[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHINA'S ZERO-COVID POLICY AND
AUTHORITARIAN PUBLIC HEALTH CONTROL
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 15, 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
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
50-185 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.......................................................... 3
Statement of Yanzhong Huang, Senior Fellow for Global Health,
Council on Foreign Relations; Professor, Seton Hall University
School of Diplomacy and International Relations................ 4
Statement of Sarah Cook, Research Director for China, Hong Kong,
and Taiwan, Freedom House...................................... 6
Statement of Rory Truex, Assistant Professor of Politics and
International Affairs, Princeton University.................... 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Huang, Yanzhong.................................................. 28
Cook, Sarah...................................................... 30
Truex, Rory...................................................... 41
Merkley, Hon. Jeff............................................... 43
McGovern, Hon. James P........................................... 44
Submissions for the Record
CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form.......................... 46
Witness Biographies.............................................. 47
(iii)
CHINA'S ZERO-COVID POLICY AND AUTHORITARIAN PUBLIC HEALTH CONTROL
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was held from 10:02 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., via
videoconference, Senator Jeff Merkley, Chair, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China, presiding.
Also present: Representative James McGovern, Co-chair,
Senator Jon Ossoff, Representive Michelle Steel, and Executive
Branch Commissioner Lisa Jo Peterson.
Chair Merkley. Good morning. Today's hearing of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China entitled ``China's
Zero-COVID Policy and Authoritarian Public Health Control''
will come to order.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF MERKLEY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
OREGON; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Before we turn to the subject of this hearing, I'd like to
announce that tomorrow the Commission will publish our annual
report on human rights conditions and rule-of-law developments
in China. This report once again marks the culmination of a
year of work by the Commission's nonpartisan research staff to
produce an extra-ordinarily detailed, comprehensive, and
credible account of the situation in China. Just a huge thanks
to the staff of the Commission for really incredible work.
The Annual Report outlines the systemic and often brutal
efforts by the government of the People's Republic of China to
censor, torture, and detain ethnic and religious minorities,
critics of Chinese Communist Party policy, and advocates of
basic rights. This past year, transnational repression has been
a particular concern for this Commission, and the report
details the tools used by Chinese authorities to reach into
other countries to silence critics, to enhance control over
diaspora communities, to conduct surveillance, and to force the
repatriation of their targets.
Within China, the report documents evidence that top
leaders directed the genocide in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region, including policies of forced labor, sexual violence,
and family separation. This year's reporting also shines a
spotlight on the pervasive problem of violence against women,
with high-profile cases showing the vulnerability of women
across society. Meanwhile, coercive population control policies
directed at ethnic minority populations amount to eugenics,
while the broader policies continue to intrude on families'
decisions about whether, when, and how to have children.
Both at home and abroad, General Secretary Xi Jinping seeks
to promote what he calls a ``Chinese view of human rights.''
This report punctures that narrative. People in China and the
diaspora communities around the world deserve the same
fundamental human rights as everyone else. The 2022 Annual
Report reflects the view of our Commissioners that the human
rights abuse the report details requires a whole-of-government
response by the United States and coordinated action with other
countries.
In partnership with our newly appointed executive branch
commissioners, which we are so delighted to have, I look
forward to continuing to work across our government to advance
the recommendations in the report so we can protect those
fleeing persecution, those facing transnational repression,
those fighting coercion, and those fearing the destruction of
their culture. The Annual Report shows how the Chinese
Communist Party seeks to dominate daily life and control how
citizens live.
Nowhere has the intensity of this political and social
control been more apparent over the last year than in the
implementation of the draconian zero-COVID policy. As senior
leaders staked the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party
on this policy, authorities implemented disproportionately
harsh public security measures, often using coercive quarantine
controls that infringed on privacy rights, freedom of movement,
freedom of expression, and due process. At the height of the
Shanghai lockdown this spring, there were an estimated 373
million people under lockdown throughout China.
To enforce these lockdowns, authorities often tape up
entrances and erect fences to prevent residents from leaving
their homes. They sweep up residents of entire buildings for
mandatory quarantine in makeshift facilities. They marshal the
full power of the surveillance state to monitor, and often
control, people's movements and health. They aggressively
censor and detain critics of the policy, and they leave
vulnerable populations unable to access medical care for other
conditions.
As we will hear this morning, China's zero-COVID policy
comes at great cost to fundamental rights and may be
unsustainable or even counterproductive in protecting overall
public health. Leading experts in public health, information
suppression, and Chinese political leadership dynamics will
help us better understand this policy, what it has meant for
the people of China, and where it may go from here.
The testimony we'll hear recognizes that these policies
have resulted in some protection of the population from the
ravages of the virus the world has grappled with for nearly
three years. Every country has wrestled with how best to
protect public health from COVID-19. There are no easy answers,
but we all have an obligation to protect basic rights. This
hearing will help us understand a policy so central to what it
means to live in China today.
I will now recognize Congressman McGovern for opening
remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MASSACHUSETTS; CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON
CHINA
Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for convening this hearing on China's zero-COVID policy and its
implications for human rights. I join the Chair in welcoming
the announcement that the Commission's 2022 Annual Report will
be published tomorrow. I encourage everyone to read it on our
website. It is, once again, a well-organized and well-sourced
accounting of the Chinese government's failure to meet its
obligations under international human rights law. The report is
the product of countless hours of diligent work by our research
staff. I cannot praise them enough for their hard work on this
report, and I cannot thank them enough for the effort they made
to produce this excellent resource.
In addition to the tragedy of the 6.6 million deaths caused
by the coronavirus globally, the pandemic has put a strain on
societies and communities everywhere. Each of us has had to
change our behavior for the good of ourselves, our neighbors,
and our colleagues. The pandemic also creates challenges for
human rights. The COVID-19 guidance issued by the Office of the
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) acknowledges
that emergency measures that may restrict human rights should
be proportionate to the evaluated risk, necessary, and applied
in a nondiscriminatory way, including having a specific focus
and duration and taking the least intrusive approach possible
to protect public health. It also asserts that respect for
human rights across the spectrum, including economic, social,
cultural, and civil and political rights, will be fundamental
to the success of the public health response and recovery from
the pandemic.
Through this lens, we are here to assess China's record. We
have seen the videos of personnel in hazmat suits spraying
disinfectant in public spaces, and of crowds rushing out of
factories or amusement parks to avoid being locked down. We saw
the images of the anti-Xi banner over the bridge in Beijing,
and of lockdown protests in Lhasa, but there are thousands, if
not millions, of stories of hardship and dissent that we do not
hear, in part because of the Chinese government's censorship.
We welcome our expert witnesses to help us understand the
experiences of people in China under the zero-COVID policy.
We must know the names of the people who have suffered for
reporting or speaking out about the government's policy. These
include Zhang Zhan and Fang Bin, citizen journalists detained
in early 2020 in connection with their efforts to document the
COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. Xu Zhiyong, a civil society
advocate, arrested and tried for criticizing Xi Jinping's
handling of the pandemic. And Xu Zhangrun, a professor who was
fired and had his pension suspended for writing about the
failure of the government's response.
Lastly, I note that the Chinese government's zero-COVID
policy has created food shortages. OHCHR's COVID-19 guidance
notes that the pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity and
urges governments to take urgent steps to meet the population's
dietary needs. We have seen evidence that the lockdowns and
draconian restrictions have limited people's access to food.
The banner on the Beijing bridge read in part, ``We want to
eat.'' China is a state party to the International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which means it formally
recognizes the fundamental human right to be free from hunger.
The Chinese government is obligated, as a matter of human
rights, to ensure that its pandemic response does not punish
people into food insecurity.
Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to gaining a
greater understanding of the situation from our witnesses, as
well as recommendations for how the United States should
respond.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congressman McGovern.
Congressman Smith, are you with us? Did you want to make
opening remarks? Okay, he is not on, so we're going to go ahead
and I'm going to introduce our panel.
Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the
Council on Foreign Relations and a professor and director of
global health studies at Seton Hall University's School of
Diplomacy and International Relations. He is the founding
editor of Global Health Governance, the scholarly journal for
the new health security paradigm, and has written extensively
on the COVID-19 health pandemic and Chinese public health
developments over the last 20 years.
Sarah Cook is research director for China, Hong Kong, and
Taiwan at Freedom House. She has published multiple reports on
China's media influence operations and directs the China Media
Bulletin, a monthly digest in English and in Chinese, on media
freedom developments in China. She managed and wrote sections
for Freedom House's recent report titled, ``Beijing's Global
Media Influence: Authoritarian Expansion and the Power of
Democratic Resilience.''
Rory Truex is an assistant professor of politics and
international affairs at Princeton University. His research
focuses on Chinese politics and authoritarian systems. His
current projects explore how Chinese citizens evaluate their
political system, the relationship between media bias and
credibility in non-democracies, and patterns in dissident
behavior and punishment. In 2021, he received the President's
Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest teaching honor at
Princeton.
Thank you all for joining us for this hearing. Without
objection your full written statements will be entered into the
record. We ask that you keep your oral remarks to about five
minutes. We'll start with Dr. Huang.
STATEMENT OF YANZHONG HUANG, SENIOR FELLOW FOR GLOBAL HEALTH,
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS; PROFESSOR, SETON HALL UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF DIPLOMACY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Mr. Huang. Well, thank you, Senator Merkley, Congressman
McGovern, and members of the Commission. I am honored to be
invited to testify at this hearing on China's zero-COVID policy
and authoritarian public health control. In the written
testimony, I make three arguments on the human rights dilemmas
in zero-COVID in China.
The first is that zero-COVID, despite being a seemingly
quixotic pursuit of a COVID-free society, indeed shields most
of the population from the virus. With nearly 20 percent of the
world's population, China has recorded only 1.1 million cases.
That accounts for 1.1 percent of the total COVID cases
worldwide, and it registered about 5,000 COVID deaths. That is
actually less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. mortality level.
That extremely low level of infection and mortality appears to
evince the government's ``people first and life first,''
approach to COVID prevention and control.
But this leads to my second point. China's ability to slow
the virus is achieved to the detriment of human rights and
civil liberties. I believe Sarah and Rory are going to testify
on that, so I'm not going to repeat what I say in the written
testimony.
I want to highlight the third point--how zero-COVID
compromises people's health and well-being. The prolonged and
stringent implementation of zero-COVID nationwide has
essentially created other second-order problems, especially
when those lockdown measures impede access to food, health
care, and other basic necessities. There's a study suggesting a
significant decline in the utilization of health-care services
after lockdown measures were introduced in the country. In
cities under prolonged lockdowns, such as Xi'an, Shanghai,
Jilin, and Urumqi, residents also faced shortages of food and
other basic necessities.
By shielding the population from COVID-19, zero-COVID also
has the unintended effect of sustaining the immunity gap
between China and the rest of the world. Government data
suggests that no more than a small fraction of 1 percent of the
Chinese population acquired some level of natural immunity due
to prior infection. Now, this places China in a unique
situation of having only vaccine-induced immunity, and because
of the low efficacy rate of the Chinese vaccines, of course,
the antibodies generated by these vaccines have dropped to a
level that is considered very low or even undetectable now.
So that immunity gap significantly increases the risk of
the health-care system being overwhelmed by a rapid surge of
cases, should policy relaxation occur. Paradoxically, it
justifies the persistence of the zero-COVID policy regime. In
the meantime, the single-minded pursuit of COVID prevention and
control also means that other major public health challenges
receive less attention and that very likely increased the
overall disease burden in China. It is clear that prolonged and
stringent school closures and stay-at-home orders, in
combination with fear about COVID-19, have aggravated a mental
health crisis in the country.
In addition, by discouraging or even denying people access
to food, medicine, and care for other illnesses, the policy is
expected to contribute to growing non-communicable disease
burden, including diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, and cancer,
which are the leading killers in the country. According to the
dean of the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University,
diabetes deaths have increased by 80 percent in the country. He
also suggested that the harm to health caused by COVID-19 has
been overshadowed by the second-order disasters associated with
the stringent COVID control measures in China.
So to quickly wrap up, I want to acknowledge this huge
effort and achievement China made in shielding its 1.4 billion
people from COVID-19, and the widespread encroachment on
privacy and civil liberties in the country. In the meantime, I
want to argue that the proclaimed ``people-first and life-
first'' approach in combating COVID-19 should be evaluated in
light of the lack of commitment to addressing other major
public health challenges in the country. Moving away from zero-
COVID is the only wise approach to transcend this human rights
dilemma.
I am aware that we will be asked about policy
recommendations. For the sake of time, I will leave that for
the Q&A. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Doctor.
Now we're going to turn to Ms. Cook.
STATEMENT OF SARAH COOK, RESEARCH DIRECTOR FOR CHINA, HONG
KONG, AND TAIWAN, FREEDOM HOUSE
Ms. Cook. Thank you very much, Senator Merkley, Congressman
McGovern, and other members of the Commission. I'm really
honored to be able to speak here today.
Nearly three years after the virus known as COVID-19 first
appeared in Wuhan, as we just heard, the Chinese government is
continuing large-scale lockdowns to try and contain its spread,
but these lockdowns are also occurring in a country that is
home to the most sophisticated multilayered apparatus of
information control in the world. In my time today I'd like to
share analysis on how these two dimensions of life in China,
the government's zero-COVID policy and its information control
system, are intersecting.
For one thing, Chinese officials have gone to great lengths
to restrict the information available to the Chinese public and
the international community about the conditions in lockdown
areas. Traditional media and investigative reporting have been
censored, such as an article by Caixin, a widely respected
business publication, about hidden deaths in Shanghai's largest
nursing home. On social media, China-based tech platforms have
censored videos, posts, and articles related to lockdowns and
problems like food shortages, including simple search terms
like ``buying vegetables'' in Shanghai.
One heartbreaking target for censorship has been accounts
of non-COVID lockdown deaths. Examples of seemingly preventable
deaths due to lockdown measures rather than a disease itself
include late-term miscarriages of pregnant women denied
hospital entry, a three-year-old boy dying from carbon monoxide
poisoning, and a bus crash en route to a centralized quarantine
center. These cases have been posted online and sparked public
outcry but were then censored themselves. Posts about COVID-19
lockdowns in ethnic minority regions like Xinjiang and Tibet,
where reports of starvation have emerged, have been subject to
censorship and other forms of manipulation.
Directives were issued to ``internet commentary personnel''
in early September to engage in content-flooding efforts on
Weibo aimed at drowning out quotes about the lockdown in
Xinjiang with lifestyle and cooking posts, while the platform
deprioritized hashtags on Tibet. Of course, the Chinese
security services have also detained and prosecuted outspoken
citizens. In September, Xinjiang police reportedly detained
four Han Chinese internet users accused of ``spreading rumors''
and over 600 residents who defied lockdown orders to protest
the lack of food.
Long-term democracy advocate Guo Quan was tried last
September for inciting subversion after he published articles
criticizing the government's response to the pandemic. In
January, citizen journalist and Falun Gong practitioner Xu Na
was sentenced to eight years in prison for sending photos about
restrictions in Beijing to an overseas Chinese language
website, one of the longest known sentences to date for sharing
COVID-19-related information. The extended lockdowns in
Shanghai and other cities have prompted more experts within
China, including top medical professionals, law professors, and
financial analysts, to raise objections to the human and
economic costs of the government's zero-COVID policy, with some
calling on their leaders to consider less rigid alternatives,
but they too have encountered censorship.
Nevertheless, there are cracks in Beijing's information
control. The fact that I'm able to put this testimony together
with detailed examples demonstrates that the information the
Communist Party would prefer disappeared still circulates
inside and outside China, often thanks to ordinary Chinese
citizens and at great sacrifice. During the Shanghai lockdown,
Chinese users went to extra-
ordinary lengths to circumvent censorship, keep content online,
and find avenues for freer expression. Various initiatives have
also kept deleted content alive outside the Great Firewall.
Resentment related to lockdowns has also translated into
real-world protests. A new Freedom House project, the China
Dissent Monitor, documented 40 cases of Chinese citizens
protesting COVID-19 restrictions since June. They include
protests with hundreds of participants, not only in Shanghai
but also in Hubei, Liaoning, and Gansu provinces, and an online
hashtag movement, featuring hundreds of thousands of posts.
At least some of these outcries have yielded results at the
local level, including policy adjustments or official
accountability. In 9 of the 40 China Dissent Monitor cases
mentioned, some form of concession was documented, such as
local officials lifting burdensome travel restrictions on
commuters. Looking ahead, however, it remains highly uncertain
how much such pressures will trickle up to a nationwide change
in policy. All the while, the censorship apparatus evolves and
expands.
My written testimony includes several recommendations, but
to conclude my oral testimony, I just want to reiterate the
importance of raising the names of imprisoned free expression
activists in meetings with Chinese counterparts, and to
recognize three of the individuals that Congressman McGovern
also mentioned, who are facing perilous legal and health
conditions in custody after being jailed for reporting on
commentary related to COVID-19. Zhang Zhan, a female citizen
journalist who's serving a four-year prison sentence. Fang Bin
from the first days of the pandemic in Wuhan. Fang is also a
Falun Gong believer and was tortured during previous
imprisonment. And Xu Zhiyong, a prominent rights lawyer and
democracy advocate who has suffered years of reprisals and
abuse due to his activism. He was tried just a few months ago,
but his sentence has yet to be announced.
All three are courageous individuals and symbolic figures
for the broader array of Chinese citizens yearning for greater
free expression and government accountability. Any lenience
shown to them thanks to international pressure will have wider
ranging repercussions. Thank you very much.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Ms. Cook, and thank you
for the excellent work of Freedom House in highlighting human
rights conditions around the globe.
Now we're going to turn to Dr. Truex. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF RORY TRUEX, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF POLITICS AND
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Mr. Truex. Thank you to Chair Merkley, Co-chair McGovern,
and members of the Commission for the opportunity to join the
discussion today. I also want to thank the members and the
staff of the CECC for all their hard work on human rights. I
personally have benefited from the political prisoner database.
I use that in my own research, and it's been very helpful for
our field in understanding the nature of human rights abuse in
China today.
I wanted to focus my remarks on the political side of the
story and try to understand the main factors that underlie the
policy and why dynamic zero-COVID has persisted as long as it
has. I would say the first reason has to do with what we would
call performance-based legitimacy. It's important to remember,
as Dr. Huang alluded to, that China's COVID story has distinct
chapters, and many of them have been very positive, actually,
for public perceptions of the CCP.
After bungling the initial outbreak in December and
January, the Chinese government did manage to bring COVID under
control by March. Concurrently, Western governments, and
notably the United States, failed to contain the virus and saw
widespread casualties. This fact was repeatedly highlighted by
the Chinese government. In that period, China's zero-COVID
policy was viewed as a resounding success, both at home and
abroad, and studies suggest the CCP experienced a tangible
boost in regime support during that time.
This support might be waning in recent months due to the
human costs of zero-COVID quarantines and lockdowns, as Ms.
Cook alluded to, but it is also important to remember that in
general Chinese citizens seem to support the political system.
Other data we have also shows that Chinese citizens appear
willing to tolerate intrusions into their personal privacy and
civil liberties, with the end of preserving social order. So
even today, we would be wrong to assume that zero-COVID has no
support in Chinese society. In fact, the opposite may well be
true, as uncomfortable as that is for us.
The second key dynamic here is that zero-COVID should be
understood as a political campaign. This is a style of
governance that was more common, of course, in the Mao era but
has seen a resurgence in a different form under Xi Jinping. In
a campaign, the core leader announces a vague, ambitious policy
goal, and lower level officials are left to fill in the blanks
and implement policies to achieve the goal as best they can.
This approach is often problematic, as lower level
officials struggle to achieve targets, falsify data, and engage
in performance to show their zeal to central leadership. It's
also difficult to reverse the course of a campaign, as it is
tied personally to the Party leader who will lose stature in
the system if the policy were to fail. If I were to say, as a
political scientist, what the principal weakness of the Chinese
political system is, I would say that this is one of them--the
ability to change course can be quite constrained. All of these
dynamics are present in China's current zero-COVID policy.
I would also emphasize that the new CCP leadership lineup
announced that the 20th Party Congress privileged Xi loyalists
that faithfully implemented zero-COVID. Namely, Li Qiang, who
was the Party Secretary of Shanghai, and Cai Qi, who was the
Party Secretary of Beijing. Li Qiang is now the second-ranked
CCP member and is slated to take over the office of premier.
This means that the new Politburo Standing Committee is, in
some sense, tainted by the zero-COVID policy and will have a
strong vested interest in maintaining the perception that it
has been a success.
Third, and I won't belabor this point because I thought Ms.
Cook did an excellent job outlining these dynamics, but it's
also important to remember that zero-COVID has been a cover to
expand political control. And it's given local governments the
justification to collect more and more information on the
Chinese population and expand the reach of the surveillance
state. Chinese citizens in most areas have a health code tied
to their mobile devices, and the ability to move freely in many
places is tied to having a green screen indicating a negative
test result and no known exposure. Individuals' whereabouts are
tracked through their mobile devices, and this information can
be used to identify people with COVID exposure through close
contact.
Public health is thus a cover for the Chinese government to
collect and analyze information on people's movements, health,
and social networks and, in turn, use that information to
control their behavior. We know that certainly under Xi
Jinping, political control in China has become addictive.
Moving forward, there was initial optimism that China would
relax zero-COVID after the 20th Party Congress, but instead, Xi
Jinping appears to have used that moment to defend the policy,
seemingly doubling down on the approach. The financial markets
are eager for a change, of course, and we are seeing rumors
coming out of China to this effect.
The new measures announced this past Friday suggest a more
pragmatic approach to COVID management, but not the elimination
of the zero-COVID approach itself. I would say, just from my
own perspective, it is best not to underestimate the stickiness
of this policy, which could very well be in place in some form
for many months or even years to come. If it is rolled back,
that rollback will be very incremental and not abrupt. I will
conclude my remarks there. I do have some policy
recommendations that I hope I get to raise, but I will end my
remarks there. Thank you.
Chair Merkley. Well, thank you very much. There are a lot
of things to inquire about in all three of your reports.
We have with us Lisa Jo Peterson from the executive branch.
This is the first time, we believe, in about a decade, that
we've had a member online from the executive branch. Lisa Jo
Peterson, I would like to afford you the opportunity to go
first, if you would like.
Secretary Peterson. Thank you very much. Very happy to be
here. My apologies, but I did arrive a few minutes late so my
question may have already been covered. We are particularly
concerned about reports that zero-COVID policy has had a
disproportionately negative impact on predominantly minority
communities, including in Xinjiang. Can any of the three speak
about ways in which they may have observed the policies being
implemented differently across the country? Are there specific
groups that you see the PRC treating differently, including
Tibetans, who we know were severely impacted by the Lhasa
lockdown?
Mr. Huang. Well, I can talk about the impact of the policy,
how it could vary across population groups. I don't really know
much about Xinjiang, but I know that migrant workers--of which
there are approximately 300 million in China--low-income
households, and small businesses are hit particularly hard by
zero-COVID, especially the lockdown measures. Also, it varies
across these groups by disease. There's a nationwide survey
suggesting 60 percent of the diabetes patients experienced food
or medication shortages during the quarantine period in 2020 in
China.
We know that China has the world's largest diabetes
population. It's 141 million adults. This implementation of
zero-COVID exacerbated the problem of inequality. More
recently, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a notice to
provide one-time funding to those migrant workers who lost
their jobs because of the COVID control measures and the
college graduates who had difficulty in finding jobs.
Ms. Cook. I can speak a little bit to some of the minority
communities. I think what you see is, some of the same lockdown
measures--and I haven't looked specifically at particular
announcements being imposed in Xinjiang and Tibet, but I think
what happens there is in general the governance is so much
harsher, and the incentives are so much stronger, I think, for
some of the points that Professor Truex made, as to not allow
any wiggle room for anything and so the role of the security
state becomes stronger. As brutal as the Chinese security
apparatus is throughout China, again, there's just so much more
practice and tolerance of harsh measures in these regions, as
well as tighter censorship, that I think even if on paper it's
the same policy, once it's implemented there, the more systemic
disrespect for human rights becomes stronger.
There's also the element of how much more dangerous any
form of dissent is there, because there it's just crushed so
harshly--any small thing. I think one thing that's interesting
is that you do see not only the minority populations in those
regions but also the Han Chinese in those regions being
detained for sharing information. We've seen this in other
cases--Han Chinese living in Urumqi writing about things
happening there and then being sentenced to long prison terms,
so I think you do see it affecting a wider range of residents.
Then the other thing I've seen, in terms of other parts of
China, is that the Falun Gong community is, of course, very
severely persecuted throughout China. They've also set up this
underground system of information sharing, often more related
to things about their faith, about the persecution of the
community, but during COVID, you saw that being mobilized to
share information about the state of affairs in lockdown
regions. Then you start to see members of that community being
detained and prosecuted, even on different legal charges than
they usually get prosecuted on, because it's more related to
that freedom of expression and sharing of information,
unrelated to, say, the religious community itself. So I would
say that's also one thing that you saw.
I'll stop there. I don't know if there's anything that
Professor Truex wants to add.
Mr. Truex. No, I don't have anything to add.
Chair Merkley. Secretary Peterson, is there anything else
you wanted to inquire about?
Secretary Peterson. I wanted to follow up just a little bit
on Professor Truex's comment about the political campaign and
see if he could just dig a little deeper on ways that the PRC
is using disinformation and misinformation in this campaign,
and using those tools to hinder international journalists or
other concerned parties.
Mr. Truex. I would say when we think of a campaign, at
least in terms of studying the Chinese political system, we
often think about the difficulties of information flow
vertically, and so when Xi Jinping is announcing a war on
COVID, of course local-level officials are going to be
incentivized to suppress data about COVID cases. And so I think
we all acknowledge that the number of COVID deaths is
underreported. The number of COVID cases is underreported. We
don't quite know to what degree.
Actually, I wonder what Dr. Huang has to say about that.
That's a key dynamic in a campaign, that people at lower levels
in the system feel unwilling or unable to reveal bad
information. I would also say that COVID itself has been
another form of political cover for the Chinese government to
make it difficult for foreigners to go to China. People like
me, I used to go to China every year. I haven't been in three
years. Basically the entire foreign academic, student, and
journalistic communities are barely going to China at all. We
are trying to make conclusions about this country from
Princeton, New Jersey, or New York, or wherever we are, and
that has been a major issue.
In my policy recommendations, I do talk a lot about how we
can potentially use this moment--we saw Biden and Xi have a
meeting yesterday--as a way to reopen people-to-people
exchange. Getting Americans back in China, I think, will be
critically important.
Mr. Huang. A quick followup to Professor Truex's comments.
I agree with him about the lack of exchange during the COVID
era because the restriction measures actually are contributing
to the misinformation and disinformation efforts. You know,
that could happen on both sides in terms of the origin of the
pandemic, and in terms of the severity of the disease, so I
would strongly recommend that we reach out to the Chinese side
and start a dialogue on how to reopen the people-to-people
exchange and eliminate those unnecessary restriction measures.
Chair Merkley. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are so
delighted that Lisa Peterson was able to join us. She is the
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human
Rights, and Labor, an absolutely critical part of the State
Department's work. We're pleased to have you this morning.
I'm going to turn to some questions now, and then we'll
turn to Congressman McGovern. I want to start, Dr. Huang, with
my understanding of how China is locked into zero-COVID. As I
was listening to testimony, I was really hearing that, first,
there's almost no immunity for people having been sick, because
the policy has been highly effective, with a very low percent
of the Chinese population getting COVID, so they don't have
natural immunity. Second, that the Chinese vaccines have been
very ineffective and have not created much resistance to the
disease, so if COVID gets going, it could spread very rapidly
in a very devastating fashion.
Third, that General Secretary Xi has made this a big point
that he's emphasized directly, and so there's a lot of his
reputation wrapped up in the success of this. And that all
three of those things--from the scientific side, the
possibility of COVID raging very quickly without the immunity
or good vaccines, and from the political side, the reputation
of the government--suggest that this policy will endure for
some time. Have I summarized it correctly, or do you want to
modify my understanding?
Mr. Huang. Well, absolutely, Senator Merkley. You are
absolutely right. I think China is now sticking to zero-COVID
in part because of its concern about the worst-case scenario if
they choose to open up. Because of that immunity gap, you're
going to see a more rapid surge of cases nationwide that is
going to overwhelm the country's health-care system, that is
going to lead to mass die-offs; that is an outcome not
acceptable to the Chinese leaders in part because of concerns
about social and political stability.
Second, since President Xi himself is personally tied to
zero-COVID policy, abandoning that policy would undermine his
own personal stature, even the political legitimacy of the
regime. Also, because COVID response has been framed as a
competition between two political systems, abandoning the
policy would be tantamount to admitting failure in that
competition.
Chair Merkley. Well, thank you very much. That's very
helpful in understanding the situation. I want to turn to Ms.
Cook. You talked about the information control system, and how
capable the Chinese government is of controlling what people
hear. If I heard you right, you said one of the factors that is
rather suppressed is the amount of food shortages in Xinjiang.
I'm not sure, but you may have said that starvation is a
challenge in Xinjiang. Can you elaborate on that a bit, our
best understanding of how bad the shortage of food is?
Ms. Cook. Yes. I mean, this is really based on, I think,
some reporting from Radio Free Asia, reporting from groups like
the Uyghur Human Rights Project. And I think from the bits that
you see coming out in terms of reports of the inability to go
out to get food. Exactly what the scale is is very difficult to
know. But I think just the example I gave of the fact that
hundreds of people actually took to the streets in Xinjiang
over food shortage, and the kind of security environment and
reprisal they know they're going to face for doing that, I
think can really speak to the desperation that people there are
facing.
I think that's just one way that we have a sense--I mean,
you see tidbits of examples, reports, you know, people
tweeting. There are so many people in the Uyghur diaspora
community, of family who are saying, if they are able to
communicate, that they're hearing how little food there is, or
there was. I'm not quite certain what the current status is.
The bits of information that get out can sometimes come with a
lag. But that's one thing that I would say there.
It did sound like, again, because there's so little room to
try and negotiate with local officials, that some of those
resources that people in other parts of China have been able to
use in order to get some leniency from local officials are just
much more absent in Xinjiang.
Chair Merkley. Thank you. If we have time for a second
round of questions, I want to come back to several of the
things, including the use of content flooding,that you discuss
in your testimony, to try to distract people from the
challenges that are going on.
Dr. Truex, you noted that China has used their zero-COVID
as a cover for increasing surveillance and control and also to
keep foreigners out, including foreign scholars such as
yourself, and that you haven't been able to go for three years.
How has China handled the issue of Chinese students returning
from overseas?
Mr. Truex. I would say those students are subject to the
same quarantine measures as other international visitors. Up
until a few days ago, that was about 10 days, and at some times
during the pandemic, even longer than that. And so that alone
has presented a significant barrier to people. International
flights, during much of the pandemic, were also prohibitively
expensive. Just from my own anecdotal experience, I would say
the flow of our Chinese students back to their home country has
been slowed significantly by zero-COVID, but I wouldn't say
that that population has been necessarily singled out or
treated any differently than any other type of visitor.
Chair Merkley. Are scholars able to go to China if they're
willing to endure that 10-day quarantine?
Mr. Truex. Yes, absolutely. Yes, and we're starting to see
that more and more. I would say some academics are beginning to
go back to China and conduct research. The research climate in
China has significantly worsened in the last three years. It's
getting more and more difficult to do the type of fieldwork
that gives us the deep understanding of the political and
social dynamics there, but yes, people are starting to go back.
There are two levels of concern. One is COVID and zero-
COVID quarantines, lockdowns, but there are also concerns about
basic researcher security. The detention of Michael Kovrig and
Michael Spavor did cast a shadow over our community, and the
willingness of the Chinese government to detain foreigners for
political reasons was very worrisome to many people in our
community. So I would say there are two levels of concerns.
Recent data by ChinaFile suggests that roughly 50 percent of
foreign China scholars have pretty significant reservations
about traveling to China, given both of those concerns at this
stage.
Chair Merkley. Well, thank you. My time has expired. When
we come back for a second round, if we have time, I'm going to
ask you to clarify something that you had mentioned about the
measures announced last Friday.
Let me now turn to Congressman McGovern.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. You each speak to food
shortages and inadequate medical care as a result of zero-COVID
restrictions. As a state party to the International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, China is obligated to
protect the right to food and the right to health of its
citizens. Dr. Huang, your testimony suggests that authorities
have traded off the population's overall health status in order
to achieve a low COVID infection rate. Each of you speaks to
the way the government promotes this as a success in propaganda
narratives. Looking ahead, from an analytical standpoint, how
does the expert community measure China's policy in terms of
health outcomes? Is there any way to engage objectively with
China's scientific community? I open that up to anybody, or all
of you.
Mr. Huang. Well, absolutely. I do believe that this
actually highlights the necessity for us to engage with Chinese
scientists, researchers, scholars, even the Chinese public
health officials, in having a dialogue over issues of public
health, lack of access to healthcare, and how to improve social
and economic rights. Such conversation unfortunately came to a
halt after 2018, and now I think it's time to resume it.
We could start from something that is less politically
sensitive, like the conversation over non-communicable diseases
and mental health. We could expand later to other more
sensitive issues, including human rights. This is not to
prevent or discourage the United States from responding
effectively to challenges in other fields but to evince
sincerity and commitment that the current overture seems to be
lacking, and giving China a continued stake in the improvement
of human rights in the country.
Co-chair McGovern. Dr. Truex or Ms. Cook, do you have
anything you want to add?
Mr. Truex. I do not, no.
Co-chair McGovern. All right. Dr. Huang and Dr. Truex,
China's refusal to accept foreign- aid vaccines and rely on
less effective domestic ones has put China's citizens in an
immunity gap with the rest of the world. To what extent is this
driven by the leadership wanting to be seen as resisting
foreign influence as a core message? I mean, are we seeing a
case where that message is counterproductive?
Mr. Truex. I can offer an initial answer. I think there's a
nationalism component here. To admit that Chinese scientists
failed to design a vaccine as effective as their Western and
American counterparts would be tantamount to admitting some
sort of inferiority in the scientific enterprise, which has
been core to Xi Jinping and core to the CCP for the last 10 to
15 years. So I think a lot of it is just sort of nationalism
and patriotism, and a reluctance to accept. I think there's
also a dynamic where, because the U.S. Government has been, you
know, very combative with Xi Jinping and with the CCP, there's
certainly a little bit of bad blood and, perhaps for that
reason, an unwillingness to ask for a helping hand.
Mr. Huang. I would add also that in addition to the
technical nationalism, I think the zero-COVID mentality also
explains why China's reluctant to receive U.S. mRNA vaccines.
As we know, zero-COVID policy cannot tolerate any infections,
but even the best vaccines cannot guarantee 100 percent
protection. The mRNA vaccines cannot provide 100 percent
protection, and that makes the zero-COVID policy more
justifiable--that is, the use of non-pharmaceutical measures to
shield the population from the virus and create a COVID-free
society.
Co-chair McGovern. Did you want to add something, Ms. Cook?
Ms. Cook. Yes. I was just going to add--and this relates to
what Professor Truex was saying about the political campaign
nature of this, and some of the ways in which disinformation
internally in China has been a part. Back in March, there was
actually a campaign on Weibo to amplify a certain hashtag that
made it sound like Moderna had actually made the coronavirus.
It got 1.86 billion views. You have those kinds of narratives,
in addition to all of the disinformation related to conspiracy
theories surrounding Fort Detrick, that, again, adds to this
difficulty of reversing course--so I just wanted to mention
that intersection as well.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
Dr. Truex, you recommend reestablishing people-to-people
exchanges and funding research in international education
programs centered in China. We heard similar recommendations
from witnesses at our April hearing on minority languages and
the September hearing on religious freedom. This makes sense to
me, but how do we promote such people-based engagements without
falling victim to a stigmatization that engaging with anything
Chinese is somehow subversive?
Mr. Truex. I think this is about being realistic and
highlighting the value of people-to-people exchange. I think
it's important for American national security to have Americans
going to China, studying Chinese, and learning about the
country. Conversely, and this is perhaps more controversial to
say, it is also in our interest to have Chinese citizens coming
here, studying at our universities, perhaps assimilating and
becoming part of our expert corps. I believe Dr. Huang himself
was formerly a Chinese citizen and is now our country's most
renowned expert on COVID-19, so I would say we need to
acknowledge the benefits of people-to-people exchange. I know
that's a difficult statement to make right now, given the
security relationship, but I think it's critically important.
In terms of the Fulbright Program, for me these are easy
wins for us. This is an important program. It's produced a lot
of very important China experts over the years and if we're
looking for ways to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship while
still acknowledging strategic competition, these are relatively
straightforward measures that we can take that I think will be
beneficial to both sides.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you very much. I think I'm out of
time. I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much.
Now we're going to turn to Congresswoman Hartzler.
Congresswoman Hartzler, are you with us? If not, then I believe
that Congresswoman Steel is up next.
Representative Steel. Thank you so much and thank you to
all the witnesses. The CCP's zero-COVID policy has caused
endless lockdowns and human rights violations. Hospitals
refused patients who had serious medical needs, and citizens
could not leave their own homes. Yet the CCP continues to claim
their policies are successful. That's not what we've seen in
this, so to all the witnesses, question one is: The CCP has a
long history of suppressing its own people. We have seen many
ways and we have been told the CCP is prohibiting religious
gatherings. Is COVID being used by the CCP to pose threats? And
how can we shed more light on these violations of basic human
rights?
Mr. Huang. Thank you, Congresswoman Steel, for the
question. I think you're right. The evidence suggests that
zero-COVID measures have been used to facilitate government
suppression. We have found that under the guise of preventing
the spread of COVID, many religious venues have closed. Some of
those groups, including the government-sanctioned churches, are
now allowed to reopen, but most family churches continue to
have difficulty holding worship services and prayer meetings. I
think our future dialogue with China should be paired with
great and continued support for civil-society building and good
governance in the country.
Representative Steel. So how are we going to let the whole
world know exactly what's going on? The CCP is very closed and
it's very hard to know. That was the reason that I sent a
letter out too, actually, right before the Olympics. We sent it
out to all these big corporations that sponsored the Olympics
saying, Let's use your platform and just a little bit of that
advertising money to let the whole world know what's going on
in China, but it seems like it's not really working. So how can
we do that, and just stop these violations of basic human
rights?
Ms. Cook. I would just say that--and maybe this is a bit
more optimistic--it's so important to be putting pressure on
American companies and others to do more, but in the recent
research that my team did on Beijing's global media influence
in 30 countries, on the one hand we found that the CCP is
investing billions of dollars to get its propaganda all over
the world, but we also found that there's a lot of resilience,
especially in democratic societies, and especially editors in
local media, in Peru, in Kenya, in Senegal, using newswires,
especially from American news companies but also, say, from the
BBC, to actually cover what's happening in Xinjiang, the
protests in Hong Kong.
Maybe it seems like a small thing, but it really makes a
difference. When you look at public opinion sentiment, a lot of
people around the world do see through some of the CCP
propaganda. In the 30 countries we looked at, views of China
and the Chinese government declined in 23 of them just in the
last few years. That's actually really different from just 5 or
10 years ago. I think there's a lot more that can be done to
make sure that especially journalists in countries around the
world have the resources, have the knowledge, have some of the
language skills Rory talked about, not only to report about
what's happening in China, but about the way in which
corruption and things like that are happening in their own
countries.
It was a nice surprise to see that the pushback also works,
and it's really global. It's not just in the U.S. or Australia,
and I think that's one thing that I hope is helpful to keep in
mind.
Representative Steel. I really hope so, too. My second
question is: We've been told that the CCP is using COVID to
increase their surveillance on their citizens now. You know,
they are moving from the gatherings to citizens. How concerned
should we be about this? And what are the long-term
implications for the citizens of China if the CCP continues
this surveillance system? It's just amazing that they see who's
moving to where. I mean, just cameras all over. So how are we
going to do this?
Mr. Truex. I can offer an initial answer to that question,
which I appreciate. I would say one of the things that I'm most
concerned about is this move toward a state that has what we
might call perfect information on its own citizens--not only
information about their social networks, their spending, their
online speech, their whereabouts, but now about their health
and even DNA in some instances. It doesn't take a lot of
imagination to understand why that's problematic in the hands
of an authoritarian government. So I think we are headed in
that direction, of sort of an Orwellian panopticon, and I'm not
someone who exaggerates a lot in this area; I do think it's a
very real concern.
The implication will be that political contention in China
will become harder and harder for Chinese citizens. Even
protesting will become very difficult, let alone the sort of
mass-scale protests or revolution that could potentially spur
political change. I think in some sense we could say that the
CCP is one of the most sophisticated repressive regimes in
human history. And it will continue in that direction.
You mentioned in your earlier question what can be done. I
think one of the most important things we can do as the U.S.
Government or civil society or universities, is document what's
happening. Document what's happening through Chinese voices,
empowering Chinese voices of the dissident community, minority
communities that have been oppressed. And we can't be
irrationally optimistic that we will be able to change the
direction of Chinese domestic politics. I think this really
comes down to Xi Jinping and the people around him, and I'm not
optimistic for the next 5, to 10, to 15 years, but at the very
least, we can document what's going on, and I think that's
important in and of itself.
Representative Steel. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, my time is up. I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Well, thank you very much, Congresswoman
Steel. I don't believe that Congresswoman Hartzler has joined
us, so if that's the case, I'm going to start a second round of
questions. If anyone arrived that I haven't seen, feel free to
alert me.
I want to start with this conversation about the question
of advocating for journalists who have been imprisoned. And
this issue is one where I'd like to get the Freedom House
perspective, since you're recommending that we do that. If you
could share how effective it is for Americans to advocate for
journalists who have been imprisoned? We worry sometimes that
they may be further mistreated for being associated with the
West as we advocate for them. Or has it been effective?
I have this perspective that goes back to 2011, when a
group of 10 senators went to China. Hu Jintao was general
secretary, and the foreign journalists were saying, you know,
We have so much more freedom, we can now report on
environmental issues. One journalist told me about going to
examine a new factory, and they were bragging about their
environmental controls, but she went around to the back of it
and found a pipe with all the chemicals just sitting there,
putting all the chemicals directly into the river. But it was
okay; she could report on that.
There was a lot of reporting on dyes and places where
fabrics are developed, doing damage to rivers. There was
positive coverage of labor activists who were saying, We need
to improve working conditions. That all has changed with
General Secretary Xi, and so just your insights on the press
and Xi's willingness to change how the press is treated,
because I don't see that he has much willingness at all to
change how the press is treated. I'd love to hear a more
positive interpretation.
Ms. Cook. I absolutely agree with you, I think, in terms of
the top-down evaluation and also in terms of conditions for
foreign correspondents--some of the restrictions that Professor
Truex mentioned about scholars talking to people who are
foreign correspondents in China--you know, COVID-19 has also
affected how much they're able to get out to Shanghai, or
Beijing, or to come back, if they're about to get out there.
I think with regard to people who are already in custody,
especially further along in the kind of prosecutorial process,
honestly, in most cases, with the exception of places where
family members have preferred to keep it quiet, but in those
cases, you wouldn't see the kind of attention and documentation
that some of the cases that I've mentioned get--or the
political prisoner database of the Commission gets--you
wouldn't see that kind of attention.
In most cases, once someone's gone through that process,
the international attention tends to help. It used to be that
they could get released. That's much rarer now, in Xi's China,
but it helps protect them. It helps them get medical care. It
gets their family in to see them. It gets those lawyers in to
see them. Sometimes it gets them out on medical parole. And it
can save people's lives, even if it doesn't get them out.
I think the other thing I would say, in terms of reasons we
really emphasize this point of raising the subject of prisoners
with counterparts at all levels, is because if you give a list
to Xi Jinping, maybe that'll have effect, but less likely, but
if you go to a provincial governor or CCP Party Secretary who's
coming to the U.S. for a trade deal, and you say, Look, I know
there are these three people who are in custody in this prison
in your province, and I'd like to know, A, what their status
is, because a lot of times we just don't know what it is, and
B, I'd like you to see if they can be released.
You know, again, the local officials are dealing with all
kinds of incentives, but a lot of times they may be more
susceptible to international pressure, and it can make more of
a difference. So that would be one thing I would say.
Chair Merkley. Great. I always love to advocate for folks.
We want to make sure it has a positive impact. But the other
part of the question--and I want to ask for more comment--is
there really any willingness to lighten the oppression of the
press in China? Everything I'm hearing about information
control suggests not in the near future, at least.
I did want to turn to you, Dr. Truex. I believe your
recommendations encouraged foreign delegations to go. Do you
have any sense of how many of the senators on this Commission,
the eight senators on the Commission, would actually be allowed
to go to China and travel to various provinces that they might
request to visit? Would we even be allowed into China?
Mr. Truex. I think that's an open question. I think you
probably would. I've personally been involved in a delegation a
few years ago through the National Committee on U.S.-China
Relations. And I think it's important to remember, when one
goes on a delegation like that, you are seeing the China that
the CCP wants you to see, so things can become very scripted.
The interactions are very controlled. We shouldn't have
delusions that we're going to have free access to Xinjiang, or
Tibet, or some of these other places. I think that's important
to acknowledge.
But I would say even those kinds of highly controlled
situations, the sort of political theater around those
interactions, can be informative. As long as one goes in with
the right lens and understanding what you're getting out of
that type of exchange, I think it can still be valuable. My
sense would be, who knows? I think on the Chinese side there
probably would be some appetite for rebuilding some
relationships, but that depends on elite politics. And I'm not
really a party to that.
Chair Merkley. Right. You've mentioned that there were
measures announced last Friday related to COVID. Can you bring
us up to date on what those were and how those might change the
course slightly?
Mr. Truex. Dr. Huang, could you do a better job of that
than me, or do you want me to give it a try?
Mr. Huang. You go ahead. [Laughs.]
Mr. Truex. Well, basically, 20 measures were announced this
last Friday that amounted to a slight relaxation of some of the
quarantine and lockdown practices. For example, the time of
quarantine once you enter into China has been reduced. I
believe it's down to four or five days, plus three days at
home. They're also going to stop tracing contacts of contacts,
so they're going to kind of pare down contact tracing in terms
of the exposures. Instead of doing second-order exposures,
they're just going to limit the first-order exposures, so a
slightly more pragmatic approach to COVID that was going to be
rolled out throughout the country. There was, in my sense, an
overreaction to this, and people are interpreting that this is
the end of zero-COVID. I would say this is a very small,
incremental step and it shouldn't be overinterpreted. But Dr.
Huang, I think you are the expert here.
Mr. Huang. Well, I agree, because if you look at all this--
the Politburo Standing Committee meetings and the followup
measures, the objective is to optimize zero-COVID, not to
abandon it. It's important to point out that at the local
level, the incentive structure has not been changed. The local
government officials are still held accountable for the COVID
situation in their jurisdiction, so if anything bad happens,
it's their responsibility, and they could lose their jobs.
I also believe that if there's some real change happening,
it may not come from the very top. It's very likely from the
bottom up; the local government officials do not have the money
to sustain the policy, and the local residents are so
frustrated with zero-COVID that the two might even ``collude''
to push for real change from the bottom.
Chair Merkley. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that
information, and the way you phrased it--optimizing zero-COVID
rather than ending it.
We have been joined by Senator Ossoff. The Senator was on
the Senate floor with baby Eva yesterday. I rushed over too
late--I'm told by a minute--to see baby Eva, but
congratulations on your healthy, beautiful little girl. We'll
turn it over to you, Senator Ossoff.
Senator Ossoff. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I'm
sure that we can arrange a meeting between you and Eva at a
time convenient for the baby.
Chair Merkley. I would love to do that.
Senator Ossoff. We will get our schedulers working on that.
Thank you for convening this hearing.
Ms. Cook, I would like to ask you a few questions about the
state of press freedom within China, and also the repressive
tactics that the CCP uses to shape and control reporting
external to China. Could you please characterize, Ms. Cook,
what evolution you've seen in the state of press freedom,
repression of reporting, and the external repression tactics
during this COVID era and, if possible, as it relates to the
CCP's zero-COVID policy?
Ms. Cook. Sure. Press freedom in China was bad before
COVID. There was very little space already under Xi Jinping
over the past decade. Some of the opening you saw previously
was for investigative reporting. I think one thing we saw in
the early, early days is that actually a lot of what we know
about what happened in Wuhan now is because of reporting by not
only citizen journalists but some media outlets, professional
outlets in China. After censorship and other reprisals, that's
pretty much been closed very much and so the full apparatus
that the Communist Party uses to not only suppress coverage,
but guide--they call it guiding--and manipulate information to
push certain content through the media ecosystem and online has
just continued to be refined and advanced.
One small tactic I'll mention is you just see more of the
manipulation of the hashtags and the trending hashtags on major
platforms, like Weibo, and then to really drive certain points
related to COVID, related to the United States, to be honest,
related to conspiracy theories, disinformation, whatever it is
they want to push. Then you can see that there is manipulation
surrounding that or other ways that you see elite censorship
directives to indicate that manipulation. So I think that's one
newer tactic that certainly affects what people can do.
The other is the shuttering of WeChat accounts. People in
China who actually need their WeChat account now to survive and
have their health code and things like that displayed, or other
types of checks and information on their mobile phone in China,
can get it shut down or suspended temporarily because they
express some views that the Chinese government doesn't like.
We're now seeing people write handwritten apologies to the
Chinese company that runs the platform in order to try to get
their accounts reinstated. So that's also one intersection in
China.
Outside of China, it's interesting, because the CCP has
really been on the defensive, not only because of what's
happened with regard to COVID and the early coverups in Wuhan,
but also what's happened in Hong Kong during the same period of
time, the horrific atrocities happening in Xinjiang. They've
been trying to be more aggressive on the propaganda side but
also in terms of trying to suppress local coverage.
In this latest report, published in September, we did case
studies in 30 countries. We found in 24, evidence of some kind
of censorship being applied to China-related coverage. In about
half, it was coming through a Chinese official or a Chinese
diplomat. In 17 of the countries, it was actually coming
through a local actor. You would see a local government
official trying to suppress news coverage related to China, a
local media owner telling reporters not to report about
something either related to something happening in China or
some kind of local activities, investments, Huawei or things
like that.
I think that's where you see the intersection between the
broader investment that the Communist Party has made in
political influence globally starting to translate into the
domestic incentives that certain actors have to either support
propagandizing CCP talking points or suppress certain types of
coverage. So I would say that was one notable finding that came
out of that research.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Ms. Cook. I'd like to ask you
this second question and then turn to Mr. Huang as well on the
same subject. In Tibet, in Xinjiang, we've seen some of the
most restrictive, ostensibly COVID-related, lockdowns in the
past year. Of course, these regions are home to minority
populations that already face massive repression and
surveillance. How has this longstanding pattern and practice of
surveillance and repression interacted with the new COVID
regime to change conditions in those areas?
Ms. Cook. That's a good question. With lockdowns elsewhere,
you see these waves. Certainly in terms of the general reduced
travel that you see within China from one region to another,
because of zero-COVID generally you've seen reduced travel.
When the lockdown comes, there is that additional
intensification and securitization that is even more extreme
than what you would see in other parts of China. That creates a
situation in terms of people being less inclined to dissent or
to protest and gain concessions than what's possible in other
parts of China. That bottom-up pressure creates even more
severe conditions.
For example, there was one report that Radio Free Asia had
about a single day in one region of Xinjiang, in Ghulja, that
has a long history of horrific suppression of the Uyghur
community, where there were 22 reported deaths unrelated to
COVID, either because of other medical conditions or because of
starvation. That just may be one snippet of what we can know
about what's happening, but you do see, as in other areas, that
what's happening, and the repression, and the restrictions, and
the impact on people's lives in other parts of the country just
become further amplified in these regions.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you. Mr. Huang, I've got about 25
seconds remaining. Over to you on the same question, please.
Mr. Huang. Well, absolutely. When we talk about the
implementation of zero-COVID in China, personally I don't think
they're targeting a particular ethnic minority in the
implementation of the policy. I think those draconian measures
are being more strictly pursued in some regions in China, more
likely because the local governments there are not so
experienced in dealing with COVID. You know, the lack of state
capacity basically led them to rely on more heavy-handed
measures, like suppression of press freedom. There the people's
voices are barely heard, and that is very different from the
situation in cities like Shanghai or Guangzhou.
Senator Ossoff. Thank you so much, Mr. Huang, Ms. Cook, and
Mr. Truex for your testimony. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Senator Ossoff.
We're turning to Co-chair McGovern, followed by Secretary
Peterson, and then to Congresswoman Steel.
Co-chair McGovern.
Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you. Dr. Truex and Ms. Cook,
the banners hung on the bridge in Beijing in late October made
international headlines, and understandably so. It's not every
day that you see ``Traitor Xi Jinping'' displayed publicly in
China. How much can we reliably extrapolate from this? You
testified to positive perceptions of the Party's performance.
How much space is there for citizens to push back against
government policies that they don't like in ways that we cannot
observe from here? Can zero-COVID help us understand
counterpressure within their system?
Mr. Truex. I can make an initial answer. I think it's a
great question. From our perspective--I do a lot of work on
public opinion data in China, and we should always be careful
when we measure public opinion in China on surveys because
there's always a concern that Chinese citizens might be afraid
to reveal how they really feel, even in a survey setting, so
anything I say should be taken with that grain of salt.
Nevertheless, the data does suggest that Chinese citizens
in general express very, very high levels of support for the
central government, and much lower levels of support for the
lower levels of government. The central government--Xi Jinping,
the Politburo Standing Committee--is viewed as sort of
virtuous, and then sort of these incompetent, venal local
governments. That's the general kind of narrative, I would say,
from the public opinion data.
People do feel comfortable expressing dissatisfaction,
though, in different policy areas. Historically the environment
and corruption back in the Hu Jintao era were the number one
and two issues for Chinese citizens. Inequality is also a major
concern. I would say that that dissatisfaction with specific
policy areas doesn't necessarily mean that Chinese citizens
seem to be voicing preferences for democracy or Western
multiparty democracy. Again, there's nothing in the data that
suggests that group in the population. They may well exist, but
I tend to be of the belief that China's political education
system--which teaches citizens to love the Party and love the
regime--is quite effective in the long term.
That's not to say there isn't dissent. And I think the
example you referenced, the so-called Bridge Man, which came
out a few weeks ago, is important. We never quite know the
level of dissatisfaction in China. I think we can observe
protests; it's telling. I believe there was a protest in
Guangzhou a few days ago where people were overturning police
cars. That's not something we see every day. We can observe
these visible protests that give us a hint as to where people
are at.
Also, the overseas population is important. In response to
the Bridge Man banner, even at Princeton University and many
universities across the country and the world, there were
similar protests and banners put up by the overseas Chinese
students, which doesn't always happen. My personal assessment
would be that I think there is waning support for zero-COVID.
It is exerting a kind of legitimacy cost for the regime.
I would also caution us in the sense that I do not think
that this is something that necessarily threatens the regime in
terms of regime change. There's a Western tendency to presume
that the CCP is always on the brink of collapse, but we've been
wrong on that for about 30 years now, so I think we need to be
cautious with that interpretation.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. Ms. Cook, to you. Do you have
anything to add?
Ms. Cook. Yes, I would just point to this new project,
actually, some of my colleagues are working on, called the
China Dissent Monitor. It's basically a database they've
created of incidents of protest and dissent in China. I think
what they've found really echoes what Professor Truex was
saying, in that relatively few protests or acts of dissent
target the central government. It's much more common for it to
target the local government or companies, but they do get
concessions.
The data and the cases they collected just since June of
protests in multiple different provinces related to zero-COVID
restrictions, people gained concessions in nine of those. Those
were mostly against local officials putting some kind of
restriction on commuting, on movement, or some other kind of
extreme measure that was causing serious hardship.
They ended up backing off, actually, after there was some
kind of--usually it was a real-life protest. In some cases, it
was more of an online protest, so I think that's partly what
Chinese people are navigating at the grassroots level, where
there can be serious reprisals and people get arrested, but
it's not a completely lost cause if you're trying to get some
kind of change or even accountability at some hospitals, and
things like that, at the local level.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
Dr. Truex, you say that lockdowns continue to ebb and flow
throughout the country. Can you give us a sense of where the
decisions are being made? Are decisions on which cities are
locked down made by the central government, or are municipal
officials making decisions with guidance from the center? If
the latter, to what extent does zero-COVID reflect the
maximalist dynamic that we've seen in implementation of policy
in other areas? I'm thinking of the strike hard campaigns of
Tibet and Xinjiang, where local officials are incentivized to
be as hardline as possible to please their superiors.
Mr. Truex. My understanding is that a lot of the major
decisions for a given area are made by the local government. So
for a given city, it would be by the municipal government,
namely the Party Secretary and the mayor of that locality,
certainly in coordination with higher levels of government, but
I think they have a fair amount of leeway in what they do. I
think your point is astute, in that this gives rise to that
performative dynamic that I was outlining earlier, in the sense
that certainly at the beginning of the COVID outbreak, and even
in the last six months, no official wants to be seen as too
light on COVID.
In fact, we observe the opposite. Li Qiang, who was the
Party Secretary of Shanghai, who oversaw the debacle that was
the Shanghai lockdowns, was rewarded and is now the number two-
ranked leader in China. I think that's quite telling. My sense
is that moving forward, given where we're at with the economy
and the kind of biological realities of COVID and the fact that
it will likely overwhelm the system at some point, there might
be some innovation at lower levels of government to try to
implement slightly more relaxed measures. They are balancing
COVID versus social stability and the economy. These lower
level officials are trying to maximize across these multiple
dimensions, and driving COVID down to zero might not always be
the most productive avenue moving forward.
My guess is that we're going to see some experimentation at
lower levels of government, but to date, it has been a lot of
that kind of maximalist, performative governance that you
alluded to, yes.
Co-chair McGovern. Thank you very much. I yield back.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
We now turn to Secretary Peterson.
Secretary Peterson. Thanks very much. Just a quick followup
on protest actions among the diaspora. Have you seen evidence
of reprisals against the people in the diaspora when they
undertake these actions?
Mr. Truex. I personally have not to date. I think a lot of
these actions are very anonymized. What I'm observing on
campuses across the country and the world is the placement of
posters. Those are usually done under cover of night, and
they're done anonymously. We aren't observing, at least I
haven't seen much in the way of mass protest by Chinese
students or citizens against Xi Jinping or against zero-COVID,
which would lead to more direct reprisals. In our field we talk
about the repertoire of contentions. The way people protest and
the way they voice their discontent is a function of the
repressive environment. I think overseas Chinese citizens are
quite astute. They know that this is the way to make their
voices heard and known in a relatively safe way.
Secretary Peterson. Thank you very much. I yield the
remainder of my time.
Chair Merkley. Thank you very much.
Okay, we're going to wrap up. I really appreciate very much
the expertise of each of the witnesses--Dr. Huang from the
Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. Cook from Freedom House, and
Dr. Truex from Princeton University, you've really helped to
inform the dialogue in America about the conditions of the
zero-COVID policy and very many related pieces of the puzzle.
We appreciate it.
The record will remain open until the close of business on
Friday, November 18th for any items members would like to
submit for the record or additional questions for our
witnesses. And with that, our hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
------
Prepared Statement of Yanzhong Huang
introduction
On May 13, 2022, after the U.S. crossed the one million marker in
Covid-related deaths, China's foreign ministry spokesperson contrasted
the gruesome situation with that in China and asked ``Who is mouthing
the empty slogan of human rights and who is actually putting people
first?'' He went on to proclaim that ``The answers are self-evident'':
In the spirit of putting people and life first, the Chinese
government gives priority to people's life, safety and health.
It follows the ``dynamic zero-COVID'' policy and adopts
targeted and science-based protocols for the most effective
COVID-19 containment at the lowest cost possible. Any anti-
COVID measure comes at a cost to the economy and society. But
it is only temporary and worthwhile compared to priceless and
irretrievable lives.
This ``people first, life first'' approach is officially used to
legitimize its nearly three-year campaign against Covid-19. Under the
so-called ``dynamic zero-Covid'' policy, heavy-handed government
intervention measures, including mass PCR testing, mandatory
quarantines, aggressive contact tracing, and city-wide snap lockdowns,
have been undertaken to cut the local transmission chain and eliminate
Covid cases as soon as they flare up. In hindsight, the seemingly
quixotic pursuit of a Covid-free society shields most of the population
from the virus. Nevertheless, stringent and persistent implementation
of zero-Covid not only raises concerns over human rights and civil
liberties violations, but also has the unintended result of putting
people's overall health and well-being in harm's way, thereby
undermining the rights to develop and survive, which the government
considers the core of human rights.
how zero-covid protects people's health
Measured by the number of Covid infections and mortality, China is
by no means one of the most successful in the world. With nearly 20
percent of the world's population, China has recorded only 1.1 million
cases, accounting for 1.1 percent of total Covid cases worldwide. Most
of the infections occurred in Wuhan in the spring of 2020 and Shanghai
in the spring of 2022. It registered 5,226 Covid deaths--most of them
occurred during the Wuhan outbreak in the spring of 2020--which is less
than 0.5 percent of the U.S. mortality level and almost negligible
compared to the 6.61 million deaths worldwide. While the U.S. continues
to register more than 300 daily Covid deaths, there have been no new
reported Covid-19 deaths in China for more than six months. In this
way, China is largely spared the so-called long-Covid--new, returning
or ongoing symptoms--which, according to a Brookings report in August,
affect 16 million people of working age in the U.S. The extremely low
levels of infection and mortality appear to evince the government's
``people first and life first'' approach in Covid prevention and
control.
concerns about human rights and civil liberties
China's ability to slow the virus nevertheless is achieved to the
detriment of human rights and civil liberties. Zero-Covid policy has
been imposed from the top down without any institutionalized
negotiation with the people who are directly affected by the policy.
Like enforcement of birth control policy in the 1980s, enforcement of
zero-Covid is largely backed up by coercive means, although the
government also relies on propaganda to persuade people to buy its
narrative on the need to sustain the policy structure. Snap lockdowns
and the extensive use of AR codes and ``the pop-up window'' enable the
government to restrict people's mobility at will. People are forced to
be tested regularly in order to access public transportation and other
public venues. While infected people, no matter how mild their symptoms
are, are immediately isolated and treated in designated hospitals,
their close contacts and secondary close contacts are sent--often
against their will--to designated places for 7-day quarantine.
The human rights woes are often amplified with the application of
``one-size-fits-all'' and ``cengceng jiama'' (i.e., the imposing of
additional targets and requirements at every lower administrative
level). After one Covid case is identified, residents in the entire
building would be sent to quarantine centers.
In order to justify these draconian measures, the state and social
media outlets have consistently highlighted the danger of Covid-19. The
fear of being infected and suffering from its health and non-health
consequences led to widespread stigmatization of infected people and
their close contacts in China. A person who happens to be infected
worries about not only the potential severe symptoms but also the
harassment and cyberbullying associated with the leak of private
information. Driven by the coronaphobia, some Chinese companies
publicly reject job seekers who recovered from Covid or had been
quarantined. Early this month, fears about Covid and poor living
conditions led to an exodus of workers from Foxconn in Zhengzhou, the
world's largest iPhone factory.
Violation of privacy and civil liberties is also exacerbated by the
widespread use of invasive surveillance techniques to monitor and track
people's movements. While many liberal democracies, including the U.S.,
use virus tracking apps, and Chinese people appear to acquiesce to
handing over personal data for pandemic control, the unprecedented use
of such technologies by an untransparent authoritarian regime has led
many China watchers to suspect that zero-Covid may provide a proof of
concept for an Orwellian state seeking to control every aspect of
social life in China. Already, the health code system has enabled the
government to have combined access to personal information including
people's Covid test results, their mobile phone location tracking,
their government issued ID number, and their vaccination status.
The surveillance state is so omnipresent and efficient that a
resident who just purchased anti-fever medicine from a local pharmacy
could receive a government notice next day asking them to be tested for
Covid.
Such concerns are not groundless. In June, local governments in
Zhengzhou, Henan province tampered with health codes of bank run
victims turned protesters so that they were denied access to all public
venues and transport and even subject to mandatory quarantine. Evidence
also suggests that zero-Covid measures facilitated government crackdown
on the nascent civil society. Under the guise of breaking up illegal
gatherings to prevent the spread of Covid, many religious venues are
closed. While government sanctioned churches are allowed to reopen when
zero-Covid measures ease up, most family churches continue to have
difficulty holding worship services and prayer meetings.
how zero-covid compromises people's health and well-being
Prolonged and stringent implementation of zero-Covid nationwide has
also created other second-order problems. Lockdown measures, for
example, impede access to food, healthcare and other basic necessities.
A study conducted by Chinese scientists found a significant decline in
the utilization of healthcare services after lockdown measures were
introduced in China. Chinese media reported a number of cases where
people have died after being denied timely medical treatment for their
non-Covid related illnesses. In cities under prolonged lockdowns, such
as Xi'an, Shanghai, Jilin and Urumqi, residents also face shortages of
food and other basic necessities.
The impact on people's livelihood varies across population groups,
exacerbating the problem of inequity. Migrant workers (approximately
292.5 million in China), low-income households and small businesses are
hit particularly hard by the lockdown. Occasionally local governments
offered them small loans and subsidies, which appeared to be too little
and too late. According to a nationwide survey, 60 percent of diabetes
patients experienced food or medication shortages during the quarantine
period in 2020 in China (which has the world's largest diabetes
population--116 million adults), which was much higher than those
without diabetes.
By shielding the population from Covid-19, zero-Covid has the
unintended result of sustaining the immunity gap between China and the
rest of the world. No more than the small fraction of one percent of
the Chinese population acquired some level of natural immunity due to
prior infection. This places China in a unique situation of having only
vaccine-induced immunity. Because of the low efficacy rate of Chinese
vaccines, however, the antibodies generated by these vaccines have
dropped to a level that is considered low or even undetectable. The
immunity gap significantly increases the risks of the healthcare system
being overwhelmed by a rapid surge of cases after policy relaxation,
which paradoxically justifies the persistence of the zero-Covid policy
regime.
Single-minded pursuit of Covid prevention and control also means
that other major public health challenges receive less attention, which
very likely increases the overall disease burden in China. It is
increasingly clear that prolonged and stringent school closures and
stay-at-home orders, in combination with the fear about Covid-19, have
aggravated a mental health crisis in China. A national survey taken in
2020 found that 35 percent of respondents suffered from mental
disorders including anxiety and depression. In addition, by
discouraging and even denying people access to food, medicine and care
for other illnesses, the policy is expected to contribute to growing
non-communicable disease burden, including diabetes, heart attacks,
stroke, and cancer, which are the leading killers in China.
According to Peng Kaiping, dean of the School of Social Sciences at
Tsinghua University, diabetes deaths have increased by 80 percent in
China, where 840,000 people died of diabetes annually before the
pandemic. He also suggested that the harm to health caused by Covid-19
has been overshadowed by the second-order disasters associated with the
stringent Covid control measures in China.
In addition, zero-Covid's devastating impact on China's economy is
taking a heavy toll on people's livelihood. Over 460,000 Chinese firms
were closed in the first quarter of 2022 alone. The widespread business
failures might explain why the youth unemployment rate is so high
(close to 20 percent). The economic slowdown threatens to put working
class and migrant workers at risk of falling back into poverty, which
prompts the central government to provide one-time relief funding to
``families or individuals whose basic life is in temporary difficulties
due to the epidemic.''
conclusion
Mike Ryan, head of WHO's health emergencies program, once said that
all pandemic control actions should ``show due respect to individual
and human rights.'' As far as human rights in China are concerned,
there is a huge perception gap between China and the West. Critics of
China's human rights tend to focus on individual political and civil
liberties in the country, while the Chinese government prefers to talk
only about the strides it has made in achieving collective social and
economic rights, such as increased access to healthcare and elimination
of absolute poverty. In appreciation of the equal status of both types
of rights, this testimony acknowledges the huge efforts and
achievements of China in shielding its 1.4 billion people from Covid-19
and the widespread encroachment on privacy and civil liberties in the
country. In the meantime, it also suggests that the proclaimed people-
first and life-first approach in combating Covid-19 should be evaluated
in light of the lack of commitment to addressing other major public
health challenges. Preliminary evidence seems to suggest that the
extremely low level of Covid infection and mortality may be achieved to
the detriment of people's overall health status, which undermines the
government narrative on its human rights achievements. Moving away from
zero-Covid is the only wise approach to transcend this human rights
dilemma.
The Council on Foreign Relations or Seton Hall University takes no
institutional positions on policy issues and has no affiliation with
the U.S. Government. All statements of fact and expressions of opinion
contained herein are the sole responsibility of the author.
______
Prepared Statement of Sarah Cook
______
Information Suppression and Dissent in China in the Context of
the Chinese Government's Zero-COVID Policy
Senator Merkley, Congressman McGovern, and other members of the
commission, thank you for inviting me to speak to you today.
Nearly three years after the virus now known as COVID-19 first
appeared in Wuhan, the Chinese government is continuing a strict, even
draconian, policy to try to contain its spread. While this approach
undoubtedly helped stem the spread of the virus and save lives in China
during the early months of the pandemic, its inflexible persistence in
the face of less dangerous but more transmissible variants has brought
significant costs to the Chinese economy, people's health and well-
being, the free flow of information, and the Chinese Communist Party's
(CCP) own legitimacy. Since March, at least 45 cities across China with
populations totaling 373 million people \1\--more than the entire
population of the United States--stretching from Shenzhen in the south
to Jilin Province in the north have faced full or partial lockdowns.\2\
These lockdowns are occurring in a country that is also home to the
most sophisticated and multi-layered apparatus of information control
in the world. Freedom House's latest edition of Freedom on the Net, a
global assessment of internet freedom published last month, found that
the Chinese government was the worst abuser of internet freedom for the
eighth consecutive year.\3\ This apparatus of information control has
been intimately intertwined with the Chinese authorities' response to
the COVID-19 pandemic from its inception.
So, how are these two dimensions of life in China--the government's
Zero-COVID policy and its information control system--intersecting?
Three aspects of information suppression over the past year are
notable, drawing on incidents and analysis from Freedom House's China
Media Bulletin and other research:
1. Suppressing news reporting of COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns in
China
As occurred in Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic, one key
target of censorship or other reprisals, is news and information
related to new outbreaks or conditions in locked-down areas.
Restricting traditional media and investigative reporting. Chinese
news outlets are subject to continued censorship directives from the
CCP dictating what they can and cannot report on. On rare occasions
when journalists have deviated from state guidance to report more
independently on an outbreak, their work has been censored. Caixin, a
widely respected business publication with a reputation for
investigative journalism, released a long investigative report on April
2, 2022, about hidden deaths at Shanghai's largest nursing home; the
article was later deleted by censors.\4\ An April 1 article about the
hospital by the state-owned English-language outlet Sixth Tone was also
deleted.\5\
Authorities have also attempted to dictate how media should report
on the lifting of lockdowns. For example, as lockdown restrictions in
Shanghai began to lift at the end of May, a leaked censorship directive
published by the US-based China Digital Times website suggested that
local media were prohibited from writing about the end of the
restrictive two-month period in the city on grounds that it was never
declared in the first place.\6\ ``Unlike Wuhan, Shanghai never declared
a lockdown, so there is no `ending the lockdown,' '' according to the
leak. Instead, the media were told to clarify that ``static management-
style suppression'' was lifting only in certain districts.
Social media censorship. As Chinese citizens have turned to social
media and other online tools to share information and register
complaints about lack of food or other problems in locked-down areas,
many have found their messages being censored and their accounts being
temporarily or permanently suspended. According to the latest Freedom
on the Net assessment, nearly three years into the pandemic, COVID-19
continues to be one of the most censored topics on the Chinese
internet. In Shanghai, for example, after residents turned to social
media to protest a lack of food \7\ and the authorities' handling of
the crisis,\8\ China-based tech platforms censored related videos,
posts, and articles, and some authorities told residents not to post
``pandemic-related messages online.'' \9\ The social media platform
Weibo began censoring the search term ``buying vegetables in Shanghai''
as complaints over food shortages grew.\10\
``Content flooding'' and hashtag manipulation to drown out
Xinjiang, Tibet complaints. This fall, regions with large populations
of ethnic minorities such as Xinjiang and Tibet have experienced
severe, lengthy COVID-19 lockdowns, accompanied by reports of
starvation.\11\ These areas are typically subjected to harsher
censorship than other parts of China, rendering it even more difficult
for information about events on the ground to emerge. Yet people in
these regions have posted their frustrations and fears online,
resulting in censorship and arrest of both minority and Han
residents.\12\ Censors have not only tried to delete certain content
but also to manipulate information in other ways. According to a leaked
directive published by China Digital Times,\13\ previously trained
``internet commentary personnel'' were ordered in early September to
engage in ``content flooding'' efforts on Weibo, aimed at drowning out
posts about the lockdown in Ili prefecture in Xinjiang with lifestyle
and cooking posts, and other innocuous material.\14\ A week later,
netizens in Lhasa began begging social media users to ``please pay
attention'' to harsh lockdown measures and poor medical care amid a
wave of positive COVID-19 cases there.\15\ Weibo responded by
deprioritizing a hashtag on Tibet.
Prosecution of whistleblowers and critics. The Chinese security
services have supplemented these measures with detentions and
prosecutions of outspoken citizens, including members of ethnic and
religious minorities, who have tried to share information with
audiences within and outside China about conditions in the country. In
March 2021, retired professor Chen Zhaozhi went on trial in Beijing for
posting online that the ``Wuhan pneumonia is not a Chinese virus, but
Chinese Communist Party virus.'' \16\ Chen, who suffers from a number
of illnesses, was denied bail. As of June 2022, he remained in
detention.\17\ In September 2021, human rights activist Guo Quan was
tried for ``inciting subversion'' after he published articles
criticizing social injustice, corruption, and the government's response
to the COVID-19 pandemic.\18\ In November 2021, a man in the Ningxia
region was detained for nine days after he sent a meme to a group on
WeChat complaining about the local COVID-19 control measures.\19\ In
January 2022, citizen journalist and Falun Gong practitioner Xu Na was
sentenced to eight years in prison for sending photos and information
about COVID-19-related restrictions in Beijing to an overseas Chinese-
language website for publication online, one of the longest known
sentences to date for sharing pandemic related information.\20\ In
August 2022, a teacher in Lhasa was arrested for posts on WeChat and
Weibo documenting harmful aspects of how the city's harsh COVID-19
lockdown had been implemented.\21\ And in September, Xinjiang police
reportedly detained four internet users accused of ``spreading
rumors,'' and over 600 people who defied lockdown orders to protest the
lack of food.\22\
2. Suppressing information about public outcries over Zero-COVID
policy implementation
As lockdowns have affected an ever-expanding number of Chinese
citizens, some of whom have faced life-or-death challenges due to the
lockdown policies rather than the virus itself, the CCP regime and its
censors have had to contend with large-scale public outcries and taken
actions to silence them.
Food shortages. During a stringent lockdown in Xi'an that began on
December 23, 2021 and encompassed 13 million people, residents of the
city turned to Weibo to express anger about food shortages.\23\ The
hashtag #DifficultToBuyFoodInXian received over 370 million clicks by
January 2, 2022. Two days later, Xi'an officials banned residents from
posting about the pandemic,\24\ and placed three individuals in
detention for up to seven days on charges of ``picking quarrels and
provoking trouble,'' an offense commonly used in free expression cases,
in response to their complaints on WeChat.\25\ During the Shanghai
lockdown that stretched from late March into May 2022, an undated video
from a housing compound in Minhang District showed residents protesting
outside against COVID-19 measures, saying ``we want to eat'' and ``we
want freedom''; the social media platform WeChat censored the clip,
claiming it violated the terms and conditions of usage.\26\
Non-COVID lockdown deaths. With almost each lockdown, there have
emerged public outcries related to residents who died seemingly
preventable deaths as a result of the strict COVID-19 measures rather
than the disease itself. Examples include late-term miscarriages of
pregnant women denied hospital entry,\27\ heart attacks,\28\ or deaths
from a bus crash en route to a centralized quarantine center.\29\ These
cases have been posted online and circulated within and outside China,
but often then subject to censorship. One recent such tragedy occurred
just weeks ago in Zhengzhou in Henan province. A three-year-old boy
whose neighborhood had been locked down since early October died from
carbon monoxide poisoning after police reportedly refused to allow his
father to take him for emergency medical care.\30\ The case and the
father's account blaming Zero-COVID policies for ``indirectly killing''
his son sparked heartbreak, anger, and street protests. But within days
his posts had been censored,\31\ as were hashtags and other comments
grieving the young boy's death.\32\
3. Suppressing medical professionals' and other elites' questioning
of the Zero-COVID policy
The extended lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities have prompted
more citizens to raise objections to the human and economic costs of
the government's Zero-COVID policy, with some calling on their leaders
to consider less rigid alternatives that might still spare many lives.
The prominence, diversity, and number of people who have encountered
censorship for trying to engage in such a rational discussion are
significant.
Medical professionals. Medical professionals remain a key target
for censors, as they have been since the start of the pandemic. Indeed,
the suppression of health experts' speech in late 2019 and early 2020
may have denied the country and the world an opportunity to contain the
virus at the outset.\33\ Yet the practice continues. In early April,
Zhong Nanshan, the country's top respiratory disease specialist,
published an English article in the National Science Review that
offered suggestions on how China could reopen ``in an orderly and
effective manner'' in the coming months.\34\ While it acknowledged the
effectiveness of policies to date, the article warned that the strict
Zero-COVID policy approach ``cannot be pursued in the long-run.'' A
Chinese version was quickly censored,\35\ and during the night of April
20-21, state media flooded Baidu search-engine results with items that
partially quoted Zhong expressing support for the existing strategy and
downplaying his remarks on the need to gradually open up.\36\ On May
10, World Health Organization (WHO) director Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, who had previously praised the Chinese government's
pandemic response, remarked that China's strategy was ``not
sustainable'' in the face of the virus's easily transmissible Omicron
variant.\37\ Almost immediately, as clips and references to the comment
circulated online, censors descended on his remarks, suppressing his
image, name, related hashtags, and even UN-affiliated accounts on Weibo
and WeChat.\38\
More grassroots health workers have also been silenced. In early
April, Dr. Miu Xiaohui, a retired infectious disease expert, attempted
to calculate how many people with diabetes might have died because of
the lack of medicine and treatment during Shanghai's lockdown, reaching
an estimated figure of 2,141. The blog post outlining his calculation
and suggestions for managing the pandemic--through a stronger focus on
vaccination campaigns and home isolation, for example--was deleted.
Law professors. Tong Zhiwei, a law professor in Shanghai, published
an online essay arguing that authorities were acting illegally when
they took extreme measures such as forcing uninfected neighbors of
infected individuals into collective quarantine.\39\ Tong also pointed
out that Shanghai had never actually entered a state of emergency per
law. His article was deleted, his verified Weibo account was then
banned from posting, and a hashtag of his name was censored. While the
shuttering of an outspoken intellectual's Weibo account silences their
criticism, the closing of a WeChat account can significantly impede
daily life. On February 3, days after his sixth WeChat account was shut
down, Peking University law professor He Weifang handwrote a letter of
protest to parent company Tencent.\40\ He said the account shutdowns
made daily activities like ``transport, shopping and public health code
screenings impossible,'' and violated his civil rights. He once had
over a million followers on Weibo before leaving the platform in 2013
amid a government crackdown on liberal-leaning intellectuals.\41\
Financial analysts and entrepreneurs. As the negative repercussions
of the Zero-COVID policy on China's economy have become more evident,
financial analysts have also been swept up in the attempt to stifle
debate. Hao Hong, a Hong Kong-based market strategist, was censored
after he published a series of commentaries on social media platforms
that predicted a gloomy trajectory for China's economy.\42\ On April
30, his Weibo account, which had three million followers, was
shuttered, and his WeChat account was suspended. The Weibo accounts of
at least three other chief economists and fund managers have been
suspended in recent months for ``violating laws and regulations.'' \43\
In another case in late May, Weibo banned the account of the head of
Trip.com, one of China's largest online travel agencies, for commenting
on the COVID-19 lockdown's impact on Chinese people's life
expectancy.\44\ The apparent purge fits a long-standing pattern in
which warnings of problems for the Chinese economy are smothered
despite growing evidence of a downturn.
Cracks in Beijing's information controls
Despite the robust resources being invested by the Chinese
government to control what news and information reaches Chinese
citizens and the wider world about conditions in locked-down areas, the
regime and its apparatus are not omnipotent. Indeed, the fact that I am
able to put this testimony together with detailed examples demonstrates
the extent to which information that the CCP would prefer disappeared
is still circulating inside and outside China, often to the credit of
ordinary Chinese citizens and at great sacrifice.
Online dissent. During the Shanghai lockdown in particular,
Chinese users went to extraordinary lengths to circumvent censorship,
keep critical content online, and find avenues for freer expression.
There was a national outcry after Shanghai implemented a policy to
remove COVID-19-positive children from their uninfected parents,\45\
with videos and related hashtags garnering tens of millions of
views.\46\ Podcasts have also emerged as a less censored space where
women, in particular, shared their daily hardships during the
lockdown.\47\
Creative solutions for voicing displeasure have included
piggybacking on officially sanctioned hashtags. On the evening of April
13, tens of thousands of angry comments were posted to a hashtag
criticizing human rights in the United States, which was artificially
ranked second by the Weibo platform.\48\ Users exploited the hashtag to
highlight the lack of rights protections in China and express
frustration with the Chinese government. Many of the posts garnered
hundreds of likes and shares, although by 4 a.m. the censors had moved
in to delete them.
Content preservation. Another collective outpouring of anguish
came in the form of a six-minute video compilation of key incidents
from the Shanghai lockdown, titled ``Voices of April.'' \49\ The video
deluged WeChat groups and was constantly reposted and forwarded even as
censors tried to remove it. People made new versions of it upside
down,\50\ embedded in cartoons, or with painted still images designed
to evade censorship algorithms.\51\
Various initiatives have countered censorship within the Chinese
internet by keeping other deleted content alive outside the Great
Firewall. A compilation of 200 cases of people who died as a result of
the lockdown itself rather than COVID-19--from denial of medical care,
hunger, or suicide, for example--was posted to Airtable, a blockchain-
based database platform. Overseas bilingual websites like China Digital
Times (CDT) \52\ or What's on Weibo,\53\ along with the Twitter
accounts of individual journalists and researchers, have captured,
archived, and translated posts like many of those cited above.\54\
Offline dissent. Resentment related to lockdowns has also
translated into real-world dissent, including solo and group protests.
One recent example that made international headlines was when a Beijing
man lowered two banners over a city bridge, shouted slogans, and lit a
fire on October 13 in protest of the government's COVID-19 policies,
and demanded freedom and dignity for Chinese people.\55\ Slogans on the
banners included: ``No covid test, we want to eat. Remove dictator and
national traitor Xi Jinping.'' Occurring days before the CCP's all-
important Party Congress opened on October 16, the ``Bridge Man''
protest was an act of defiance directed at Xi Jinping as the architect
of the Zero-COVID policy, just as he was set to be anointed to an
unprecedented third term as CCP chief. The demonstration was met with
rapid censorship and the deployment of police and minders across the
capital,\56\ but not before sparking attention on social media,
international news headlines, and expressions of solidarity by Chinese
students at college campuses around the world.\57\
``Bridge Man's'' protest, while striking, was not an isolated act
of public dissent against Xi's COVID policies. A new Freedom House
project, the China Dissent Monitor, documented 40 cases of Chinese
citizens protesting COVID-19 restrictions between June and October
2022. They include protests that drew hundreds of people to the streets
not only in Shanghai, but also in Hebei, Guangxi, Liaoning, and Jiangsu
provinces, and online hashtag movements featuring hundreds of thousands
of posts.
Official concessions. In at least some instances, public outcries
and news coverage appears to have contributed to policy adjustments or
official accountability, at the local level. In Xi'an, several
officials were punished and two hospitals temporarily closed down over
tragedies--like miscarriages and a heart attack death--during the
month-long lockdown from December 2021 to January 2022.\58\ In nine of
the 40 China Dissent Monitor cases mentioned above, some form of
concession was also documented, including local officials lifting
burdensome travel restrictions on commuters following street protests.
Looking ahead
Throughout the summer and early fall, many observers were
cautiously optimistic that after the 20th Party Congress in mid-
October, the Chinese government might transition away from the Zero-
COVID policy. Unverified rumors in early November of a change in policy
prompted a jump in the stock market from investor excitement at the
prospect, further fueled by remarks by epidemiologist Zeng Guang that
he believed conditions for opening were ``accumulating.'' \59\
Such hopes appear to have been unfounded. During the Party
Congress, Xi reiterated his commitment to the policy and state media
have praised it as one of his key achievements, rendering too rapid a
reversal a potential blow to his legitimacy.\60\ Days after Zeng's
comment, Chinese health officials repeated their dedication to the
Zero-COVID policy.\61\ More broadly, the rhetorical shifts, legal
changes, and vaccination campaigns that experts have said would be
prerequisites to any significant shift remain notably absent.\62\
So long as the lockdowns continue, the cycle observed in major
metropolitan areas like Xi'an, Shanghai, and Lanzhou of logistical
problems, non-COVID medical tragedies, and overall citizen frustration
spurring outcries and even protests are likely to continue as well. All
the while, the censorship apparatus continues to expand and evolve.
Regardless of when the Zero-COVID policy ends, the lockdowns,
censorship, and citizen responses are likely to have long-term effects,
not only for families who suffered untimely deaths or other traumas due
to the restrictions. It seems clear that this historic and tragic
episode in the lives of millions of people will not be easily
forgotten, even if much of the digital evidence is hastily obscured.
Interest in emigrating from China is reportedly on the rise, while
reflections published by Shanghai residents underscore a disappointment
with Chinese state media's obvious lack of coverage of the problems
surrounding the lockdown.\63\
Meanwhile, a sense of solidarity and community has also arisen
surrounding both offline mutual-assistance efforts and online outbursts
of collective anger, which itself pokes a hole in the CCP's tactics of
atomizing dissent. As one netizen commented in response to the US human
rights hashtag hijacking: ``So many posts to like. This is the true
voice of the people. Let's commemorate tonight. . . . Maybe tomorrow
it's gonna be songs and dances again, but at least we know that we are
awake.'' \64\
Recommendations
Consistently raise press freedom and political prisoners as part of
bilateral engagement:
Consistently raise the issues of press freedom and
internet freedom in China publicly and in private meetings with Chinese
counterparts, including at the highest levels. Stress that universal
rights like free expression apply to China.
Urge the release of imprisoned journalists and free
expression activists. Experience demonstrates that consistently raising
individual prisoner cases can result in improved treatment in
detention, lighter sentences or, in rare cases, release from
imprisonment. In addition to others listed in this testimony, there are
three notable detainees jailed for reporting or commentary related to
COVID-19 who are facing precarious legal and health conditions in
custody. Their names should be raised at every opportunity and updates
on their treatment and well-being requested. If traveling to China and
to a relevant province, US officials should request to meet with these
and other prisoners:
Zhang Zhan: Zhang is a citizen journalist sentenced
to four years in prison in December 2020 for reporting related
to COVID-19, including videos taken in February 2020 from
Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.\65\ She is being
held in Shanghai's Women's Prison. Under public pressure to
grant her a medical release,\66\ after she lost a significant
amount of weight in custody, the authorities reportedly
improved conditions for Zhang.\67\ The latest known update on
her condition was in February 2022. (Zhang is case 2020-00175
in the CECC's Political Prisoner Database)
Fang Bin: Fang is a citizen journalist who gained
international attention for videos taken of corpses at
hospitals in Wuhan in the first days of the pandemic.\68\ After
two years of efforts to locate him, including by Zhang Zhan,
activists reported in February 2022 that he was being held at
Jiang'an District Detention Center in Wuhan.\69\ His case was
reportedly submitted for prosecution on charges of ``picking
quarrels and provoking trouble.'' \70\ In addition to being a
citizen journalist, Fang is reportedly a Falun Gong believer
\71\ who had been tortured during previous detentions for his
faith.\72\ The latest known update on his condition was in
February 2022. (Fang is case 2020-00140 in the CECC's Political
Prisoner Database)
Xu Zhiyong: Xu is a prominent rights lawyer and
democracy advocate who has suffered years of reprisals and
abuse due to his activism.\73\ After completing a four-year
prison term on politically motivated charges, Xu resumed
meetings with other human rights defenders in China. He was
detained in Guangdong on February 15, 2020 following a
nationwide effort to track him down. Shortly before his arrest,
he published a scathing letter calling for Xi Jinping to resign
over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.\74\ Xu was tried on
June 22, 2022 in Linshu County People's Court in Shandong
Province for ``subversion of state power,'' but no sentence has
been announced.\75\ He has reported being tortured in custody
and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that
his detention is ``arbitrary''. (Xu is case 2005-00199 in the
CECC's Political Prisoner Database)
Support civil society initiatives that counter censorship:
Funding should be made available to quickly enhance the
server capacity of circumvention tools facing increased demand from
China during moments of crisis or political turmoil. During these
circumstances, the number of Chinese people seeking uncensored
information typically spikes. At least year's Summit for Democracy, a
Multilateral Surge and Sustain Fund for Anti-Censorship Technology was
established. Congress should work with the administration to determine
whether this fund could be used for rapid responses and to support
groups that develop and disseminate tools to enable users to securely
access blocked websites, including from mobile phones.
Support efforts to monitor, preserve, and recirculate
censored content within China, including news articles and social media
posts related to COVID-19 and lockdown conditions that have been
deleted by censors.
Support research and outreach initiatives that inform
Chinese audiences about the censorship and surveillance apparatus,
imprisoned journalists and online activists, the regime's human rights
record overall, emerging protests, and how democratic institutions
function. Existing studies and surveys have shown that netizen
awareness of censorship often yields a greater desire to access
uncensored information, assist a jailed activist, or take steps to
protect personal communications.
Pass legislation focused on advancing press freedom
globally and with regard to China. Freedom House would particularly
urge consideration of two bills with broader relevance: the Global
Press Freedom Act (S. 204) introduced by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI)
with support from Todd Young (R-IN) and the International Press Freedom
Act (S. 1495), introduced by Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) with support from
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Both are bipartisan bills that would
help prioritize press freedom within U.S. foreign policy, including in
China. They would create an office focused on press freedom in the
Department of State, and S. 1495 adds special visas and funding for
journalists at risk.
Apply targeted sanctions:
Impose targeted sanctions, such as travel bans and asset freezes,
on individual Chinese officials involved in serious abuses against
those who have exercised their right to free expression. Closely
monitor conditions in Xinjiang and Tibet. Apply targeted sanctions to
officials in regions where international human rights crimes are being
committed against ethnic and religious minorities and may be amplified
by restrictive COVID-19 policies. Sanctions should be coordinated with
partners and imposed multilaterally.
Respond vigorously to violations affecting U.S. citizens and
journalists:
React with strong and immediate diplomatic action (press
statements, phone calls, meetings, letters) to any violations of media
freedom or free expression involving U.S. citizens or media outlets,
including detentions in China, violence against foreign correspondents,
restrictions on visas and media access, and efforts by Chinese
diplomats to interfere with press freedom within the United States.
[Footnotes appear on the following pages.]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Prepared Statement of Rory Truex
Introduction
Thank you to Chair Merkley, Co-chair McGovern, and the Members of
the Commission for the opportunity to join the discussion today on
China's zero-Covid policy.
At the CCP's recent 20th Party Congress, Xi Jinping defended
China's ``dynamic zero-Covid policy,'' highlighting ``tremendously
encouraging achievements in both epidemic response and economic and
social development'' in ``the all-out people's war'' against the
virus.\1\ The Chinese government is in its third year of a zero-Covid
strategy, and the economic and social costs of extended lockdowns and
quarantines are leading many to question the sustainability of its
approach.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Low De Wei, ``Full Text of Xi Jinping's Speech at China's Party
Congress.'' Bloomberg. October 18, 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/
news/articles/2022-10-18/full-text-of-xi-jinping-s-speech-at-china-
20th-party-congress-2022
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Why has China's dynamic zero-Covid policy persisted as long as it
has? What are the political dynamics underlying this policy, and what
is the outlook moving forward?
In my remarks today I will argue that there are four key political
forces that create significant inertia around China's zero-Covid
policy: the initial popularity and success of zero-Covid; campaign
dynamics and the personal involvement of Xi Jinping; the ability to use
zero-Covid as cover for increasing surveillance and control over the
population; and the industry that has emerged around enforcing zero-
Covid.
These forces for inertia are counterbalanced by two forces for
policy change: the detrimental effects of zero-Covid on the Chinese
economy; and the growing dissatisfaction among the Chinese population
with lockdowns and quarantines. The likelihood of Xi Jinping changing
course on dynamic zero-Covid depends on how well the CCP regime can
manage these costs.
Political Factors Underlying the Zero-Covid Policy
1. Zero-Covid as Performance-Based Legitimacy--China's Covid story
has distinct chapters, and most of them have been positive for public
perceptions of the Chinese Communist Party. After bungling the initial
Covid outbreak in December 2019 and January 2020, the Chinese
government managed to bring Covid under control by March. Concurrently,
Western governments, notably the United States, failed to contain the
virus and saw widespread casualties and dysfunction at various levels
of government.
In that period, China's zero-Covid policy was viewed as a
resounding success, both at home and abroad, and studies suggest the
CCP experienced a tangible boost in regime support during that time.\2\
Political legitimacy in China is built on how the system performs, and
beginning in 2020, Covid cases became a core metric on which
performance was measured. Survey data also suggests that Chinese
citizens in general appear willing to tolerate intrusions into their
personal privacy and civil liberties in the name of preserving social
order.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Wu, Cary. ``Did the pandemic shake Chinese citizens' trust in
their government? We surveyed nearly 20,000 people to find out.'' The
Washington Post. May 5, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/
2021/05/05/did-pandemic-shake-chinese-citizens-trust-their-government/
\3\ Su, Zheng, Xu Xu, and Xun Cao. ``What Explains Popular Support
for Government Surveillance in China?'' Journal of Information
Technology & Politics. 2021. https://cpb-us- e1.wpmucdn.com/
sites.psu.edu/dist/e/11338/files/2020/09/Support-for-Government-
Surveillance-in-China-April-19-2020-Manuscript.pdf
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The biological realities of the omicron variants have made zero-
Covid untenable in the long term. The government is now pursuing a
strategy of ``dynamic zero-Covid,'' which, to quote nationalist
commentator Hu Xijin, ``is not really about pursuing zero infections at
all times, it is about continuing to keep the epidemic situation under
control.'' \4\ But even this more moderate approach seems unsustainable
given the infectiousness of the virus.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Koetse, Manya. ``Victory or Perseverance? Visions of China's
`Dynamic Zero' Covid Future.'' What's On Weibo. November 8, 2022.
https://www.whatsonweibo.com/victory-of-perseverance-
visions-of-chinas-dynamic-zero-covid-future/
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Chinese citizens' perceptions of China's Covid strategy have only
recently appeared to shift. The Shanghai lockdown in the spring of 2022
saw food shortages, inhumane quarantine practices, and obstacles to
accessing basic medical care. Lockdowns continue to ebb and flow
throughout the country, bringing significant costs to the economy and
adding uncertainty to everyday life. During the last few months, at any
given time there are dozens of major cities under some form of
lockdown, with hundreds of millions of people affected.\5\ A number of
tragedies have gone viral on Chinese social media, illuminating the
absurdities of dynamic zero-Covid. These stories feature citizens
locked down in inhumane conditions, often without proper access to
food, loved ones, or medical care.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Gan, Nectar and Shawn Deng. ``Chinese Cities Rush to Lockdown
in Show of Loyalty to Xi's Zero-Covid Strategy.'' CNN. September 5,
2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/china/china-covid-lockdown-74-
cities-intl-hnk
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2. Zero-Covid as a Campaign--Given the emerging failures of the
dynamic zero-Covid approach, why does it persist? China's ``war on
Covid'' can be understood through the lens of campaign-style
governance, which was more common in the Mao era but has seen a
resurgence in a different form under Xi Jinping. In a campaign, the
core leader announces a vague, ambitious policy goal, and lower-level
officials are left to fill in the blanks and implement policies to
achieve the goal as best they can. This approach is often problematic,
as lower-level officials struggle to achieve unreasonable targets,
falsify or suppress data and information, and engage in performative
measures to show their zeal to central leadership.\6\ It is also
difficult to reverse the course of a campaign, as it is tied personally
to the Party leader, who would lose stature in the system if the policy
were to fail. All these dynamics are present in China's current zero-
Covid policy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ See Ding, Iza. ``Performative Governance.'' World Politics 72.4
(2020): 525-556 and Kung, James Kai-Sing, and Shuo Chen. ``The Tragedy
of the Nomenklatura: Career Incentives and Political Radicalism During
China's Great Leap Famine.'' American Political Science Review 105.1
(2011): 27-45.
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It is also noteworthy that the new CCP leadership lineup announced
at the 20th Party Congress privileged Xi loyalists that faithfully
implemented zero-Covid, namely Li Qiang (Party Secretary of Shanghai)
and Cai Qi (Party Secretary of Beijing). Li Qiang is now the second
ranked CCP member and is slated to take over the office of Premier.
This means that the new Politburo Standing Committee is in some sense
tainted by the zero-Covid policy, and it will have a strong vested
interest in maintaining the perception that it has been a success.
3. Zero-Covid as Political Control--Zero-Covid has given local
governments the justification to collect more information on the
Chinese population, expanding the reach and scope of the growing
surveillance state.\7\ Chinese citizens now have a health code tied to
their mobile devices, and the ability to move freely is tied to having
a ``green screen'' indicating a recent negative test result and no
known exposures. Individuals' whereabouts are tracked through their
mobile devices, and this information can be used to identify people
with potential Covid exposures through close contact. Public health is
thus a cover for the Chinese government to collect and analyze
information on people's movements, health, and social networks, and in
turn use that information to control their behavior. This is consistent
with the broader development of ``techno-authoritarianism'' under Xi
Jinping and his tendency to push the system towards ever-greater levels
of social control.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ McCarthy, Simone. ``Under Xi Jinping, zero-Covid is
accelerating China's surveillance state.'' CNN. October 20, 2022.
\8\ Kynge, James and Sun Yu. ``China and Big Tech: Xi's Blueprint
for a Digital Dictatorship.'' Financial Times. September 7, 2021.
https://www.ft.com/content/9ef38be2-9b4d-49a4-a812-97ad6d70ea6f
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4. Zero-Covid as Industry--According to some estimates, the Chinese
government will spend roughly $52 billion on ``testing, new medical
facilities, monitoring equipment and other anti-Covid measures, which
will benefit as many as 3,000 companies.'' \9\ This includes diagnostic
and pharmaceutical companies, but also surveillance companies and
camera manufacturers, which have installed thermal imaging cameras
throughout many cities. In certain cities, construction companies have
been tasked with building hospitals, temporary medical facilities, and
testing kiosks. China's ``zero-Covid industrial complex'' is vast and
touches a number of different sectors, creating a powerful private
sector constituency with a vested interest in perpetuating zero-
Covid.\10\ Some Chinese analysts have raised concerns that this
interest group could mislead the public and misguide public health
policy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Baptista, Eduardo. ``Zero-COVID, Big Money: China's Anti-virus
Spending Boosts Medical, Tech, Construction.'' Reuters. May 29, 2022.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/zero-covid-big-money-chinas-anti-
virus-spending-boosts-medical-tech-construction-2022-05-29/
\10\ ``China's Zero-COVID Industrial Complex.'' The Economist. May
14, 2022. https://www.economist.com/business/2022/05/14/chinas-zero-
covid-industrial-complex
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Projecting Forward
There was initial optimism that China would relax its zero-Covid
policy after the 20th Party Congress, but instead Xi Jinping used that
moment to defend the policy, seemingly doubling down on the approach.
The financial markets are eager for a change of course, and we are
seeing rumors coming out of China to this effect. But if the Chinese
government were planning on shifting course, it would undertake a
number of easily observable preparatory measures: (1) a renewed
vaccination campaign focused on elderly citizens; and (2) a media
campaign that more accurately depicts the risks of Covid and prepares
citizens mentally to accept life with the endemic virus. These
preparations alone would take several months. As of the writing of this
testimony, we have observed neither of those measures, which would
suggest dynamic zero-Covid is here to stay, in the medium term at
least. It is best not to underestimate the stickiness of this policy,
which could very well be in place in some form for many months or even
years to come.
In terms of the political implications for the regime and Xi
Jinping, in the authoritarian politics field we tend to focus
separately on the risks of elite threats (coup d'etats) and mass
threats (revolutions). At the elite level, the results of the 20th
Party Congress suggest that Xi has further solidified his control of
the Party, as evidenced by the dominance of his faction in top
leadership bodies. Any policy divisions about zero-Covid that remain
are likely to be minimal, and certainly would not engender an elite
split or instability that would threaten Xi Jinping or the broader
regime. At the mass level, it is important to remember that the CCP
enjoys a relatively robust reservoir of support among the population.
Trust for the central government is particularly high.\11\ Most Chinese
citizens appear to broadly support the system even when dissatisfied
about specific policy areas. We may observe protest and unrest in
certain geographic areas, but it is unlikely zero-Covid would produce
the type of collective action needed to truly threaten the regime.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Manion, Melanie. ``A Survey of Survey Research on Chinese
Politics: What Have We Learned.'' Contemporary Chinese Politics: New
Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies. 2010. 181-199.
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Policy Discussion
One of the overlooked downsides of China's zero-Covid approach is
that it has completely gutted opportunities for foreigners to travel to
China and learn about the country. Deep knowledge of China and Chinese
is a critical resource for the U.S. government moving forward, and we
face a significant asymmetry with our Chinese counterparts, who tend to
have better language skills and more intimate knowledge of American
politics and society. Many of our core Chinese language programs in
China have moved elsewhere, and the Fulbright program has been
terminated. The flow of American students, journalists, academics,
businesspeople, and officials traveling to China has slowed to a
trickle. This could have long-term negative effects on U.S. national
security and foreign policymaking. We may well be losing the next
generation of China experts.
It should be a priority of the U.S. government to rebuild the
foundations of people-to-people exchange with China. At a time when
government-to-government relations have soured, the dense fabric of
ties between individual Chinese and American citizens can prove to be a
stabilizing force. Universities should rebuild academic ties with
Chinese institutions in areas not core to national security, like the
social sciences and humanities. The U.S. government should fund
research and international education programs centered on China.
Congresspeople and their staffers should be traveling to mainland China
through formal and informal delegations. We should be pushing for
American journalists to regain access to China, and to be protected and
fairly treated in the process of reporting.
With the 20th Party Congress and the midterm elections in the
rearview mirror, there may be a brief moment where tensions between the
two countries can be meaningfully reduced. The U.S.-China relationship
can and should be stabilized, even if it remains on a footing of
broader strategic competition.
Thanks for the opportunity to join this panel. I look forward to
the discussion.
______
Prepared Statement of Senator Merkley
Good morning. Today's hearing of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, ``China's Zero-COVID Policy and Authoritarian
Public Health Control'' will come to order.
Before we turn to the subject of this hearing, I'd like to announce
that the Commission will publish our annual report on human rights
conditions and rule-of-law developments in China tomorrow. This report
once again marks the culmination of a year of work by the Commission's
non-partisan research staff to produce an extraordinarily detailed,
comprehensive, and credible account of the situation in China. Just a
huge thanks to the staff of the Commission for really incredible work.
The Annual Report outlines the systematic and often brutal efforts
by the government of the People's Republic of China to censor, torture,
and detain ethnic and religious minorities, critics of Chinese
Communist Party policy, and advocates of basic rights. This past year,
transnational repression has been a particular concern for this
Commission, and the report details the tools used by Chinese
authorities to reach into other countries to silence critics, to
enhance control over diaspora communities, to conduct surveillance, and
to force the repatriation of their targets. Within China, the report
documents evidence that top leaders directed the genocide in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, including policies of forced labor,
sexual violence, and family separation. This year's reporting also
shines a spotlight on the pervasive problem of violence against women,
with high-profile cases showing the vulnerability of women across
society. Meanwhile, coercive population control policies directed at
ethnic minority populations amount to eugenics, while the broader
policies continue to intrude on families' decisions about whether and
when to have children.
Both at home and abroad, General Secretary Xi Jinping seeks to
promote what he calls a ``Chinese view of human rights.'' This report
punctures that narrative. People in China and the diaspora communities
around the world deserve the same fundamental human rights as everyone
else.
The 2022 Annual Report reflects the view of our commissioners that
the human rights abuses the report details require a whole-of-
government response by the United States and coordinated action with
other countries. In partnership with our newly appointed executive
branch commissioners, who we are so delighted to have, I look forward
to continuing to work across our government to advance the
recommendations in the report so we can protect those fleeing
persecution, those facing transnational repression, those fighting
coercion, and those fearing the destruction of their culture.
The Annual Report shows how the Chinese Communist Party seeks to
dominate daily life to control how citizens live. Nowhere has the
intensity of this political and social control been more apparent over
the last year than in the implementation of the draconian zero-COVID
policy. As senior leaders staked the credibility of the Chinese
Communist Party on this policy, authorities implemented
disproportionately harsh public security measures, often using coercive
quarantine controls that infringed on privacy rights, freedom of
movement, freedom of expression, and due process. At the height of the
Shanghai lockdown this spring, there were an estimated 373 million
people under lockdown throughout China. To enforce these lockdowns,
authorities often tape up entrances and erect fences to prevent
residents from leaving their homes. They sweep up residents of entire
buildings for mandatory quarantine in makeshift facilities. They
marshal the full power of the surveillance state to monitor--and often
control--people's movements and health. They aggressively censor and
detain critics of the policy. And they leave vulnerable populations
unable to access medical care for other conditions.
As we will hear this morning, China's zero-COVID policy comes at
great cost to fundamental rights and may be unsustainable or even
counterproductive in protecting overall public health. Leading experts
in public health, information suppression, and Chinese political
leadership dynamics will help us better understand this policy, what it
has meant for the people of China, and where it may go from here.
The testimony we'll hear recognizes that these policies have
resulted in some protection of the population from the ravages of the
virus the world has grappled with for nearly three years. Every country
has wrestled with how best to protect public health from COVID-19 and
there are no easy answers. But we all have an obligation to protect
basic rights, and this hearing will help us understand a policy so
central to what it means to live in China today.
______
Prepared Statement of Representative McGovern
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing on China's
zero-COVID policy and its implications for human rights.
I join the Chair in welcoming the announcement that the
Commission's 2022 Annual Report will be published tomorrow. I encourage
everyone to read it on our website. It is, once again, a well-organized
and well-sourced accounting of the Chinese government's failure to meet
its obligations under international human rights law.
The report is the product of countless hours of diligent work by
our research staff. I cannot praise them enough for their hard work on
this report and the effort they made to produce this excellent
resource.
In addition to the tragedy of the 6.6 million deaths caused by the
coronavirus globally, the pandemic has put a strain on societies and
communities everywhere. Each of us has had to change our behavior for
the good of ourselves, our neighbors, and our colleagues.
The pandemic also creates challenges for human rights. The COVID-19
Guidance issued by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights acknowledges that emergency measures that may ``restrict human
rights should be proportionate to the evaluated risk, necessary and
applied in a non-discriminatory way, [including] having a specific
focus and duration, and taking the least intrusive approach possible to
protect public health.''
It also asserts that ``respect for human rights across the
spectrum, including economic, social, cultural, and civil and political
rights, will be fundamental to the success of the public health
response and recovery from the pandemic.'' Through this lens we are
here to assess China's record.
We have seen the videos of personnel in hazmat suits spraying
disinfectant in public spaces, and of crowds rushing out of factories
or amusement parks to avoid being locked down. We saw the images of the
anti-Xi banner over the bridge in Beijing, and of lockdown protests in
Lhasa. But there are thousands, if not millions, of stories of hardship
and dissent that we do not hear, in part because of the Chinese
government's censorship.
We welcome our expert witnesses to help us understand the
experiences of people in China under the zero-COVID policy.
And we must know the names of the people who have suffered for
reporting or speaking out about the government's policy. These include:
Zhang Zhan and Fang Bin, citizen journalists detained in
early 2020 in connection with their efforts to document the COVID-19
outbreak in Wuhan;
Xu Zhiyong, a civil society advocate, arrested and tried
for criticizing Xi Jinping's handling of the pandemic; and
Xu Zhangrun, a professor who was fired and had his
pension suspended for writing about the failures of the government's
response.
Lastly, I note that the Chinese government's zero-COVID policy has
created food shortages. OHCHR's COVID-19 Guidance notes that the
pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity and urges governments to take
urgent steps to meet the population's dietary needs. We have seen
evidence that the lockdowns and draconian restrictions have limited
access to food. The banner on the Beijing bridge read in part: ``We
want to eat.''
China is a state party to the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, which means it formally recognizes the
fundamental human right to be free of hunger. The Chinese government is
obligated, as a matter of human rights, to ensure that its pandemic
response does not push people into food insecurity.
Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to gaining a greater
understanding of the situation from our witnesses, as well as
recommendations for how the United States should respond.
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Witness Biographies
Yanzhong Huang, Senior Fellow for Global Health, Council on Foreign
Relations, and Professor, Seton Hall University School of Diplomacy and
International Relations
Yanzhong Huang is a Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council
on Foreign Relations, where he directs the Global Health Governance
roundtable series. He is also a professor and Director of Global Health
Studies at Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and
International Relations, where he developed the first academic
concentration among U.S. professional international affairs schools
that explicitly addresses the security and foreign policy aspects of
health issues. He is the founding editor of Global Health Governance:
The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm. In addition
to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Huang has written extensively on Chinese
public health developments of the past twenty years, including his most
recent book Toxic Politics: China's Environmental Health Crisis and Its
Challenge to the Chinese State (Cambridge, 2020) as well as earlier
research on the 2002 outbreak of SARS (``The SARS Epidemic and Its
Aftermath in China: A Political Perspective,'' 2004) and the impact of
the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on the spread
of HIV/AIDS and TB in China (see, e.g., The Diplomat, 19 April 2014).
Dr. Huang received his Ph.D. in political science from the University
of Chicago. Dr. Huang previously gave testimony at a 2013
Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing entitled ``Food and
Drug Safety, Public Health, and the Environment in China'' and a 2003
roundtable entitled ``Dangerous Secret: SARS and China's Health Care
System.''
Sarah Cook, Research Director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan,
Freedom House
Sarah Cook is Research Director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at
Freedom House and has published multiple reports on China's media
influence operations. She directs the China Media Bulletin, a monthly
digest in English and Chinese providing news and analysis on media
freedom developments related to China. Ms. Cook also has expertise on
religious freedom in China. Ms. Cook recently managed and wrote
sections for ``Beijing's Global Media Influence: Authoritarian
Expansion and the Power of Democratic Resilience,'' Freedom House's
analysis of China's media influence in 30 countries, which was released
in September 2022. Her comments and writings have appeared on CNN, in
The Wall Street Journal, and in Foreign Policy. She has given testimony
before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China many times over
the years.
Rory Truex, Assistant Professor of Politics and International
Affairs, Princeton University
Rory Truex is an Assistant Professor of Politics and International
Affairs at Princeton University. His research focuses on Chinese
politics and authoritarian systems. His current projects explore how
Chinese citizens evaluate their political system; the relationship
between media bias and credibility in non-democracies; and patterns in
dissident behavior and punishment. He received his undergraduate degree
from Princeton in 2007 and Ph.D. in political science from Yale in
2014.
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