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


                          CHINA'S ZERO-COVID POLICY AND 
                        AUTHORITARIAN PUBLIC HEALTH CONTROL
=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           NOVEMBER 15, 2022

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
 
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              Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov

                              _________

                                
                    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

                              ----------                              

                               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

                              ----------                              


                       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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           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.
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                          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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