[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CONTROL OF RELIGION IN CHINA THROUGH
DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
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Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-647 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
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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
DANIEL K. KRITENBRINK, Department of State
MARISA LAGO, Department of Commerce
THEA MEI LEE, Department of Labor
LISA JO PETERSON, Department of State
UZRA ZEYA, Department of State
Matt Squeri, Staff Director
Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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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 Nury Turkel, Chair of the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom................................ 5
Statement of Karrie Koesel, Associate Professor, University of
Notre Dame..................................................... 18
Statement of Chris Meserole, Director of Research, Artificial
Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, Brookings
Institution.................................................... 20
Statement of Emile Dirks, Postdoctoral Fellow, Citizen Lab....... 22
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Turkel, Nury..................................................... 33
Koesel, Karrie J................................................. 34
Meserole, Chris.................................................. 38
Dirks, Emile..................................................... 44
Merkley, Hon. Jeff............................................... 53
McGovern, Hon. James P........................................... 53
Submissions for the Record
Statement of Freedom House....................................... 55
CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form.......................... 58
Witness Biographies.............................................. 50
(iii)
CONTROL OF RELIGION IN CHINA THROUGH DIGITAL AUTHORITARIANISM
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was held from 10:00 a.m.to 11:43 a.m., via
videoconference, Senator Jeff Merkley, Chair, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China, presiding.
Also present: Representative James P. McGovern, Co-chair,
Senator Ossoff, and Representatives Smith and Hartzler.
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 ``Control
of Religion in China through Digital Authoritarianism'' will
come to order.
Before we turn to the subject of this hearing, I'd like to
take a moment to acknowledge and thank President Biden for his
recent appointment of five executive branch commissioners to
this Commission. This marks the first time in nearly six years
that the Commission includes executive branch commissioners.
Their appointment will bolster our ability to bring the
expertise and perspective of the various branches of government
to our work monitoring human rights and the rule of law in
China. As we develop recommendations for legislative,
executive, and international action, dialogue to coordinate our
efforts will be critical, as it has been in recent years, in
implementing legislation spearheaded by this Commission, such
as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the Uyghur Human
Rights Policy Act, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy
Act, and more.
I look forward to working closely with our new
commissioners. Those commissioners are Assistant Secretary of
State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink,
Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Marisa
Lago, Under Secretary of Labor for International Affairs Thea
Lee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Lisa Peterson, and Under
Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human
Rights Uzra Zeya. Welcome to our new commissioners. We are
absolutely delighted to have you.
Today our hearing focuses on freedom of religion,
particularly recent developments in Chinese authorities' use of
technology to crack down on the free exercise of religion.
While many of our hearings explore violations of religious
freedom--in Xinjiang, Tibet, and elsewhere--this is our first
hearing dedicated to this topic since 2018. Recent Chinese
Communist Party steps to use digital repression to strengthen
control of religion make this an especially timely hearing. As
more religious activity and resources move online, especially
in response to COVID, Chinese officials have expanded their use
of digital tools to surveil and suppress online religious
expression. Invasive surveillance technologies and mass
biometric data collection track and monitor religious groups
that authorities deem to be a threat.
In March of this year, new measures for the administration
of internet religious information services went into effect,
which require a government-issued permit to post religious
content online and which ban the online broadcasting of
religious ceremonies, rites, and services, among a host of
other restrictions infringing on Chinese citizens' freedom of
religion. These measures control how individuals and
communities worship, with the aim of sinicizing religion to
conform with Party priorities. As we will hear today, those
priorities are political and social control. To achieve that
control, Chinese authorities cite objectives like combating
crime and countering so-called religious extremism as they
undermine fundamental human rights. The recent UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights report on Xinjiang calls this
what it is, a pretext that conflates personal religious choice
with extremism and leads to severe human rights abuses.
Our first witness today is one of the most powerful voices
in the world when it comes to exposing these abuses and
advocating for those who simply wish to exercise their basic
rights. I'm honored that Nury Turkel is here with us. After we
hear his perspective, our second panel of eminent experts will
help us understand the tools of digital surveillance and
repression, the risks of this model of authoritarian management
of religion spreading to other countries, and recommendations
for how defenders of religious freedom can respond. I look
forward to our witnesses' testimony.
I'd now like to recognize my co-chair, Congressman
McGovern, for his opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MASSACHUSETTS; CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON
CHINA
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to
our witnesses. Religious freedom has been at the core of the
Commission's work since its founding, and I appreciate your
scheduling this hearing on this important topic. The Chinese
government's record on religious freedom is as atrocious as it
is well documented, including by this Commission and by the
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, whose chair
we're honored to have as a witness today. In our thoughts today
are the prisoners of conscience who have had their religious
liberty violated by the Chinese government. It is our moral
responsibility to help them tell their stories and those of the
people whose voices do not reach us.
Today's hearing will focus on new and insidious methods
authorities are using to exert control over religious practice,
including online regulation and digital surveillance
technologies. The UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion
or belief last year reported that the Chinese government
reportedly uses biometrics, digital surveillance, and personal
data for behavioral analysis for identifying ``extremist'' or
``unhealthy'' thought. He notes that such technologies used in
the counterterrorism context threaten freedom of thought.
This aligns with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights'
recent report on Xinjiang, which explains how Chinese officials
misused counterterrorism policy to brutally repress Uyghurs and
other Turkic Muslims and deny their ability to practice their
religion and cultural heritage. This shows how the right to
freedom of religion intersects with other fundamental rights--
the freedoms of speech and association, equal protection, due
process, presumption of innocence--all of which are protected
under international human rights law.
In this light, I hope the witnesses will expand on the
meaning of sinicization of religion--a process to coerce
religious believers' allegiance to the state and the Party. We
also want to understand how sinicization manipulates the
teaching of religious principles to imply that they support the
Party's ideology. It appears that the Party is exploiting
religion as a means to impose social control.
Last month, a group of UN experts, including the special
rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, issued a statement
against the cynical abuse of religion or belief as a tool of
discrimination, hostility, and violence, and noted that
international law rejects any attempt to use religion or belief
as justification for the destruction of the rights and freedoms
of others. USCIRF (the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom) shows that the United States seeks to be a
leader in promoting international religious freedom. To be
effective, however, we must live up to the standards we demand
of other countries. We lack credibility in criticizing China
for using religion as a pretext to restrict other liberties if
our own government, including at the state level, engages in
the same behavior.
Two final points. One, while China officially only
recognizes five religions, our analysis and advocacy must
recognize that there is a stunningly wide array of religious
belief in the country. PRC regulation not only harms religious
freedom but its diversity, too. Lastly, as China suffers from a
devastating heat wave, I am interested in how restrictions on
religion undermine the cause of environmental protection, given
the links between spirituality and nature within Buddhism and
Daoism, for example. Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look
forward to the testimony.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congressman McGovern.
Congressman Smith, did you wish to make some opening
remarks?
STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH,
A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY
Representative Smith. Yes. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman. I want to thank you for organizing this very
important hearing on an extremely important topic. Digital
authoritarianism perhaps is too benign a phrase for what we are
seeing take place today in Xi Jinping's China. Rather, it's
digital totalitarianism or techno-totalitarianism, if you
prefer the alliteration, for nothing more clearly illustrates
the fundamental distinction between authoritarianism and
totalitarianism than this attempt by Xi Jinping to dictate the
beliefs of one's innermost conscience and how one forms the
very thoughts to lift up in prayer to God.
Xi Jinping dictates, in effect, the totality of society,
for there is nothing beyond the Communist Party decrees. This
is not simply authoritarianism, but a dictator that lets the
priest or preacher think of things of God and theology, though
once he steps out into the political realm in criticizing the
government he is subjected to arrest and silencing. Rather, we
see under Xi Jinping the sinicization of the very content of
belief, the rewriting of the words of scripture--be it the
Bible, Sutra, or Koran--to conform with Xi Jinping Thought.
Indeed, one need only go back to the era of Mao Zedong and
the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution to find anything
remotely comparable. While Mao particularly hated religions
deemed foreign, in reality he waged a war against anything that
smacked of the four olds: old ideas, old culture, old customs,
old habits. Ironically, the result of Mao's bringing the
entirety of Chinese society to its knees was a loss of faith in
the Communist Party, which subsequent economic growth and
prosperity could never fully restore; plus the growth of
religious belief and revivalism that we see manifested among
the Chinese people today, which Xi Jinping now seeks to further
control.
In so doing, Xi is able to draw upon technology, the likes
of which the Mao Zedongs could only dream of, from artificial
intelligence, to tracking apps, which bring us closer than ever
before to the nightmare envisioned by George Orwell. Again,
this totalitarianism is not simply authoritarianism. In 2018, I
wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled ``The World
Must Stand against China's War on Religion.'' In it I stated,
``The ruling Chinese Communist Party has undertaken the most
comprehensive attempt to manipulate and control or destroy
religious communities since Mao made the eradication of
religion a goal of his disastrous Cultural Revolution half a
century ago. Now Xi, apparently fearing the power of
independent religious belief as a challenge to the Communist
Party's legitimacy, is trying to radically transform religion
into the Party's servant, employing a draconian policy known as
sinicization.''
That was in 2018, when the Party was implementing a five-
year plan to bend religion to the goal of building a socialist
society, as we've seen in documents such as the online outline
of the five-year working plan for promoting the sinicization of
Christianity. That's their plan. That document contains
principles which are applied broadly to all religious believers
and must be observed, such as: ``embrace and support the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, be guided by the
core values of socialism, and endorse the system, ways,
theories, and culture of our country's development, integrate
outstanding Chinese traditional culture with advanced socialist
culture.''
Five years from 2018 brings us to today. Since then, the
repression has only gotten worse, with the Chinese Communist
Party under Xi exercising greater control over the content of
religious education and the content of scripture, while
extending his grip geographically to the once-free bastion of
Hong Kong, where even the towering giant of religious freedom,
Cardinal Zen, was arrested in May of this year, and his trial
is scheduled to begin next week. I pause here to call upon Pope
Francis to speak out with clarity and conviction on behalf of
Cardinal Zen and the persecuted church in Hong Kong and China.
With that, again, I look forward to our witnesses and yield
back to you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, again, for the hearing.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congressman Smith.
I'd now like to turn to the witness for our first panel,
Nury Turkel. He is the chair of the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom. Mr. Turkel was born in a
reeducation camp, spending the first several months of his life
in detention with his mother. He came to the United States in
1995 and was later granted asylum. A lawyer, a foreign policy
expert, and a human rights advocate, he serves as the chair of
the board for the Uyghur Human Rights Project and as senior
fellow at the Hudson Institute. Previously he served as the
president of the Uyghur American Association. Mr. Turkel, the
floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF NURY TURKEL, CHAIR OF THE
U.S. COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Mr. Turkel. Good morning, Chairman Merkley, Co-chair
McGovern, and honorable members of the Commission. Thank you
very much for inviting me to testify on behalf of the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom. I appreciate
your steadfast leadership and continuing attention to the
Chinese government's assault on religious freedom, targeting
many ethnic and religious communities across China, including
Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, underground Catholic and
Protestant house church Christians, and Falun Gong
practitioners, just to name a few.
For decades, the ruling Communist Party has placed religion
under tight, comprehensive, and coercive control. It exercises
control by using arbitrary laws and regulations, implementing
them through a complex but sophisticated web of Party and
government agencies at all levels, including the CCP's infamous
United Front Work Department, State Administration for
Religious Affairs, and China's public security and state
security apparatus. Anyone suspected of violating the CCP's
religious policies is severely punished. China's egregious
abuse against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims is a case in
point that the United States Government rightfully has formally
recognized as genocide and crimes against humanity. Even the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on Xinjiang
confirmed that severe violations have occurred and may amount
to crimes against humanity.
The crackdown on religion has become increasingly harsh in
recent years under the brutal rule of CCP leader Xi Jinping,
leading some experts to call his decade-long reign a bitter
winter for religious freedom in China. Xi Jinping's new
regulation on religion, the Measures for the Administration of
Internet Religious Information Services, represent a new low
for Xi and his government. Its impact cannot be overstated, as
the regulation imposes new restrictions on religious
activities, further constricting the narrow space in which
religious groups can operate.
This new regulation has particularly significant and
adverse effects on independent, unregistered religious
communities. Because of the government's severe persecution,
many of them rely on online platforms and resources for
religious education, training, religious gatherings and
worship, and other religious activities. These online platforms
and smartphone apps are often the only viable means through
which these religious communities can carry out activities and
connect with one another, especially during the strict COV-19
lockdown.
The negative impact of this regulation is already being
felt across China, since it went into effect in March 2022.
Chinese authorities have recruited hundreds, if not thousands,
of auditors to target and censor religious content on the
internet. Christian and Tibetan Buddhist groups have reported
that their websites and WeChat virtual groups were shut down
and are no longer accessible. USCIRF is concerned that this
regulation will lead to more persecution and abuses, especially
for groups with foreign connections.
Regulations also impose tighter restrictions on state-
sanctioned religious groups. These groups are required to
submit detailed information to authorities to apply for a
permit to operate online. In addition, they are required to
self-censor their religious material on the internet.
Therefore, even state-sanctioned religious groups are not safe
and could be punished if they are found to be non-compliant
with government policies.
We are all aware of the Chinese government routinely
monitoring actions and censoring all kinds of online content,
including religious materials. But this new regulation is the
first of its kind designed to specifically target religious
content on the internet, and it has created a chilling effect
on many religious groups and individuals. It is tantamount to a
total ban on religious activitty, as many groups are no longer
able to operate in person or online.
The order to cleanse the internet of any exposure to
religion came from the highest echelon of the Party, Xi Jinping
himself. At the 2016 National Conference on Religious Work,
attended by high-level Party and government officials, Xi
Jinping expressed particular displeasure toward the phenomenon
of internet religions. Five years later at the 2021 National
Conference on Religious Work, Xi again emphasized the need to
strengthen the management of religious affairs on the internet.
It is important to note that Xi Jinping sees religion as
fundamentally connected to national security. As a consequence,
he has underscored the need to fight against foreign
infiltration through the use of religion and religious
extremism, including the internet. This new regulation is an
integral part of the CCP's sinicization policy to subjugate and
control all ethnic and religious groups, coercing support and
loyalty to the CCP's rule and its policies, or else facing
severe consequences.
Mr. Chairman, this new regulation is the latest example of
the CCP expanding and refining its techno-authoritarianism
toolkit at home. It tries to intimidate and coerce its citizens
to perpetuate its rule. Ethnic minority regions, Tibet and
Xinjiang in particular, have borne the brunt of the CCP's
technology-enhanced brutality in recent years, as this
Commission has well documented. The CCP has been exporting its
techno-authoritarianism overseas to countries with poor human
rights records as well.
Oppressive regimes can emulate the Chinese model to
persecute political dissidents and human rights advocates. The
United States Government and companies must continue to ensure
that critical technology is not exported to China nor
contributing to any religious freedom abuses abroad. USCIRF
also recommends that the United States Government impose more
targeted sanctions on Chinese officials and entities
responsible for severe religious freedom violations, especially
those within the United Front Work Department, the State
Administration for Religious Affairs, as well as China's public
security and state security apparatus. These entities are
directly involved in drafting, implementation, and enforcement
of the new regulation on internet religious activities.
In closing, I would like to thank the Commission again for
the opportunity to testify and for your attention to the plight
of all persecuted ethnic and religious groups in China. I look
forward to your questions.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much for your testimony.
We'll now have a round of questions from members of the
Commission who are with us. I believe we're allocating seven
minutes to each member, and I'll encourage people to wrap up
their remarks if they're hitting that boundary.
I'll begin, Mr. Turkel, by noting that you have been a
target of the Chinese government's intimidation and threats, as
have many other Uyghurs and others globally. As this
transnational repression targets Uyghurs and Hong Kongers and
Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners, human rights advocates,
journalists, and others outside of China's borders, what should
the United States do to address this problem?
Mr. Turkel. Chairman, thank you very much for bringing up
my own experience, at least in the past decade or so. I came to
the United States, as you noted, in 1995. Now I'm an American
citizen--a U.S. official--and the Chinese government is
retaliating against me and my family for my service in the U.S.
Government and for advocating for a strong human rights policy
through my professional work and personal advocacy.
Last December I was sanctioned by Xi Jinping's China, and
this May I was also sanctioned by Putin's Russia, so two of the
world's worst human rights abusers have sanctioned me. The
consequences of my being sanctioned are very, very serious. I
still have my mother, whom I have not seen since 2004, living
in communist China. The last time I saw her was when she was
here with my late father for my law school graduation, and I
don't even know if I will see her again. The Chinese--this is a
hostage-taking. This is direct retaliation against a U.S.
official. And this is retaliation against an American citizen
who's exercising his freedom of speech in the United States.
I am grateful that you and other Members of Congress have
been paying attention to this, but we need to have a clear
policy that includes a legislative mandate. As far as I know,
there are no legal tools available to go after those
individuals engaging in transnational repression. I do believe
that there is good will within our government, but we need
clear guidance. I think Congress can play a significant role.
Also, I would like to see law enforcement act a little bit
more coherently, even aggressively. The FBI put out a bulletin,
which was very, very helpful, but at the same time, I'm sensing
that the Uyghur American community feels a little hopeless that
the U.S. Government role, and even the law enforcement role,
that are clearly described and mandated in the Uyghur Human
Rights Policy Act, have not been done. Also, our government
needs to understand what transnational repression entails. That
could be done through an annual human rights report. That could
be done through public education. That could be done through
hearings like this.
Then finally, I'd like to see the officials responsible for
designing and carrying out transnational repression, whether it
be in Tehran, whether it be in Moscow, whether it be elsewhere,
or Beijing, face consequences. They should not be allowed to
come to the United States, and our allies in liberal
democracies should consider similar measures. Why would they
stop this kind of behavior if they don't face consequences?
It's quite simple, so we need to act on this societally,
governmentally, and also in tandem with our partners and allies
who value human rights, who value freedom of speech, who value
religious freedom.
Chair Merkley. Thank you for your response. I'm going to
keep raising the issue of transnational repression. We're often
thinking about the human rights issues inside other countries,
and certainly that's our role as a Commission in terms of
what's happening inside China, but we also have to realize what
China is doing outside of China, and inside the United States,
in violating the human rights of those resident here.
Let me turn back to what's happening inside of China. In
your testimony you note the connection Xi Jinping draws between
the management of religion and national security. As I noted in
my opening remarks, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
called this linkage a pretext for serious human rights
violations in Xinjiang. What more can be done so the Chinese
government and other governments cannot hide behind this so-
called counterterrorism or counterextremism strategy to flout
binding international human rights laws in regard to religion?
Mr. Turkel. Thank you, Chairman, for that excellent
question. Since 2014, the Chinese government, through its
national security strategy, clearly stated that the freedom
that we treasure, that they cannot stand, is part of their
national security concern. They're constantly battling against
``Western'' influence or ``foreign'' influence. To the CCP,
even though religious freedom is something constitutionally
guaranteed with specific language, such as you can be a certain
religious faith, the Party has never allowed its citizens to
practice; that's only on paper.
On national security concerns, the convenience the Chinese
find in, in particular, the Uyghur religion is the fact that it
can be easily linked to counterterrorism or the fight against
three forces, as they often say. Fight against extremism--
religious extremism, separatism, and terrorism. Even to this
day, after the UN recognized that there are crimes against
humanity underway, the Chinese top diplomats in Washington,
Beijing, and Geneva are still repeating those same lines.
They may also underestimate the intelligence of the people
in the free world, that they can tell that this is not the type
of counterterrorism that the United States government sees, or
that our European allies see. Secretary Blinken said it very
clearly in his ``60 Minutes'' interview, that the United States
does not believe that the U.S. and China are fighting the same
type of terrorism. The Chinese can say this 15 times more, but
it does not hold any water.
Here's the important aspect of what they're trying to do.
This is all about preemptive policing. That religious belief is
now linked to national security is a cancerous tumor. It needs
to be cut out or killed with a spray of chemicals. This is a
part of their public remarks. The CCP, for example, likens
Uyghur Islam to mental illness, and claims that followers are
abnormal and therefore, as former Chinese Ambassador to
Washington Cui Tiankai said, those people need to go through
thought transformation to be normalized. He said this on CNN to
the American people. Those tumors, those thought viruses, to
the Chinese government are a national security concern that
need to be taken out before they metastasize and spread to
vital organs.
And what do we do? I don't think that the United States
Government treats religious freedom--human rights--as a
national security concern. We always deal with it once it turns
into a humanitarian crisis, genocide, war crimes. It becomes a
very costly operation. I'd like to see our government in its
overall foreign policy agenda, as initially intended, to put in
place the International Religious Freedom Act. We need to make
an integral part of our national security agenda--specifically
in our foreign policy engagements--diplomatic engagement with a
government that has a dismal human rights and religious freedom
record.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much for your insight and use
of your role on the Commission on International Religious
Freedom to be such a powerful voice for religious freedom in
the world.
Congressman and Co-chair McGovern.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Turkel. Next month, the Sino-Vatican
Agreement is up for renewal, and last week Cardinal Secretary
of State Pietro Parolin expressed confidence that the agreement
would be renewed, saying ``When you negotiate with someone you
must always start from recognizing their good faith.'' Really?
I mean, I certainly would not have made a statement like that.
Let me ask you, what is your assessment of the state of
Catholics in China today? Are they subject to the same level of
sinicization as other religions? And as Mr. Smith pointed out
in his opening statement, Cardinal Zen goes on trial next month
in Hong Kong. Do you think that Vatican authorities have done
enough to defend him?
Mr. Turkel. We have been publicly expressing concern over
the silence at the Vatican with respect to persecuted Catholics
in Hong Kong and in mainland China. I think that the constant
Chinese battle against Western influence, by and large,
includes the Christian Catholics in China. To the Chinese
government, the concept of foreign religion essentially entails
Uyghur Muslims and the Christian Catholic community in China.
Now they've tested it out. It worked, and essentially no one
paid a price for it within the Chinese leadership, with the
mildest of criticism around the world. Thank God we live in a
country that's shown leadership in this effort.
The cause has not been serious enough to the CCP
leadership, and the Catholic community in China does not have
the type of voice that they should have in this kind of
discussion. I worry that the same method being implemented in
the Uyghur homeland, without many consequences, now will be
implemented in the Christian community. We're already seeing
signs of similar practices, removing crosses from the top of
the churches in China and also putting up Xi Jinping's pictures
on the walls inside the places of worship. In the case of the
Uyghurs, it's a no-go. You don't look at images to practice
your religion.
So now with the sinicization effort, they're rewriting the
Bible, rewriting the Koran to make it communist ideology as a
religion. Communism is not a religion. It may be a religion for
Xi Jinping and his cohorts, but it's not a religion. Abrahamic
religion and communism are incompatible. This is a destructive
effort, and I will have to repeat this I don't know how many
times: What is the cost that the CCP leadership has suffered?
Yes, we have imposed sanctions. It has been a long
proposition. The United States has shown leadership. Where are
the European allies? Where are the other liberal democracies
who believe in human rights, who believe in religious freedom?
Unless this becomes a collaborative global effort and we impose
serious costs on the CCP leadership, they will continue this
with impunity.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. I appreciate your response.
Mr. Turkel, you know, Tibetan Buddhists value the
preservation of the natural environment as an integral part of
their spiritual belief system, as we hear often from His
Holiness the Dalai Lama. This is true of others, including
Chinese Buddhists, Daoists, and folk religion practitioners.
Should we look at environmental destruction, including that
wrought by climate change, as impinging on the religious
freedom of these faith traditions?
Mr. Turkel. Both the Tibetan Plateau and the Uyghur
homeland, which some people describe as the Taklamakan Desert,
have been earlier targets for the CCP's environmental
destruction, degradation efforts. In the case of Xinjiang, for
example, they've been testing nuclear weapons since the 1960s.
They still use dirty coal to make polysilicon. In the case of
the Tibetans, they've been destroying forests, and there's
serious water pollution in the Tibetan area. Also the Chinese
government's attempts at moving people from inland Chinese
cities are creating pressure on local people's lives that could
be as simple as jobs, as simple as the resources.
In the case of the Tibetans, I believe that the Tibetan
people have in recent years not been talked about enough, as
has been the case in the past. I think we need to start paying
attention. I worry that the Chinese are trying to buy time,
waiting until the Dalai Lama's time expires. That will be a
disastrous circumstance and situation, both inside and outside
of Tibet. We still don't know the whereabouts of the Panchen
Lama, and this should concern us. So this all, again, just
boils down to the CCP's fear of religion.
Actually, this has been scientifically proven: In a society
where the government respects religious freedom, that naturally
brings stability. That naturally makes the society prosperous.
So the Chinese, instead of spending billions of dollars on
domestic security, scaring its own population or being fearful
of their own population, and engaging in destructive efforts to
destroy this proud Tibetan nation, the Uyghur nation, the
Catholics, and others--they should be leaving people alone,
letting them live the life they want to live.
I think in the long term, the Chinese Communist Party has
not only been disastrous for worldwide rights concerns, but is
also creating a long-lasting effect on the psyche, on the
social health of Chinese society.
Co-chair McGovern. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back my remaining time.
Chair Merkley. Thank you.
Congressman Smith.
Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, to Chairman Turkel, thank you for your
extraordinary leadership, your courage, and the fact that you
have family members, your mom, who are at grave risk from the
Chinese Communist Party, and yet you speak with such clarity
and such precision and courage. I can't thank you enough for
that leadership. To have you walking point is a blessing to the
Commission on International Religious Freedom, so thank you
again for that leadership.
To the point on the Vatican agreement, when I was chairman
of this Commission, I did travel over to the Vatican. I asked
Cardinal Parolin, the secretary of state, not to engage in that
agreement, not to agree to giving Xi Jinping veto power over
bishops, which I think is absurd and completely undermines the
underground Catholic church. I have met many members of that
church in-country, including Bishop Su of Baoding province who
was out of prison and went back to prison, spent more than
almost 40 years, no one knows for sure how many because he may
have died since. The underground Catholic church has been hurt
severely by this.
I also think it has a chilling effect on the church's voice
in speaking out for the Uyghurs, and speaking out for the
Tibetan Buddhists, for the Protestants. The solidarity with all
those persecuted faiths, Falun Gong, does not have the same
articulation that it would otherwise have. I do hope that the
church will reconsider its position very seriously. Let me also
say, in response to the Chairman's question--it was a good
one--what do we do now? I would respectfully say that it's
time. You know, we do have Magnitsky sanctions, and we are
trying to hold those most responsible for their egregious
behavior to account.
In March, I introduced H.R. 7193, the China Trade Relations
Act of 2022, that would reestablish human rights linkage to our
MFN, to our trade relationship, with China. This is not a
partisan dig, but on May 26, 1994, Bill Clinton delinked most
favored nation status from human rights. I believe very, very
passionately that that's when the Chinese Communist Party said:
``They just care about profits.'' You know, the balance of
trade last year was well over $350 billion. They are an export
economy.
If we had human rights linkage that was serious and said
that unless there's serious sustained progress on human
rights--and of course, religious freedom is at the core of all
of this--there would be amelioration of their policy, and I
think reform. When they think we're bluffing and we just talk
and don't have any linkage to trade, I think we lose an
opportunity to protect the sanctity of religion, of all the
religions and religious practices in China. So Mr. Chairman,
you might want to speak to this, Mr. Turkel, if you'd like. But
I do think we need to get even more serious about this.
Had we had it since 1994, I do think that reformers of some
kind would have made sure that this exporting economy called
China would have made systemic changes in their barbaric
practices, especially their persecution of religious freedom.
So, Chairman Turkel, if you want to speak to that I would
appreciate it. And if not, I understand. But I do think we have
to get even more serious. I mean, China has so exploited the
trade relationship and has brought to their shore dual-use
items that now have transformed them into a superpower. Even on
the military side alone, we have sold them the rope that they
someday hope to hang us with.
So if you could, Mr. Turkel.
Mr. Turkel. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Definitely.
We have a lot to do. I need to use this time to bring up
something that supports your ideas, which is that last December
most people in the United States, around the world, noticed
something very significant. The United States Government, the
Biden administration, sanctioned--they added the Chinese
Military Medical Academy and its 11 affiliates to the Commerce
Department's Entity List--which is an export ban list, as you
know--for developing brain-control weaponry to be used on
ethno-religious groups, especially the Uyghurs.
This just didn't catch much attention. I think this kind of
focused, targeted sanctioning, Entity Listing, needs to
continue to happen. Why would the Chinese government develop
brain-control weaponry to be used? Again, to the earlier point,
they used to control the behavior of the Uyghur people, of
religious communities, but now they want to control their
bodies. This weaponry essentially controls the communication
between your body and your brain. People need to look at it.
This is the type of regime that should come across as
disturbing, alarming news to all of us.
As we know, technology and economic development are
supposed to foster freedom and improve our lives. But Chinese
progress--though some people make flattering statements on TV
or in their academic papers, specifically on China's science
and technology and economic development--is not moral progress.
Chinese technology has been enabling and facilitating
collective punishment and enslavement of vulnerable
populations.
Now Chinese surveillance, this technology, has become part
of ordinary people's lives. It's in their homes. They have QR
codes on their doors. It's in the places of worship--in
churches, mosques, temples. Everything, every aspect of the
people within communist China, is subject to this level of
persuasive and sophisticated surveillance and we've got to do
something about it.
The one thing I have in mind that I think Congress should
consider is putting in place something like the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act (FCPA). In the 1970s when this law was enacted,
it was not really known to most people. It has become a very
effective tool around the world today. The U.K. has similar
measures. And now, instead of going to foreign countries,
playing by their rules, we're exporting good corporate
practices. The entire global business community follows the
FCPA.
We need to have something like that when it comes to tech
authoritarianism, digital surveillance. This is a serious
problem. This is about our future. If we don't stop this, if we
don't blunt this, this will become a serious problem, create
enormous challenges to civil liberties and religious freedom,
even the democratic process, as simple as some dictatorship or
authoritarian regime monitoring voting records, monitoring the
opposition party's activities. That is a real threat to
democracy, at a bare minimum.
Representative Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I
yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you, Congressman Smith.
And now we're going to turn to the Senate side. Senator
Ossoff.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Chair Turkel, for your service and your
testimony today. I led a delegation to India about a week and a
half ago and had the opportunity in Dharamshala to meet with
leaders of the CTA (Central Tibetan Administration) and Tibetan
government-in-exile. How would you characterize, based upon
your knowledge and understanding, the CCP's use of digital
technology for purposes of repression and control in Tibet?
Mr. Turkel. Thank you, Senator. We've been hearing this and
reading about it--this is an erroneous statement, actually,
that the surveillance technology has been developed and tested
on the Uyghurs, and now it's spreading. Actually, it's the
other way around. It initially started in mainland China, where
this person that the United States Government sanctioned, Chen
Quanguo, was the Communist Party chief in Tibet. It was
initially implemented in Tibet. It was very successful, and he
got promoted by Xi Xinping in August 2016.
He took his apparatus, his team, his security detail, over
to Urumqi, set up this command center in an old hotel. This was
profiled in The New Yorker. The Tibetan people actually were
affected by this early on, but we failed to pay attention. We
failed to detect the early warning signs and then it becomes a
much bigger operation when Chen Quanguo took the same practice
over to Urumqi. He was given resources. He was given authority,
even a seat in the Politburo. That essentially paved the way
for today's Uyghur nightmare.
The Tibetan people have not only been subjected to that. As
I noted earlier, they have been pretty much forgotten. We need
to pay attention to them. They are also facing an existential
threat. They are also facing a serious political threat,
stemming from Beijing. They're also facing a serious leadership
threat, because the Panchen Lama is still in Chinese custody,
has been disappeared. First things first, we have to implement
the existing laws designed to protect the Tibetan people's
rights.
I'm glad that we have an Under Secretary of State who is
the special coordinator for Tibet. As somebody who knows the
Tibetan leadership and Tibetan community, in previous years I
was so frustrated that our government did not even open its
doors--Lobsang Sangay, for example, former president of the
Central Tibetan Administration, was not even allowed to enter
the White House, could not even enter the State Department. Our
officials ended up going to the hotel to meet with him.
I mean, the laws are put in place to follow. We have to
implement the laws with respect to the Uyghurs, the Hong
Kongers, and Tibetans. Otherwise, it's meaningless effort.
First things first, we have to go back to the way that we
treated Tibetan issues a decade or so ago, with seriousness. I
know that we have not been able to make the progress that we
want to see, but we have not been persistent in our efforts.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Chairman Turkel. I'd like to ask
you as well how you have observed and understood the same
technologies, techniques, and tools that have been used to
surveil and repress religious minorities also being used to
target journalists.
Mr. Turkel. I can't emphasize enough the sophistication of
Chinese surveillance. Unlike our government, and unlike other
governments, the Chinese have no resources problem. They have
been pouring in zillions of dollars into R&D and also control
of those tech companies. The journalists have been surveilled,
kicked out, but a couple of years ago they started coming back.
For a long time, the Washington Post did not have even a single
reporter, until recently, in China.
Again, the Chinese want to hide their crimes. The Chinese
want to continue to confuse the international community. The
Chinese government wants to continue to engage in
disinformation because journalists, specifically Western
journalists, could do investigative journalism. They can try to
get to the bottom of it. This attack on Western journalists
started when Wen Jiabao was the prime minister. Melissa Chan,
the former Al Jazeera journalist, was one of the first ones
kicked out of China. She was just doing her job. The Chinese
could not stand her, and this practice is still continuing.
Are we doing the same thing with their reporters? Is social
media doing the same thing? For example, today a guy from the
Global Times put out inflammatory, offensive statements on
social media. And this Twitter tolerates, whereas our
journalists could not even go there to report. This needs to be
addressed at the highest levels.
One other thing that I need to point out is the
surveillance of journalists and surveillance of ordinary
citizens. Chinese high-tech firms are essentially state
entities. They are SOEs, state-owned enterprises. As reported
and written in several books recently, the Chinese government
has a number of red phones. This was also profiled in a book
that I wrote about. A German scholar--a German journalist, Kai
Strittmatter, has a book called We Have Been Harmonized. It
describes how every single Chinese high-tech CEO's desk has a
red phone directly connected to the leadership, so the
leadership in the CCP apparatus controls high tech. If the CCP
does not like any journalist, any citizen, any entity, or even
foreign officials, they can order them to do things that serve
their interest, so this is an intertwined, interactive system,
and I don't think, again, that we're paying enough attention.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you for your testimony and your
service. I appreciate it and look forward to following up with
you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator.
We now turn back to the House side. Congresswoman Hartzler
is with us.
Representative Hartzler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Chairman Turkel, for your courageous leadership
and providing us with the information that's so sorely needed.
I'd like for you to expand a little bit on some of the comments
you've made here just answering questions, but also on your
testimony, where you talk about the CCP exporting its techno-
authoritarianism overseas to other countries, and oppressive
regimes emulating this China model for the treatment of
political dissidents and human rights advocates. You say that
our government must continue to ensure that critical technology
is not exported to China and contributing to religious freedom
abuses.
I wonder if you could list several examples of the
countries this has been exported to and specifically what
critical technology you're referring to. Are you referring to
5G technology? You've talked about Tibet a little bit, but
could you just outline some of the countries where they're
exporting and specifically what they're exporting, so we can be
very clear and fully aware of what we need to watch for and
what we need to try to stop?
Mr. Turkel. Thank you, Congresswoman.
First of all, the equipment. Their equipment still gets
support from our technology firms--software, hardware. A few
years ago when Huawei was added to the Entity List, the
Financial Times reported a conversation with one of the folks
who worked for Huawei. This person essentially said, with this
Entity List designation, our phones, our equipment just become
a frame. This will be disastrous for the company. In order for
this company to catch up with the technology, even with the
support that they're receiving from Silicon Valley, it takes
decades. So that's the reality of the Chinese high-tech
industry.
I can say this--I'm not a tech person, but I can say that
based on the reading that I've done, the research that I've
done, Silicon Valley has been complicit. We need to look into
their role. We need to eliminate the gray areas in the laws and
regulations. We need to make it difficult for Silicon Valley
companies to continue to find a way to get a waiver. Even
companies or entities added to the Entity List or sanctioned--
there is a way to go around it. There is a thing called a
special license that the Office of Foreign Assets Control
issues. There is a way that they can get a waiver to continue
their business practices.
The other thing--we need to look at this societally,
governmentally. Based on the book that I was referring to, our
hospitals, our schools, our prisons, in one instance one of the
military bases, even our embassy in Afghanistan--now not being
used--were using Hikvision cameras. We know that this is a
state-owned enterprise. This is linked to the CCP. In the
United States even today, you can find Hikvision cameras.
They're available. This is wrong.
Then the third thing that we need to do is talk to our
European allies. This is not about the United States stopping a
certain country or a company for our geopolitical interests.
This is about the future. The European community is still not
on the same page as we are when it comes to these serious
threats.
Finally, we need to have a judicial process, law
enforcement process, to go after the businesses, the Chinese
high-tech, that have a business presence in the United States.
There's no international law that addresses their complicity in
human rights abuses, and the genocide, for example, in China,
but we do have Federal courts. Some of the Chinese companies
that are present in the United States are subject to local
Federal court jurisdiction. Why can't the Justice Department
open an investigation, look into those companies that have a
business presence here and who have been implicated in the
ongoing human rights abuses? Again, laws are put in place to
implement, enforce. This has to be looked at diplomatically,
legislatively, and specifically in a law enforcement aspect.
Representative Hartzler. Thank you very much. I introduced
legislation to the NDAA a few years ago specifically so that
Hikvision could not be sold anymore in our country--the video
surveillance cameras--so I'm very interested and very concerned
to hear that they're still present. I definitely will be
looking into that. I know many of us here at this hearing are
very concerned about that, so thank you for giving us an update
on that. That's very concerning.
On another subject, though, I wanted to bring up that
through the Defending Freedoms Project, I'm a congressional
advocate for three Chinese Christian prisoners--Pastor John
Cao, Pastor Zhang Shaojie, and Pastor Wang Yi. These brave men
and their stories can be searched and read about more on the
internet. But my question is, do you think that the CCP's
efforts to censor and shut down certain online information
pertaining to religion will have an impact on our access to the
pastors' information here in the United States? How would you
recommend that advocates continue to support current and future
victims of religious persecution, should access to their
stories be limited or removed?
Mr. Turkel. Congresswoman, this is such an important
question. Not only are we not going to be able to get access,
but even a simple communication with anyone outside of the
country that is perceived as hostile to the CCP has
consequences. You know, they monitor our phone calls,
communications, your access to certain webpages. Sorry to keep
bringing up the Uyghur situation--the Uyghur phones have to be
scanned by the police at the mobile police stations set up on
the streets.
We don't have information as to whether this is the same
practice that the Chinese have in inland China cities, but once
that's already been successful in one place, it's reasonable to
expect that the Chinese will transfer this over to the other
provinces because, again, this is such an insecure regime that
it's fearful of its own population, fearful of people of faith,
people of reason who desire to be left alone. They will do this
at any cost, with any justification. It's a very troubling
trend.
The online databases not only in China, but outside of
China, have also been subject to various attacks. Some NGO
websites are regularly attacked by Chinese hackers. Now we have
a new trend--I don't know if this is the case today, but when I
was testifying in the summer of 2021 at a House Foreign Affairs
Committee hearing, the YouTube channel had lots of
disinformation on the right bar while having the hearing on the
left side of the screen, so our firms, again, need to step up.
We need to be able to technologically support those who are
courageous--who share information with us--so that we can
assist them. We also want to find a way to protect those who
have been critical in sharing information. As we noted, there
are no journalists on the ground. We have to rely on those
courageous people to get information. Otherwise, we will not be
able to help. Even the UN report--my recently published report
cites several individuals providing information and who now
fear for their lives. Again, this is something that Congress
could help with, and I'm afraid that without cause, without
pushback, the Chinese will even do more harm to vulnerable
religious and ethnic communities.
Representative Hartzler. Very, very concerning. I sure
appreciate this.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Thank you, Mr. Turkel, for your testimony, for your service
to our country, and for your tireless advocacy for freedom of
religion.
We will now turn to our second panel. I'll invite the
witnesses for our second panel to turn on their videos. I'll
give them an introduction and we'll dive in.
Let's start with Karrie Koesel, an associate professor of
political science at the University of Notre Dame, who
specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese and Russian
politics, authoritarianism, and religion in politics. She is
the author of Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation,
Conflict and the Consequences. She is also the co-editor of
Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing
China and Russia. I'd like to note that she previously taught
at the University of Oregon.
Chris Meserole is research director of the Brookings
Institution's Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology
Initiative, and a Fellow at the Brookings Foreign Policy
program. His research is focused currently on the increasing
exploitation of digital technology by authoritarian regimes and
violent non-state actors. He's the co-author of a report on how
Russia and China are exporting digital authoritarianism and has
testified before the U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom on the digital repression of religious minorities in
China.
Emile Dirks is a postdoctoral fellow at Citizen Lab at the
University of Toronto. His research focuses on the policing of
so-called target people, Chinese citizens whom the Ministry of
Public Security views as threats to social stability and
national security, as well as police-led mass DNA collection
and surveillance programs. Two of his most recent publications
concern mass DNA collection programs in China.
Thank you, all three of you, for joining us for this
hearing. Without objection, your full written statements will
be entered into the record. We ask that you keep your remarks
to five minutes. We'll begin with Dr. Koesel.
STATEMENT OF KARRIE J. KOESEL,
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
Ms. Koesel. Good morning and thank you. Chair Merkley, Co-
chair McGovern, and distinguished members of the Commission,
I'm honored to participate in today's hearing. In my remarks, I
will focus on three long-term strategies used to assert Chinese
government control over religion and the implications for
religious groups on the ground.
As we know, contemporary China represents one of the most
restrictive environments for religion and religious communities
around the globe. The reach of the Chinese state into religious
life is extensive. This first strategy of control utilizes
technology. In the past decades, strategies of religious
management have expanded with the development of digital and
surveillance technologies. These technologies facilitate
systematic and coordinated efforts to collect information, to
monitor, and to target religious communities, especially those
perceived as operating outside of state-set parameters or those
viewed as extremists.
The Chinese surveillance state monitors social media to
identify and collect information on religious believers and
their networks. It uses phone apps to transmit information on
user activity and their locations, facial recognition
technology, and CCTV cameras at temples, churches, and mosques
to keep tabs on not only attendance, but also the content of
religious services. Religious life is ostensibly monitored at
every level--in public, in private, and virtually.
The implications: First, expanding digital technologies
accelerate the crackdown on unregistered religious groups.
These are groups not formally affiliated with government-
sponsored patriotic associations and they operate in private.
They tend to include Protestant house churches, underground
Catholic churches, but also unregistered Buddhists, Daoists,
and Muslims, as well as practitioners of folk and popular
religions. The growing sophistication of the Chinese
surveillance state means it is increasingly difficult for these
communities to operate under the radar.
A second implication is that control of religious
expression online is increasing. Online forums, microblogs, and
instant messaging platforms face increased censorship. These
online communities are seen as vehicles of ``religious
infiltration'' and a source of religious growth, especially
among Chinese young people on college campuses.
A second strategy is sinicization. Religious communities
have been asked over the past decade to sinicize. This is a
long-term strategy to manage religious life, to insulate it
from ``foreign influence'' by making it more Chinese, but more
importantly, to instill fealty to the Party-state. Sinicization
prioritizes the integration of politics and ideology, as well
as support for the leadership of the Party at the center of
religion.
At present in China, there is no central policy
articulating how sinicization should develop. Instead, this has
been left up to the five patriotic associations to introduce
their own plans. Now, it is within each of these plans that we
can see a clear political direction. The Catholic plan, for
instance, asserts that sinicization requires conscientious
approval of politics and obedience to the national regime. The
Protestant plan calls on pastors to harmonize biblical
teachings with ideology and to preach core socialist values.
The Buddhist plan prioritizes the study of Xi Jinping Thought.
Even Daoism, an indigenous religion in China, has developed a
plan to sinicize.
The takeaway here is that sinicization centers on the
``Partyfication'' of religion. It is a strategy to politically
reorient China's faithful, not embrace traditional culture or
Chinese values. One implication is that sinicization efforts on
the ground are currently quite uneven. Religious communities
have some flexibility in interpreting sinicization, and the
Party seems content to allow some latitude so long as the
efforts show necessary reverence.
A second implication is that the long-term impact remains
uncertain. It remains to be seen whether sinicization will rein
in religion, cultivate love for and loyalty to the CCP, or
divide religious communities internally. Historically in China,
processes of sinicization actually encouraged religious growth,
so this may be one outcome.
The final strategy I wish to highlight on controlling
religion is more outward facing. This is the so-called Three
Troops strategy launched under Xi Jinping, which brings
together Party and government officials, prominent religious
representatives, and academics to counter what are perceived as
U.S.-led international efforts to promote religious freedom.
The implication here is that Chinese strategies of religious
management are shifting. They're shifting from defense to
offense, and from domestic to global, with the broader goal to
counter and to quiet foreign advocacy for religious freedom.
I'd like to close with a few recommendations. U.S. advocacy
for religious groups in China and calls to protect religious
freedom and human rights, can backfire, because we know this is
seen as evidence domestically in China of fomenting instability
or foreign forces trying to divide the country. However, there
are steps we can and should take to support freedom of religion
and belief. Bilateral engagement. We need to consistently raise
issues of religious freedom and human rights in China in public
and in private meetings with our Chinese counterparts. We
should work with U.S. allies and partners to take similar
action, especially in the Muslim-
majority world.
Second, we need to build expertise. We need to prioritize
funding domestically to maintain U.S. expertise on China. It is
a national security imperative that we increase support and
training of American students and scholars in China and the
Chinese language.
In closing, I'd like to thank the Commission for your
attention and leadership on this important set of issues. My
written testimony elaborates on the strategies and offers
additional recommendations. I look forward to answering any
questions you have. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you, Dr. Koesel.
We'll turn now to Dr. Meserole.
STATEMENT OF CHRIS MESEROLE, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE, BROOKINGS
INSTITUTION
Mr. Meserole. Chairman Merkley, Co-chairman McGovern,
distinguished members of the Commission, thank you for the
opportunity to speak before you this morning on such a vital
and important issue. Although there is a growing awareness of
the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party's model of
digital authoritarianism, the extent to which its expansion has
converged with the Xi regime's increasing restrictions on
religious freedom is far less well known. I'm grateful for the
chance to share my thoughts on how that convergence came to
pass, the unprecedented challenges it poses for freedom of
religion within China and around the globe, and how the United
States should respond.
After the arrival of the internet in China in the late
1980s, the Chinese Communist Party was quick to recognize both
the risks and opportunities posed by digital technology and
began building out an unprecedented apparatus for online
censorship and surveillance. When Xi Jinping took power in
2012, he moved quickly to consolidate that apparatus under his
control, while also investing heavily in the equipment,
infrastructure, and training to build out real-world
surveillance programs, like SkyNet, smart cities, Sharp Eyes,
and early pilots of the social credit system. Since these
systems often lack due process and public oversight, the Xi
regime has effectively built out the world's most comprehensive
digital architecture for repression.
Unfortunately, the Xi regime has also, in tandem, built out
a legal and bureaucratic architecture for religious repression,
too. Most notably, Beijing has sought to rein in what it views
as religious extremism in Xinjiang and Tibet. But the Xi
regime's efforts to curtail religious freedom extend well
beyond its counterterrorism policy. In 2016, Xi held a two-day
conference on religion in which he previewed strict new
religious regulations across China and urged the CCP to
``actively guide the adaptation of religions.'' Several years
later, another set of regulations came into effect requiring
religious organizations to ``spread the principles and policies
of the Chinese Communist Party.''
These regulations were so far reaching that a Chinese
Catholic priest lamented that in practice, your religion no
longer matters--if you are Buddhist, or Daoist, or Muslim, or
Christian. The only religion allowed is faith in the Chinese
Communist Party. Regrettably, the Xi regime's effort to control
all religious life then directly converged with its effort to
expand digital surveillance in late 2021. Although Chinese
officials had imposed some measures to regulate online
religious activity before--most notably their decision to ban
the sale of Bibles online--Xi himself brought the issue to the
fore in another conference on religion at the end of last year.
In addition to reiterating his earlier call for the
sinicization of religion, Xi's remarks at the conference
insisted that ``China must strengthen the management of online
religious affairs.'' Soon thereafter, Chinese officials then
released new regulations banning foreign organizations from
publishing content online and requiring registered religious
organizations to receive licenses for streaming religious
services and ceremonies. Shortly after the regulations came
into effect in March 2022, provincial governments began
training new staff to censor online religious activity and
ensure compliance with the new regulations.
Importantly, these new regulations represent a significant
and troubling expansion of China's surveillance state.
Provincial authorities will still play a leading role in
regulating religion, as they have historically, but with the
key agencies responsible for the Chinese surveillance apparatus
also jointly issuing the new regulations--including the
Ministry of Public Security--the oversight of religious
activity now formally extends far beyond local administrators.
Put in Orwellian terms, Big Brother now has clear authority to
extend its watchful eye over people of faith.
For Chinese citizens, what this means is that the
surveillance and regulatory system that has long monitored
their public religiosity now extends to private faith, too. GPS
sensors in smartphones and cars, plus facial recognition that
can track citizens across a city, make it difficult for private
and covert religious communities to form and operate
undetected. Meanwhile, client- and server-side scanning have
made it possible to detect private religious activity like
downloading a picture of the Dalai Lama or reading a Bible,
while smart televisions and cellphones make it possible to
remotely watch and hear private prayers within a home. Most
importantly, the knowledge that state authorities are able to
monitor even private religious activity can create a chilling
effect that ultimately deters individuals from engaging in
private religious expression at all.
China's ongoing zero-COVID policy stands to exacerbate
these trends. With COVID restrictions requiring the frequent
closure of houses of worship, online platforms and smartphone
applications have enabled many household churches and other
religious organizations to remain in community. The recent
online regulations thus remove a key option for exercising
private and public religion at a time when it is needed most.
Yet, as devastating as the Xi regime's digital
authoritarianism and religious repression are for the Chinese
people, they will not be felt solely within China's borders.
The country has not only exploited popular messaging
applications like WeChat to monitor diaspora communities
abroad, it has also willingly sold its surveillance
technologies for everything from computer vision to deep packet
inspection to over 80 countries, including those like Iran,
whose political leaders have explicitly lauded China's
surveillance model and whose regime has a long history of
targeting religious minorities for repression.
The Xi regime's expansion of its surveillance state and
recent crackdown on religious activity both online and offline
cry out for a forceful response from the United States.
Although the Biden administration has taken an increasingly
hard line toward Beijing, particularly in denying it access to
many of the advanced technologies its surveillance system
relies on, much more can and should be done. Most notably, the
U.S. Government needs to formulate and execute a coherent plan
for countering digital authoritarianism globally and, as
important, organize itself for the long-term nature of that
threat.
Absent a more comprehensive and persistent approach, the
system of digital repression that has so tragically denied
religious freedom to residents of Xinjiang and Tibet will not
only persist but stands to be replicated among religious
communities across the globe.
In closing, thank you again for the chance to testify this
morning, and even more for casting light on the daunting new
era of religious persecution that the Chinese Communist Party
has ushered in. Thank you again.
Chair Merkley. Thank you, Dr. Meserole.
Now we'll turn to Dr. Dirks.
STATEMENT OF EMILE DIRKS,
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW, CITIZEN LAB
Mr. Dirks. Distinguished members of the Commission, thank
you for holding this hearing and inviting me to participate.
Today through my testimony I would like to highlight three
aspects of the Chinese government's control of religion through
digital authoritarianism. One, Chinese police engage in
widespread digital surveillance of practitioners of banned
faiths. Two, to surveil these practitioners, China's police
collaborate with other Party-state offices. And three, police
are now engaged in a mass DNA collection program targeting the
people of Tibet.
Understanding these surveillance programs and developing
effective policies and responses requires researchers capable
of analyzing Chinese language sources. Therefore, today I will
recommend that the United States Government provide greater
Federal funding to Chinese and minority language learning
programs at universities and colleges.
My first point, well known to those who study state
surveillance in China, is that China's police digitally surveil
practitioners of banned faiths. Operating outside China's
system of officially recognized religions, China's banned
faiths include Falun Gong and the Church of Almighty God, among
others. To Chinese police, practitioners of banned faiths are
``target people'' who threaten social stability. As target
people, practitioners are surveilled through police-run
databases. Police collect personal data from practitioners,
including data on their faith, and then categorize them
according to the level of threat they purportedly pose.
As a form of digital surveillance, these databases severely
restrict practitioners' freedom. Police files on registered
practitioners are associated with machine-readable national ID
cards. For example, when a practitioner uses their national ID
card to check into a hotel room, an alert is sent to the local
police. Based on this alert, police can intercept the
practitioner to interrogate or detain them. However, police
cannot control practitioners through digital surveillance
alone. This leads to my second point.
In order to deepen state control of practitioners of banned
faiths, police routinely collaborate with other Party-state
offices to visit practitioners at their homes. These home
visits play multiple roles. On one hand, authorities may
provide economically disadvantaged practitioners with social
assistance. Assistance is meant to encourage practitioners to
break with their faith and return to mainstream society. On the
other hand, home visits are also used to search for evidence of
ongoing worship or to warn practitioners against associating
with fellow believers. Home visits can also strengthen digital
surveillance. Through home visits, Party-state officials
collect personal information on practitioners, which is then
added to police databases.
Authorities have long used home visits and digital
surveillance against religious authorities. In the Tibet
Autonomous Region, even practitioners of officially recognized
religions, like Tibetan Buddhism, are subject to intense state
control. However, in the Xi Jinping administration, new forms
of biometric surveillance have emerged. This brings me to my
third point.
Since 2016, police in the Tibet Autonomous Region have
engaged in a mass DNA collection program targeting the whole of
the region. Mass DNA collection in Tibet is unconnected to any
ongoing criminal investigation. Instead, police have targeted
entire communities of Tibetan men, women, and children for DNA
collection. The scale of DNA collection is immense. My research
suggests that since June 2016, police may have collected DNA
samples from between one-quarter and one-third of Tibet's
population, or between 919,000 and 1.2 million DNA samples. DNA
collection appears to be ongoing, and when completed, a mass
DNA database covering Tibet will give police a powerful tool of
social control to use against the region's people.
Through digital surveillance, inter-bureaucratic
cooperation, and mass DNA collection, China's police surveil
and repress religious and ethnic minority communities.
Understanding these developments requires researchers capable
of analyzing the Chinese language sources that describe these
surveillance programs. However, according to some reports, the
study of foreign languages at U.S. universities and colleges is
declining. This is worrying. If this trend is not reversed, the
United States Government may lack future researchers capable of
understanding the control of religion through digital
authoritarianism in China. This in turn will undermine the
United States Government's capacity to craft effective policies
in response.
Therefore, I recommend that the United States Government do
two things. One, increase Federal funding for Mandarin and
Cantonese Chinese language programs at universities and
colleges. And two, increase Federal funding for language
learning programs at universities and colleges focused on
minority languages spoken in China, including various Tibetan
dialects, Uyghur, and others. Increased funding for language
studies will lay a strong foundation for future research into
the control of religion through digital authoritarianism in
China. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I
look forward to your questions and comments.
Chair Merkley. I really appreciate the testimony from all
three of you.
I want to start with trying to understand better the
control of information. I was thinking back to 2011, when
Majority Leader Reid organized a bipartisan delegation of 10
senators to visit China. Hu Jintao was the leader or China, and
everything we heard while we were there was about how things
were opening up, that there was less repression of religion,
that labor leaders who had concerns were being encouraged to
present them so that those issues could be addressed, and that
environmentalists who were raising concerns about pollution in
the rivers were no longer considered critics but helpful
advocates on how to address serious problems.
There was just kind of a whole trend. Then in 2012, 10
years ago, Xi Jinping became general secretary, and will
probably soon be assigned to his third five-year term. It feels
to me, as an outside observer, a nonexpert, that his personal
vision for China has been driving a reversal of the trends that
we saw in 2011, so I wanted to ask, and I don't want to take up
the whole seven minutes with it, but perhaps Dr. Meserole, do
you want to take this question on--Is it right to perceive that
really Xi Jinping is driving this massive national crackdown
that has many aspects, including the crackdown on religious
worship?
Mr. Meserole. I think it's certainly right to pin the
extent and scale of the current crackdown on Xi Jinping and the
regime that he sits on top of. I will note that the kind of
digital surveillance apparatus that he inherited long pre-dated
him. It's something that emerged in the early 1990s and was
progressively built out alongside the growth of the internet
within China.
What changed under Xi Jinping was twofold. I think in the
broader sense of opening that you had mentioned, there had been
this series of reforms that the Deng Xiaoping era from the
early 1980s on had ushered in, in the sense that China needed
to open up and engage a little bit more with the rest of the
world, which would be key to their economic growth. And I think
that proved tremendously successful in terms of the economic
growth that they were able to achieve.
By the time Xi Jinping came in, I think that growth had
started to slow a little bit, and on top of that, he himself
inherited an administration that had decentralized over three
decades by that point. Most of the focus had been
decentralizing out some of the different centers of power
within China. As an example of that, there were something like
60 different regulatory agencies overseeing the internet and
having say over different pieces of the internet when Xi
Jinping came to power.
One of the first things he did when it comes to digital
repression is consolidate all of those agencies under the
Cyberspace Administration of China, and also to elaborate a
little bit more clearly what the control authorities of
different agencies are under his direction. As a result, he's
been able over the last 10 years to exert greater and greater
control over the digital surveillance system that they've
developed, to the point where now I think the scale, the
extent, the reach, all of which are really unprecedented, I
think do owe to him, and he is certainly the most responsible
for both how it's built out and how it's directed at this
point. I think especially in light of the upcoming third term,
potentially, I think it's alarming that he has so much control
over it.
Chair Merkley. Well, this digital surveillance is so scary,
and then you throw in the DNA database surveillance. I'm
reminded of a movie from 25 years ago that was called
``Gattaca.'' The name came from the initials that represented
four bases of DNA. Nobody could move without being watched very
carefully, both from the perspective of what they were doing
online and their DNA. And here we are. This science fiction has
become a reality.
One of the pieces of this is the monitoring of websites.
Help us understand this. We hear that you now have to be
registered to be able to have a website that expresses anything
that involves religion. So in my mind, I'm picturing a system
where no websites are allowed to be accessed unless they're
preregistered, and I'm also picturing the Great Firewall. Are
there a thousand Chinese basically tracking every church in the
world that's putting something up on the web and saying, oh,
their website cannot be accessed?
Is it an opt-in or opt-out system? How do they do this? I'm
really struck by the fact that you can now not put your baptism
up online, or a sermon up online. That the CathAssist Catholic
app was shut down in just a month. That in May 2022, just a few
months ago, China Aid Association reported that a website that
had been up for 21 years, a Christian website, a repository of
music and hymns, was shut down, and so on and so forth. Help us
understand how the website control is being operated.
Mr. Meserole. Yes. It's a great point. I would say that
there are actually two levels of censorship of religious
activity. If you are a church, or a mosque, or a temple in
China and you're trying to have some kind of web presence, one
option is to go out and just register a domain name and have an
actual website that your organization controls and owns. To do
that, you need to register. When somebody logs onto a browser
and enters your URL into the browser and wants to visit your
site, what there is on the back end is a database of domain
names that then can take that string of text that you entered
in for the URL and then translate it into the server that posts
the content for that site.
What China can do is basically say, you need to have
certain kinds of registration requirements to be able to get a
domain name that we will put into our global database of domain
names, and what servers they point to on the internet. It's
this crucial chokepoint where the human-readable part of the
web meets the digital, numeric part of the web, and they can
very actively and easily set up processes where, again, you
might need to register for a license to be able to get a domain
name. That'll be tied to that central database that they have
for domain names. That's fairly straightforward to block, and
it's something that the government is going to have control
over.
The other way to do it is--even now in the United States,
for example, you'll see different religious communities
sometimes not even register a website anymore. They'll just go
on Facebook, or they'll use a social media app as their main
kind of online presence. Similar things can happen within
China, where the responsibility starts to lie less with the
state and more with those private companies.
Actually, one of the things that I'm most concerned about
with this new set of online religious regulations is that the
same thing that we've seen play out in the nonreligious space,
where commercial entities within China are held more and more
responsible for taking a proactive stance in censoring content,
that this will actually start to come into play with religion,
too. If a religious community is trying to use WeChat or
another app as its de facto home online, that application now
is responsible for censoring that.
They're actually going to be more conservative than the
government in many cases in censoring content because for them
it's not always clear what kind of communities are and aren't
allowed and so they'll default to the most conservative
interpretation of that to stay in the good graces of the state.
But between that and the domain name registration issue, it's
very straightforward for China to be able to start to block
religious groups from having an online presence and being able
to communicate with their community that way.
Chair Merkley. Thank you. It's scary as hell, and I'm
worried about all the forms in which this affects us here
within the United States as well, as we address the challenges
of technology. What China's doing and the example they're
setting for other authoritarian regimes is transforming the
world and so I'm so glad we're holding this hearing.
Co-chair McGovern.
Co-chair Mcgovern. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Dirks, thank you for the detail in your testimony about
the collection of DNA of Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous
Region. It's very troubling, and I know it's not isolated.
Human Rights Watch says that coercing people to give blood
samples can violate an individual's privacy, dignity, and right
to bodily integrity, and may constitute a degrading treatment,
and as a mass policy is a serious human rights violation. What
steps can the United States take to ensure that American
companies are not complicit in this, or that the research
efforts do not use this data?
Mr. Dirks. Thank you for your question. Yes, the program,
as detailed both in my own research and also in the recent
report by Human Rights Watch, is quite disturbing. In terms of
how the United States Government or allies can ensure that non-
Chinese companies are not involved in these programs--one of
the ways is to examine public procurement documents to ensure
that material produced by companies outside of China is not
being used in mass DNA collection programs, for example in
Tibet.
But again, going back to my recommendations, one of the
things that this requires is researchers that are able to dig
through the public record, that is often Chinese, and actually
analyze these sources. So I think, again, it's vital that we
provide funding to Chinese language programs to ensure that
researchers are actually capable of doing this kind of open-
source research in the future, which in turn would help to
inform effective U.S. Government policy in the future.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
Mr. Meserole, you testify to China's role not only in
exploiting digital surveillance technology but in providing the
model that has normalized the practice of religiously motivated
repression globally. You specifically cite the case of Saudi
Arabia, and the fact that it has used Israeli tech, not
Chinese, to surveil and target dissident communities at home
and abroad. From the perspective of the individual, do the
human rights implications of digital surveillance differ
depending on the status of the relations between the U.S.
Government and the government doing the surveilling? As a
public policy matter, would the challenges of digital
authoritarianism be better addressed by focusing on the
technologies and their use, or by focusing on select countries?
Mr. Meserole. Just to answer the first part of the question
about whether, from an individual's experience, it really
matters, I would say if you're being repressed and you're being
denied your ability to exercise religious freedom, I'm not sure
exactly that you'd care what layer of the text app that's
happening at, or who's in control of that. It does matter, I
think, the U.S. involvement there, in the sense that I think we
have leverage over different regimes that we can use and
exercise to get them to push back on this kind of technology.
That's where I would turn to the second part of your
question about digital authoritarianism. I think we want to
highlight certainly that there are particular regimes like
China, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others, that I think are
actively developing these kinds of surveillance systems. My big
fear is that there are 5 billion people in the world who are
not in China, not in the U.S. or Europe, and their digital
infrastructure is being built out right now. We need to have a
proactive and coherent foreign policy, effectively, for how we
want to handle this challenge of digital authoritarianism so
that individuals around the world are able to exercise their
religion freely, are able to worship freely, are able to go
online freely.
I think we would probably be better served if there were a
single coherent policy for the U.S. Government on digital
authoritarianism, rather than what we see now, which is, China
pops up and does something, Iran pops up and does something,
and we're addressing it on a case-by-case basis as opposed to
taking a much more proactive and coherent view, which would
ideally be the direction we would go in, especially given the
long-term nature of the challenge.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you very much.
Dr. Koesel, what are your thoughts on the upcoming renewal
of the Sino-Vatican agreement, and the Vatican's position going
in?
Ms. Koesel. Thank you for your question, Congressman.
I should start by saying I haven't reviewed the documents.
I don't believe they're publicly available. So going into it, I
think it's more ``wait and see'' as to what will come out of
this agreement. We haven't seen what this will mean for
religious communities within China, especially the Catholic
Church, and whether we'll see a greater integration between
underground Catholics and the official Catholic church. I think
that is the hope, potentially, coming from the Vatican, that
this will be a pathway to allow greater expression for
religiosity within China and a healing and bringing of these
two churches together. But at this point, it is wait and see
until those documents, or whatever will be released, are
available.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back my time.
Chair Merkley. Thank you.
Congressman McGovern, the Senate vote is underway. I know
that we have Congresswoman Hartzler waiting to ask questions.
Can I turn the gavel over to you for the balance of the
hearing?
Co-chair McGovern. Absolutely.
I'll turn to Representative Hartzler.
Chair Merkley. Great. Thank you.
Representative Hartzler. Thank you. Thank you both, Mr.
Chairman.
This question is for Chris Meserole. To what extent are
U.S. companies implicated in the PRC's digital repression of
religion? And are there instances of U.S. application stores
removing religious apps from their storefronts at the request
of the PRC? And are there areas where U.S. companies might be
vulnerable to participation, knowingly or unknowingly, in the
repression of religion?
Mr. Meserole. That's a great question. I think to the
question about whether American companies are actively engaging
in removing religious content, I think it's undeniably true at
this point. You know, if you go to Amazon.cn. you can't buy a
Bible there. If you use an iPhone, there are certain kinds of
religious apps that are not allowed within China, because they
follow the Chinese law.
I don't think it's controversial to say it's a challenge
for American companies to operate in China and not follow these
restrictions, which means that pretty much any American company
operating in China and putting out a consumer application or
platform app store, they're going to run into these issues and
they're going to have to comply with China, or else they're
going to have to leave the country. Those who are still there,
I think we have to assume, are in compliance with what China is
doing.
More broadly, I think that there's also the question of
American firms and their involvement or the use of their
products within the surveillance state itself. I've been really
heartened to see the more aggressive steps that the White House
has started to take recently, especially when it comes to
export control, things like the export control restrictions on
Nvidia's GPUs for cloud computing servers, which are really the
best servers that you would want to use to train AI models, in
particular the kind of AI models that are used in facial
recognition, the best-performing models for facial recognition.
We know that China has developed machine learning models to
explicitly identify religious minorities as they pass through
the country. Those models were more likely than not trained on
either Nvidia GPUs or AMD GPUs. By banning the sale of those
GPUs to China, it won't cripple them from being able to develop
those kinds of models, but it will hamper their ability to do
them at scale, especially if these technologies mature, so I
think ideally we would continue to place more and more
restrictions on the kinds of unique hardware that China relies
on the U.S. for to literally build out the surveillance
apparatus that it's been developing.
Representative Hartzler. That is encouraging, that there's
at least some pushback that we are doing to be helpful here. We
do not want to be complicit in any of this, and anything that
we can do to stop this spread around the world, and also to
help the people of China, we need to do.
Thank you very much to all the witnesses for your testimony
and your work. I really appreciate it. I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you very much. I don't see any
other members or senators on the call, so I will bring the
questioning to an end.
Let me just thank the panelists again. I think you're
reminding us all about how important language promotion is,
something we need to act on in the House version of the
COMPETES bill. There was a provision to put more money toward
promoting the issue of language. I mean, we need to be teaching
not just Mandarin but all the different dialects of China.
Hopefully we can continue to build on that and maybe figure out
a way to get the Senate to take it, and we can move on that. I
also thought the suggestion that we need a common U.S. holistic
policy on digital surveillance is something that we need to
pursue.
Again, I thank all of you for being with us and for your
excellent testimony. We may have additional questions, which
we'll follow up with in writing, but let me just bring this
hearing to a close and say thank you to everybody. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:43 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]
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A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
------
Prepared Statement of Nury Turkel
Good morning, Chairman Merkley, Co-chair McGovern, and Honorable
Members of the Commission. Thank you for inviting me to testify on
behalf of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, at
this important hearing.
I truly appreciate your steadfast leadership and continuing
attention to the Chinese government's religious freedom abuses
targeting many ethnic and religious communities across China, including
Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, underground Catholic and Protestant
house church Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners, to name a few.
For decades, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has placed
religion under tight, comprehensive, and coercive control. It exercises
control by using arbitrary laws and regulations and implementing them
through a complex but sophisticated web of Party and government
agencies at all levels, including the CCP's United Front Work
Department, State Administration for Religious Affairs, and China's
Public Security and State Security apparatus.
Anyone suspected of violating the CCP's religious policies is
severely punished. China's egregious abuses against Uyghurs and other
Turkic Muslims is a case in point and one which the U.S. Government has
determined amounts to genocide. Even the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights' recent Xinjiang report confirmed that severe violations have
occurred and may amount to crimes against humanity.
The crackdown on religion has become increasingly harsh in recent
years under the brutal rule of CCP leader Xi Jinping, leading some
experts to call his decade-long reign the ``bitter winter for religious
freedom in China.''
Xi Jinping's new regulation on religion, the ``Measures for the
Administration of Internet Religious Information Services,'' represents
a new low for Xi and his government. Its impact cannot be overstated,
as the regulation imposes new restrictions on religious activities,
further constricting the narrow space in which religious groups can
operate.
This new regulation has a particularly significant and adverse
impact on independent, unregistered religious communities. Due to the
government's severe persecution, many of them rely on online platforms
and resources for religious education and training, religious
gatherings and worship, and other religious activities. These online
platforms and smartphone apps are often the only viable means through
which these religious communities can carry out activities and connect
with one another, especially during the strict COVID-19 lockdowns.
The negative impact of this regulation is already being felt across
China since it went into effect in March 2022. Chinese authorities have
recruited hundreds, if not thousands, of auditors to target and censor
religious content on the Chinese internet. Christian and Tibetan
Buddhist groups have reported that their websites and WeChat virtual
groups were shut down and are no longer accessible. USCIRF is concerned
that this regulation will lead to more persecution and abuses,
especially for groups with foreign connections.
The regulation also imposes tighter restrictions on state-
sanctioned religious groups. These groups are required to submit
detailed information to authorities to apply for a permit to operate
online. In addition, they are required to self-censor their religious
materials on the internet. Therefore, even state-sanctioned religious
groups are not safe and could be punished if they are found to be non-
compliant with the government's policies.
We are all aware that the Chinese government routinely monitors and
censors all kinds of online content, including religious materials. But
this new regulation is the first of its kind designed to specifically
target religious content on the internet, and it has created a chilling
effect for many religious groups and individuals. It is tantamount to a
total ban on religious activities, as many groups are no longer able to
operate in person or online.
The order to de-religionize the internet came from the highest
echelon of the Party, Xi Jinping. At the 2016 China National Conference
on Religious Work attended by high-level party and government
officials, Xi Jinping expressed particular displeasure toward the
phenomenon of ``internet religions.'' Five years later at the 2021
China National Conference on Religious Work, Xi again emphasized the
need to ``strengthen the management of religious affairs on the
internet.''
It is important to note that Xi Jinping sees religion as
fundamentally connected to national security. As a consequence, he has
underscored the need to fight against ``foreign infiltration through
the use of religion'' and ``religious extremism,'' including on the
internet. This new regulation is an integral part of the CCP's
``Sinicization policy'' to subjugate and control all ethnic and
religious groups, coercing support and loyalty to the CCP rule and its
policies, or else face severe consequences.
Mr. Chairman, this new regulation is the latest example of the CCP
expanding and refining its techno-authoritarianism toolkit at home, as
it tries to intimidate and coerce its own citizens to perpetuate its
rule. Ethnic minority regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, in particular,
have borne the brunt of the CCP's technology-enhanced brutality in
recent years, as the China Commission has well documented.
The CCP has been exporting its techno-authoritarianism overseas to
countries with poor human rights records as well. Oppressive regimes
can emulate the ``China model'' to persecute political dissidents and
human rights advocates. The U.S. Government and companies must continue
to ensure that critical technology is not exported to China and
contributing to any religious freedom abuses abroad.
USCIRF also recommends that the U.S. Government impose more
targeted sanctions on Chinese officials and entities responsible for
severe religious freedom violations, especially those within the United
Front Work Department, the State Administration for Religious Affairs,
as well as China's public security and state security apparatus. These
entities are directly involved in the drafting, implementation, and
enforcement of the new regulation on internet religious activities.
In closing, I would like to thank the Commission again for the
opportunity to testify and for your attention to the plight of all
persecuted ethnic and religious groups in China. I look forward to your
questions.
______
Prepared Statement of Karrie J. Koesel
Chair Merkley, Co-chair McGovern, and distinguished members of the
Commission. I am honored to participate in today's hearing on the
control of religion in China through digital authoritarianism.
In my remarks today, I will focus my attention on three strategies
used to assert Chinese government control over religion and the
implications for religious life. These strategies are part of a long-
term and coordinated effort to contain and transform religion in China.
Background
Contemporary China represents one of the most restrictive
environments for religion and religious communities around the
globe.\1\ This is not by accident, but by design. Since coming to power
in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has promoted state atheism,
viewed religion as an impediment to the advancement of socialism, an
ideological competitor, and vehicle for foreign influence.
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\1\ Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR),
``OHCHR Assessment of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region, People's Republic of China,'' August 31, 2022, https://
www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-
31-final-assessment.pdf; Office of International Religious Freedom,
``2020 Report on International Religious Freedom,'' US Department of
State, May 12, 2021, https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-
report-on-international-religious-freedom/; Samirah Majumdar and
Virginia Villa, ``Globally, Social Hostilities Related to Religion
Decline in 2019,'' Pew Research Center, September 30, 2021, https://
www.pewforum.org/2021/09/30/globally-social-hostilities-related-to-
religion-decline-in-2019-while-government-restrictions-remain-at-
highest-levels/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The CCP's approach toward religion has been guided by twin goals of
containment and control. Religious life has been tolerated, so long as
it stays within tightly defined parameters and serves the interests of
the party-state. The Chinese government recognizes only five religions
(Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism), ritual and
worship are restricted to registered sites, religious communities are
channeled into religious patriotic associations, and clergy must be
trained in government-sanctioned seminaries where 30 percent of the
curriculum is devoted to patriotic and ideological education.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ ``Order of SARA No. 16, Measures for the Administration of
Religious School [in Chinese],'' Chinese Government Web, April 23,
2021, http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2021/
content_5623053.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reach of the Chinese state into religious life is extensive.
strategy 1: digital & surveillance technologies
Under General Secretary Xi Jinping, strategies of religious
management have expanded with the development of digital and
surveillance technologies. These technologies facilitate systematic and
coordinated efforts to collect information, and monitor and target
religious groups and practitioners, especially those perceived as
operating outside of state-set parameters or viewed as security
threats.
The Chinese surveillance state monitors social media to identify
and collect information on religious believers and their networks; it
tracks phone apps that transmit information on user activity and
location; it utilizes facial recognition technology to follow movement;
and relies on an impressive array of CCTV cameras at temples, churches,
and mosques to keep tabs on attendance and the content of religious
services.
Recent measures regulating religious information online bring
religious communities in compliance with other laws on Internet
security. Religious associations, schools, and monasteries must obtain
a license for maintaining websites and online religious content must be
approved by government representatives at provincial religious affairs
departments.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ``Regulations on Religious Affairs,'' SARA, Chinese Government
Web, February 1, 2018, http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2017-09/07/
content_5223282.htm; ``Measures for the Administration of Internet
Religious Information Services,'' Chinese Government Web, March 1,
2022, http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2022/content_5678093.htm.
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Religious life is ostensibly monitored at every level--in public,
in private, and virtually.
Implications
Expanding digital technologies accelerates the crackdown
on unregistered religious groups. Religious communities not formally
affiliated with the government-sponsored religious patriotic
associations operate with no legal protections. These communities meet
in private homes, hotels, factories, fields, and in virtual
communities; they include Protestant house churches, members of the
underground Catholic Church, unregistered Buddhists, Daoists, and
Muslims and practitioners of popular and folk religions. The growing
sophistication of the Chinese surveillance state means it is
increasingly difficult for unregistered communities to operate under
the radar.
Control of online religious expression is increasing.
Religious online forums, microblogs, and instant messaging platforms
run by individuals face increased censorship (e.g., WeChat, Weibo, QQ,
RenRen). These online tools and virtual communities are seen as a
vehicle of ``religious infiltration'' and source of religious growth on
college campuses.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Ge Chengguang, ``An Analysis of the Influence of Internet on
College Students' Religious Beliefs,'' Gong Wu Yuan, https://
www.21ks.net/lunwen/zjxylw/76485.html.
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strategy 2: sinicization
Under General Secretary Xi, religious communities have been asked
to sinicize. Sinicization is a long-term strategy to insulate religious
life from foreign influence by making it ``more Chinese'' and ensuring
fealty to the party-state.\5\ Specifically, Sinicization prioritizes
the integration of political ideology and support for the CCP. A
handbook for Chinese government officials outlines the Sinicization of
religion as:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Xinhua, ``Xi Calls for Improved Religious Work,'' April 24,
2016, China.org.cn, http://www.china.org.cn/china/2016-04/24/
content_38312410.htm.
Religious personnel and believers must identify and agree with
politics, love the motherland, support the socialist system,
support the leadership of the CCP, and abide by the laws,
regulations, and policies of the country; Integrate culturally,
meaning to interpret religious teachings according to the
requirement of contemporary China's development and process and
in line with the excellent traditional Chinese culture; Adapt
to society, adjust religious concepts, systems, organizations,
etc.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Zhong Ji, Key Words for Party Members and Cadres to Study in
the New Era [in Chinese], (Beijing: Party Building Books Publishing
House, 2019), 62.
Put simply, Sinicization is the ``partyfication'' of religion.
It is important to note that Sinicization is not new to China nor
to the CCP. Xi's predecessors from Mao to Hu all took steps to adapt
Marxism-Leninism to a Chinese context, which led to the development of
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Sinicized Marxism.\7\
Foreign missionaries also attempted to root churches locally to make
them more acceptable. Matteo Ricci dressed in Buddhist robes and
introduced Catholicism through Confucian concepts.\8\ However, the
CCP's Sinicization of religion is distinct from earlier efforts in that
it puts the party-state at the center of religious life.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Hu Jintao, ``Hu, Jintao's Report at the 17th National Congress
of the Communist Party of China [in Chinese].'' The State Council
Information Office of the PRC, October 26, 2007, http://
www.scio.gov.cn/37231/Document/1566887/1566887_11.htm; Wang Qi, ``Why
Does the General Secretary Place So Much Emphasis on the Sinicization
of Religion in Our Country? [in Chinese],'' December 6, 2021. UFWD of
CPCCC, http://www.zytzb.gov.cn/202112qwpl/364882.jhtml; Yang Fenggang,
``The Sinicization of Chinese Religions: From Above and Below,''
Religion in Chinese Societies 18 (2021): 16-43.
\8\ Matteo Ricci, Douglas Lancashire and Hu Guozhen, The True
Meaning of the Lord of Heaven = Tianzhu Shiyi. Chinese-English ed. by
E.J. Malatesta, (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources in cooperation
with the Ricci Institute, 1985).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At present, there is no central policy articulating how
Sinicization should develop. Instead, the national religious patriotic
associations have introduced five-year plans to answer Beijing's call.
It is within these plans we clearly observe the political direction.
The Catholic plan asserts that Sinicization ``requires
conscientious approval of politics. Love of the motherland and
obedience to the national regime is the responsibility and obligation
of every Christian.'' \9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ ``Five-Year Work Plan for Advancing Adherence to the Direction
of Sinicization of Catholicism in Our Country [in Chinese],'' CPA and
BCCCC, October 8, 2018, https://www.chinacatholic.cn/html/report/
18100224-2.htm.
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The Protestant plan calls on pastors to harmonize Biblical
teachings with the ideology of the party-state and to preach Core
Socialist Values \10\ and patriotism from the pulpit and in
seminaries.\11\ It recommends displaying expressions of faith in forms
such as traditional melody, calligraphy, and paper cutting. Pastors
should blend notions of love and respect attributed to Mencius with
Biblical teaching that focuses on loving others as yourself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Core Socialist Values have been articulated as a set of moral
values to guide China's national rejuvenation, and include prosperity,
democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of
law, patriotism, dedication, friendliness, and integrity; see, e.g.,
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2017-10/12/
content_33160115.htm.
\11\ ``Five-Year Plan for Promoting the Sinicization of
Christianity in Our Country (2018-2022) [in Chinese],'' CCC and TSPM,
March 27, 2018, https://www.ccctspm.org/cppccinfo/10283.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Buddhist plan for Sinicization prioritizes the study and
implementation of Xi Jinping Thought. Religious personnel are urged to
accept and support the leadership of the party-state and promote
Buddhist teachings in line with Core Socialist Values.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ ``Outline of the Five-Year Work Plan for Adhering to the
Sinicization of Buddhism (2019-2023) [in Chinese],'' Buddhist
Association of China, November 14, 2019, https://
www.chinabuddhism.com.cn/e/action/ShowInfo.php?classid=506&id=40672.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Islamic Association's Sinicization plan highlights the
integration of Chinese aesthetics and patriotism into religious and
cultural life. This includes adopting Chinese styles of clothing to
correct the practice of imitating foreign Islamic dress, promoting
architectural styles in mosques that highlight Chinese elements, using
``Confucianism to interpret scripture,'' and teaching Core Socialist
Values in mosque curriculum.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ ``Outline for the Five-year Year Work Plan for Adhering to the
Sinicization of Islam in China (2018-2022) [in Chinese],'' https://
mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yqRJy1eNTNZdEqq8n12MKg.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even Daoism--an indigenous religion to China--has developed a plan
to Sinicize. The Daoist plan calls for incorporation of Xi Jinping
Thought into the traditional Daoist canon and the promotion of
patriotism and political education in religious circles.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ ``Outline for the Five-Year Work Plan for Adhering to the
Sinicization of Daoism (2019-2023) [in Chinese],'' http://
dao.china.com.cn/2019-11/14/content_40959194.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The takeaway from these plans is that Sinicization centers on the
partyfication of religion.
Implications
Sinicization is a strategy to politically reorient
China's faithful, not embrace traditional Chinese culture or values.
Sinicization seeks to subdue religion so that it aligns with the
ambitions and interests of the party-state. Beijing is planning for a
long-term coexistence with religion, and Sinicization is one answer to
managing religious growth.
Sinicization efforts remain uneven. Religious communities
have some flexibility and are interpreting Sinicization in different
ways. Some religions have incorporated Chinese folktales or Confucian
parables into religious services. Others have embraced traditional
clothing for clergy or integrated Chinese traditional architecture into
building renovations. Still others have held flag-raising ceremonies,
organized patriotic speech contests, or added photographs of Xi Jinping
next to sacred objects. Thus far, the party-state seems content to
allow flexibility, so long as Sinicization efforts show necessary
reverence.
The long-term impact of Sinicization is uncertain. It
remains to be seen whether the Sinicization campaign will rein in
religion, cultivate love and loyalty toward the CCP, or divide
religious communities and foster resentment among China's faithful.
Historically, processes of Sinicization have nourished religious growth
in China, as external faiths have become more familiar and embedded in
local traditions and social fabrics. Therefore, it is within the realm
of possibility that Sinicization may increase religiosity, an outcome
that Beijing is likely not anticipating.
strategy 3: ``three troops''
The third strategy of religious management is outward facing.
General Secretary Xi has called for the development of ``Three Troops''
to address major religious issues at home and abroad.\15\ The Three
Troops initiative brings together party and government officials,
prominent religious representatives, and academic researchers to
improve China's ability to implement the Sinicization of religion, and,
more importantly, to counter what is perceived as U.S.-led,
international freedom of religion initiatives.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ See, e.g., Xu Yihua, ``The Background and Current Tasks of
Cultivating the ``Three Teams'' of Religious Work: Learning from the
Spirit of the 2021 National Conference on Religious Work,'' The World
Religious Culture 1 (2022): 60911, https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/b0/
a3/c21257a438435/page.htm; ``Welcome to the 20th National Congress of
the Communist Party of China, Opening a New Situation for Religious
Work in a New Era,'' China National Daily, http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/
report/22082392-1.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Implications
Chinese strategies of religious management are shifting
from defense to offense. The Three Troops initiative is intended to
counter and quiet foreign advocacy for religious freedom in China.
Beijing is harnessing religion for soft power purposes.
There is growing recognition that religion is a beneficial form of soft
power and can be used to enhance relations with countries and win
public opinion, especially through infrastructure initiatives, such as
the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
recommendations
International advocacy for Chinese religious communities and calls
to protect religious freedom and human rights can backfire in China
because it is seen as evidence of external forces seeking to divide
China, foment instability, and challenge CCP rule. However, there are
steps that can and should be taken to support freedom of religion and
belief.
Bilateral Engagement
Consistently raise the issue of religious freedom and human rights
in China in public and in private meetings with Chinese counterparts;
Urge Chinese authorities to release prisoners of
conscience who have been detained, placed under house arrest, or
imprisoned for their religion or beliefs;
Press Chinese authorities to refrain from conflating
peaceful religious activity with extremism and terrorism;
Work with U.S. allies and partners to take similar action,
especially Muslim majority partners.
Pathway for Registration
Encourage Chinese officials to create a pathway for registration of
unregistered religious communities that includes direct registration
with the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), not through
religious patriotic associations.
Build Expertise
Prioritize funding to maintain U.S. expertise on China. It is a
national security imperative that we invest and increase support for
training American students and scholars in China and Chinese language.
Federal support of DOE International Education programs, including
Title VI and Fulbright-Hays is crucial.
In closing, I would like to thank the commission for your attention
to this important set of issues. I look forward to answering any
questions that you have.
______
Prepared Statement of Chris Meserole
Chairman Merkley, Chairman McGovern, distinguished Members of the
Commission, thank you for the opportunity to speak before you this
morning on such a vital and important issue.
Although there is a growing awareness of the threat posed by the
Chinese Communist Party's model of digital authoritarianism, the extent
to which its expansion has converged with the Xi regime's increasing
restrictions on religious freedom is far less well known. I'm grateful
for the chance to share my thoughts on how that convergence came to
pass, the unprecedented challenges it poses for freedom of religion
within China and around the globe, and how the United States should
respond.
China's Surveillance State and Restrictions on Religion
Before delving into how the Xi regime's rising digital
authoritarianism intersects with its growing religious repression, each
trend needs to be understood separately.
After the arrival of the internet in China in the late 1980s, the
Chinese Communist Party was quick to recognize both the danger digital
networks posed to the Party and also their potential for surveillance
and control. By 1994 the State Council of China had placed supervision
of the internet under the control of the Ministry of Public Security,
and by 1997 Wired was running a cover story on the ``Great Firewall of
China.'' \1\ Over the next decade, Chinese authorities invested heavily
in state censorship and surveillance technologies, including packet
inspection and IP blocking, as part of the Golden Shield project.\2\ At
the same time, Internet firms were increasingly held liable for hosting
and transmitting prohibited speech, leading the largest firms--
including foreign firms operating in the country--to develop robust
censorship and moderation capabilities themselves.\3\ By the time Xi
Jinping took power in 2012, Chinese authorities had established an
online censorship and surveillance apparatus whose capabilities were
even then unprecedented in scope. Xi moved quickly to consolidate that
apparatus under his control, primarily by establishing the Cyberspace
Administration of China and tasking it with overseeing the country's
censorship and cybersecurity policies.\4\ As smartphone usage exploded
over the past decade and hundreds of millions of Chinese have come
online, the scale and reach of online censorship and surveillance under
the Xi regime has expanded accordingly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ ``Freedom of Expression and the Internet in China: A Human
Rights Watch Backgrounder,'' Human Rights Watch, 2001; Geremie R. Barme
and Sang Ye, ``The Great Firewall of China,'' Wired, 1 June 1997.
\2\ Elizabeth C. Economy, ``The Great Firewall of China: Xi
Jinping's Internet Shutdown,'' The Guardian, 29 June 2018.
\3\ ``Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet
Censorship,'' Human Rights Watch, 9 Aug. 2006.
\4\ AJ Caughey and Shen Lu and ``How the CAC Became Chinese Tech's
Biggest Nightmare,'' Protocol, 11 Mar. 2022.
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Yet the surveillance apparatus developed by Chinese authorities is
not limited to the web alone. As prior testimony before this commission
has shown, Beijing has also harnessed digital technology for off-line
surveillance and monitoring, too.\5\ Most prominently, Chinese security
services in Xinjiang and Tibet have leveraged cameras, drones,
smartphones, and biometric technology to turn those regions into what
are effectively open air prisons.\6\ However, use of these surveillance
technologies is by no means limited to Xinjiang and Tibet. Since 2005,
when the Ministry of Public Safety and what is now the Ministry of
Industry and Information Technology established the first ``Skynet
program,'' Chinese officials have launched and expanded a wide range of
digital surveillance efforts throughout the country.\7\ With prodding
from Beijing, local authorities have invested heavily in the equipment,
infrastructure, and training to build out Skynet as well as related
surveillance efforts like Smart Cities, Sharp Eyes, and early pilots of
the Social Credit System.\8\ The most sophisticated of these systems--
which have seen widespread use during the pandemic, thanks to China's
Zero Covid policy--now also make it possible to track individuals in
real time using facial recognition algorithms overlaid on drone cameras
and CCTV feeds.\9\ Since these systems often lack due process and
public oversight, the Xi regime has effectively built out the world's
most comprehensive architecture for digital repression.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Samantha Hoffman, ``China's Tech-Enhanced Authoritarianism,''
CECC Hearing, November 17, 2021; Yaqui Wang, ``Testimony of Yaqui
Wang,'' CECC Hearing, November 17, 2021.
\6\ Nithin Coca, ``China's Digital Wall Around Tibet,'' Coda Story,
16 May 2019.
\7\ Zhang Zihan, ``Beijing's Guardian Angels?'' Global Times, 10
Oct. 2012.
\8\ Jessica Batke and Mareike Ohlberg, ``Budgeting for
Surveillance,'' ChinaFile, October 30, 2022.
\9\ Rebecca Heilweil, ``Coronavirus is the first big test for
futuristic tech that can prevent pandemics,'' Vox, 27 Feb. 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, the Xi regime has in tandem built out a growing
legal and bureaucratic architecture for religious repression. After
banning religious activity outright during the Cultural Revolution,
Chinese authorities had reversed course in the ``Reform Era'' that
followed, most notably with the CCP Central Committee's issuance of
Document 19 in 1982. The result was a remarkable resurgence of
religious communities across China, with government estimates
recognizing a nearly fourfold increase in Protestantism alone between
1997 and 2018.\10\ Yet over the past decade, Beijing has once again
sought to bring religion back under greater control. In part that
effort has stemmed from Beijing's efforts to rein in what it views as
``religious extremism'' in Xinjiang and Tibet; the country's
Counterterrorism-Terror Law of 2016, along with corresponding measures
and regulations, granted local authorities in each region the power to
detain individuals for otherwise conventional religious behavior, such
as growing a long beard.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ ``China's Policies and Practices on Protecting Freedom of
Religious Belief,'' Information Office of the State Council, 3 Apr.
2018; ``White Paper--Freedom of Religious Belief in China,'' Embassy of
the People's Republic of China in the United States, Oct. 1997.
\11\ ``China detains Uighurs for growing beards or visiting foreign
websites, leak reveals,'' Guardian, 17 Feb. 2020; ``OHCHR Assessment of
human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,
People's Republic of China,'' United Nations Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights, 31 Aug. 2022, page 8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, the Xi regime's efforts to rein in religion extend well
beyond its counter-terrorism policy. In 2016, Xi held a two-day
conference on religion during which he both outlined a more hardline
vision for religious regulation and also called for greater
Sinicization of religion, urging the CCP to ``actively guide the
adaptation of religions'' and faith communities to ``interpret
religious doctrines in a way that is conducive to modern China's
progress and in line with our excellent traditional culture.'' \12\ The
speech came amid a growing crackdown on Christian churches \13\ and in
advance of new regulations requiring all religious organizations to
register with the government.\14\ Soon after the regulations took
effect in 2018, Xi then announced that the State Administration for
Religious Affairs (SARA) would be dissolved and its oversight function
shifted to a new bureau in the CCP's United Front Work Department, a
move designed to bring the management of religion further under the
Party's control.\15\ In 2020, another set of regulations came into
effect requiring religious organizations ``to spread the principles and
policies of the Chinese Communist Party'' and to educate their
adherents and leaders ``to support the leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party'' and to follow ``the path of socialism with Chinese
characteristics.'' \16\ In response to the regulations, a Chinese
Catholic priest replied: ``In practice, your religion no longer
matters, if you are Buddhist, or Taoist, or Muslim or Christian: the
only religion allowed is faith in the Chinese Communist Party.'' \17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ ``Xi Calls for Improved Religious Work,'' Xinhua, 24 Apr.
2016.
\13\ Ian Johnson, ``China Bans Online Bible Sales as It Tightens
Religious Controls,'' The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2018
\14\ Dominic J. Nardi, ``The 2019 Regulation for Religious Groups
in China,'' USCIRF, February 2020.
\15\ Alex Joske, ``Reorganizing the United Front Work Department:
New Structures for a New Era of Diaspora and Religious Affairs Work,''
Jamestown, 9 May 2019. https://jamestown.org/program/reorganizing-the-
united-front-work-department-new-structures-for-a-new-era-of-
diaspora-and-religious-affairs-work/
\16\ For background, see Eleanor Albert and Lindsay Maizland,
``Religion in China,'' Council on Foreign Relations, 25 Sept. 2020; for
translation, see Wang Zhicheng, ``New Administrative Measures for
Religious Groups,'' Asia News, 31 Dec. 2019.
\17\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Xi regime's effort to control religious life then converged
with its growing attempts to regulate online activity in late 2021.
Although Chinese officials had imposed some measures to regulate online
religious activity before--most notably its decision to ban the sale of
Bibles online,\18\ and a handful of stipulations in the religious
regulations that took effect in 2018 and 2020 \19\--Xi himself brought
the issue to the fore in another conference on religion at the end of
last year. In addition to reiterating his earlier call for the
Sinicization of religion, Xi's remarks at the conference pushed for
greater regulation of digital religion and insisted that ``China must
strengthen the management of online religious affairs.'' \20\ Chinese
officials then released new regulations banning foreign organizations
from publishing content online and requiring registered religious
organizations to receive licenses for streaming religious services and
ceremonies.\21\ Shortly after the regulations came into effect in March
2022, provincial governments began training new staff to censor online
religious activity and ensure compliance with the new regulations.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Ian Johnson, ``China Bans Online Bible Sales as It Tightens
Religious Controls,'' The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2018.
\19\ Article 48 of the 2020 regulations, for example, claimed that
``internet religious information services'' also had to comply with
relevant laws and regulations concerning religious affairs.
\20\ Amber Wang, ``China's latest crackdown on religion bans
foreigners from spreading church and spiritual content online,'' South
China Morning Post, 22 Dec. 2021.
\21\ Tsukasa Hadano, ``China Bans Online Religious Activity Ahead
of Party Congress,'' Nikkei Asia, 6 Jan. 2022.
\22\ John Zhang, ``127 Persons Pass Internet Religious Information
Service License Examination in Guangdong,'' China Christian Daily, 28
June 2022. http://chinachristiandaily.com/news/
category/2022-06-28/127-persons-pass-internet-religious-information-
service-license-
examination-in-guangdong--11614
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The new regulations represent a significant new expansion of
China's surveillance state. Provincial authorities will still play a
leading role in regulating religion, as they have historically.\23\ But
with the key agencies responsible for China's surveillance apparatus
also jointly issuing the new regulations--namely, the Ministry of
Public Security, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry
of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry for National
Security--the oversight of religious activity now formally extends far
beyond local administrators. If the impact of the new regulations can
be put in Orwellian terms, what they mean is that ``Big Brother'' now
has clear authority to extend its watchful eye over people of faith.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ Article 5 of the new regulations: ``The religious affairs
departments of people's governments at the provincial level and above,
together with the network information departments, competent
departments for telecommunications, public security organs, state
security organs, and so forth, shall establish coordination mechanisms
for the administration of Internet Religious Information Services.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Local and Global Implications for Religious Freedom
As I've noted in previous testimony, digital technology has
provided extraordinary new capabilities for religious repression.\24\
From the Spanish Inquisition to Stalinist Russia, modern nation-states
have long sought to persecute religious activity, often to devastating
effect. Indeed, this happened within China itself during the Cultural
Revolution. Yet in pre-digital eras states were largely only able to
regulate public religion; religiosity has always been a mix of public
and private beliefs, behaviors, and institutions, and in practice state
regulation has generally been limited to the former. Regulating the
offline exercise of private religion is simply too difficult and costly
for a state to carry out at scale--which is partly why, for example,
religious communities in Maoist China were able to endure and flourish
anew once religious restrictions were lifted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\24\ Chris Meserole, ``Technological Surveillance of Religion in
China,'' USCIRF hearing, July 22, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, the digital surveillance that China has pioneered allows
for restrictions on even the private exercise of religion. GPS sensors
in smartphones and cars, plus facial recognition that can track
citizens across a city, make it difficult for private and covert
religious communities to form and operate undetected. Likewise, client-
and server-side scanning have made it possible to detect private
religious activity like downloading a picture of a religious leader or
reading a sacred text, and smart televisions and cellphones make it
possible to remotely watch and hear private prayers within a home. Most
importantly, however, the knowledge that state authorities are able to
monitor even private religious activity can create a chilling effect
that ultimately seeks to deter individuals from engaging in private
religious expression at all. By eroding faith that the private exercise
of religion is possible, digital surveillance works to erode faith
altogether.
Although China is still far from fully eradicating unlicensed
religious activity, examples of their efforts still abound. The recent
plight of Uighur Muslims in Western Xinjiang is most well known, with
local authorities compiling massive DNA and facial recognition
databases that can be used to track individual members of mosques and
Islamic networks, as well as smartphone surveillance capable of
blocking access to the Quran and censoring posts about Islam. Yet the
state is not just interfering with the religious freedom of Turkic
Muslims; Hui Muslims have also been jailed merely for creating WeChat
groups to discuss the Quran.\25\ Nor is the discrimination limited to
Western China. Local authorities and security services across the rest
of China have implemented facial recognition technology--provided by
firms like Huawei, Magvii, and Tiandy--to indiscriminately identify
individuals who may be Muslim.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ ``China Jails Man for Teaching Islam Online,'' CBS News, 12
Sept. 2017.
\26\ Paul Mozur, ``One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is
Using A.I. to Profile a Minority,'' The New York Times, 14 Apr. 2019;
Drew Harwell and Eva Dou, ``Huawei Tested AI Software That Could
Recognize Uighur Minorities and Alert Police, Report Says,'' Washington
Post, 9 Sept. 2022; Tate Ryan-Mosley, ``This Huge Chinese Company Is
Selling Video Surveillance Systems to Iran,'' MIT Technology Review,
December 15, 2021; Edward Wong and Ana Swanson, ``U.S. Aims to Expand
Export Bans on China Over Security and Human Rights,'' The New York
Times, 5 July 2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, many of those technologies are readily applied to
Buddhist and Christian communities too. In Tibet, merely storing an
image of the Dalai Lama on a smartphone can warrant detention. And
evading the authorities online and offline is increasingly
difficult.\27\ VPNs have been criminalized in the region, while an
elaborate ``digital wall'' of cameras, drones, and remote sensing
technologies has cut down the number of Tibetans successfully fleeing
to Nepal by 97%.\28\ Unregistered Christian Churches, which are viewed
as a potential vector for foreign influence, have also been the subject
of intense surveillance and censorship too. Pastors have been told to
remove themselves from WeChat groups, while other clergy suspected of
having ties to foreign churches have had their social media accounts
and digital content banned.\29\ Other underground or unregistered
churches have been shut down entirely for refusing to comply with
digital surveillance.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ ``Wave of Arrests Across Eastern Tibet After Digital Search
Operations,'' Free Tibet, 22 July 2021.
\28\ Nithin Coca, ``China's Digital Wall Around Tibet,'' Coda
Story, 16 May 2019.
\29\ ``Five members of the Sion Church in Taiyuan travelled abroad
to attend an evangelical conference, and were arrested for `the crime
of stealing across the border','' ChinaAid, 27 July 2021.
\30\ ``China Outlaws Large Underground Protestant Church in
Beijing,'' Reuters, 10 Sept. 2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The combination of the new religious regulations, along with
China's ongoing ``Zero Covid'' policy, stand to exacerbate these
trends. With Covid restrictions requiring the frequent closure of
houses of worship (or serving as a pretext for their closure), online
channels have offered a way for some religious organizations to remain
in community. The new regulations thus threaten to remove a key option
for exercising religion at a time when it is needed most.
Potential for Religious Repression Abroad
Although the Xi regime's combination of digital authoritarianism
and religious repression most directly impacts religious organizations
within China, it also poses an urgent challenge to faith communities
abroad. There are three particular dangers in that regard.
First, China's efforts to digitally surveil and censor religious
minorities extend well beyond its borders. As an illustration of how
seriously Chinese authorities take the issue, in 2019 they expended a
sophisticated ``zero day'' exploit for iOS devices on the Uighur
diaspora. Chinese hackers had developed a way to gain root access to
iPhone just by having the browser open a website, yet state authorities
opted to exploit the vulnerability to monitor a small Uighur community
abroad rather than a foreign political leader or high-value target.\31\
In addition, the Chinese have also sought to leverage WeChat to monitor
ties between Christian communities abroad and those in mainland China--
to the point where domestic Chinese clergy have asked their members not
to use WeChat with Christians in the United States.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ Cooper Quintin and Mona Wang, ``Watering Holes and Million
Dollar Dissidents: The Changing Economics of Digital Surveillance,''
Electronic Frontier Foundation, 9 Sept. 2019.
\32\ Wan Zixin, ``China's Social Media Platforms--Tools of
Religious Persecution,'' Bitter Winter, 19 May 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second, China is increasingly exporting its surveillance technology
to others. As part of its ``Digital Silk Road,'' the Xi regime has
sought to couple its Belt and Road development initiative with a
concurrent push to boost foreign sales of Chinese telecommunications
equipment and technology, including surveillance technology.\33\ As a
result, China has now successfully sold the surveillance technology it
has pioneered to over 80 states globally,\34\ many of whom also have
extensive legal and bureaucratic structures for religious repression.
For example, consider Iran. After widespread protests throughout the
country in 2009, Tehran purchased a surveillance system from ZTE for
Iran's telecommunications monopoly, enabling the regime to monitor
landline and mobile communications and carry out deep packet inspection
across nearly all internet traffic.\35\ More recently, Tehran has
entered into a 25-year trade agreement with China in which Iran will
receive greater Chinese investment and technology, while earlier this
year Iran's parliament pushed forward a new Internet ``Protection
Bill'' that would place the country's internet infrastructure under
control of its armed forces and security services and was explicitly
modeled in part on Beijing's approach to internet technology.\36\ As
one lawmaker put it, in reference to internet restrictions and
surveillance, ``the Chinese have unique and innovative experience in
this field, which we can put to use.'' \37\ Iran's security services
have already made progress in that effort, with the purchase of video
surveillance systems from the Chinese firm Tiandy--a company notorious
for its supply of ``smart interrogation desks'' and facial recognition
systems designed to target ethnic and religious minorities.\38\ Left
unchecked, the Iranian regime appears intent on replicating China's
surveillance system within its borders using Chinese-made technology.
Given Tehran's track record, this poses serious risks to religious
freedom in the country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\33\ Jonathan E. Hillman, The Digital Silk Road: China's Quest to
Wire the World and Win the Future, Washington, DC: CSIS, 2021.
\34\ Dahlia Peterson, ``How China Harnesses Data Fusion to Make
Sense of Surveillance Data,'' Brookings Techstream, 23 Sept. 2021.
\35\ ``Special Report: Chinese Firm Helps Iran Spy on Citizens,''
Reuters, 22 Mar. 2012.
\36\ ``Iran: Human Rights Groups Sound Alarm Against Draconian
Internet Bill,'' Human Rights Watch, 17 Mar. 2022.
\37\ ``Iran Plans to Work With China On Technology To Further
Restrict Internet,'' Iran International, 3 Feb. 2022.
\38\ Tate Ryan-Mosley, ``This Huge Chinese Company Is Selling Video
Surveillance Systems to Iran,'' MIT Technology Review, December 15,
2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Third, the Xi regime's use of digital surveillance for religiously
motivated repression has normalized the practice globally. Consider
Saudi Arabia. As with China, the Saudi government has leveraged zero-
day exploits to surveil and target dissident communities abroad.\39\ It
has also carried out mass surveillance of internet communications and
social media within the country, with one key advisor--who was also
involved with the killing of Jamal Khashoggi--publicly crowdsourcing a
list of dissidents to target using a Twitter hashtag.\40\ Even though
the Saudi regime has used Israeli rather than Chinese surveillance
tech, and leveraged American rather than Saudi digital platforms,
China's surveillance apparatus has helped to normalize its repression.
Not surprisingly, Saudi officials have publicly acknowledged studying
Beijing's technology development and deployment, claiming that ``there
is a lot to learn from China.'' \41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\39\ Bill Marczak, et al., ``The Kingdom Came to Canada: How Saudi-
Linked Digital Espionage Reached Canadian Soil,'' Citizen Lab Research
Report No. 115, University of Toronto, 1 Oct. 2018.
\40\ Katie Benner, et al., ``Saudis' Image Makers: A Troll Army and
a Twitter Insider,'' The New York Times, 20 Oct. 2018.
\41\ Andrew England and Simeon Kerr, ```More of China, Less of
America': How Superpower Fight Is Squeezing the Gulf,'' Financial
Times, 20 Sept. 2021.
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How the United States Should Respond
As the international community has awoken to the threats posed by
China's model of digital authoritarianism, the United States and its
allies and partners have started to respond forcefully. The U.S. Entity
List is now far more comprehensive, export controls have been expanded,
and new sanctions have been put in place on officials and firms
responsible for the worst human rights abuses within China.\42\
Although the full effect of these and related efforts will take time to
play out, the era in which Chinese firms were able to easily and openly
develop and export repressive censorship and surveillance technology is
drawing to a close--and rightfully so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\42\ Edward Wong and Ana Swanson, ``U.S. Aims to Expand Export Bans
on China Over Security and Human Rights,'' The New York Times, 5 July
2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, where the application of China's surveillance and
censorship technology to religious freedom is specifically concerned,
there is still far more that can be done. In particular:
Establish a temporary, independent commission on digital
authoritarianism. Addressing the challenge that digital
authoritarianism poses to freedom of religion will not be possible
without a consensus understanding of the threat it poses to the United
States and democratic societies more broadly. A new bipartisan
commission could carry out a full review of the challenge posed by
digital authoritarianism, especially to religious freedom, and offer a
consensus set of recommendations for how the United States should
respond.
Re-organize for the long term. With digital surveillance
and high-tech competition set to be a defining challenge in the years
and decades to come, the U.S. government has taken early steps to adapt
its bureaucracy for the long-term nature of that challenge. Now that
new bodies like the Bureau for Cyberspace and Digital Policy in the
State Department have gotten off the ground, there should be an inter-
agency review of how the offices set up to address digital policy and
security liaise with and inform offices dedicated to religious freedom
globally, and vice versa. This may result in more staff in the CDP or
EAP bureaus having online religious freedom as part of their portfolio,
and/or more staff in USCIRF and elsewhere with tech and digital policy
as part of theirs. Regardless of the outcome, however, the Biden
administration should mandate a review of how best to organize
effectively against digital authoritarianism and religious repression.
Create an open-source monitoring function. Crafting
effective policy is difficult without reliable information and
analysis, yet right now there is no consistent source of digital
surveillance and censorship, much less its impact on religious
repression, across the U.S. government. In light of the recommendation
above, there should be an office dedicated to regularly providing the
public with open-source information about how political regimes are
deploying surveillance and censorship technology and what impact it is
having on human rights, including the freedom of religion. By reliably
producing this information, the United States will also be better
positioned to build momentum for global efforts to counter digital
authoritarianism in China, Iran, and elsewhere.
Link religious freedom with freedom of expression online.
In response to the growing calls for national internets like China's
Great Firewall or Iran's ``Halal web,'' the Biden administration
rightly reiterated the need for an open and free internet earlier this
year with its ``Declaration for the Future of the Internet.'' \43\ Yet
religion was referenced only once in passing in the declaration, and is
often downplayed in broader policy discussions around freedom of
expression online--despite the role that religious repression often
plays in motivating mass digital surveillance. As the United States
advocates for greater internet freedom around the world, its messaging
should emphasize that freedom of speech and freedom of religion go
hand-in-hand.
\43\ ``A Declaration for the Future of the Internet,'' White House,
May 2022.
Leverage privacy-enhancing technologies. As the scale of
government and commercial surveillance has grown, privacy-enhancing
technologies hold enormous promise for advancing and protecting
democratic values and norms--yet they are often absent from discussions
about how to push back on the high-tech surveillance of religion in
China and elsewhere.\44\ The U.S. should not only continue to invest
more in privacy-enhancing technology, but they should also invest in
efforts to educate religious minorities about how to use them. Virtual
private networks (VPNs) are particularly valuable here, especially in
states--like Saudi Arabia--that seek to emulate China's surveillance
system but do not yet have the technical competence to do so
effectively.\45\ With many religious activities shifting online, the
need for end-to-end encrypted group videoconference and streaming will
be increasingly vital. Although early options like Jitsi and Signal
exist, privacy-preserving group video platforms will require far more
investment to become easily accessible and usable by religious
communities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\44\ Andrew Imbrie, et al., ``Privacy Is Power,'' Foreign Affairs,
16 Feb. 2022.
\45\ ``A Seven-Nation Survey,'' Northwestern University in Qatar,
2018.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Prepared Statement of Senator Merkley
Good morning. Today's hearing of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China entitled ``Control of Religion in China through
Digital Authoritarianism'' will come to order.
Before we turn to the subject of this hearing, I'd like to take a
moment to acknowledge and thank President Biden for his recent
appointment of five executive branch commissioners to this Commission.
This marks the first time in nearly six years that the Commission
includes executive branch commissioners. Their appointment will bolster
our ability to bring the expertise and perspective of the various
branches of government in our work monitoring human rights and the rule
of law in China. As we develop recommendations for legislative,
executive, and international action, dialogue to coordinate our efforts
will be critical, as it has been in recent years in implementing
legislation this Commission spearheaded such as the Uyghur Forced Labor
Prevention Act, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, the Hong Kong Human
Rights and Democracy Act, and more.
I look forward to working closely with our new commissioners.
Those commissioners are Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and
Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink, Under Secretary of Commerce for
International Trade Marisa Lago, Undersecretary of Labor for
International Affairs Thea Lee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Lisa Peterson, and
Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human
Rights Uzra Zeya.
Welcome to our new commissioners. We are absolutely delighted to
have you.
Today, our hearing focuses on freedom of religion, particularly
recent developments in Chinese authorities' use of technology to crack
down on the free exercise of religion. While many of our hearings
explore violations of religious freedom--in Xinjiang, Tibet, and
elsewhere--this is our first hearing dedicated to this topic since
2018.
Recent Chinese Communist Party steps to use digital repression to
strengthen control of religion make this an especially timely hearing.
As more religious activity and resources move online, especially in
response to COVID, Chinese officials have expanded use of digital tools
to surveil and suppress online religious expression. Invasive
surveillance technologies and mass biometric data collection track and
monitor religious groups that authorities deem to be a threat. In March
of this year, new Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious
Information Services went into effect, which require a government-
issued permit to post religious content online and ban the online
broadcasting of religious ceremonies, rites, and services, among a host
of other restrictions infringing on Chinese citizens' freedom of
religion.
These measures control how individuals and communities worship,
with the aim of ``sinicizing'' religion to conform with Party
priorities. As we will hear today, those priorities are political and
social control. To achieve that control, Chinese authorities cite
objectives like combating control and countering so-called ``religious
extremism'' as they undermine fundamental human rights. The recent UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights Xinjiang report calls this what it
is: a pretext that conflates personal religious choice with extremism
and leads to severe human rights abuses.
Our first witness today is one of the most powerful voices in the
world when it comes to exposing these abuses and advocating for those
who simply wish to exercise their basic rights, and so I'm honored that
Nury Turkel is here with us. After we hear his perspective, our second
panel of eminent experts will help us understand the tools of digital
surveillance and repression, the risks of this model of authoritarian
management of religion spreading to other countries, and
recommendations for how defenders of religious freedom can respond. I
look forward to our witnesses' testimony.
______
Prepared Statement of Representative McGovern
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to our witnesses.
Religious freedom has been at the core of the Commission's work
since its founding. I appreciate your scheduling this hearing on this
important topic.
The Chinese government's record on religious freedom is as
atrocious as it is well documented, including by this Commission and by
the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, whose chair we
are honored to have as a witness today.
In our thoughts today are the prisoners of conscience who have had
their religious liberty violated by the Chinese government. It is our
moral responsibility to help them tell their stories, and those of the
people whose voices do not reach us.
Today's hearing will focus on new and insidious methods authorities
are using to exert control over religious practice, including online
regulation and digital surveillance technologies.
The UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief last
year reported that the Chinese government reportedly uses ``biometrics,
digital surveillance and personal data for behavioral analysis for
identifying `extremist' or `unhealthy thought.' '' He notes that such
technologies used in ``counter-terrorism'' contexts threaten freedom of
thought.
This aligns with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' recent
report on Xinjiang which explained how Chinese officials misused
``counter-terrorism'' policy to brutally repress Uyghurs and other
Turkic Muslims and deny their ability to practice their religion and
cultural heritage.
This shows how the right to freedom of religion intersects with
other fundamental rights--the freedoms of speech and association, equal
protection, due process, presumption of innocence--all of which are
protected under international human rights law. In this light, I hope
the witnesses will expand on the meaning of ``Sinicization'' of
religion--a process to coerce religious believers' allegiance to the
state and the Party.
We also want to understand how ``Sinicization'' manipulates the
teaching of religious principles to imply that they support the Party's
ideology. It appears the Party is exploiting religion as a means to
impose social control.
Last month, a group of UN experts, including the special rapporteur
on freedom of religion or belief, issued a statement against the
``cynical abuse of religion or belief as a tool of discrimination,
hostility and violence,'' and noted that ``[i]nternational law rejects
any attempt to call on either religion or belief, or freedom of
religion or belief, as justification for the destruction of the rights
and freedoms of others.''
USCIRF shows that the United States seeks to be a leader in
promoting international religious freedom. To be effective, however, we
must live up to the standards we demand of other countries. We lack
credibility in criticizing China for using religion as a pretext to
restrict other liberties if our own governments, including at the state
level, engage in the same behavior.
Two final points. One, while China officially recognizes only five
religions, our analysis and advocacy must recognize that there is a
stunningly wide array of religious beliefs, and non-belief, in the
country. PRC regulation harms not only religious freedom but its
diversity, too.
Lastly, as China suffers from a devastating heat wave, I am
interested in how restrictions on religion undermine the cause of
environmental protection, given the links between spirituality and
nature within Buddhism and Daoism, for example.
Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to the testimony.
Submissions for the Record
------
Freedom House Statement for the Record
the people's republic of china is one of the worst violators
of religious freedom in the world
Freedom House research has tracked 16 straight years of decline in
freedom and democracy around the world, with 2021 seeing the fewest
number of countries with net improvements during that period. Nearly 42
percent of the world's population now lives in countries that faced a
deterioration in rights in 2021.
Unfortunately, worsening conditions for religious freedom are a
component of this deepening democratic recession, with the global
average score for our religious freedom indicator declining by 5.4
percent over the last 16 years. State repression of religious
minorities and attacks by nonstate actors were the most common driver
of the decline in religious freedom, trends borne out in the types of
attacks we see in the emergency support we provide to individuals under
threat for their religious views.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Annie Boyajian USCIRF Testimony ``Leveraging Targeted Sanctions
in Defense of Religious Freedom'', 10/21/2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Chinese Communist Party is one of the worst violators of
religious freedom today. Controls over religion in China have increased
since 2012, seeping into new areas of daily life and triggering growing
resistance from believers. A 2017 report published by Freedom House
found that at least 100 million people--nearly one-third of estimated
believers in China--belonged to religious groups facing ``high'' or
``very high'' levels of persecution (Protestant Christians, Tibetan
Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, and Falun Gong).\2\ Most of these
communities face as bad, or worse, persecution today than they did five
years ago. Religious believers and activists on behalf of the rights of
ethnic minorities continue to be key targets for high-tech surveillance
and prosecution for what they write on applications like WeChat.
Freedom House has documented multiple cases of Tibetans, Uyghurs, and
Falun Gong practitioners who have been sentenced to prison for writing
about issues related to their culture or faith on that app.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conditions for religious believers in China occur within a broader
context of increased authoritarianism and declining freedom in China.
Over the past decade, repression in China has gone from bad to worse.
Since Xi Jinping took the helm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in
November 2012, the authorities have intensified many of their
restrictions, resulting in an overall increase in religious
persecution. In 2014, China had a Freedom in the World score of 17; by
2022, that had dropped to nine. China ranks 193rd out of 210 countries
and territories. Tibet ties for dead last. In 2011, China, the world's
largest surveillance state, had a Freedom on the Net score of 17; this
year, it's a 10, making it the lowest scoring country in our net
freedom index for the seventh year in a row. These are dramatic rates
of decline for that period of time--nearly 50 percent.
china's persecution of religious communities
Most well-known in a long list of violations are the widespread
crimes against humanity and acts of genocide that have been committed
against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and forced labor facilities, which
reportedly detain more than one million men, women, and children at any
given time. The abuses being perpetrated against the Uyghurs are,
unfortunately, only part of the story. Some officials now working in
the Uyghur region fine-tuned their tactics by first targeting Tibetans
and Falun Gong practitioners,\3\ and, for decades religious believers
including Christians have suffered torture and abuse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ https://jamestown.org/program/the-learning-curve-how-communist-
party-officials-are-
applying-lessons-from-prior-transformation-campaigns-to-repression-in-
xinjiang/
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As China experiences a spiritual revival across a wide range of
faiths, the Chinese government's religious controls have taken
different forms for different localities, ethnicities, and
denominations. Over the past five years and especially during the
pandemic, in addition to the worsening atrocities committed against
Turkic Muslims, communities in other parts of China like Falun Gong
practitioners, have faced intensified repression, reversing a slight
lull in the aggressiveness of the CCP's campaign against the group in
the early years of Xi Jinping's leadership. Falun Gong believers across
China, including some with relatives in the United States, face large-
scale arbitrary detention, torture, and at times, death from abuse in
custody.
Catholics who worship outside of state-sanctioned parameters
continue to face reprisals and pressure from Chinese security forces,
despite a 2018 agreement on the appointment of bishops between the
Vatican and Beijing.
One trend that deserves greater attention is the precarious
situation for religious freedom in Hong Kong. Following adoption of the
National Security Law two years ago, we have seen a wide range of
rights suppressed, resulting in dozens of prosecutions. Now and over
the coming year, the authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing may be
turning their sights on religious communities.
the chinese communist party's use of the internet to oppress believers
Conditions for internet users in China remain profoundly
oppressive, confirmed by the country's status as the world's worst
abuser of internet freedom for the seventh consecutive year. Ordinary
users continue to face severe legal repercussions for activities like
sharing news stories, talking about their religious beliefs, or
communicating with family members and others overseas. The CCP has
tightened its control over the state bureaucracy, the media, online
speech, religious groups, and civil society associations.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2021/global-drive-
control-big-tech
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The regime frequently censors cultural and religious content that
it deems undesirable. Content related to marginalized ethnic,
religious, and linguistic groups is restricted. Keywords related to
Falun Gong consistently appear on leaked lists of prohibited terms.
Reference to the banned Church of the Almighty God are also reportedly
marked as politically sensitive by censors employed by mobile phone
services, with users facing account deactivation for sharing religious
information. Following the coronavirus outbreak in January 2020,
reports emerged of Christian congregations being prevented from
conducting live-streamed meetings and of individual parishioners being
compelled to delete religious imagery from their social media accounts.
However, censorship is not reciprocal. Amid the human rights crisis in
Xinjiang, Uyghur-language content and relevant news reporting have been
heavily censored and many ordinary Uyghur users detained, while
Islamophobic commentary is permitted to circulate widely.
In March 2020, new rules called the Provisions on the Governance of
the Online Information Content Ecosystem came into effect. These
provisions place online content in three categories: encouraged
positive content, discouraged negative content, and illegal content.
The illegal category includes terrorist and obscene content, as well as
information ``harming the nation's honor and interests,''
``subverting'' the CCP regime, or challenging the government's social,
ethnic, religious, or economic policies. New regulations jointly
released by five state organs on December 21 banned the transmission of
religious content online in China without a government license.
Authorities in Qinghai province (where a fifth of the population is
Tibetan) have banned Tibetan social media groups tied to religion. The
new regulations call for the ``Sinicization'' of religion, in which the
Party leads all religious communities and controls religious-based
content.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ https://freedomhouse.org/report/china-media-bulletin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Members of persecuted religious and ethnic minority groups also
tend to face especially harsh punishment for their online activities.
Prominent rights defenders and members of ethnic minorities or banned
religious groups have received the longest sentences, often exceeding
10 years. A leaked Chinese government document with details of dozens
of Uyghurs and other Muslims jailed or taken away for reeducation in
Xinjiang that was made public in February 2020 included in its list
someone who was friends on WeChat with a Uyghur in Turkey, an
individual who accidentally clicked on an overseas website on their
phone, and a woman sentenced in August 2017 to 15 years in prison for
making contact online with Uyghurs outside the country. Also that
month, four Tibetan monks \6\ were sentenced to up to 20 years in
prison after police discovered a phone containing records of
communication with fellow monks in Nepal and donations for earthquake
relief. These are harsher punishments than a defendant might receive
for violent crimes like sexual assault or manslaughter in some
countries.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/06/china-tibetan-monks-
harshly-sentenced
\7\ https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
These prosecutions are facilitated by the Chinese regime's
extensive and sophisticated surveillance systems. Direct surveillance
of internet and mobile phone communications is pervasive, and privacy
protections under Chinese law are minimal. In recent years, the Chinese
government has increasingly moved toward big-data integration with the
help of private companies, essentially consolidating in various
databases a wide array of information on individuals, including their
internet and mobile phone activities, with known members of ethnic and
religious minorities being a high priority target.\8\ Residents of
Xinjiang are subject to severely invasive surveillance tactics and both
Uyghurs and Tibetans face heightened monitoring even when traveling in
other parts of China.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/21/china-xinjiang-
surveillance-state-police-targets/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
china's role in suppressing religious freedom abroad
The Chinese government's violations of religious freedom are also
not contained within its borders. According to Freedom House's
research, the authoritarian regime in China conducts the world's most
sophisticated, comprehensive, and far-reaching campaign of
transnational repression in the world.\9\ It was responsible for 229 of
the 735 incidents of physical transnational repression that Freedom
House recorded between 2014 and 2021, targeting people on every
inhabited continent and in at least 36 countries. Mirroring the
patterns of its repression at home, the CCP has targeted individual
dissidents, their family members, and entire ethnic and religious
groups, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, and Falun Gong
practitioners. The CCP has also abused Interpol's systems to have false
notices issued for believers, resulting in their detention or even
deportation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/
united-states
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
recommendations
As democracies around the world, including the United States,
grapple with how to address the threats and challenges undemocratic
rulers pose to global rights and freedoms, it is important that
attention be given to how to better protect freedom of religion or
belief. Steps to better protect against China's repression of religious
freedom, both at home and abroad include:
1. In all meetings with Chinese officials, raise human rights and
religious freedom issues, including the names of political and
religious prisoners. Request information or specific action related to
their medical condition and treatment. This should include both
prisoners who are a priority nationally, as well as prisoners detained
within the geographic boundaries or for subjects that fall within the
thematic responsibility of the Chinese official with whom you are
meeting. This is especially relevant on travel to China, when dealing
with state or CCP officials at the provincial or municipal level or
those in policy areas like education or ethnic minorities. Make this
routine practice for STAFFDELS and CODELS, and press the executive
branch to have U.S. officials across all agencies at all levels raise
these issues, including the president.
2. Strategically expand targeted sanctions geographically and
higher up the CCP hierarchy, including on officials who have committed
or been complicit in the abuse, torture, or persecution of religious
believers. Freedom House commends the U.S. government for the targeted
sanctions applied to Chinese and Hong Kong officials to date.
Penalizing violators of human rights and religious freedom through the
blocking of visas and freezing of U.S.-based assets is an effective way
to deter future abuses and ensure that these individuals face some
measure of justice. Targeted sanctions should be applied to violators
of religious freedom as impactfully as possible and should be part of a
robust, comprehensive strategy that employs a full range of coordinated
diplomatic and policy actions. As part of this comprehensive strategy,
policymakers should seek to avoid unintended consequences for religious
minorities in the implementation of foreign policy initiatives.
3. Ensure robust implementation and enforcement of the Uyghur
Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) and urge other countries to adopt
similar measures. The UFLPA prohibited the importation of products made
in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region--where forced labor is
notorious and rampant--unless the importer can prove that forced labor
was not used in the creation of their products. It also required the
imposition of sanctions on those involved in human rights abuses
related to forced labor and the creation of a strategy to ensure that
goods made with forced labor in China do not enter the United States.
Congress should work with the executive branch to ensure sufficient
funding for these efforts, timely creation and implementation of the
strategy, and robust enforcement of the provisions related to sanctions
and import bans.
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Witness Biographies
Nury Turkel, Chair of the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom
Nury Turkel is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur-American lawyer,
foreign policy expert, and human rights advocate. He was born in a re-
education camp at the height of China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution
and spent the first several months of his life in detention with his
mother. He came to the United States in 1995 as a student and was later
granted asylum by the U.S. Government. Since June 2022, Nury has served
as the Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom,
having been reappointed by Speaker of the House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in May of 2022 for a two-year term. He is a Senior
Fellow at the Hudson Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations. He serves as the Chairman of the Board for the Uyghur Human
Rights Project, which he co-founded in 2003. Previously, he served as
the president of the Uyghur American Association, where he led efforts
to raise the profile of the Uyghur people in the United States.
Karrie Koesel, Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame
Karrie J. Koesel is an associate professor of political science at
the University of Notre Dame where she specializes in the study of
contemporary Chinese and Russian politics, authoritarianism, and
religion and politics. She is the author of Religion and
Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict and the Consequences (Cambridge
University Press, 2014) and co-editor of Citizens & the State in
Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China & Russia (Oxford University
Press, 2021). Professor Koesel is a Fellow in the Public Intellectuals
Program at the National Committee on US-China Relations. She served as
a member of the International Diffusion and Cooperation of
Authoritarian Regimes (IDCAR) research network; an associate scholar of
the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace
and World Affairs at Georgetown University; and a researcher for the
Under Caesar's Sword project at the University of Notre Dame. Before
joining the ND faculty, she taught at the University of Oregon.
Chris Meserole, Director of Research, Artificial Intelligence and
Emerging Technology Initiative, Brookings Institution
Chris Meserole is Research Director of the Brookings Institution's
Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative and a Fellow
in the Brookings Foreign Policy program. Meserole is an expert on
artificial intelligence, emerging technology, and global security. His
research is currently focused on the increasing exploitation of digital
technology by authoritarian regimes and violent non-state actors. He is
the co-author of an early report on how Russia and China are exporting
digital authoritarianism and has testified before the U.S. Commission
on International Religious Freedom on the digital repression of
religious minorities in China. He also co-led the inaugural working
group on recommendation algorithms and violent extremism for the Global
Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and has served on the independent
advisory council of the Christchurch Call. Meserole has an academic
background in interpretable machine learning and computational social
science. His work has appeared or been featured in The New Yorker, New
York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Wired, and other
publications.
Emile Dirks, Postdoctoral Fellow, Citizen Lab
Emile Dirks is a postdoctoral fellow at The Citizen Lab at the
University of Toronto. His research focuses on the policing of so-
called ``target people,'' Chinese citizens whom the Ministry of Public
Security views as threats to social stability and national security, as
well as police-led mass DNA collection and surveillance programs
implemented under the Xi Jinping administration. Two of his most recent
publications concern a national program to collect DNA samples from
tens of millions of Chinese men and boys, and a mass DNA collection
program targeting men, women, and children across the Tibet Autonomous
Region.
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