commission on China entitled ``The 
Dismantling of Hong Kong's Civil Society'' will come to order.
    Earlier this month, Hong Kong marked the 25th anniversary 
of the British handover to the People's Republic of China. 
Instead of celebrating the high degree of autonomy and 
universal suffrage promised to the people of Hong Kong, this 
anniversary served as an occasion for Chinese leader Xi Jinping 
to go to Hong Kong and flaunt the control he now wields over 
the city. It's now been two years since implementation of Hong 
Kong's draconian National Security Law.
    In these two years, authorities completed the 
transformation of Hong Kong from an open society into a city 
gripped by fear--fear of the mainland's authoritarian 
repression. A city that once boasted a vibrant civil society 
and pro-democratic institutions saw these pillars of what made 
Hong Kong so special systematically dismantled. The Hong Kong 
government now jails protesters and politicians, shuts down 
independent media, and silences critics, even criminalizing 
dissent.
    At least 10,500 Hong Kongers have been arrested for 
political and protest-related offenses. No fewer than 123 
individuals face national security charges and will likely be 
tried with few or no due process protections and with possible 
extradition to mainland China. At least 65 civil society 
organizations have shut down or left Hong Kong for fear of 
prosecution under the National Security Law. Today, sadly, that 
once-vibrant civil society is crushed, muted, and scattered.
    Today's hearing offers a microcosm of what's happened and 
what remains. Our witnesses bring a deep history in civil 
society in Hong Kong, as well as experience being persecuted 
and having to continue their work in exile, in Tokyo, in 
London, in Los Angeles, and here in Washington, DC. Like so 
many, they continue to fight for the people of Hong Kong and 
its once-proud institutions.
    In recent months, this Commission has heard from dozens of 
Hong Kong's true patriots: journalists, human rights advocates, 
students, former legislators, social workers, and religious 
clergy, nongovernmental organization staff, doctors, nurses, 
lawyers, teachers, and trade union organizers. In the coming 
days, we will release a report on what those members of civil 
society have experienced, largely in their own words. Today's 
hearing offers a glimpse into that bleak picture. The Chinese 
government's policy of crushing resistance turns Hong Kong into 
a city subject to centralized political control, like other 
cities in China. The civil society voices we've heard from view 
authorities as co-opting those who can be bought, constraining 
those who can be intimidated, and cracking down on those who 
cannot be silenced.
    As we hear some of those stories today, I look forward to 
learning from our witnesses what we can do to support the civil 
society that remains in Hong Kong and organizations that now 
operate elsewhere on behalf of the people of Hong Kong. I look 
forward to exploring with the Biden administration additional 
steps that can be taken to hold accountable those responsible 
for undermining Hong Kong's autonomy, basic rights, and rule of 
law.
    Later today, the Commission will release a report--a staff 
analysis--on the role of Hong Kong's prosecutors in these 
abuses. We hope that this analysis, like the work we do 
documenting political prisoner cases generally, will shine a 
light in a dark place and point to a better path ahead. Without 
objection, these supplementary materials will be entered into 
the record.
    I now recognize Congressman McGovern for his opening 
remarks.

  STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
MASSACHUSETTS; CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON 
                             CHINA

    Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for 
holding this hearing on the erosion of civil society in Hong 
Kong. Hong Kong has long been a particular interest of this 
Commission. From the start, 20 years ago, our annual report has 
included a discrete Hong Kong chapter. This is the sixth 
hearing on Hong Kong, or featuring a witness on Hong Kong, in 
my three and a half years as House co-chair. The reason for 
this heightened attention is regrettable, however.
    The changes during this time have been dramatic. Three 
years ago this summer, the world witnessed massive protests in 
the streets of Hong Kong. The trigger was an extradition treaty 
that put residents at risk of being forcibly sent to the 
mainland. The context was the steady erosion of democratic 
norms under Chinese government and Communist Party influence. 
For our September 2019 hearing on the protests, witnesses flew 
in from Hong Kong. They would not be able to do that today.
    One witness was Joshua Wong, a leader of the pro-democracy 
movement, making his second appearance before the CECC. Today 
he is in prison on political charges. Another was Denise Ho, a 
democracy activist and singer. She was arrested and released on 
bail and still faces charges of the crime of supporting 
democracy. In 2020, the central government passed the National 
Security Law, providing a ``legal'' basis for political 
persecution of those deemed oppositional to the Party's 
priorities.
    Further, Hong Kong authorities have imposed measures 
aligned with the ideological priorities of the central 
government. These include removing books from libraries, 
pushing patriotic education in schools, revising history to 
suit party narratives, and suppressing LGBTQ voices. These 
impulses are not exclusive to Hong Kong or China. We see such 
evidence of authoritarianism creep in in many places at home 
and abroad.
    Today we hear from citizens and residents of Hong Kong who 
have been firsthand witnesses to this extraordinary change. The 
fact that none of our witnesses remains in Hong Kong is 
indicative of the crackdown. We invite them to share their 
stories and to speak for their friends and colleagues still in 
Hong Kong who are not able to speak for themselves. We not only 
want to hear about the state of civil society, but to receive 
recommendations, as the chairman said, on what U.S. 
policymakers can do to support those who still desire democracy 
and human rights.
    I also welcome your recommendations on whether the U.S. 
should create humanitarian pathways for those fleeing 
repression in Hong Kong. Lastly, let us not forget the 
prisoners of conscience who are in jail or on trial in Hong 
Kong--Joshua Wong, Jimmy Lai, Cyd Ho, Claudia Mo, and so many 
others. We continue to stand with them and to advocate for 
their release.
    Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the staff is working 
on analytical products in conjunction with this hearing, and I 
look forward to their publication. I look forward to the 
testimony today. I yield back.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
    Congressman Smith, do you wish to make any opening 
comments?

                 STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH,
                A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY

    Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 
First of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for organizing 
this very important hearing on the very disturbing dismantling 
of civil society in Hong Kong that we see taking place right 
before our very eyes. Last October, I had convened a hearing at 
the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, which I co-chair with 
my good friend and colleague Jim McGovern, on the state of 
civil and political rights in Hong Kong. What we heard then 
with regard to the erosion of civil and political rights was 
deeply concerning, but as much as the danger signs were all 
flashing red some nine months ago, the situation has only 
gotten worse since then, as we shall hear from our witnesses.
    While this deterioration has impacted civil society 
organizations across the board, I want to focus on one aspect 
of civil society that until very recently has been very 
vibrant, namely, the faith-based sector and parochial education 
provided principally by Catholic schools. Indeed, though 
estimated as constituting only 5 percent of the overall 
population, the Catholic imprint on Hong Kong's elites has been 
quite profound. One thinks of the great democracy advocate and 
lawyer Martin Lee, whose faith motivated his commitment to 
democracy and the rule of law, Albert Ho, former chairman of 
the democratic party, and Anson Chan, the former chief 
secretary who pushed for direct democracy for Hong Kong.
    Or Jimmy Lai, the billionaire who founded the Giordano 
clothing and retail emporium, as well as founded and financed 
the fiercely independent Apple Daily, which was shut down by 
the government in June of last year. Jimmy, a convert to 
Catholicism, was arrested and charged with crimes under the 
draconian National Security Law, which was enacted in 2020 at 
the behest of the Chinese Communist Party. Jimmy remains in 
jail, but he is a man of faith who easily could have fled to 
safety like the roughly 90,000 citizens who left Hong Kong 
between June 2020 and June 2021, because he is or was a rich 
man. Yet Jimmy stayed in Hong Kong to stand with those who 
spoke for freedom. Such a heroic man.
    Towering above all is Cardinal Zen, who for years has been 
warning about Communist China's efforts to control the church, 
in particular its Catholic schools, as well as education in 
general. The church resisted efforts in 2012 to impose 
propagandistic citizen education using mainland-approved 
textbooks in Catholic schools, which was a mere 10 years ago. 
Fast-forward to today, however, and the teachers are being 
purged from schools at all different levels in Hong Kong, not 
only Catholic ones. The cardinal has been a thorn in the side 
of Beijing, as well as those in Hong Kong who sought to do the 
Chinese Communist Party's bidding.
    Thus, one perhaps should not be surprised that at the 
beginning of this year a series of four articles appeared in Ta 
Kung Pao, a newspaper owned by the Chinese government via its 
liaison office in Hong Kong, attacking the cardinal. They 
ominously liken him to practitioners of Falun Gong, whose 
adherents are horribly persecuted in mainland China, while also 
calling for greater curtailment of religious liberty.
    Then at 90 years of age, the next shoe dropped. The 
cardinal was arrested in May of this year and charged under the 
National Security Law. His offenses included subversion, in 
other words supporting democracy protesters, and collusion with 
foreign organizations. The latter is especially chilling when 
one considers how in communist China the Catholic Church was 
deemed a foreign power, with Chinese Catholics on the mainland 
forced to either join a patriot church or go underground.
    Yet these heroic individuals aren't the only prominent 
Catholics in Hong Kong. Both former chief executive Carrie Lam 
and current executive John Lee, who previously served as 
secretary of security, identify as Catholics and went to 
Catholic schools. These are the two individuals most closely 
associated with implementing Beijing's policy mandates and 
enforcing the National Security Law, leading to the dismantling 
of Hong Kong's civil society. Indeed, just the other day the 
Holy See's envoy and unofficial representative in Hong Kong, 
Monsignor Javier Herrera Corona, warned Hong Kong Catholics 
that the freedoms they have enjoyed in the past are now fast 
disappearing and cautioned missionaries that Hong Kong is ``not 
the great Catholic beachhead it was.''
    What is so frustrating about this is all the signals that 
were missed here in Washington, indeed here in Congress as 
well, leading up to this. I first introduced the Hong Kong 
Human Rights and Democracy Act in 2014. It was the time of the 
Umbrella Movement, which began in response to a decision by the 
Standing Committee of the PRC's National People's Congress to 
pre-screen candidates for Hong Kong's chief executive position, 
effectively excluding those Beijing deemed unreliable.
    A new generation of democracy leaders, as we all know, 
emerged, including great student leaders like Joshua Wong and 
Nathan Law. International observers and the foreign media 
cheered these advocates, as did we, and there was a sense of 
optimism and enthusiasm. Perhaps because of that optimism at 
the time it was hard to get our congressional colleagues to see 
clearly the gathering threat to Hong Kong's democracy and civil 
and political rights. Our bill had only five co-sponsors that 
year, including now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
    As I have noted in the past, many believed that Hong Kong, 
with its greater freedom and free trade principles, could help 
turn and tug the People's Republic of China in a liberalizing 
fashion. Hong Kong's Basic Law was a mini constitution that 
some believed could serve as a model for expanding respect for 
the rule of law in China one day. Such hope, sadly, proved 
illusory. In March of 2019, the Hong Kong government proposed 
extraditing alleged criminals to China, raising fears that 
political dissidents could be sent to mainland China to face 
charges over exercising basic freedoms.
    Hong Kong's government, using an increasingly aggressive 
police force, began to resemble that of mainland China in 
responding to legitimate protests, speech, and peaceable 
assembly. Congress too awakened to the changed situation and 
with now 47 co-sponsors, and under the leadership of Speaker 
Pelosi, our Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed the 
House, with Lantos Commission co-chair Jim McGovern, I'm happy 
to say, as the lead Democrat. Indeed, that same day, Jim's bill 
placing restrictions on tear gas exports and crowd-control 
technology to Hong Kong also passed, with me as the lead 
Republican co-sponsor.
    When the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was 
enacted into law, the Trump administration declared that Hong 
Kong was no longer ``sufficiently autonomous'' to warrant being 
treated as being independent of China for trade and technology 
export purposes, and further sanctioned key individuals in the 
Hong Kong government, including Carrie Lam. While we could 
point to this as a victory, with Republicans and Democrats 
united, frankly speaking we all know it was a case of too 
little and too late--certainly too late to help save democracy 
and civil society in Hong Kong.
    Thus, here we are, no longer at a crossroads but further 
down the wrong road. Where we go from here depends in part on 
whether the world is paying attention, and especially whether 
we here are paying attention, which is why this hearing today 
is so important. To Martin Lee, Albert Ho, Cardinal Zen, Jimmy 
Lai, and Joshua Wong, and all of those who have been unjustly 
arrested or imprisoned, please know--please know you are not 
forgotten. With that, I look forward to hearing from our very 
distinguished witnesses. I yield back.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congressman.
    I'd now like to introduce our panel of witnesses.
    Patrick Poon is a visiting researcher at the Institute for 
Comparative Law at Meiji University in Tokyo. He is advisor to 
the 29 Principles, a United Kingdom-based organization 
supporting lawyers facing oppression. In his years in Hong 
Kong, he served as a court reporter for the South China Morning 
Post, China Labour Bulletin, the China Human Rights Lawyers 
Concern Group, the Independent Chinese PEN Center, and Amnesty 
International.
    Fermi Wong is founder and former executive director of Hong 
Kong Unison, a group that promotes equality for ethnic 
minorities. Her work running a civil society organization in 
Hong Kong has been featured in Time magazine, the South China 
Morning Post Magazine, and Hong Kong Free Press. Now in the 
United Kingdom, she seeks to promote Hong Kong civil society 
abroad.
    Ching Cheong is a veteran journalist who worked for the 
state-owned Wen Wei Po newspaper for 15 years, acquiring 
knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party's interference in Hong 
Kong affairs. He is featured in a recent Economist article 
titled, ``How a Free and Open Hong Kong Became a Police 
State.'' Before he left Hong Kong, he was involved with 
independent media and journalist organizations. He joins us 
from Los Angeles this morning.
    Samuel Bickett is a human rights lawyer focused on the rule 
of law and civil liberties in Hong Kong, and a fellow at the 
Georgetown Center for Asian Law. He was a corporate sanctions/
corporate corruption lawyer based in Hong Kong from 2013 to 
2021. He was arrested during the 2019 protests and convicted, 
imprisoned twice, and then deported from Hong Kong earlier this 
year.
    Thank you all for joining us to bring your stories, your 
knowledge, and your expertise. We look forward to your 
testimony. We will begin with Patrick Poon, who's joining us 
from Tokyo.

 STATEMENT OF PATRICK POON, VISITING RESEARCHER, INSTITUTE OF 
               COMPARATIVE LAW, MEIJI UNIVERSITY

    Mr. Poon. I would like to thank the CECC and the 
distinguished audience for giving me this opportunity to share 
my experience and my views on the situation of civil society in 
Hong Kong. I'll focus on the drastic change of civil society 
space from the time I changed my job as a journalist to become 
an NGO worker with local and international NGOs since the early 
2000s to the era of red net, as I would describe it, after the 
National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese 
authorities.
    ``Red line'' is simply not enough to describe the scope. 
The Hong Kong and Chinese governments wouldn't even make clear 
where the red line is, so they can arbitrarily restrict Hong 
Kong people's freedoms. The message is clear--you can only 
survive if you don't challenge the government. When I started 
my NGO career focusing on supporting workers, writers, and 
lawyers in mainland China, the civil society was very vibrant. 
We could organize all kinds of activities, ranging from staging 
demonstrations to call for the release of detained dissidents 
in China to arranging for writers and lawyers to meet with 
their counterparts in Hong Kong. We never experienced any 
interference or felt any threats.
    Even when I was an Amnesty researcher, I wouldn't fear too 
much for my personal safety when I commented on the detention 
of Chinese dissidents or when I worked on documenting Uyghur 
and Kazakh cases in relation to the political reeducation 
camps. I still remember how a mainland Chinese writer once 
exclaimed when he arrived in Hong Kong, when I met him at the 
train station. He said, I could finally breathe the air of 
freedom. It was a time when many young university graduates in 
Hong Kong were willing to take a relatively low salary to work 
on issues so that we could do something to help our friends in 
China.
    During that time, I was able to communicate with many high-
profile mainland Chinese dissidents without fear. Late Nobel 
Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo had so much hope for Hong 
Kong's support that he contacted me and several others in Hong 
Kong in late 2008 to invite prominent pro-democracy figures in 
Hong Kong to co-sign Charter 08. Many of those democratic 
figures, some of them now in prison, and myself, were among the 
first batch of co-signatories. We didn't need to think much 
when we decided to co-sign it.
    These experiences led me to continue my work at 
international NGOs like Amnesty as I believed that it is 
significant to push China to comply with its international 
obligations. It was unimaginable at that time that Hong Kong's 
freedom of expression and freedom of assembly would be 
completely gone. Even prayer meetings or masses to commemorate 
the victims of the Tiananmen massacre are now deemed too 
sensitive. For NGOs in Hong Kong, we used to feel secure to 
organize talks on Hong Kong issues in China and Hong Kong, 
whether public or closed door, with universities in Hong Kong. 
We didn't need to worry too much about our personal safety 
compared with activists in mainland China.
    But now everyone needs to have second thoughts or self-
censor the content of the events before planning such 
activities. We used to be able to organize public talks by 
inviting human rights lawyers from China to share their 
experiences with the general public. Now it's just unimaginable 
that similar activities could be done anymore in Hong Kong. We 
used to be able to hold public rallies, from small-scale 
demonstrations outside China's Central Government Liaison 
Office calling for the release of detained Chinese dissidents 
to mass rallies calling for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, 
without any interference.
    Police officers at that time were friendly and would even 
engage in discussing the route with the organizers. The police 
made it very clear to us that we didn't need to get their 
permission to hold any rallies. We only needed to inform them 
and they would routinely issue a letter of no objection, only 
formalities, despite the Public Order Ordinance (that has been 
repeatedly criticized by UN human rights experts as restrictive 
of freedom of assembly). Sometimes the police would even call 
us to confirm that we would be organizing a demonstration if we 
forgot to inform them in advance.
    However, after the anti-extradition bill protests in 2019 
and the imposition of the NSL in 2020, the situation has 
completely changed. Anybody appearing in places like Victoria 
Park, where the annual candlelight vigil to commemorate the 
Tiananmen massacre used to take place on June 4th would be 
questioned by the police and warned that they would be charged 
with illegal assembly if they stayed there. Like many Hong 
Kongers, I honestly didn't believe that unionist Lee Cheuk-yan, 
solicitor and former legislator Albert Ho, and barrister Chow 
Hang-tung, leaders of the now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in 
Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China which 
organized the annual candlelight vigil, would be accused of 
inciting an unauthorized assembly for an assembly that had been 
allowed for over 30 years. They are now even facing the same 
notorious charge of inciting subversion of state power, like 
many Chinese activists.
    Finally, I would also like to share a bit about my 
experience as a former court reporter, as I'm puzzled at how 
difficult it is to cover court news in Hong Kong nowadays. I 
covered quite a lot of trials about protesters being accused of 
obstruction in a public place for staging small-scale protests 
that occupied some space, such as outside China's Central 
Government Liaison Office. Those were big news in those days. 
The sentences the protesters faced at that time were about a 
few weeks. Granting bail was considered normal. I never heard 
any judge at that time say that they didn't trust that the 
defendants would commit the said offense during bail.
    Presumption of innocence was well observed. Reporters 
wouldn't feel any restrictions on reporting anything in open 
trials, except for knowing that we shouldn't disclose the facts 
for cases that would be committed to be tried at the high 
court. Now everything has changed. Even reporting details about 
bail application is banned by the courts in Hong Kong. Judges 
rarely consider public interest when they make judgments. I 
appreciate that there have been some efforts to pressure the 
Hong Kong and Chinese governments. However, the situation won't 
change if the Hong Kong and Chinese governments can't see the 
real consequences. We shouldn't give them the impression of 
business as usual as they are cracking down on our civil 
society.
    While various governments have issued statements expressing 
concern about the erosion of human rights in Hong Kong, it's 
difficult to see any real impacts as the Chinese and Hong Kong 
governments have realized that they can continue doing business 
despite severe criticism of human rights records. Authoritarian 
regimes like China and their supporters have learned that they 
can divert attention of all criticism on human rights by 
pointing out that there are also serious human rights 
violations in democratic countries.
    However, checks and balances is what democracies should 
emphasize distinguishes them from tyrannies. Democratic 
governments should make the business community realize that 
there are real consequences for colluding with dictatorships. 
Combining the effort of pushing China and Hong Kong to comply 
with international human rights standards, and economic 
sanctions on senior government officials, would be the most 
effective and mutually beneficial way to ensure accountability. 
Otherwise, democracies will eventually succumb to authoritarian 
propaganda, which nobody would want to see. Therefore, I would 
urge the U.S. Government to impose further sanctions on all 
senior government officials in Hong Kong and China. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Poon. Your 
description of an individual coming to Hong Kong and saying, I 
could finally breathe the air of freedom, is certainly a 
description of an event that can no longer take place in any 
shape or form. I really appreciate your testimony.
    We are now going to turn to Ms. Wong. Ms. Wong is joining 
us from the United Kingdom.

STATEMENT OF FERMI WONG, FOUNDER AND FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 
                             UNISON

    Ms. Wong. Dear Mr. Chair, Co-chair, and other 
commissioners, thank you very much for holding this hearing. It 
really means a lot for us. I got a little emotional when Mr. 
Chris Smith mentioned those names. They all are my dear 
friends. I miss them a lot, and I can't see them in Hong Kong 
anymore.
    I was born in China and spent my whole childhood there. It 
was in Hong Kong that I experienced awakening to the universal 
values of freedom, equality, social justice, and individual 
rights. I have spent almost my entire adult life in civil 
society and my main focus is fighting for equality for ethnic 
minorities in Hong Kong, especially those of South Asian origin 
like the Nepalese, Indians, and Pakistanis. I also joined the 
democracy movement, fighting for universal suffrage in Hong 
Kong.
    Hong Kong used to be the capital of protests for good 
reasons. First, the Hong Kong government was not democratic and 
not so responsive. After the handover, the formulation of 
government policies was very bad. We learned that it was only 
when issues were taken to the streets that officials might 
respond. Second, because there were independent media, and they 
did a very good job, that helped to put pressure on the 
government and draw public attention and concern. The third 
reason is we Hong Kongers now have very high awareness of our 
freedom of assembly and speech, so we use protests and marches, 
and petitioned to defend our individual rights.
    The last reason was there was a huge gap between rights 
promised and rights delivered. The Basic Law Article 39 
provides for human rights protections as guaranteed by the Hong 
Kong Bill of Rights, the ICCPR, and the ICESCR. And also, we do 
have four pieces of equal opportunities laws, namely a 
disability discrimination ordinance, a race discrimination 
ordinance, and a sex discrimination ordinance, and a family 
status discrimination ordinance. However, the National Security 
Law has taken away all these rights. We say the civil society 
in Hong Kong is dead now, no more.
    When I first read the National Security Law, I was very 
naive. I thought that the crimes of secession, sedition, 
terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces should be of no 
concern to my work fighting for equality for minorities. But 
then I noticed that the National Security Law instructs the 
Hong Kong government to ``strengthen propaganda, guidance, 
supervision, and administration'' over ``schools, social 
groups, media, and the internet.'' Soon I realized that the 
National Security Law meant a total crackdown on civil society.
    In Hong Kong, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 
that provide social services for people who are in need, almost 
100 percent receive funding from the government. So after the 
handover, and also our amendment on funding mode, that means 
all NGOs need to sign a Funding and Service Agreement (FSA) 
with the government every three years, and that created very 
serious self-censorship. Now no more social service agencies 
are criticizing government policies. We have another setup if 
you want to criticize or challenge unfair policies and unjust 
systems--we would go to the civil societies or we set up our 
own civil societies. I must let you know that in Hong Kong, 
civil society is entirely separate and different from NGOs.
    For social services now, completely silenced. Just recently 
we had an amendment to our professional social workers 
ordinance that anyone who violates the National Security Law 
would be deregistered and their license would be taken away 
forever. Then the Labor Bureau is organizing study groups on 
the speech that Xi Jinping gave on the 25th anniversary of the 
handover. This is very important--the Labor Bureau or the 
government officials, they count who is present and who is 
absent. What does that mean? It means that if you are present, 
you are loyal enough and it will be easy for you to get 
government funding. Now only those NGOs that are seen as 
patriotic can get funding. If those NGOs don't really cooperate 
with government policy or join the study groups, I'm afraid 
it's very difficult for them to survive. This is the case in 
the social work profession and also the NGOs in Hong Kong. I 
would like to talk about civil society.
    I first joined the Civil Human Rights Front back in 2002. 
Back when it was set up I joined it, when I was advocating for 
legislation against racial discrimination. I really relied on 
civil society, the joint effort to pressure the government. For 
example, because there was very poor education policy for 
ethnic minorities, especially those from the working class. I 
need to cooperate with the Professional Teachers' Union, and 
now it has been shut down, no more. Then all the Pakistanis, 
Nepalese, Indians, the working class, you know, they do not 
enjoy equal wages. They were discriminated against in the 
workplace. We need trade unions. I always went to Lee Cheuk 
Yan, CTU, Confederation of Trade Unions. Now it's shut down and 
Lee Cheuk Yan is in jail.
    I needed to rely on some different civil societies; the 
Civil Human Rights Fund now is also gone. No more. And then 
another issue is, before, I used to join the civil societies 
delegations to lobby at the UN, because Hong Kong has signed a 
lot of human rights conventions and covenants. We did not 
really worry and weren't afraid of being prosecuted. But now 
this time just last week, at the hearing on the CCPR, on the 
China report, you saw the committee members needed to ask the 
Hong Kong official delegations whether they could guarantee no 
Hong Kong civil societies would be prosecuted when they return 
to Hong Kong.
    It is a very different story now. If I try to criticize any 
government policies for the media-- of course now I doubt any 
media would report on it. But if they had, I might be accused 
of inciting hatred toward the government, and then it's also 
violating the National Security Law. I just want to tell you 
that for the civil societies in Hong Kong, it's very difficult 
to survive. We could only rely on public donations during the 
mass rallies, or crowd funding, but now we can't do it because 
you would be accused of money laundering. Then if we try to go 
to local corporate or local private family foundations, you 
can't because no one will support you because they dare not 
upset the government.
    Then if you receive any funding from overseas, that means 
you are colluding with foreign forces. Now we are stuck. We 
don't have any way out at all. So, Mr. Chair and dear 
commissioners, I would like you to continue to pay attention to 
the Hong Kong situation. Then maybe please join hand in hand 
with democratic countries to defend human rights and democracy 
for the world and put aside those very short-term interests of 
doing business with China. Thank you very much.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you, Ms. Wong. I appreciate your focus 
on many aspects of social media and also on the role of the 
media.
    Speaking of the role of the media, that's a good transition 
to our next panelist, Ching Cheong. Ching Cheong is joining us 
from Los Angeles. Mr. Ching.

         STATEMENT OF CHING CHEONG, VETERAN JOURNALIST

    Mr. Ching. At the time when Beijing began to draft the 
Basic Law, Beijing reminded the law drafters that post-1997 
Hong Kong should only be an economic city and not a political 
one, which suggested that the thriving civil society might be 
curtailed. The Chinese Communist Party was worried that civil 
society organizations might be used as vehicles for the 
infiltration of Western influence to subvert this one-party 
dictatorship.
    In the early 1990s, I gained access to a report by the 
National Security Ministry which identified five social groups 
that might be potentially dangerous to the CCP. These included 
journalists, religious leaders, lawyers, educators, and social 
workers. In 2003 Beijing mapped out a detailed plan aimed at 
suppressing these five groups. It compiled a database of the 
prominent figures in each of these sectors and classified them 
according to their political attitude toward the CCP--either as 
friendly, neutral, or animus--and developed different united 
front strategies for them, either to co-opt or eliminate them. 
It set up also a psychological warfare department to discredit 
those who were considered as not friendly.
    Beginning in 2003, the CCP took several important measures 
to abrogate its Basic Law commitments. All these measures were 
aimed at imposing the CCP's will on Hong Kong and gradually 
convert Hong Kong from a free society to an authoritarian one. 
Such efforts culminated in the enactment of the draconian 
National Security Law in 2020, which ultimately destroyed Hong 
Kong's civil society. Within the first year of its enactment, 
more than 60 civil society organizations were disbanded.
    Now I'll focus on the media sector. Before 1997, Hong 
Kong's media market was characterized by its plurality and 
diversity in its editorial lines. At those times, most of them 
were Taiwan-friendly. To reverse this situation, the CCP 
started a massive united front strategy, trying to convert the 
political stance of these newspapers. At that time, the number 
one man in Hong Kong, Mr. Xu Jiatun, began to adopt a friendly 
approach by wining and dining newspaper owners and executives. 
The most successful case has been Sing Tao Daily and Ming Pao, 
which used to be against China taking back Hong Kong.
    Other means to transform the Hong Kong media included 
outright acquisitions of shares of major news outlets by pro-
China business tycoons, like the South China Morning Post, Ming 
Pao, and the TVB. Such acquisitions resulted in obvious changes 
in their respective editorial policies. By 2014, the remaining 
mainstream news outlets that were still critical of the CCP and 
supportive of the democracy movement were Jimmy Lai's Next 
Magazine and Apple Daily, together with a few web-based media 
such as Stand News and Citizen News.
    The enactment of the National Security Law gave the 
authorities wide-sweeping power to shutter all the remaining 
pro-democracy news outlets, with Apple Daily and Stand News 
bearing the full brunt. The chilling effect was obvious. The 
FCC voluntarily suspended its annual Human Rights Press Awards, 
citing the elusive red line in the National Security Law. The 
Hong Kong Journalists Association lowered the threshold for 
dissolution in anticipation of the pressure to disband itself.
    The Independent Commentators Association, which I was 
instrumental in setting up, set up to safeguard media freedom, 
went into silent voluntary dissolution. To avoid the ax, the 
editorial policies of news outlets had to toe Beijing's line. 
The obvious example is to call the Russian invasion of Ukraine 
a ``special military operation'' instead of an invasion and 
churn out commentaries that blame the U.S. for precipitating 
the Russian invasion.
    Now, I want to turn to the lessons for the world. In a 
short span of 25 years, a once-free society soon degenerated 
into an authoritarian one. For over a century, Hong Kong had 
served as the haven for the political dissidents from China; 
now it has become the exporter of political refugees itself. 
Once prized as the freest place in the Chinese-speaking world, 
Hong Kong experienced unprecedented curtailment of freedom of 
speech and expression. The pearl of the Orient, a highly 
successful crossbreed of East and West civilizations, began to 
lose its luster, and it is an irreparable loss to the whole 
world.
    Thus Hong Kong provides a classic example of how, in time 
of peace, a free society based on the rule of law is being 
converted into an authoritarian one in which law itself becomes 
a tool of political repression. The world should learn from 
Hong Kong's tragic experience and draw important lessons 
therefrom to avoid begetting the same fate. What alarms me is 
that the tactics the CCP used to convert Hong Kong are being 
applied in Western democracies as well. These familiar tactics 
include propaganda, united front strategy, party-building 
mechanisms, infiltration, and intelligence, to name the most 
obvious ones.
    All these tactics are clearly at work in the West now. 
Hence, the dreadful experience of Hong Kong provides a wake-up 
call for the whole world. Caring about Hong Kong is not just 
for Hong Kong's own sake, but for the sake of the whole world. 
Since we witnessed first hand how the fundamental pillars of a 
free society can be easily destroyed by the CCP, we feel duty 
bound to explicitly state the obvious danger.
    So I come to my policy recommendations, one for Hong Kong 
and one for the U.S. On Hong Kong, we hope Congress will pass 
the provisions in Section 30303, the Hong Kong Freedom and 
Choice provisions, and other Hong Kong-focused measures in H.R. 
5421 as soon as possible. For the U.S., I hope Congress will 
try to proactively step up the surveillance of CCP-related 
activities in the U.S. Under the framework of the CECC, I think 
it should find out ways to combat or reverse the appeasement 
sentiments toward the CCP, which is, I found, quite rampant in 
the U.S. Thank you for giving me this chance to express my 
ideas.
    Chair Merkley. Well, thank you, Mr. Ching.
    Our fourth witness is able to join us here in Washington, 
DC. We see how scattered our witnesses are--Japan, Los Angeles, 
the United Kingdom. We're glad to have Mr. Bickett here in 
person to share his story and his experience as a human rights 
lawyer, which bears so directly on the challenges faced in Hong 
Kong. Welcome, Mr. Bickett.

  STATEMENT OF SAMUEL BICKETT, AMERICAN LAWYER AND ACTIVIST; 
            FELLOW, GEORGETOWN CENTER FOR ASIAN LAW

    Mr. Bickett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to 
testify today. The Hong Kong justice system has been corrupted 
by Beijing's repressive security apparatus. If a case is of 
political interest to Beijing, a defendant has little hope of 
receiving a fair trial. Compared to the National Security Law, 
little is said about the deterioration of traditional common 
law courts, but the vast majority of political prisoners were 
charged under laws on the books for decades, which have been 
twisted to suit Beijing's current purposes.
    High-profile political defendants wrongly charged in these 
courts face an impossibly rigged system. Many ordinary judges 
have been willing participants in dismantling the rule of law. 
The burden of proof has been turned on its head. Rather than 
requiring the prosecution to prove its case, judges often 
declare that defendants haven't sufficiently proved their 
innocence, and judges regularly ignore or even falsify 
exculpatory evidence to reach a guilty verdict.
    Judges who follow the law are punished. When Beijing 
attacked several judges who acquitted protesters in 2020, the 
judiciary's leadership removed them. State media harassed one 
judge so severely that in 2021 he abruptly resigned and moved 
with his family to the U.K. Similar purges have taken place in 
the DOJ and police. The message to civil servants has been 
clear: Get in line or suffer the consequences.
    Private lawyers are next. The Law Society and Bar 
Association recently launched investigations into dozens of 
lawyers for their work representing protesters. Many human 
rights lawyers have already been harassed out of town. One 
judge has even suggested lawyers offering services to 
protesters may be criminally liable as accomplices. While 
others have gone through much worse, including many that the 
commissioners spoke of earlier, my own experience illustrates 
how deeply corrupted the process has become.
    In December 2019, I came across two men in an MTR station 
in Hong Kong beating and choking a teenager with a baton. As 
cellphones recorded the incident, they denied that they were 
police officers. I grabbed the baton, stopped the attacks, and 
detained one of the men until the police came. But the police 
claimed then that the man, Yu Shu Sang, was actually a police 
officer. Yu admitted to the police that he had not only lied 
about being a police officer, but that he had also falsely 
accused the teenager of a crime he didn't commit. All of this 
was caught on video. Nonetheless, the police arrested me and 
let the attackers go free.
    At the police station, I underwent a common interrogation 
method in Hong Kong. They put me in a room with the temperature 
set at around 35 degrees Fahrenheit for hours at a time, 
periodically taking me out for interrogation, before putting me 
back into the near-frozen room. I spent two days in custody 
before getting bail. The DOJ is required by law to act 
independently, but in political cases it is the police calling 
the shots. The first prosecutor in my case told us that the 
police pressured her bosses to pursue the charges because I was 
a foreigner who had ``embarrassed the police'' on camera. She 
was soon replaced.
    After that, at every court hearing, two police officers sat 
behind the new prosecutor, Memi Ng, and instructed her. This 
scene, police officers literally whispering into the ear of 
prosecutors, is now common in court in almost every political 
case. At my May 2021 trial, we showed exculpatory videos, and 
police officers openly admitted to lying repeatedly, destroying 
evidence, and witness tampering. Magistrate Arthur Lam simply 
disregarded all of this and outright invented a new set of 
facts, unconcerned about how this conduct would look to 
observers. This has also become very common. In these common 
law cases, non-NSL cases, we see it all the time, and it's not 
talked about enough.
    He then sentenced me to four and a half months in prison. 
After nearly two months behind bars, I was released on bail so 
that I could appeal. The court assigned the case to a notorious 
National Security judge, Esther Toh. Judge assignments are 
supposed to be random, but they no longer are. High-profile 
political cases almost always go to a small circle of the most 
virulently pro-Beijing judges. Again, I'm not talking about 
National Security cases, which of course do. These are regular 
common law cases. Judge Toh of course upheld my conviction and 
sent me back to prison for the rest of my sentence.
    There's much that the U.S. and its allies can do to 
increase the cost of Hong Kong's crackdown. I'm just going to 
address three of those proposed actions today, all of which 
would protect American interests as well. First, existing 
sanctions are nowhere close to sufficient as a deterrent. I 
urge Congress and the White House specifically to issue 
sanctions against mid-level prosecutors and police officers, 
casting the net wide and low enough to send a message to the 
civil service's rank and file: If they continue to infringe on 
defendants' rights, there will be consequences.
    Additionally, I urge Congress to finally provide a special 
immigration pathway for Hong Kongers to live and work in the 
United States and eventually obtain citizenship. Those now 
fleeing Hong Kong will make exceptional contributions wherever 
they land. It is America's loss, and frankly America's shame, 
that the country is not doing more to attract them here. 
Passing the America COMPETES Act with the Hong Kong refugee 
provisions intact would be a good first step.
    Finally, many American companies continue to fund China's 
abuses through massive foreign investment. A law in the mold of 
the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that prohibits U.S. persons 
from facilitating serious human rights abuses could be a game 
changer. Any such law must also permit private actions against 
offenders, allowing much of the enforcement effort to be 
undertaken by private plaintiffs and holding companies 
accountable for what they're doing in Hong Kong and China.
    I'm out of time and I'll stop there. Thank you for your 
attention.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Bickett, for 
sharing your experience as a human rights lawyer, but also as 
just an individual who intervened to assist somebody who was 
being beaten up, and then saw the entire episode changed, in 
kind of a Kafkaesque fashion, such that you became the criminal 
rather than the savior, and not just suffered time in prison 
but under a form of freezing air torture, if you will. We 
appreciate that you're here now, able to share your experiences 
freely, and to suggest ways that the U.S. can be more 
aggressive.
    We're going to turn to our periods of questioning now, 
seven minutes. I'll ask each person to try to confine 
themselves to that time commitment. To our witnesses, try to be 
fairly crisp in your responses so we can get through as many 
questions as possible.
    I'll start with Ms. Wong. What you described in Hong Kong 
bears close resemblance to what we know about mainland China. 
Officials tolerating some social welfare organizations, as long 
as they strictly self-censor themselves, while treating those 
advocating for citizens' participation in governance much more 
harshly, leaving little space for human rights lawyers, or 
independent journalists, or women's or LGBTQ rights 
organizations, or labor organizers, or religious organizations, 
not to mention foreign NGOs.
    Is this how you see things? That the control of civil 
society in Hong Kong now closely resembles what we have seen in 
mainland China?
    Ms. Wong. Yes. We see in all their strategy suppression of 
the NGOs in China, and now it's happening in Hong Kong.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. You're in exile. How do Hong 
Kongers in exile preserve the spirit of Hong Kong and work to 
rebuild civil society abroad? Is it really possible to benefit 
those who are still in Hong Kong?
    Ms. Wong. We live in exile, working very hard to keep our 
spirit and form different NGOs of different natures, different 
services. We really want to tell our friends still in Hong Kong 
that we never forget them. We are working hard, whether it's 
international lobbying or just doing some concrete work for 
Hong Kongers who are in need in other countries. This is what 
we can do. Of course, we don't think that we can really affect 
the current situation in Hong Kong, but we do hope that because 
of our lobbying, our advocacy, that international communities 
will help to resolve or improve the situation in Hong Kong.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you.
    Mr. Bickett, let me turn to you. I think it was often 
thought that China would restrain itself in regard to Hong 
Kong, in part because it had made this agreement when Hong Kong 
was turned over, of two systems within one country, in part 
because of the implications for Taiwan, and in part because of 
the implications for the business community and the concern 
that they might destroy the golden egg. And yet the golden egg 
hasn't been destroyed by their actions. You do suggest in your 
testimony that the business community has been put in a 
situation where they had previously relied on transparency and 
independence of the legal system, but the legal system is 
completely corrupted now.
    What have we seen as the reaction of the business 
community? And is the business community proceeding forward, 
maintaining its presence in Hong Kong, more or less 
accommodating itself to the National Security Law?
    Mr. Bickett. I think we're seeing a number of different 
attitudes. Overall, I think I would say that the business 
community, especially the foreign business community, is not as 
concerned as they should be about what's happening in Hong 
Kong. I think a lot of businesses are somewhat deluding 
themselves that the breakdown of the rule of law and of the 
court system will only apply to political individuals, locals, 
things like that. Obviously, my case raises questions about 
that, but there are other issues that have come up that I think 
suggest that that's simply not the case.
    One only needs to look over the border into China to see 
why. Does any foreign company operating in China really think 
that if they have a dispute with, say, China Construction Bank, 
that they're going to have any chance of winning that dispute 
in China, no matter what the situation is? Does any company 
think that if they have intellectual property that they want to 
protect and have a legal right to protect in China, that 
they're going to be able to do so? No. I can't imagine any 
reason why that would be different in Hong Kong, now that 
China's decided to do what it's doing to Hong Kong.
    Beyond that, I think companies are playing a little fast 
and loose with their own employees. Companies are telling their 
employees: Don't worry. Go over there. It's safe. You can be an 
expat in Hong Kong. You can live up on Victoria Peak and nobody 
will ever notice you. I think my case shows why that's simply 
not the case. Companies really need to ask themselves, is it 
really worth the business that they're doing in Hong Kong and 
in China to be putting their employees at risk, to be putting 
their business at risk? It's going to continue to clamp down on 
people, and there are going to be arbitrary arrests of 
Americans and of others for political reasons or otherwise.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Bickett and Mr. Ching, in your testimony you both call 
for the United States to provide special immigration pathways 
for Hong Kongers. This has been a major priority for members of 
this Commission. What message does it send if we welcome to our 
shores those fleeing persecution? And what message does it send 
if we fail to welcome to our shores those who are fleeing 
persecution? Either of you feel free to jump in.
    Mr. Bickett. I can go first. Look, I think all of us on 
this panel have a lot of friends in Hong Kong, and know a lot 
of people who are trying to leave. This is noticed, right? 
What's happening in the U.S. domestically or with foreign 
policy, it's noticed by those abroad. What happened in the 2020 
election is noticed by those abroad. And what's happening with 
the United Kingdom, with Australia, with Canada, welcoming Hong 
Kong refugees with open arms, people notice it and people talk 
about it. When people talk about where they're going to go, 
they tell us that they don't feel welcome in the United States.
    I think that, frankly, there are a lot of people in our 
leadership who don't want to welcome them, and I think that's 
really unfortunate. Hong Kongers are ideal immigrants who would 
come here and make an incredible contribution. I really hope 
that the provisions, particularly in the America COMPETES Act, 
can be included in the final version of the bill that gets 
passed by Congress.
    Chair Merkley. Mr. Ching, did you wish to comment? Then 
I'll turn this over to my co-chair.
    Mr. Ching. I agree with Samuel. American society has been 
regarded as the beacon of freedom and democracy and yet when 
Hong Kong was in its worst days, there was not sufficient 
support for a channel for people coming to the U.S. I 
understand that applying for political asylum takes a long, 
long time. For example, in my case I've been waiting for two 
years without getting an interview. This kind of attitude is 
quite discouraging to those who try to seek refuge in the U.S., 
which was considered as the beacon of freedom by people around 
the world. I think there should be better access for those who 
want to come to the U.S., to have this chance.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you.
    I'm going to turn this over to Co-chair McGovern. When it 
comes back to my second round, I want to clarify what you 
pointed out there, that you've been applying for two years to 
be able to come to the United States and that your application 
has not been granted. Thank you.
    Co-chair McGovern.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Each of you has testified in support of imposing additional 
sanctions on Hong Kong officials. In 2020, then-Chief Executive 
Carrie Lam famously said that she keeps piles of cash at home 
because she has no bank account after U.S. sanctions landed on 
her. So two years later, have officials had time to adjust, and 
can you assess the effectiveness of further sanctions, both 
materially and symbolically? I'd ask everybody for a brief 
answer. Mr. Bickett, why don't we begin with you?
    Mr. Bickett. I have a couple of points on the sanctions 
issue. In my past life I was a sanctions lawyer in the 
corporate context as well. You know, sanctions are a mixed bag. 
I have, sort of, some reluctance on sanctions and how they're 
used. In particular, if you look at something like the Carrie 
Lam sanctions, they're great in the sense that they send a 
message, they encourage Hong Kongers, and they make a 
difference. It's also hilarious, the image of her having cash 
in her house. I think it makes Hong Kongers very happy to know 
that, but it doesn't deter anyone. Individual sanctions against 
a leader don't deter anyone, and that's why my testimony 
focused on civil servants.
    If you start sanctioning a group of civil servants at a 
lower level, prosecutors who have prosecuted particularly 
egregious cases, police officers who have been responsible for 
torture, or things like that in the mid-level, then people 
lower in the ranks start to realize, hey, you know, this isn't 
just going to be Carrie Lam and her cash house. This is going 
to be us, potentially. Those are the people who are not going 
to go out and say, I quit, and leave the service, but they're 
going to potentially quietly start restraining themselves a 
little bit, and there is an urgency since a lot of these cases 
are still going through the system. Once they've all gone 
through the system, there's going to be little deterrent 
effect. It's all going to be done. So that's something that I 
would encourage Congress to do very quickly.
    As for whether there's been time to adjust, that's 
absolutely true. You know, we don't get the details, but I 
would assume that by this point Carrie Lam and John Lee and 
these people who have been sanctioned have been able to get a 
bank account through a Chinese bank. That's sort of the double-
edged sword of sanctions. The more the United States uses them, 
the more our adversaries adjust and find ways to get around 
them and set up mechanisms to do so. With that said, Carrie Lam 
will never be able to travel to the United States. She 
probably, despite them not issuing sanctions, won't be able to 
get a ticket to go to the U.K. or to Europe.
    These things matter. They matter to Carrie Lam who, despite 
everything that she says, absolutely loves the West and doesn't 
want to spend the rest of her days in China, and they certainly 
would matter to civil servants who might have money, family, 
and just simple travel plans abroad.
    Co-chair McGovern. Mr. Ching.
    Mr. Ching. I think sanctions have symbolic value, sending a 
strong message to those who want to implement Beijing's 
draconian law. I think the sanctions should go right to the 
top. Not just the middle-level officials. In my mind, I think 
Xi Jinping himself could be personally held accountable for all 
the atrocities he committed in Hong Kong. In 2008 he came to 
Hong Kong and said that the power system in Hong Kong, the 
state powers--executive, judicial, and legislative--should 
cooperate with each other. Here is the man who first violated 
the Basic Law commitment to Hong Kong, and I think if any 
sanction is going to be effective, it should be directed at the 
number-one man who brought about all these problems in Hong 
Kong. If you simply sanction Carrie Lam or John Lee, it won't 
be as effective. If the American Government is adamant about 
punishing the CCP, sanctions efforts should be directed at Xi 
Jinping.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Ms. Wong.
    Ms. Wong. I agree that sanctions to individual officers, 
either number one or Hong Kong top officials, would have very 
important symbolic meaning, even though maybe they get just 
another way to have, you know, the Bank of China. As far as 
other Hong Kong officials are concerned, they don't have any 
so-called mission, or whatever. What they have is personal 
interest. Certainly, if the sanctions go personal, that would 
be more effective. At least it would make them have second 
thoughts about it, so I will agree with Mr. Ching.
    Co-chair McGovern. Yes.
    Mr. Poon.
    Mr. Poon. Yes, I certainly agree with all of them. I think 
as far as the sanctions, if they could be targeted on the top 
and also the medium level, that actually would send a very 
clear message to government officials that they would not be 
spared if they continue their human rights violations. Then I 
think that for further sanctions, they should influence 
businesses also because as I argued earlier, we shouldn't make 
businesses feel that they can do business as usual.
    Also, for some of the family members of senior officials--
Carrie Lam's family is still living overseas without any 
consequences. I mean, I'm not saying they should be punished, 
but when so many young protesters in Hong Kong tried so hard to 
flee Hong Kong, but there's actually not enough ways for them 
to flee Hong Kong, but they can see Carrie Lam's family can 
still really lead a good life overseas, it's actually quite 
ironic. I mean, if we want to have something more useful, it 
should be very, very strong sanctions conditions and shouldn't 
just be restricted to a very few conditions. Thank you.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. I'm out of time. I 
unfortunately have to go to another hearing, but at some point 
further on as you're answering questions, one of the things 
that I think would be important for us to hear is whether or 
not you think that our current administration here in 
Washington, or Congress, whether or not there is an impression 
that we are taking matters in Hong Kong seriously enough, 
whether or not we are responding in a way that people think we 
should. My guess is that you don't and so that's why these 
recommendations and this conversation is important, to figure 
out what we can do next and what we can do more, because what 
is happening in Hong Kong is unconscionable, and some of the 
people that the chairman and I mentioned and Mr. Smith 
mentioned, these are people we not only know but they're our 
friends. They're good people who are in jail for no good 
reason. It really is quite shocking and unconscionable. I thank 
you all and I yield back. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
    Let's turn to Congressman Smith.
    Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I 
want to thank our distinguished witnesses for their very 
sobering testimony, which I think makes very clear that we are 
not doing enough, and that goes for Congress. It goes for the 
President. It goes for other world leaders. We would like to 
comment further on that.
    You know, we are living in a time when Xi Jinping is 
directly responsible for genocide against the Uyghurs, and 
other people in that region of the world, in Xinjiang, and when 
he continues to bitterly oppress the Tibetan people, when he 
commits gross violations of human rights across the entirety of 
China, with the prevalence and the pervasive use of such things 
as torture, the theft of people's organs simply because the 
Chinese Communist Party wants to make money. Well, Xi Jinping 
is directly responsible for all of that and the ongoing 
oppression of the people of Hong Kong.
    I'm just wondering why you think we are not doing more. Is 
it empathy fatigue? Is it that people in the West, while they 
were originally outraged over certain behaviors, began to 
accommodate and then actually enable, however unwittingly? I 
don't think we do enough, and I would appreciate your thoughts 
on that. When, Ms. Wong, you said that civil society is dead, 
that is horrible. That is heartbreaking because these are the 
people, as you pointed out, your friends--and our friends too--
but your friends at a very, very personal level.
    Please know how much all of us feel for you and for your 
fellow Hong Kongers who have fought so hard and see nothing but 
Xi Jinping's oppression in the future, unless the world rallies 
in a very significant way. I mean, the sanctions we've done 
have been a slap on the wrist. That's all it is. It's not much 
more, and it needs to significantly expand. I would appreciate 
any thoughts all of you might have on that.
    Mr. Bickett, thank you for your testimony. Which U.S. 
companies do continue to enable? I have found--and I'm one of 
those who, going back to when MFN status was delinked from 
human rights, on May 26, 1994, by President Clinton, in my 
humble opinion that's when we largely lost China, with that 
delinkage, and sadly, we haven't been able to get it back. It 
seems to me that the companies are the glue that helps this 
dictatorship stay wedded to profits and power, and maybe you 
might want to speak again to specific companies and industries 
that are acting in a way that is totally self-interested and 
not interested in the people of Hong Kong.
    If you would address in your answers the social credit 
system, which is applied throughout China; obviously, many of 
the businesses are both in mainland China and in Hong Kong, 
while it would appear it's not directly imposed upon Hong 
Kongers, this idea of surveilling every Chinese citizen and 
business with the use of data to monitor, shape, and rate 
financial, social, religious, or political behaviors, it is the 
worst manifestation of the surveillance state the world has 
ever known. I'm wondering how that applies currently in Hong 
Kong, especially with this escalating influence, almost total 
dominance, by Xi Jinping on China.
    Finally, in May of last year the State Administration of 
Religious Affairs, or SARA, issued new regulations entitled the 
Administrative Measures for Religious Clergy. It forces all 
clergy to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. 
Article 3 of the regulations states, ``religious clergy should 
love the motherland, support the leadership of the Chinese 
Communist Party, support the socialist system, and adhere to 
the direction of centralization of religion in China.''
    This is an invasive usurpation of religious freedom, and we 
have already seen its deadly effects in places like Tibet and 
elsewhere. I'm wondering, is any of this being applied, and to 
what extent, in Hong Kong? The Basic Law, obviously, was 
supposed to convey fundamental religious freedom. Sinicization 
means simply all religions must comport with the principles of 
Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist ideology. If you could speak 
to that I would appreciate it as well. I yield to our 
witnesses, beginning with Mr. Bickett, if you could.
    Mr. Bickett. Sure. I'll try to go through those, maybe not 
in that order. Starting with the last one, the most notable, as 
you mentioned earlier, clampdown on religion is the arrest of 
Cardinal Zen, who was really just doing his duty as a religious 
figure and was arrested for that. What I think may have not 
gotten seen as closely in the news with that is that the 
Vatican actually just threw him under the bus. I think it was 
the secretary of state in the Vatican, the cardinal there, who 
outright said to the media: Well, we just hope that this 
doesn't affect our upcoming renewal of an agreement with China 
to allow cardinals in the country. You know, I'm not a 
Catholic, but that's certainly not the Christ I know and the 
Christianity that I practice. I just can't imagine them 
throwing the cardinal under the bus for that.
    Let me go back to the question that was specifically 
directed to me, which is about particular businesses. There are 
a lot. I think what I'll highlight is the financial industry. 
Banks are a little bit more subject to public pressure in the 
sense that a lot of them have public accounts in the U.S., and 
things like that. Private equity and funds are I think the 
biggest offenders here. There's a great report that came out 
from Hong Kong Watch a couple of weeks ago that specifically 
addressed these issues with respect to BlackRock, Blackstone, 
and some of these major investors into China. Another one that 
I'll point out here is venture capital--Sequoia Capital--the 
head of their China business is a high-ranking official in 
China, and their investments show it.
    Some of these private equity and venture capital firms, 
they'll release happy press releases talking about their new 
investment into Chinese surveillance companies and how it's 
helped that company grow. These are American companies. I don't 
know for sure, but I think a big difference with these 
companies versus, say, just a typical--The Gap, is that The Gap 
worries about boycotts in the United States from regular 
people. The Gap worries about how their image will look across 
the world. Blackstone, KKR, far less so, simply because I think 
they're very complex firms and most people don't understand 
what they're doing. They simply don't get that much blowback 
for it. And I think that needs to change.
    I'll leave the other questions to other people. I know that 
we're running over time.
    Representative Smith. Ms. Wong.
    Ms. Wong. Sorry, I have no knowledge about the business 
sector.
    Representative Smith. Are world leaders, including 
President Biden, doing enough in raising the issue of Hong 
Kong, and looking to do perhaps--which I think are needed--
additional sanctions? Especially against Xi Jinping?
    Ms. Wong. No, not at all, so sorry to say that, because I 
think that the U.S should really, really defend democracy--
because now I think it's so important, human rights and 
democracy--against authoritarianism. I think there should be 
concrete action, not just empty promises. I mean, concrete 
action really to defend democracy the world over. Hong Kong's a 
good case where you have a political decision to defend 
democracy, is what I want to say.
    Representative Smith. Thank you.
    Mr. Bickett. If I can just pile on on sanctions. As I've 
said, I think sanctions are important--Xi Jinping or anything 
else. Xi Jinping is not personally going to be affected by 
American sanctions. Let's be clear about that. It's symbolic. 
It would be nice.
    Representative Smith. What about--and I agree with you to a 
large extent--but what about if he were to be singled out? I 
mean, you talk about committing genocide in plain view, and of 
course the oppression of the people of Hong Kong is an 
egregious human rights abuse. Where is the International 
Criminal Court and like-minded bodies? I mean, they're never 
held accountable. People like Charles Taylor and Slobodan 
Milosevic?, we wait until they're out of power or the world 
community finally wakes up, long after the bloodletting and the 
abuse is finished. This is in real time, as we meet. I mean, 
it's worth an effort, I would think, to hold him liable 
before----
    Chair Merkley. Congressman, after the response to this 
question we're going to be turning to Senator Ossoff.
    Mr. Bickett [continuing.]. The International Criminal Court 
(ICC); I think everyone in this hearing would probably agree 
that it has very, very limited powers, and in particular it has 
no enforcement mechanism. Where you see ICC or international 
prosecutions, it's because the governments have turned the 
people over. With that said, I agree with you that there's 
something to be said for if not Xi Jinping, investigations 
into, in particular, the genocide in Xinjiang, the activities 
in Hong Kong, etc., and Tibet as well.
    I think the point I always try to emphasize on sanctions is 
that I worry in the U.S. Congress and the Presidency that 
sanctions often are used as an easy way to say we're doing 
something and then issue a few sanctions on individuals who it 
might affect a little, without changing any policy abroad, and 
then packing up and going home. I mean, that's in particular 
why I focused in my introduction on something like a Foreign 
Corrupt Practices Act-like law that would actually target 
American companies behaving badly, because that's what we have 
the most influence over. Yes, sanctions, issue them, but it 
can't be all that we do. It simply--at the end of the day, it 
does not do enough by any stretch to further American policy 
abroad.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you.
    Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'd 
ask consent to enter into the record the names of 13 
journalists or defenders of press freedom who are currently 
under arrest, in detention, or incarcerated in Hong Kong.
    Chair Merkley. Without objection.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you know, prior 
to my election to the Senate I worked in the production of 
investigative journalism, investigating war crimes, official 
corruption, human rights abuses. Mr. Ching, I'd like to ask you 
for a detailed update on how, since the imposition of the 
National Security Law on Hong Kong, the CCP's efforts to 
dismantle press freedom and freedom of expression are 
continuing.
    Mr. Ching. OK. First of all, the chilling effect of the 
closing down of Apple Daily is really very, very alarming. The 
Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC), for example, has run this 
Human Rights Press Award for over 26 or 25 years. After going 
through all this process of selecting the awardees, the FCC 
suddenly announced that they were going to suspend it, citing 
the National Security Law, which imposed an elusive red line. 
Now this is a very big blow to press freedom in Hong Kong 
because the FCC has been promoting itself as one of the 
vanguards of press freedom and yet succumbed to the pressure of 
the National Security Law.
    Following the action of the FCC, a number of other press 
organizations also chose to shut down. For example, the Hong 
Kong Journalists Association the other day passed a resolution 
to lower the threshold for self-dissolution. Why? Because it 
anticipated pressure from the authorities to close it down. 
Instead of being forced to close down, they chose to try to 
dissolve voluntarily. Although they have a very high bar for 
this self-dissolution, they convened an annual general meeting 
to lower the bar, lower the threshold for self-dissolution. 
Unfortunately, the one that I have founded, the Independent 
Commentators Association, chose to wind down silently, 
voluntarily.
    The chilling effect is so strong that I think it will have 
a big impact on journalism in Hong Kong. Keith Richburg, the 
president of FCC, he is also teaching at the Journalism and 
Media Studies Centre (JMSC) in Hong Kong U, which is a very 
renowned education outlet for journalism. He told his students 
to be careful and to be smart in avoiding the red line. If this 
kind of mentality is taught, passed on to future generations of 
journalists, then I don't think Hong Kong will be able to 
maintain a press freedom environment anymore. I think the 
chilling effect of being shut down, the way Apple Daily and 
Stand News were shut down, were quite serious in intimidating 
the entire profession.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Ching. With my remaining 
time, can you comment, if you have any knowledge or experience, 
on how the CCP is seeking to influence or intimidate or coerce 
or shape reporting, publication, and journalism pertaining to 
Hong Kong, even by reporters, writers and publications who are 
beyond Hong Kong's borders, or beyond the PRC's borders? How do 
they engage in such efforts internationally?
    Mr. Ching. Well, the most common tactic is this united 
front strategy. They'll try to get close to you, even if you 
are far away from Chinese judicial territory. They will try to 
get someone close to you, try to persuade you that China is not 
that bad. Maybe you are misguided by misinformation from the 
West, and things like that. They try to befriend you and try to 
get your trust, and then by and by, they will tell you what you 
should report and what you should avoid. For journalists 
outside of China, they don't have this long arm yet, but they 
will try to have colleagues conducting this kind of united 
front strategy on you.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Ching. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman. I yield back.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator Ossoff.
    I want to go back to Mr. Ching. You're operating now from 
Los Angeles, but you mentioned that you've been applying for 
some form of immigration status for a couple years without it 
coming through. Can you expand on that story a bit, to give us 
some insight?
    Mr. Ching. Yes. I came to the U.S. for a conference, but 
because of COVID-19, all the flights back to Hong Kong were 
suspended and I had to wait for reassignment ever since. 
Finally the National Security Law comes in, and looking at the 
law itself, I understood that I had no hope of returning home 
safely, so I applied for political asylum in the States. That 
was two years ago. I didn't even get a chance to interview, and 
I wonder if it's because of this: some senators have pointed 
out that the U.S. might not be very receptive to political 
refugees from Hong Kong. Maybe this is the reason, and I hope 
therefore that you can map out a way to expedite political 
refugees who want to come to the U.S.
    Chair Merkley. So even in a situation where you're at 
extraordinary risk should you return to Hong Kong, because of 
your commentaries and your writings, the asylum process has 
just essentially been frozen?
    Mr. Ching. Sorry?
    Chair Merkley. The asylum process for you--for 
consideration of your application for asylum--has essentially 
been dysfunctional or frozen?
    Mr. Ching. I don't know. I don't know what happened.
    Chair Merkley. OK. Well, thank you. I do think that the 
fact that our door has not been open to champions of human 
rights and free speech and free assembly who are being 
oppressed through the National Security Law is of great concern 
to me.
    I did want to turn to you, Mr. Bickett. You had the 
experience of being detained and subjected to extensive--I 
guess, being trapped in a room at 35 degrees. From your 
knowledge of the prisons in Hong Kong, is this the only 
technique? What other techniques are used to make people 
suffer, if you will? I've heard references that the biggest 
fear is being deported to China. If that is correct, could you 
expand a little bit on that; that is, on being deported to 
mainland China from Hong Kong.
    Mr. Bickett. Sure, and if I could just add on, on your 
previous question on asylum. One of the big reasons why--most 
of the activists that you sometimes see roaming these halls 
trying to bug senators about things in particular, is that many 
of the Hong Kong activists are applying for asylum right now. 
One of the big reasons why it's just a wholly inadequate 
solution for Hong Kong and Chinese immigrants is that once you 
file that application, all of these people are effectively cut 
off from their lives in Hong Kong. If you apply for asylum, it 
certainly puts you on a political list. It puts your family on 
political lists. They can't really communicate with their 
families anymore to keep them safe; whereas if there were just 
a normal mechanism for them to come to this country, we'd be 
less likely to draw that attention. They're also heavily 
restricted from traveling, so that's a particular issue for 
many of the activists, who need to go to conferences, who need 
to go try to raise awareness about China and Hong Kong. There 
is a process where they can apply to Customs and Immigration 
for leave to travel abroad, but it's usually either denied or 
delayed greatly. so it's just really an inadequate solution for 
people.
    On your other question about treatment in custody, when I 
was put in the freezing room, this is a very common thing that 
the police do--not the prisons necessarily, but the police when 
you're in custody. There was somebody who died from it a few 
months ago, and it really came out how many people were really 
going through this. I think it's a way for them to not leave 
marks on people but to enhance interrogation or torture, 
whatever you want to call it. It's pretty widespread. There are 
beatings that people have reported and violence from police. 
You don't hear that in as much of a widespread way as you do 
the freezing room and other things that don't leave a mark.
    In the prisons themselves most correctional services 
officers are relatively mild, particularly at the junior 
levels. My impression is that--I should qualify this with the 
fact that because of who I was, because of my high profile and 
because of my foreign passport, I was clearly kept away from 
certain things. You did see police--or you did see prison 
officials--beating people sometimes. You saw them punishing 
people in ways they shouldn't have. It was rarely related to 
politics. It was more related to, this person is annoying me.
    Where we see more systematic abuse of prisoners--high-
profile political prisoners--in the prison system is directed 
by senior officials. In particular, you have someone like Jimmy 
Lai, who's been talked about a lot today, from Apple Daily, who 
is kept isolated from the entire prison population, supposedly 
for his own protection but really as a way to make him suffer. 
He is supposed to be allowed out for an hour a day for 
exercise. That may happen or it may not, but otherwise, he's 
just sitting in a room and isn't allowed to really interact. No 
interaction with people, that's truly torture. I can't imagine. 
He's not the only one. That happens to a lot of other high-
profile political prisoners. They use a mechanism in their own 
regulations that supposedly allows them to remove people for 
protection reasons and then they just extend it and extend it 
for years.
    Chair Merkley. Can you address the fear folks have of being 
deported to China and possibly being cut off from all contact 
with individuals----
    Mr. Bickett. Yes. I think that this is a fear for some of 
the high-profile people. People thought it was going to happen 
to Jimmy Lai for quite some time. There were some leaks coming 
out of the judiciary. Jimmy Lai's case, up to the Court of 
Final Appeal (CFA), which is effectively the supreme court, was 
the first test of how the CFA was going to deal with the 
National Security Law. They ruled against Jimmy Lai and 
basically ruled that he should be held indefinitely without 
trial, before trial. There were leaks that came out that 
effectively this may have been because the court realized if 
they didn't do that, that Jimmy Lai and all of these others 
would be sent to China.
    I don't say that to defend this court, which has been, you 
know, absolutely cowardly in how it's dealt with these issues, 
but it shows that in most aspects of society there is always 
that present threat; the simple threat of being sent to China 
makes prisoners act differently, makes civil society act 
differently. Fermi can speak to that as well. It is a huge fear 
for Hong Kongers.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. I want to turn to Mr. Poon and 
Ms. Wong. One of the threats I often hear about is a concern 
about retaliation against family members who are still in Hong 
Kong or in China. Can either of you shed any light on this 
risk? Have you had any experiences in which your own extended 
family, friends, associates in Hong Kong or China have been 
pressured in various ways because of your courage to speak out?
    Mr. Poon. What I have been hearing from many of my friends 
who are living in the U.K.--I was in the U.K. in the past year 
before coming to Japan. Many people who used to work in or 
still work in the NGO sector, they don't really want to talk. 
That's why I am not among those who have always been talking 
publicly, but now you can see that I need to talk about the 
situation publicly because all the more famous ones feel a lot 
of pressure, and they really are fearing that they would be 
facing a lot of threats and danger.
    I think because of the atmosphere, people would feel that 
they would not want to take the risk, and they also see the 
example of Ted Hui, for instance, where you see the kind of 
pressure and also his bank accounts being frozen, etc. and also 
his being charged, even though he's already outside of Hong 
Kong. From these examples, it actually also makes others feel 
very, very threatened if they want to talk in public, even 
those who used to be very famous and very outspoken when they 
were in Hong Kong. I can feel the immediate threat they feel 
and then also the worry among them.
    Chair Merkley. Ms. Wong.
    Ms. Wong. For myself, yes, I've been struggling. You can 
tell that they are not calling for sanctions to particular 
persons, because my family are still in Hong Kong. If anything 
happens to me, I'm prepared to cut off my relationship with my 
family, but I know that may not help. The NGO I founded has a 
board of directors; I worry because they're still serving 
ethnic minorities. My society is the first one and the only one 
that does advocacy for ethnic minorities, so yes, I have fear.
    In fact, even though some of my friends asked me to attend 
the UN hearing just as before, I worried that it would do harm 
to my board of directors in Hong Kong and my family, so I did 
not go. Someone has to state what has been happening in Hong 
Kong and really call on the international community to do 
something, for example, the USA.
    Chair Merkley. Well, thank you all. I keep having more 
questions come to mind based on your testimony and the 
situation, but we're out of time and there's a vote underway 
that will be closing, so I'm going to have to wrap this up. But 
it's not the end of the dialogue because the Commission is 
working every single day with an extraordinary team to shed 
light on these issues in Hong Kong and in China and China's 
oppression of the rights of people in so many different ways.
    I really appreciate Mr. Poon, Ms. Wong, Mr. Ching, Mr. 
Bickett, your courage, your testimony, your outspoken and 
continuing work on behalf of freedom of speech, freedom of 
assembly, and freedom of religion, and democratic processes so 
that there is government by and for the people. We have seen 
that extinguished in an extraordinarily dramatic fashion in 
Hong Kong in an incredibly short period of time, in complete 
violation of the commitments that China has made. We need to 
find every conceivable way to respond and to resist, and I 
appreciate the recommendations that you've put forward at this 
hearing.
    The record will remain open until the close of business on 
Friday, July 15 for any items members would like to submit for 
the record or for any additional questions for our witnesses. 
Again, thank you to every champion of human rights, of 
democracy, of opportunity, and of freedom. This hearing is 
adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]






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


                         A  P  P  E  N  D  I  X

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                          Prepared Statements

                                ------                                


                   Prepared Statement of Patrick Poon

    I would like to thank the CECC and this distinguished audience for 
giving me this opportunity to share my experience and my view on the 
situation of the civil society in Hong Kong. I will focus on the 
drastic change of civil society space from the time I changed my job as 
a journalist to become an NGO worker with local and international NGOs 
since the early 2000s to the era of ``red net'', as I would describe, 
after the National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese 
authorities. Red line is simply not enough to describe the scope. The 
Hong Kong and Chinese governments wouldn't even make it clear about 
where the red line is so that they can arbitrarily restrict Hong Kong 
people's freedoms. The message is clear--you can only survive if you 
don't challenge the government.
    When I started my NGO career focusing on supporting workers, 
writers and lawyers in mainland China, the civil society was very 
vibrant. We could organize all kinds of activities, ranging from 
staging demonstrations to call for release of detained dissidents in 
China to arranging writers and lawyers to meet with their counterparts 
in Hong Kong. We never experienced any interference or felt any 
threats. Even when I was an Amnesty researcher, I wouldn't fear too 
much for my personal risk when I commented on the detention of Chinese 
dissents or when I worked on documenting Uyghur and Kazakh cases in 
relation to the political re-education camps. I still remember how a 
mainland Chinese writer once exclaimed when he arrived in Hong Kong and 
I met him at the train station: ``I could finally breathe the air of 
freedom.'' It was a time when many young university graduates in Hong 
Kong would be willing to get a relatively low salary to work on issues 
that we believed we could do something to help our friends in China.
    During that time, I was able to communicate with many high-profile 
mainland Chinese dissidents without fear. Late Nobel Peace Prize 
laureate Liu Xiaobo had so much hope for Hong Kong's support that he 
contacted me and several others in Hong Kong in late 2008 to invite 
prominent pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong to co-sign the ``Charter 
08''. Many of those democratic figures, some of them now in prison, and 
myself were among the first batch of co-signatories. We didn't need to 
think much when we decided to co-sign it. These experiences led me to 
continue my work in international NGOs like Amnesty as I believed that 
it is significant to push China to comply with its international 
obligations. It was unimaginable at that time that Hong Kong's freedom 
of expression and freedom of assembly would bea completely gone. Even 
prayer meetings or a mass to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen 
Massacre are now deemed too sensitive.
    For NGOs in Hong Kong, we used to feel secure to co-organize talks 
on human rights issues in China and Hong Kong, no matter public or 
closed-door, with universities in Hong Kong. We didn't need to worry 
too much about our personal safety compared with activists in China. 
But now, everyone needs to have a second thought or self-censor the 
content of the events before planning such activities. We used to be 
able to organize public talks by inviting human rights lawyers from 
China to share their experiences to the general public. Now, it's just 
unimaginable how similar activities could be done anymore in Hong Kong.
    We used to be able to hold public rallies, from small-scale 
demonstrations outside China's Central Government Liaison Office 
calling for the release of detained Chinese dissidents to mass rallies 
calling for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, without any interference. 
Police officers at that time were friendly and would even engage in 
discussing the route with the organizers. The police made it very clear 
to us that we didn't need to get their permission to hold any rallies. 
We only needed to inform them, and they would routinely issue a 
``letter of no-objection'', only formalities, despite a Public Order 
Ordinance (that has been repeatedly criticized by UN human rights 
experts as restrictive of freedom of assembly). Sometimes, the police 
would just call us to confirm that we would be organizing a 
demonstration if we forgot to inform them in advance. However, after 
the anti-extradition bill protests in 2019 and the imposition of the 
NSL in 2020, the situation has completely changed. Anybody appearing in 
places like the Victoria Park, where the annual candlelight vigil to 
commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre used to take place, on 4 June would 
be questioned by the police and warned that they would be charged with 
``illegal assembly'' if they stay there. Like many Hongkongers, I 
honestly didn't believe that unionist Lee Cheuk-yan, solicitor and 
former legislator Albert Ho and barrister Chow Hang-tung, leaders of 
the now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic 
Movements of China which organized the annual candlelight vigil, would 
be accused of ``inciting an unauthorized assembly'' for an assembly 
that had been allowed for over 30 years. They are now even facing the 
same notorious charge of ``inciting subversion of state power'' like 
many Chinese activists.
    Finally, I would also like to share a bit about experience as a 
former court reporter as I'm puzzled how difficult it is to cover court 
news in Hong Kong nowadays. I covered quite a lot of trials about 
protesters being accused of ``obstruction in public place'' for staging 
small-scale protests that occupied some space, such as outside China's 
Central Government Liaison Office. Those were already the big news in 
those days. The sentences the protesters faced were about a few weeks. 
Granting bail was considered normal and I never heard any judge at that 
time would say that they didn't trust that the defendants would commit 
the said offence during bail. Presumption of innocence was well 
observed. Reporters wouldn't feel any restrictions on reporting 
anything in open trials, except for knowing the fact that we shouldn't 
disclose the facts for cases that would be committed to be tried at the 
High Court. Now, everything has changed. Even reporting details about 
bail application is banned by the courts in Hong Kong. Judges rarely 
consider public interest when they make judgements.
    I appreciate that there have been some efforts to pressure the Hong 
Kong and Chinese governments. However, the situation won't change until 
the Hong Kong and Chinese governments can see the real consequences. We 
shouldn't give them the impression of business as usual as they are 
cracking down on our civil society.
    While various governments have issued statements expressing concern 
about the erosion of human rights in Hong Kong, it's difficult to see 
any real impact as the Chinese and Hong Kong governments have realized 
that they can continue doing business despite severe criticism of human 
rights records.
    Authoritarian regimes like China and their supporters have learned 
that they can divert attention of all criticism on human rights by 
pointing out that there are also serious human rights violations in 
democratic countries. However, check and balance is what democracies 
should emphasize as different from tyrannies. Democratic governments 
should make the business community realize that there is real 
consequence for colluding with dictatorship.
    Combining the effort of pushing China and Hong Kong governments to 
comply with the international human rights standards and economic 
sanctions on senior officials would be the most effective and mutually 
beneficial way to ensure accountability, otherwise democracies will 
eventually succumb to authoritarian propaganda, which nobody would want 
to see.
    Therefore, I would urge the U.S. government to impose further 
sanctions on all senior Hong Kong and Chinese officials.
    Thank you.
                                 ______
                                 

                    Prepared Statement of Fermi Wong

    Dear Chair, Co-chair, and other Commissioners,
    Thank you so much for holding this hearing. I spent my entire adult 
life working in the civil society to fight for equality for ethnic 
minorities. The dismantling of the civil society under the National 
Security Law has completely destroyed the hard gains that took us 
decades to achieve.
    I was born in China and spent my childhood there. It was in Hong 
Kong that I experienced awakening to the universal values of equality, 
social justice, and individual rights. I learned that we could take 
legal actions to defend our rights.
                     hong kong as a city of protest
    Hong Kong used to be the capital of protests for good reasons.
    First, the government was not democratic and not very responsive. 
Indeed, the formulation of government policy was very bad. Only when 
issues were taken to the streets that officials might respond.
    Second, the independent media did a great job at supervising and 
putting pressure on the government. They were helpful in amplifying 
collective wishes shown in public protests.
    Third, Hong Kongers had high awareness of their freedom of assembly 
and speech. They used protests to defend their individual rights.
    Fourth, there was a gap between rights promised and rights 
delivered. The Basic Law Art. 39 provides for human rights protections 
as guaranteed by Hong Kong's Bill of Rights, the International Covenant 
on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on 
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There is also the Equal 
Opportunities Law. Long Hair (Leung Kwok Hung, former lawmaker) was 
very skilled at using judicial review to fight for rights when the 
government did not do what was provided for in the law.
    The National Security Law has taken away all these rights.
                        equality for minorities
    I founded Unison because I discovered that Hong Kong had equality 
written in the laws but in fact practiced discrimination against ethnic 
minorities, especially those of South Asian origins.
    Access to education is the most important pathway to overcoming 
inequalities. Hong Kong was supposed to have a nine-year free education 
policy. However, Hong Kong schools discriminated against South Asians 
and denied them equal access. I realized that this discrimination was 
invisible to the broader society. So I dedicated myself to putting 
equality on the agenda. I formed my own organization and took social 
actions such as rallies, assemblies, and petitions. The team gradually 
achieved equal access to not just the basic nine years of education 
(equivalent to Grade 9), but all the way to university admissions. Our 
team moved on to fight for equal access to job opportunities at various 
branches of the civil service.
    Let me explain how important the broader civil society was in 
helping to achieve these gains and how disastrous the National Security 
Law crackdown has been on even a seemingly non-political issue as 
equality for minorities.
    When I first read the National Security Law, I thought that the 
crimes of ``secession,'' ``sedition,'' ``terrorism,'' and ``collusion'' 
with foreign forces should be of no concern to my work. Then I noticed 
that the National Security Law instructs the Hong Kong government to 
``strengthen propaganda, guidance, supervision, and administration'' 
over ``schools, social groups, media, and the internet.'' Soon I 
realized that the National Security Law means a total crackdown on the 
civil society.
    As the cause of minority rights is deeply embedded with the civil 
society, the very recipe of our team's success has completely 
collapsed.
    In Hong Kong, many non-governmental organizations, especially those 
involved in providing social services, are dependent on government 
funding and thus refrain from criticizing government policies. Civic 
groups that championed political, social and economic justice, however, 
raised funding from the public to maintain their autonomy from the 
government. This then required that they mobilize popular support and 
raise public awareness by joining forces with protest-related umbrella 
organizations, in particular, the Civil Human Rights Front, the 
Professional Teachers' Union, and the Confederation of Trade Unions, 
all of which have been forced to disband.
    I joined the Civil Human Rights Front's human rights group when I 
needed to mobilize support from different social sectors to support 
legislation against discrimination. Now the Front is gone and there is 
no more freedom of assembly.
    I worked with the Professional Teachers' Union to achieve equal 
access to education. The union not just helped to promote our cause, 
but also provided training for teachers involved in education for 
minorities where language issues were relevant. The union's chair was 
also routinely elected to represent the education sector in the 
Legislative Council. These supportive legislators helped push through 
anti-discrimination legislation and keep the issue under the spotlight. 
Now the union is gone. The legislature has been revamped so that the 
seat is occupied by the vice chair of the pro-Beijing Hong Kong 
Federation of Education Workers.
    I also cooperated closely with the Confederation of Trade Unions. 
Ethnic minorities are discriminated against in jobs. Many are working 
class laborers and are treated poorly by both supervisors and 
coworkers. To fight for their labor rights, Pakistanis and Nepalese set 
up a member union under the Confederation. Even the civil service used 
to deny minorities job opportunities. They used the excuse that 
minorities didn't know Chinese. I shamed the government that if they 
retained British officers who didn't speak Chinese, why did they apply 
a different standard to South Asians? Lee Cheuk Yan, when he was a 
legislator representing the labor sector, helped to secure access to 
government jobs for minorities. Now, their own union is gone, the 
Confederation is gone, and Lee Cheuk Yan is in jail. The government is 
reviewing all unions and asking for explanations of their political 
activities. Union leaders have been intimidated into disbanding their 
organizations and leaving Hong Kong.
    In fighting for social justice, I focused on macrosocial work and 
challenged the very formulation of government policies. In my early 
career, government officials and school administrators were not 
responsive. To get their attention, I called journalists to write 
stories and asked legislators to press questions. Today, if you 
criticize government policies, you could be arrested for inciting 
hatred of the government. The cause has also lost critical allies. 
Independent media have been shut down and journalists arrested. Former 
pro-democracy legislators are all behind bars or in exile.
    Making noises within Hong Kong was not enough to get government 
responses. I figured that Hong Kong signed a range of international 
agreements that promise equality: the International Covenant on the 
Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on 
Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, 
Social and Cultural Rights. Thus, I went to international human rights 
oversight meetings to pressure the Hong Kong government to honor its 
treaty obligations. This kind of international advocacy would lead to 
the charge of foreign collusion now.
    The National Security Law crackdown has also made it nearly 
impossible for civic organizations to raise funds. We used to collect 
public donations at mass rallies and from online crowd-funding. Now, 
protests are banned and groups who raise fund online have been arrested 
for ``money laundering.'' We used to enjoy donations from private 
family foundations and local corporate sponsors. Now, they no longer 
dare support independent groups for fear of upsetting the government. 
We also used to receive funding from international foundations. Now, 
this could lead to the charge of foreign collusion. The sources of 
funding for civil society organizations have dried up.
    After over two decades of hard work, ethnic minorities finally felt 
proud that they were accepted as Hong Kongers. By 2019, many South 
Asians who grew up in Hong Kong could speak fluent Cantonese. They 
received university education and became successful professionals in 
different sectors. Some even became recognizable faces in the media and 
ran for elected office.
    The crackdown has set everything back. If we ethnic Chinese Hong 
Kongers are fearful of the National Security Law, minorities are even 
more so. Many minority youth were arrested during the anti-extradition 
protest. They have received much less help with legal fees and other 
support. South Asians are also worried that their ties with their 
hometowns could make them vulnerable to charges of foreign collusion.
    Minorities love Hong Kong and don't understand China, now Hong Kong 
has become like China--they are lost as to what to do and who they are. 
The crackdown has been such a shock to the entire community that even 
elites have withdrawn from the society. They have resorted to the 
original position that they had over two decades ago: ``we are always 
seen as outsiders''; ``don't complain about discrimination''; ``don't 
talk about fighting for your rights.''
    This is utterly heartbreaking development. I should add that 
minority rights represent just one example. The same is happening to 
LGBT rights and other vulnerable groups, such as sex workers.
                              social work
    As a social worker, let me take this opportunity to address 
worrisome developments in the profession.
    The profession's code of conduct specifies that social workers 
promote human rights and social justice. Under the National Security 
Law, social work will go down like journalism. It will lose its soul. 
Social workers will no longer dare to do advocacy work. Nor will they 
have the resources to do so.
    There is a fundamental distinction between civil society groups 
that raise their own funds and social welfare organizations that are 
dependent on government funding. The former will find it difficult to 
continue. The latter don't dare criticize government policies and will 
exercise even more self-censorship. The government is also subjecting 
funding of social service organizations to annual review, making them 
more beholden to official policies.
    We should also see what many social service organizations really 
are. The pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong 
Kong and the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions have been 
cultivating their own social workers and social service community 
centers. Such pro-establishment organizations receive government 
funding to provide social services to residents, in an effort to win 
votes for their party members.
    The Liaison Office and the Labor Bureau are organizing study 
sessions to learn Xi Jinping's Hong Kong speech on the handover's 25th 
anniversary. The Labor Bureau will take note of which organizations 
show up for consideration of future funding. Social service 
organizations that are not in the government camp have to think hard if 
they need to show up in order to survive.
    The social sector will be further controlled by legal changes to 
undermine its self-governing authority in certifying qualifications. 
Social workers who violate the National Security Law could be 
deregistered for life.
                                 ______
                                 

                   Prepared Statement of Ching Cheong

                              a. overview
    1. The dismantling of Hong Kong's (HK's) Civil Society started as 
soon as the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984. Despite 
the open pledge of ``one country two systems'' with ``Hongkong people 
ruling Hongkong'', enjoying a ``high degree of autonomy'' for 50 years, 
what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did was to send swarms of 
national security agents to HK to make sure that ``the transition (from 
British to Chinese sovereignty) will be based on solid power''.
    2. In 1984, China started to draft the Basic Law, the mini-
constitution for post-1997 HK. During the drafting process, the CCP had 
already shown signs that it would somehow roll back on its promise. It 
reminded the law-drafters that post-1997 HK should only be an economic 
city and not a political one, which suggested that the thriving civil 
society might be curtailed. The CCP was wary of HK becoming a 
bridgehead of Western political influences to subvert its one-party 
dictatorship.
    3. With this apprehension in mind, the CCP began to identify forces 
that it thought might be endangering its dictatorial rule By the early 
1990's. I was shown (but not given) a draft report prepared by a senior 
national security cadre in which it advised that the central government 
should watch out for after 1997. These include: 1. Journalists, 2. 
Religious leaders, 3. Lawyers, 4. Educators, and 5. Social workers. I 
said this report would mislead Beijing and ruin Hong Kong, for they 
formed the key pillars of the city's civil society. Unfortunately, I 
couldn't convince them to change their views. We have been paying the 
price for this.
    4. In 2003, just five years after the handover, the CCP had already 
mapped out a detail plan aimed at suppressing these five groups of 
people. It compiled a data base of all the prominent figures in each of 
these sectors and classified them according to their political attitude 
towards the CCP either as friendly, neutral or animus and develop 
different united front strategy for them, either to co-opt or eliminate 
them. It set up a psychological warfare department to discredit those 
who fell under their ``strike-list''. The scene was set for an overall 
crackdown of HK's civil society.
    5. Beginning 2003, the CCP took several important measures to 
abrogate its Basic Law commitments. All these measures were aimed at 
imposing the CCP's will on HK, and gradually convert HK from a free 
society to an authoritarian one. Such efforts culminated in the 
enactment of the draconian National Security Law (NSL) which ultimately 
destroyed HK's civil society.
                          b. the media sector
    6. HK's media sector was the first to be compromised. Before 1984, 
HK's media market was dominated by anti-CCP publications, with pro-CCP 
ones numbering just five (Wen Wei Po, Ta Kung Pao, New Evening News, 
Ching Pao and Commercial Daily) with a combined readership less than 
80,000. Thus, the CCP started with converting the most important anti-
CCP media, using its so-called ``magic weapon'' of united front 
strategy. The Director of the Xinhua News Agency Xu Jiatun, the CCP's 
number one man in HK, started with a friendly approach by wining and 
dining newspaper owners and executives.
    7. For example, to woo Sing Tao Daily, a well-established pro-
Taiwan newspaper, Xu arranged a charter flight for the publisher Sally 
Aw Sian to visit her hometown in Fujian Province, which the family had 
not stepped foot on for decades. To coopt the liberal Ming Pao, which 
asked the embarrassing question why Beijing was adamant at taking back 
Hong Kong while forfeiting legitimate claims to huge tract of 
territories taken away by Russia, Deng Xiaoping himself hosted 
publisher Louis Cha a dinner. This honor succeeded in silencing him.
    8. Other means to transform the HK media milieu included outright 
acquisition of shares of major news outlets by pro-China business 
tycoons, such as the acquisition of the influential South China Morning 
Post by Malaysian sugar tycoon Robert Kuok in 1993, the Ming Pao by 
Malaysian media tycoon Tiong Hiew King. This trend continued after 1997 
with a CCP member Li Ruiguang acquiring a majority share of the most 
influential outlet TVB in 2015. Such acquisition resulted in obvious 
change in their respective editorial policies.
    9. By 2012, the remaining mainstream news outlet that was still 
critical of the CCP and supportive of the democracy movement was Jimmy 
Lai's Next Magazine and the Apple Daily, together with a few web-based 
media such as the Stand News and the Citizen News. They too became the 
natural targets of the CCP.
    10. The enactment of the National Security Law in 2020 gave the 
authority wide-sweeping power to shutter all the remaining pro-
democracy news outlets, with Apple Daily and the Stand News bearing the 
full brunt. The chilling effect was obvious. For example, the FCC 
voluntarily suspended its annual Human Rights Press Awards, citing the 
elusive red line. The Hongkong Journalist Association lowered its 
threshold for dissolution in anticipation of the pressure to disband 
itself. The Independent Commentators Association, set up to safeguard 
media freedom, went into silent voluntary dissolution. The editorial 
policies of news outlets had to toe Beijing's line, for example, 
calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine as ``special military 
operation'' instead of ``invasion'', and churned out commentaries that 
blamed the U.S. for causing the Russian invasion.
                        c. lessons for the world
    11. In a short span of 25 years the once free society soon 
degenerated into an authoritarian one. For over a century, the city 
that had served as the haven for political dissidents from China, now 
becomes the exporter of political refugees itself. Once prized as the 
freest places in the Chinese-speaking world, now experienced 
unprecedented curtailment on freedom of speech and expression. The 
Pearl of the Orient, a highly successful crossbreed of East and West 
civilization, began to lose its luster, an irreparable loss to the 
whole world.
    12. Thus, the post-1997 history of Hongkong provides a classical 
example of how, in time of peace, a free society based on the rule of 
law is being imperceptibly converted into an authoritarian one in which 
law becomes a tool of political repression. The world can learn from 
Hongkong's experience and draw important lessons therefrom to avoid 
begetting the same fate.
    13. Worse still, we find with alarm that the tactics the CCP used 
to convert Hongkong are being applied in Western democracies as well. 
These familiar tactics, including propaganda, united front strategy, 
party-building mechanism, infiltration, and intelligence to name the 
most obvious, are clearly at work in the West. Our dreadful experience 
is therefore relevant to the whole world.
    14. Thus, the dreadful experience of Hongkong provides a wake-up 
call for the whole world. Caring for Hongkong is not just for 
Hongkong's own sake but for the sake of the whole world. The world 
needs to learn from HK's lesson and take precautionary actions against 
the stealthy erosion by the CCP leading to the collapse of the Western 
societies. Since we witness first-hand how the fundamental pillars of a 
free society can be easily destroyed by the CCP, we feel duty-bound to 
explicitly state the obvious danger.
                       d. policy recommendations
    15. On HK: Since HK is no longer a free society as envisaged in the 
1992 U.S.-HK Policy Act, it might be appropriate to scrap that Act to 
reflect the change since 1992. To address the urgent needs of today, 
Congress should pass the provisions in Sec. 30303 (Hong Kong Freedom 
and Choice provisions) and other Hong Kong-focused measures in H.R. 
4521 in the conference committee.
    16. On the U.S.: To stave off the CCP's erosion of the U.S., 
Congress should provide resources to:

      Step up the surveillance of CCP-related activities in the 
U.S.: activities that would potentially undermine a free society 
(propaganda, united front strategy, underground party building, 
intelligence gathering and infiltration into various level of the 
administration) to protect the American political system.

      Conduct research, under the CECC framework, into ways to 
reverse the appeasement sentiments towards the CCP which is quite 
rampant in the U.S. If appeasement towards the CCP is allowed to 
develop unabated, then ``Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World'' (by Mark 
Clifford) will be the result.

                  Prepared Statement of Samuel Bickett

            the deterioration of hong kong's justice system
    Hong Kong's justice system has been corrupted by Beijing's 
authoritarian security apparatus. If a court case is of political 
interest to Beijing or its agents in Hong Kong, a defendant has little 
hope of receiving a fair trial, and often will spend years in prison 
before receiving a verdict.
    While few people of good faith would still defend the Hong Kong 
Department of Justice and Police Force, there are those who insist the 
judiciary continues to operate independently and in accordance with 
law. The evidence shows otherwise.
    Under the 2020 National Security Law, Beijing formally set up a 
parallel justice system that it could control for certain political 
cases; the outrages of this system have been well documented. But 
relatively little is said about the deterioration of traditional common 
law courts. While some low-level protest cases might still fly under 
the radar, high profile political defendants wrongly charged in common 
law courts with crimes like unlawful assembly, riot, and incitement 
face almost as little hope as national security law defendants. In 
these cases, unable to rely on the repressive language of the National 
Security Law, prosecutors and judges instead manufacture evidence and 
twist well-established legal principles to obtain convictions.
    Many ordinary judges have been willing participants in the 
dismantling of defendants' rights. The burden of proof has been turned 
on its head; rather than requiring the prosecution to prove its case, 
judges often declare that defendants haven't sufficiently proved their 
innocence. Faced with inconvenient facts, judges falsify or 
deliberately omit exculpatory evidence so frequently that those of us 
working to document it can't keep up.
    Even in non-NSL cases, judges often deny bail to defendants who 
then languish in prison for years awaiting trial. The judiciary's 
leadership has also ordered all judges to attend national security 
seminars given by mainland officials, in which they are trained to view 
court cases through a political lens.
    Judges who follow the law are punished. When Beijing's state media 
attacked several judges who acquitted protesters in early cases, the 
Judiciary's leadership removed the judges from the bench and reassigned 
them to desk duty. State actors harassed and threatened one judge so 
severely that in 2021 he abruptly resigned and moved with his family to 
the U.K. As for the DOJ, when Beijing passed the National Security Law 
in Summer 2020, the Chief Prosecutor, David Leung--not a pro-democracy 
activist by any stretch--was reportedly seen as not loyal enough to 
Beijing and excluded from national security cases. He resigned and was 
replaced by someone more willing to play Beijing's game. The message to 
both judges and prosecutors has been crystal clear: get in line, or 
suffer the consequences. Many ethical judges and prosecutors have left 
their jobs, and those who remain are a mix of those who are too craven 
to do their duty and those who enthusiastically embrace the 
authoritarian regime.
    Private lawyers are next: Both the Law Society and Bar Association 
regularly issue screeds defending government positions while remaining 
silent on government abuses, and both organizations recently launched 
investigations into dozens of private lawyers for their work 
representing protesters. One national security judge, Stanley Chan, has 
suggested that lawyers who provided their business cards to protesters 
could be criminally liable as accomplices. National security police 
interrogated the former chair of the bar association, after which he 
quickly moved to the U.K., and a number of esteemed barristers are in 
prison without trial for political activity. One well-known human 
rights solicitor decided to leave the city after being attacked in 
state media; he was harassed by CCP reporters even as he walked through 
the airport to his gate. Any remaining principled criminal lawyers will 
either fall in line, leave the profession, or risk prison themselves.
    The Legal Aid system for indigent defendants was also revamped last 
year. Whereas previously a defendant could choose their lawyer, under 
the new system the government assigns a lawyer for them. 
Unsurprisingly, any lawyers seen as insufficiently loyal to the regime 
are excluded.
                many cases, including my own, illustrate
                    how the system has been co-opted
    There are many non-NSL cases in which these abuses have been 
documented, some of which I have written about in my Hong Kong Law & 
Policy Newsletter. Two high profile incitement of unlawful assembly 
cases illustrate this point:

      Magistrate Amy Chan convicted activist lawyer Chow Hang 
Tung of inciting others to unlawfully assemble in Victoria Park on the 
June 4, 2021 Tiananmen Crackdown anniversary. The conviction was based 
on a social media post in which Chow invited followers to ``light 
candles in every corner of Hong Kong''--plainly, not an invitation to 
come to Victoria Park. In her written ruling, Magistrate Chan simply 
deleted this exculpatory line when she reprinted the social media post.

      Judge Amanda Woodcock convicted Apple Daily founder Jimmy 
Lai for inciting others to join a similar Tiananmen Crackdown vigil in 
Victoria Park a year earlier. Lai had stood by silently at a press 
event in which a pro-democracy organization, Hong Kong Alliance, 
announced it would later walk to Victoria Park. Lai left and did not go 
to the park. Woodcock ruled that because Lai ``is a prominent public 
figure known to publicly share similar views as Hong Kong Alliance,'' 
and because at the press conference, he was ``surrounded and followed 
by photographers and reporters,'' his very presence was an effort to 
incite others to attend the gathering. In other words, Jimmy Lai was 
guilty because he was Jimmy Lai.

    My own case is another illustration. While many Hongkongers have 
had it much worse than me, my experience shows how the system has been 
co-opted and politicized by officials, often crossing into outright 
criminal misconduct. At every stage, public servants failed me, failed 
their oath, and failed Hong Kong.
    In December 2019 while out shopping, I came across two men beating 
and choking a teenager with a baton. As a crowd formed and several 
people filmed the events, a British man asked them in English if they 
were police. They both responded no. I then asked them in Chinese if 
they were police. They both responded no in Chinese. When one of the 
men, Yu Shu Sang, began to attack the British man, I grabbed at the 
baton to stop him. After a scuffle, I took hold of one side of the 
baton and detained him until the police arrived a few minutes later. 
When they came, the police claimed that Yu was actually a police 
officer. The whole incident was caught on cell phone video, and Yu 
admitted on questioning that he had falsely accused the teen he was 
beating of a crime he didn't commit, but they arrested me anyway and 
let the attackers go free.
    I spent two days in police custody, where I was tortured using a 
common method in Hong Kong. The police put me in a room with the 
temperature set at around 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for 
hours at a time. Periodically, an officer would pull me out of the room 
shivering and turning blue, warm me up, and interrogate me. Each time, 
I would refuse to answer and they would put me back in the freezing 
room.
    After obtaining bail, my lawyers wrote to the DOJ to urge them to 
look at the evidence showing my innocence and drop the case. I still 
held out hope that my legal colleagues in DOJ, sworn to the law just as 
I was, would do the right thing. They did not. A court prosecutor wrote 
back that they would pursue the charges, despite the evidence of my 
innocence.
    In Spring 2020, the prosecutor assigned to the case told my counsel 
that she wanted to drop the charges, but that her superiors were 
proceeding with the case because I was a foreigner who had 
``embarrassed the police'' on camera. That prosecutor was then removed 
from my case, and a private lawyer named Memi Ng was appointed to 
prosecute me instead.
    It became clear by this point that it was the police, not the DOJ, 
calling the shots. At every hearing, two police officers sat behind Ms. 
Ng and instructed her on even minor issues--a violation of both the 
prosecution code and Hong Kong Law, which require prosecutors to act 
independently of the police and on the basis of law. This court scene--
police officers quite literally whispering in the ear of the 
prosecutor--is now routine in politically sensitive cases.
    During the discovery phase, we discovered that the police had 
destroyed CCTV camera footage showing an earlier attack on the teen by 
Yu that I had not witnessed. The police also admitted in writing that 
they had ``no evidence'' that Yu was a serving police officer, and only 
months later, after we raised objections repeatedly, produced a 
suspicious document ``delaying'' Yu's retirement date past the time of 
the incident. We also discovered that the Police had called in their 
only civilian witness, the second attacker Lo Chi Keung, before trial 
and offered to ``award'' him with a cash bribe. I was unusually 
persistent and rigorous in tracking down this rampant misconduct, but 
if it happened to me, it is surely happening in other political cases.
    At my May 2021 trial, Magistrate Arthur Lam disregarded the 
inconvenient videos of the incident and police admissions at trial of 
repeated lying, destruction of evidence, and witness tampering. He then 
simply invented a new series of events, indifferent to how transparent 
his misconduct was. He convicted me and sentenced me to four and a half 
months in prison.
    After nearly two months in prison, I was released on bail pending 
appeal. Despite everything, I still held out hope for the judiciary, 
and believed that an appellate judge would reverse the conviction.
    I was wrong yet again. The court assigned the case--supposedly at 
random--to a notorious national security judge, Esther Toh. In reality, 
even common law case assignments are no longer random, and high-profile 
political cases almost always go to a small circle of Beijing-friendly 
judges. At the hearing, Judge Toh gave several speeches to the 
assembled press, including one defending the right of police officers 
to falsely accuse people of crimes they didn't commit, and another 
proclaiming that it is never lawful to stop a police officer, even if 
they're off duty and committing a violent crime. Judge Toh, of course, 
upheld the conviction, and sent me back to prison for the rest of my 
sentence.
    On March 22 of this year, officers took me from the prison and 
immediately deported me to the U.S. I am still appealing my conviction, 
this time to the Court of Final Appeal. The Court has already refused 
to hear my case once, without any justification for doing so. I am now 
applying a second time for a hearing. But my previous optimism is 
gone--I expect nothing but obfuscation and rejection from the Court.
                    final observations and proposals
    Those holding out hope that courageous officials in the justice 
system will step up to save Hong Kong's rule of law must accept the 
reality: Hong Kong's much-lauded justice system is lost. Going forward, 
officials will no doubt point to an occasional acquittal as evidence of 
their fairness, but there is no chance of acquittals in any case that 
would risk a reaction from political authorities in Beijing.
    For businesses who think the compromised legal system won't affect 
their interests, one only needs to look across the border to Mainland 
China to see that this cannot be the case. In the Mainland, business 
disputes involving a foreign company rarely turn in favor of the 
foreigners, and often result in not just financial losses but exit bans 
for foreign employees, sometimes for years. If prosecutors and judges 
have embraced the principle that cases of interest to Beijing must be 
decided in Beijing's favor, how could it not affect, say, a civil 
dispute between a U.S. bank's Hong Kong branch and China Construction 
Bank, or a creditor claim filed in Hong Kong against an insolvent 
Chinese real estate company? A justice system is either independent of 
political authorities or it is not--there is no half-way option.
    Hong Kong will not be restored to its former glory anytime soon. 
There is, however, much that the U.S. Government can do to at least 
increase the costs of Hong Kong's crackdown and deter similar action in 
the future.

      Human rights (Magnitsky) sanctions: While the U.S. has 
sanctioned a number of top Hong Kong officials, this does little to 
curb the serious abuses of officials in the justice system further down 
the chain. I urge Congress and the White House to issue sanctions 
against midlevel prosecutors and police officials who have misused the 
court system to unjustly imprison perceived dissidents. A wide net cast 
low enough into the ranks just might deter some civil servants from 
further perverting the justice system. And while any government that 
values judicial independence should be very cautious about sanctioning 
judges, there is simply no question that some judges have abandoned 
judicial independence, including the Chief Justice and the known 
National Security Law judges. These judges merit consideration for 
sanctions as well.

      Penalties against U.S. companies for facilitating human 
rights abuses: Ultimately, only measures that increase the risk to 
businesses of investing in authoritarian regimes can curb Beijing's 
excesses in the Chinese mainland and its colonies. Industry-based 
sanctions such as those issued against Russia in 2014 are one way of 
doing this, but lesser measures can also have an impact. One option 
that could be very effective is a law in the mold of the Foreign 
Corrupt Practices Act that prohibits U.S. persons, including U.S. 
companies, from facilitating serious human rights abuses, and subjects 
violators to civil and criminal penalties. I would also urge that any 
such law go beyond the FCPA in permitting private civil actions against 
offenders, which would enable private plaintiffs and attorneys to take 
up much of the work of enforcing the law.

      Immigration pathways: I urge Congress to finally provide 
a special immigration pathway for Hongkongers to live and work in the 
United States, and eventually obtain citizenship. As our allies in the 
U.K., Canada, and Australia have moved forward with such pathways, 
Hongkongers have moved to these places in droves. These Hongkongers are 
by and large well-educated, relatively wealthy, and of working age. 
They will make exceptional contributions wherever they land, and it is 
America's loss that we are not doing more to attract them here.

                               conclusion
    To be frank, the U.S. Government has, to this point, done far too 
little to stem the rise of CCP authoritarianism. To illustrate how far 
we are from the mindset we need to be in: As we speak, just a short 
walk away the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art is co-hosting a 
Hong Kong film festival with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, 
Hong Kong's principal propaganda arm abroad. If even U.S. Government 
entities here in the nation's capital haven't yet gotten the message 
that these are not people we can work with, how can we expect U.S. 
businesses to stop cooperating with the regime? How can we demand it of 
our allies?
    Finally, I urge all members of Congress to remember that this 
country's credibility abroad on issues of democracy and human rights is 
inextricably tied to whether our leaders are seen as respecting 
democracy and human rights at home. The rhetoric and actions of some 
members of Congress related to the last presidential election have 
severely hurt America's influence abroad, and given our adversaries in 
China and elsewhere ammunition as they seek to spread authoritarianism 
across the world. I urge all of America's leaders to remember that 
their actions on domestic issues have consequences well beyond the 
country's borders.
    Thank you for your time and attention.
                                 ______
                                 

               Prepared Statement of Senator Jeff Merkley

    Good morning. Today's hearing of the Congressional-Executive 
Commission on China entitled ``The Dismantling of Hong Kong's Civil 
Society'' will come to order.
    Earlier this month, Hong Kong marked the 25th anniversary of the 
British handover to the People's Republic of China. Instead of 
celebrating the ``high degree of autonomy'' and ``universal suffrage'' 
promised to the people of Hong Kong, this anniversary serves as an 
occasion for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to go to Hong Kong and flaunt 
the control he now wields over the city.
    It's now been two years since implementation of Hong Kong's 
draconian National Security Law. In these two years, authorities 
completed the transformation of Hong Kong from an open society into a 
city gripped by fear--fear of the mainland's authoritarian repression.
    A city that once boasted a vibrant civil society and pro-democratic 
institutions saw these pillars of what made Hong Kong so special 
systematically dismantled. The Hong Kong government now jails 
protesters and politicians, shuts down independent media, and silences 
critics, even criminalizing dissent. At least 10,500 Hong Kongers have 
been arrested for political and protest-related offenses. No fewer than 
123 individuals face national security charges and will likely be tried 
with few or no due process protections and with possible extradition to 
mainland China. At least 65 civil society organizations have shut down 
or left Hong Kong for fear of prosecution under the National Security 
Law. Today, sadly, that once-vibrant civil society is crushed, muted, 
and scattered.
    Today's hearing offers a microcosm of what's happened and what 
remains. Our witnesses bring a deep history in civil society in Hong 
Kong, as well as experience being persecuted, and having to continue 
their work in exile, in Tokyo, in London, in Los Angeles, and here in 
Washington, DC. Like so many, they continue to fight for the people of 
Hong Kong and its once-proud institutions.
    In recent months, this Commission has heard from dozens of Hong 
Kong's true patriots: journalists, human rights advocates, students, 
former legislators, social workers, religious clergy, nongovernmental 
organization staff, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, and trade union 
organizers. In the coming days, we will release a report on what those 
members of civil society have experienced, largely in their own words.
    Today's hearing offers a glimpse into that bleak picture. The 
Chinese government's policy of crushing resistance turns Hong Kong into 
a city subject to centralized political control like other cities in 
China. The civil society voices we've heard from view authorities as 
co-opting those who can be bought, constraining those who can be 
intimidated, and cracking down on those who cannot be silenced.
    As we hear some of those stories today, I look forward to learning 
from our witnesses what we can do to support the civil society that 
remains in Hong Kong and organizations that now operate elsewhere on 
behalf of the people of Hong Kong.
    I look forward to exploring with the Biden administration the 
additional steps that can be taken to hold accountable those 
responsible for undermining Hong Kong's autonomy, basic rights, and 
rule of law. Later today, the Commission will release a staff analysis 
on the role of Hong Kong prosecutors in these abuses. We hope that this 
analysis, like the work we do documenting political prisoner cases 
generally, will shine a light in a dark place and point to a better 
path ahead. Without objection, these supplementary materials will be 
entered into the record.
                                 ______
                                 

         Prepared Statement of Representative James P. McGovern

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on the erosion of 
civil society in Hong Kong.
    Hong Kong has long been a particular interest of this Commission. 
From the start, 20 years ago, our annual report has included a discrete 
Hong Kong chapter. This is the sixth hearing on Hong Kong, or featuring 
a witness on Hong Kong, in my three and a half years as House co-chair. 
The reason for this heightened attention is regrettable, however.
    The changes in this time have been dramatic. Three years ago this 
summer, the world witnessed massive protests in the streets of Hong 
Kong. The trigger was an extradition treaty that put residents at risk 
of being forcibly sent to the mainland. The context was the steady 
erosion of democratic norms under Chinese government and Communist 
Party influence.
    For our September 2019 hearing on the protests, witnesses flew in 
from Hong Kong. They would not be able to do that today. One witness 
was Joshua Wong, a leader of the pro-democracy movement, making his 
second appearance before the CECC. Today he is in prison on political 
charges. Another was Denise Ho, a democracy activist and singer. She 
was arrested and released on bail, and still faces charges of the crime 
of supporting democracy.
    In 2020, the central government passed the National Security Law, 
providing a ``legal'' basis for political persecution of those deemed 
oppositional to the Party's priorities. Further, Hong Kong authorities 
have imposed measures aligned with the ideological priorities of the 
central government. These include removing books from libraries, 
pushing ``patriotic education'' in schools, revising history to suit 
Party narratives, and suppressing LGBTQ voices.
    These impulses are not exclusive to Hong Kong or China. We see such 
evidence of authoritarian creep in many places at home and abroad.
    Today we hear from citizens and residents of Hong Kong who have 
been first-hand witnesses to this extraordinary change. The fact that 
none of our witnesses remains in Hong Kong is indicative of the 
crackdown. We invite them to share their stories and to speak for their 
friends and colleagues still in Hong Kong who are not able to speak for 
themselves.
    We not only want to hear about the state of civil society, but to 
receive recommendations on what U.S. policymakers can do to support 
those who still desire democracy and human rights. I also welcome your 
recommendation on whether the U.S. should create humanitarian pathways 
for those fleeing repression in Hong Kong.
    Lastly, let us not forget the prisoners of conscience who are in 
jail or on trial in Hong Kong--Joshua Wong, Jimmy Lai, Cyd Ho, Claudia 
Mo, and so many others. We continue to stand with them and to advocate 
for their release.
    Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the staff is working on 
analytical products in conjunction with this hearing and I look forward 
to their publication. I look forward to the testimony.

                       Submissions for the Record

                              ----------                              


                      Submission of Senator Ossoff

            List of Journalists and Press Freedom Defenders
                         Arrested in Hong Kong

                               1. Jimmy Lai Chee-ying

                               2. Claudia Mo Man-ching

                               3. Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam

                               4. Frankie Fung Tat-chun

                               5. Wan Yiu-sing (Giggs)

                               6. Cheung Kim Hung

                               7. Ryan Law Wai-kwong

                               8. Lam Man-chung

                               9. Yeung Ching-kee

                              10. Fung Wai-kong

                              11. Chan Pui-man

                              12. Patrick Lam Shiu-tung

                              13. Chung Pui-kuen



    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]      

    

                          Witness Biographies

    Patrick Poon, visiting researcher, Institute for Comparative Law at 
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan

    Patrick Poon is a visiting researcher at the Institute for 
Comparative Law at Meiji University, and advisor to the 29 Principles, 
a U.K.-based organization supporting lawyers facing human rights 
oppression. In his years in Hong Kong, Poon was a court reporter at the 
South China Morning Post, China Labour Bulletin, China Human Rights 
Lawyers Concern Group, Independent Chinese PEN Center, and Amnesty 
International. He is well versed in not just Hong Kong-based civil 
society organizations, but also China-focused human rights 
organizations that have sought shelter in Hong Kong, and international 
human rights organizations that have monitored developments in both 
Hong Kong and mainland China.

    Fermi Wong, founder and former executive director, Hong Kong Unison

    Fermi Wong is the founder and former executive director of Hong 
Kong Unison, which promotes equality for ethnic minorities. She set up 
her own civil society organization with private funding, avoiding 
dependence on government funding and the consequent inability to 
challenge government policies. Her work has been featured in Time 
magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, and Hong Kong Free 
Press. In the U.K., she seeks to promote Hong Kong civil society abroad 
as co-founder and director of the Hong Kong Umbrella Community and 
Mingle Cafe, and as co-founder and consultant for Green Bean Media.

    Ching Cheong, veteran journalist

    Ching Cheong worked for the state-owned Wenwei Po newspaper for 15 
years, acquiring knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party's 
interference in Hong Kong affairs ever since the Sino-British Joint 
Declaration was signed. He is extensively featured in a recent 
Economist article entitled ``How a Free and Open Hong Kong Became a 
Police State.'' Before he left Hong Kong, Ching was involved with 
independent media and journalist organizations.

    Samuel Bickett, human rights lawyer and Fellow at Georgetown Center 
for Asian Law

    Samuel Bickett is a human rights lawyer focused on the rule of law 
and civil liberties in Hong Kong, a Fellow at the Georgetown Center for 
Asian Law, and author of the ``Hong Kong Law & Policy'' newsletter. He 
was a corporate sanctions/corporate corruption lawyer based in Hong 
Kong from 2013 to 2021. He was arrested during the 2019 protests and 
convicted, imprisoned twice, and then deported from Hong Kong earlier 
this year.
      
      

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