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

                         THE CECC AT 20: TWO DECADES OF
                    HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE AND DEFENSE IN CHINA
    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                        ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               DECEMBER 13, 2022

                                   __________

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

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                  Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov
                                 _________

                     U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

    50-186 PDF               WASHINGTON : 2023

                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                        LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

    Senate

                                         House

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

                         EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

                   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

    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 Hon. Thomas Suozzi, a U.S. Representative from New
      York...........................................................     4
    Statement of Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.............     5
    Statement of Teng Biao, Hauser Human Rights Scholar, Hunter
      College, and Pozen Visiting Professor, University of Chicago...     9
    Statement of Rana Siu Inboden, Senior Fellow, Robert Strauss
      Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas
      at Austin......................................................    11
    Statement of Sophie Richardson, China Director, Human Rights
      Watch..........................................................    13

                                    APPENDIX
                              Prepared Statements

    Biao, Teng.......................................................    32
    Inboden, Rana Siu................................................    34
    Richardson, Sophie...............................................    39

    Merkley, Hon. Jeff...............................................    42
    McGovern, Hon. James P...........................................    43

                           Submissions for the Record

    ``Authoritarian States: Blocking Civil Society Participation in
      the United Nations,'' a report by Rana Siu Inboden, published
      by the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law    45
    CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form..........................    72
    Witness Biographies..............................................    73

                                     (iii)

     THE CECC AT 20: TWO DECADES OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE AND DEFENSE IN CHINA

                                  ----------

                           TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2022

                                Congressional-Executive
                                           Commission on China,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The hearing was held from 10:00 a.m. to 11:50 a.m., in Room
    106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, Senator
    Jeff Merkley, Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on
    China, presiding.
        Also present: Representative James P. McGovern, Co-chair,
    and Representatives Smith, Suozzi, and Wexton.

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

        Chair Merkley. Good morning. Today's hearing of the
    Congressional-Executive Commission on China entitled ``CECC at
    20: Two Decades of Human Rights Abuse and Defense in China''
    will come to order.
        This year marked the start of the Commission's third decade
    monitoring the People's Republic of China's compliance with
    international human rights standards and developments related
    to the rule of law in China. The Commission's annual report,
    hearings, and other products provide a detailed multi-year
    accounting. Over that time, our work documents a dramatic arc
    from the early 2000s of a movement within China to stand up for
    and defend human rights to the current situation, the Chinese
    Communist Party's escalating efforts to constrict space for
    internet freedom, for civil society, and for the exercise of
    citizens' basic rights.
        In that same period, the hope some held on to that China's
    inclusion in global institutions would be accompanied by
    improvements in human rights has met the harsh reality: Chinese
    authorities are using those institutions to debase and
    discredit the very notion of universal rights. As we close out
    the 117th Congress, this hearing aims to take stock of where
    the last two decades have left us and where those fighting for
    fundamental freedoms can go from here. We are joined by some of
    the leading experts in the field, who will shed light on the
    evolution of the domestic situation in China, the international
    legal landscape, and the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to
    shape both.
        Before we hear their testimony, our examination of this
    topic will be framed by special remarks from a very special
    friend of this Commission. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
    spoke from the dais at the first hearing of the CECC 20 years
    ago, just a floor above us in this very building, to help
    launch a Commission she played a key role in creating. As we
    thank her for her historic leadership in Congress and tireless
    work on behalf of human rights everywhere, but especially in
    China, there is nobody more fitting for us to hear from to mark
    two decades of the Commission's work and help chart what we can
    do to keep fighting for the people against the powerful.
        That is the essence of what the Commission tries to do. The
    talented and professional staff has published 21 annual
    reports, compiled over 10,000 Political Prisoner Database
    records, and met with countless stakeholders over the years. In
    this Congress alone, we've passed the groundbreaking Uyghur
    Forced Labor Prevention Act, advanced legislation establishing
    a China Censorship Monitor and Action Group, held 15 hearings
    that ran the gamut of issues within our mandate, sent dozens of
    advocacy letters, and published analysis on the treatment of
    Muslim minorities, economic coercion against American
    companies, the case for sanctioning those responsible for
    political persecution, and the dismantling of Hong Kong's civil
    society.
        Since the first days of the Commission, the backbone for
    all of this work has been Judy Wright. The first person hired
    to staff the CECC, Judy Wright has been the only Director of
    Administration the Commission has ever had. After nearly 21
    years in this role, and almost 40 years working for the U.S.
    Congress, Judy will begin a richly deserved retirement at the
    end of this month. She has kept the Commission running
    smoothly, supported research staff through thick and thin,
    maintained institutional memory over the many political
    transitions in Congress over the years, and has been a
    treasured friend to generations of CECC staffers and
    commissioners. Judy, this team will miss you dearly. We wish
    you all the best in retirement, and thank you for your service.
        This is my last hearing as chair before we transition to
    the next Congress. It has been an honor to serve with my co-
    chair, Congressman McGovern, who has shown tremendous
    leadership these last four years in translating the work of the
    Commission into meaningful legislation defending Uyghurs, Hong
    Kongers, Tibetans, and others experiencing abuse. That work has
    been truly bipartisan and bicameral, and as we prepare for the
    next Congress, I look forward to continued close partnership
    with Congressman Smith, with Senator Rubio, and with all of
    this Commission's champions for human rights and the rule of
    law in China.
        I will now turn to Co-chair McGovern.

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

        Co-chair McGovern. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
    for scheduling this hearing. I look forward to the testimony of
    our witnesses, and I want to thank you for your incredible
    leadership. It has been an honor to serve alongside you, as
    well as with my friend Congressman Suozzi from New York. I've
    really admired your style and your commitment to the human
    rights of the Chinese people.
        You know, today we take stock of the changes in China and
    the evolution of international law in the two decades since the
    CECC was established. Our intent is not to look back but to
    plan for the future by assessing our work amidst a changing
    landscape. Xi Jinping will continue to lead a government that
    employs the newest tools to suppress dissenting viewpoints,
    impose social control, and repress critics domestically and
    across borders. We want to make sure that the Commission is
    properly equipped and oriented to fulfill its mandate and to
    serve our constituents--Congress, the executive branch, the
    China human rights community, and most important of all, the
    people of China.
        Chinese, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Southern Mongolians, Hong
    Kongers, and all others who live in the PRC deserve to have
    their rights and dignity respected. Human rights are inherent,
    as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
    protected by the covenants and agreements that have flowed from
    it. The Chinese Communist Party would have us believe that some
    rights count more than others, citing Chinese values to
    discount certain civil and political rights. Some in the United
    States also believe that some rights count more than others,
    citing American values to discount certain social and economic
    rights.
        Under international law, both are wrong. Human rights are
    universal, independent, and mutually reinforcing. This
    Commission, by statute, is mandated to assess China's
    compliance with international human rights standards. These
    standards are not determined by any party in China and not by
    any party in the United States. These standards, codified at
    the United Nations and widely adjudicated, apply to every
    person in every country and territory on Earth. We do a
    disservice to the people of China if the Commission's work is
    shaped by personal or political preferences, rather than by the
    universal human rights that the people of China are entitled
    to. Over two decades, the Commission has earned a reputation
    for objective and informative analysis. And let's keep it that
    way.
        On a personal note, this is my last hearing as co-chair of
    this Commission. With my co-chairs, Senators Rubio and Merkley,
    along with Congressman Smith, we have sought to translate the
    Commission's expertise into advocacy and legislative impact. We
    helped get into law the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, the Hong Kong
    Human Rights and Democracy Act, the PROTECT Hong Kong Act, the
    Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, and the Tibetan Policy and
    Support Act. I give special mention to the Uyghur Forced Labor
    Prevention Act, which was the product of Commission staff
    research that led to a report, a hearing, legislation, and then
    law. I propose it as a model both for how the Commission can be
    effective and how it can craft robust human rights policy. I
    hope to be able to continue to serve on this Commission and to
    work on a bipartisan basis to promote human rights in China.
        Lastly, none of this would be possible without the hard-
    working non-partisan staff of the Commission. They are experts
    in the field and committed to both the cause of human rights
    and to the accuracy in reporting that has made the Commission's
    work so respected. I cannot thank them enough. Like the chair,
    one staffer I will mention by name is Judy Wright. She's
    retiring after 20 years at the Commission and many years before
    that in the House. As Director of Administration, she has made
    everything possible. We will miss her. I wish her a well-
    deserved and fulfilling retirement. I also want to acknowledge
    our lead staffer in the House, Todd Stein. I have worked with
    nobody who knows more about China, who is more fluent in human
    rights law, who cares more deeply about this issue than him.
    And it has really been a privilege and an honor to work
    alongside him. We're going to continue to work together on this
    issue for many years to come.
        As we're waiting for Speaker Pelosi to arrive, let me just
    say that I want to pay a special tribute to her. You know, she
    reminds us all the time, even when it's inconvenient, about how
    important focusing on human rights is. And with regard to human
    rights in China, she reminds us that if we don't have the
    courage and the guts to speak out against human rights abuses
    in China, then we don't have the moral authority to speak out
    against human rights abuses anywhere on this planet. The
    legislation that both of us have pointed out, that has been a
    product of this Commission, would not have become law were it
    not for the leadership of Speaker Pelosi in the House. And I
    cannot thank her enough for her commitment.
        So thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from
    our witnesses as to their recommendations for how this
    Commission, Congress, and the United States Government can best
    advocate for the universal rights of the people of China. And
    with that, I yield back.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
    Hopefully we'll be continuing to work together, though in
    different roles, shortly.
        Congressman Tom Suozzi is with us from New York. He is
    retiring from Congress. We've really appreciated your service
    on this Commission and all the other excellent work you've done
    while serving in the House of Representatives. Would you like
    to share any opening comments?

                   STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS SUOZZI,
                     A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK

        Representative Suozzi. Yes, Senator, thank you very much
    for your leadership of this Commission. We're very grateful to
    you for your professionalism and the great work that you've
    done over the past couple years. It's been a great honor to
    serve with you and with Chairman McGovern, who's been involved
    in human rights issues for so many decades, as well as
    Congressman Smith who's, I'm sure, joining us either
    electronically or will be joining us in person soon. And of
    course, it's such a great honor to follow in the footsteps of
    someone like Speaker Pelosi, who's really been a leader on
    human rights issues for such a long time.
        As I look back on the 20-year anniversary of this
    Commission, I just want to quickly mention four dates--1972,
    1989, 2001, and 2022. 1972 is when Nixon first went to China.
    And at that time, we thought the more that China was exposed to
    the United States and our way of life and the West as a whole,
    to democracy and to capitalism, the more that they'd become
    like us. We know today that that just simply hasn't happened.
    1989, Tiananmen Square. We thought, Wow, maybe something's
    going to happen here; people are really waking up to the
    realities of human rights abuse in China, and the people are
    rising up. And we saw that revolution crushed in that massacre.
    But people were paying more attention than before.
        2001 is when China joined the WTO. Globalism was this new
    idea and we thought we were going to really benefit from China
    participating in the world economy. They can uplift their
    quality of life. They can participate in the world economy, and
    we can get cheaper goods in the process. Wow, what a great
    opportunity. And maybe they'll finally wake up to their human
    rights abuse and become more like the West in recognizing that
    they have to address human rights concerns. And that's when
    this organization was set up, soon after China joined the WTO.
    But today, in 2022, things couldn't be worse than they are. We
    see what's happening to the Uyghurs. We see what's continued to
    happen with the Tibetans, the repression in Hong Kong, the
    saber-rattling in Taiwan, and so much more.
        This Commission plays such an important role here in the
    United States and on the world stage in trying to call to the
    world's attention these human rights abuses. We know this well
    because we look at it, because of the great work our staff
    does, the research that's done, the hearings that we hold, the
    experts that we listen to, like we'll listen to today. But the
    world doesn't really realize how bad things are in China. As
    the chair of the Uyghur Caucus, I'm particularly aggrieved by
    the way that the Uyghurs are treated, but all the different
    human rights abuses that I've mentioned continue to go on every
    day. We have to recognize that we're going to have to pay more
    for our jeans and t-shirts, but that's okay because we have to
    hold China accountable for the human rights abuse that exists.
    And I look forward to the work that this Commission will
    continue to do in the future. I'm excited to hear Speaker
    Pelosi as we celebrate, and thank her again for her leadership.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chair Merkley. We are absolutely delighted to welcome the
    Speaker of the House. Madam Speaker, you have missed the
    accolades that we have been putting forth, pouring forth,
    really, recognizing that you were instrumental in the creation
    of this Commission and have been a champion for human rights,
    particularly regarding China, throughout these decades. We've
    so appreciated that leadership, that important fight for human
    rights across the world, and particularly in China. We are
    honored that you've come to share with us some comments today.
    Welcome.

                       STATEMENT OF NANCY PELOSI,
                          SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE

        Speaker Pelosi. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank
    you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for your great
    leadership of the Commission. Your values, your strategic
    thinking, and all the rest, are invaluable to the cause. I
    thank you and recognize that. I'm glad to be here with Mr.
    McGovern. In the House, we call him our spiritual leader,
    whether we're going to Tibet, or elsewhere in China, to make
    the case. And Mr. Suozzi, thank you for your leadership. We'll
    miss you here, but you took this on so seriously, and I really
    appreciate that. And to your witnesses here today, welcome, and
    thank you for your courage.
        I was a witness at the first meeting of this Commission. I
    was a brand-new whip of the House. I had just been sworn in as
    whip of the House. So it was the first testimony I ever gave as
    a member of the leadership. And today, this will be the last
    testimony I will give as a member of the leadership--but not my
    last comment on human rights in China.
        In the interest of time, I will stick with my remarks, but
    there's just so much to be said about this subject, and how we
    could have done better as a nation since Tiananmen Square to
    avoid the situation we're in now. I see that they handed me
    this--China says it has taken U.S. semiconductor rules to the
    WTO. Imagine that. When I invited the chairman of the People's
    Congress to the Capitol--they had hosted us in China--and we
    were reciprocating, I said: I'm really sorry to bring up the
    fact, on your first visit here, that China is violating--it was
    announced that day that they were dumping rubber into the U.S.
    And I said, I hate to begin the meeting this way, but you
    shouldn't be doing that. And I can't ignore that fact.
        And the chairman of the People's Congress had the chair of
    this committee and that committee of the People's Congress, a
    very distinguished group. And they said, Well, we all agree
    that when we joined the WTO they said we didn't have to obey
    that rule. So that was how they came into the WTO. But I thank
    the co-chair, Mr. McGovern. Thank you for your leadership.
    Thank you Chairman Merkley, for yours. It's an honor to join
    the Congressional-Executive Commission on China as we mark 20
    years of tireless work on human rights. It seems like it went
    by just like that.
        It's fitting that we do so just days after U.N. Human
    Rights Day, marking the adoption of the Universal Declaration
    of Human Rights in 1948. Sitting here, I recall that first
    meeting I talked about. In my remarks, I made clear that we
    must not abandon human rights for economic opportunity in
    China. As we gather today, our concerns remain just as salient
    and strong. So I'm grateful to all of you, to the CECC for
    organizing this timely hearing, ``CECC at 20: Two Decades of
    Human Rights Abuse and Defense in China.''
        Thank you, again, Chairman Merkley, Co-chair McGovern,
    Congressman Chris Smith--in a bipartisan way we've worked on
    this issue for a long time. And thank you, Mr. Suozzi, for your
    leadership. You all have honored the long bipartisan, bicameral
    tradition of the CECC, the foundation of its remarkable success
    and lasting impact on policy. This has always been bipartisan.
    And that is so much the beauty of it. Excuse me. Let us salute
    the Biden administration for strengthening your work by
    appointing executive branch commissioners for the first time
    since 2014. Thank you, Mr. President.
        As we all know, the Commission was established as the
    People's Republic of China acceded to the World Trade
    Organization. In 2000, I took to the House floor to urge my
    colleagues to block China from the WTO, arguing that we should
    not put deals ahead of ideals. As the world's strongest
    economy, America has a moral duty to link our trade relations
    with human rights. I just told you how casual and cavalier the
    Chinese were about obeying the rules of the WTO.
        However, there were those who argued that Beijing's
    inclusion in international business institutions would bring a
    wave of reform and progress. In doing so, corporate America and
    its allies in the United States Government--in our government--
    gave China a blank check, letting big businesses prosper from
    China's abuses and disadvantaging America's small businesses
    and America's workforce. Mr. Chairman, the U.S.-China Business
    Council, at the time that we were starting this fight 30 years
    ago after Tiananmen, had been in existence for over 70 years.
        And they were getting pushed out of the trade situation by
    corporate America who was in there for insurance and finance,
    and all that. But our products were not given access to China
    unless we gave them our designs. And that still wasn't access
    to their markets but just made them competitors on the world
    scene, thereby disadvantaging small businesses and America's
    workforce, while we hoped that China would change its behavior
    on human rights.
        But many of us knew--and the world has witnessed--that this
    approach was fated to fail. As we reevaluate the last 20 years,
    it is clear that delinking trade and human rights has not
    improved our trade relationship. Just think of this, my
    colleagues. When we were starting this discussion following
    Tiananmen Square, the China-U.S. trade deficit, their advantage
    in trade, was $6 billion a year. I thought for $6 billion, we
    can free the prisoners at Tiananmen Square, we can gain access
    to their markets, we can stop their proliferation of dangerous
    weapons that contribute to--weapons of mass destruction
    delivery systems, and the rest--for $6 billion a year. Now it
    is more than $6 billion a week--a week! And look what has
    happened in human rights at the same time.
        At the same time, the CCP's exploitative labor practices
    created unfair competition for American business and workers--
    and prison labor--and it's a bad deal for American businesses
    too, subjecting themselves to intellectual property theft for
    access to Chinese markets. As I mentioned, you want to sell,
    you want to manufacture in China? You have to give them your
    designs. They no longer need you. They have your intellectual
    property. And then they say, but you can't compete--you can't
    sell in our market. We have your designs. We can sell in our
    market. We can now compete globally.
        So meanwhile, in terms of human rights and the rule of law
    over the last 20 years, the more things change the more they
    stay the same. In the 1990s, we fought against Beijing's use of
    prison labor. Harry Wu, and there were so many other leaders,
    made big sacrifices documenting the use of prison labor. Now
    we're combating the use of forced Uyghur labor and
    concentration camps. Meanwhile, the world has witnessed the
    PRC's decades-long campaign of terror and repression to achieve
    total coercive control, including the aggression against the
    culture, religion, and language of Tibet, which we witnessed
    when we visited there.
        The president of China had said to me when I complained to
    him, with Dianne Feinstein, about what they were doing in
    Tibet, he said: Go see for yourself. We've done great things in
    Tibet. I said, Well, thank you for that because I've been
    trying for 25 years to get a visa to go to Tibet. [Laughs] But
    since he was asking us to go see for ourselves, we went. And
    Mr. McGovern was our spiritual leader on that trip.
        So Tibet. The crushing of Hong Kong's autonomy and civil
    rights. What they're doing in Hong Kong--really? Intimidating
    the people of Taiwan, the jailing of dissidents like Jimmy Lai,
    Joshua Wong, Ilham Tohti and, of course, for such a long time
    now, the Panchen Lama.
        One of the most sinister forms of torture is to tell the
    imprisoned, Nobody even knows you're here, or why you're here,
    so why don't you just confess to what we want you to confess
    to? But that's not true, because with the Commission's prisoner
    database we have made it clear to the CCP and to the world that
    America knows, remembers, and will call attention to it. Make
    no mistake about it, if we don't speak out for human rights in
    China because of economic reasons, we lose all moral authority
    to talk about human rights anyplace in the world.
        That's why, led by the efforts here in the CECC, Congress
    has taken bold bipartisan action to bolster the defense of
    human rights in China. Our Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act
    will harness America's economic might to combat the genocide of
    the Uyghurs. Our Tibet Policy and Support Act makes clear
    America's commitment to the political rights of the Tibetan
    people. Our Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act sent a
    strong message of support to the courageous protesters marching
    for freedom. And with our CHIPS and Science, we are investing
    in American workers and American industry, ensuring that we
    remain competitive with China, reducing our dependence on their
    factors of production for us to compete with them. With this
    President, we asserted our independence.
        As we engage in this retrospective today, we must remain
    vigilant against putting deals ahead of ideals, business
    interests at the expense of basic rights, a trend many of us
    saw developing more than two decades ago, really since
    Tiananmen Square. And let us be unequivocally clear--America
    must defend all human rights, as you made clear in your
    statements earlier--I could hear what you all were saying, even
    though I wasn't in the room--we cannot and we must not
    discriminate. It is my hope that the Commission will continue
    to lead the charge now, and for 20 years more to come.
        Thank you, again, to the CECC for the opportunity to
    participate today. And now I yield back to the distinguished
    co-chair, Mr. McGovern, with gratitude to all of you who are
    participating today.
        Chair Merkley. Madam Speaker, thank you for summing that
    up. And that phrase, ``do not put deals ahead of ideals,'' sums
    up so much of our effort to illuminate the abuses occurring in
    China, to advocate for dramatic improvements, to stand on the
    side of ideals. And thank you very much for your service over
    these decades.
        Speaker Pelosi. If I may, Mr. Chairman, I want to salute
    you. Because you--all of us on the West Coast know how
    important trade with Asia is to the economy of our communities.
    And to balance the human rights and the trade issue is a
    challenge. But I thank you for your courage in taking the lead
    in such an important way. Thank you.
        Chair Merkley. It's been an honor to do so. Thank you. We
    now will turn to our experts to take a look, to scrutinize
    these last two decades and what has transpired. I will
    introduce each of them now.
        Teng Biao is a human rights lawyer and currently the Hauser
    Human Rights Scholar at Hunter College, City University of New
    York. He formerly taught at China University of Political
    Science and the University of Chicago. One of the earliest
    promoters of the rights defense movement and the New Citizens
    Movement in China, he cofounded two human rights NGOs in
    Beijing, the Open Constitution Initiative and China Against the
    Death Penalty, in 2003 and 2010, respectively.
        Rana Siu Inboden is a senior fellow with the Robert Strauss
    Center for International Security and Law at the University of
    Texas at Austin. She previously managed the State Department's
    Human Rights and Democracy Fund China Program and served in
    several other roles related to China. Her book, China and the
    International Human Rights Regime, examines China's role in the
    international human rights system between 1982 and 2017.
        Sophie Richardson is China Director at Human Rights Watch.
    She has overseen the organization's research and advocacy on
    China since 2006 and has published extensively on human rights
    and political reform in China, as well as in Southeast Asia.
    She is author of China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of
    Peaceful Coexistence. She has testified before the U.S. Senate
    and House of Representatives, Canadian Parliament, and European
    Parliament.
        Thank you all for lending your expertise to us for this
    hearing. Without objection, your full written statements will
    be entered into the record. We ask that you keep your remarks
    to about five minutes.
        Mr. Teng Biao.

      STATEMENT OF TENG BIAO, HAUSER HUMAN RIGHTS SCHOLAR, HUNTER
      COLLEGE, AND POZEN VISITING PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

        Mr. Teng. Thank you very much. Thank you for your wonderful
    work for human rights in China, and elsewhere in the world.
    When Xi Jinping came to power, he hugely intensified the
    crackdown on human rights. He actually waged a war on law. Just
    as in 1989, when the CCP believed that the social
    liberalization and democratic movement had threatened one-party
    rule, it did not hesitate to crush the peaceful protests with
    tanks and machine guns. Xi Jinping abolished the two-term limit
    for the presidency, shut down thousands of NGOs, rounded up
    human rights lawyers and dissidents, persecuted all religious
    groups, and intensified censorship.
        Since 2009, 159 Tibetans have self-immolated to call for
    freedom. And Hong Kong's freedom has been destroyed since 2020.
    And Uyghur genocide is still ongoing. Women were systematically
    raped and sexually harassed in the concentration camps,
    intellectuals and elites were purged, children were forcibly
    separated from their parents, a million Han Chinese officials
    were sent to live with Uyghur families. The Xinjiang Victims
    Database has documented 210 deaths in the camps. The real
    number must be higher than this.
        What is extremely terrifying is that the CCP has
    established an unprecedented totalitarian surveillance system
    in China. At least half a billion surveillance cameras are
    installed throughout the country, and the number is still
    increasing sharply. A social credit system is expanding
    rapidly. Powerful phone trackers can connect one's digital
    footprint, real-life identity, and physical whereabouts. Facial
    recognition, voiceprint, and gait recognition capability,
    together with government-controlled big data, make privacy
    hardly possible. The authorities have collected DNA data from
    hundreds of millions of Chinese by cheating or by force. Social
    media controlled by the CCP--Weibo, WeChat, TikTok and others--
    are also effective tools to surveil all Chinese internet users.
        By strengthening high-tech totalitarianism, the Chinese
    government's goal is to maximize its capacity to monitor
    everyone's every movement in every corner at every moment.
    Furthermore, COVID-19 has become a perfect excuse for the CCP
    to strengthen its control. Four hundred million people are
    under COVID lockdown. Every citizen is required to show a green
    health code and also a venue code and itinerary code to leave
    home. Before two human rights lawyers departed to meet their
    client, their health codes suddenly turned red, which was
    obviously a manipulation by the authorities to restrict their
    travel. The zero-COVID policy has been purposed more to tighten
    its perfect dictatorship than to fight coronavirus.
        Some recommendations: Democracies should urge the Chinese
    government to release all political prisoners. I call your
    attention to the jailed prisoners of conscience, like Ilham
    Tohti. I have a slide show of photos of the leading human
    rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi. Xu Zhiyong and Ding
    Jiaxi, the leaders of the New Citizens Movement, and still in
    detention after secret trial. And also Wang Binzhang, Gao
    Zhisheng, Gulshan Abbas, Go Sherab Gyatso, and Jim Lai.
        The Chinese government should immediately release all the
    protestors detained during the recent A4 revolution. I have
    confirmed that protesters have been tortured by the police.
    Peng Lifa, who hung the banners at Beijing Sitong Bridge, is
    the new Tank Man who inspired the A4 revolution. A girl,
    reportedly named Li Kangmeng, was the first person to hold a
    white paper. The whereabouts of Li Kangmeng and Peng Lifa
    remain unknown.
        Democracies should also urge the Chinese government to stop
    its repressive policies in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia,
    including restriction of their native languages, destruction of
    their cultural heritage, religious persecution, forced
    marriage, torture, and arbitrary detention. Democracies should
    stop appeasing the CCP regime. Not seeking regime change is the
    wrong message to send the CCP.
        It's imperative to help the Chinese people jump the Great
    Firewall. When the Chinese people can access information from
    the free world, many of them will be awakened and will tend not
    to tolerate the brutal rule of the CCP. A bit more affordable
    technologies or equipment like VPNs will make a great
    difference. Democracies should sanction the global companies
    that are complicit in the CCP's censorship and surveillance.
    Cisco and some other tech giants facilitated China's Great
    Firewall. Zoom terminated the meetings organized by Chinese
    activists and suspended the host accounts upon instruction from
    the Chinese government.
        Today I request a congressional investigation of Apple.
    Apple has ceded legal ownership of its customers' data to a
    company owned by the Chinese government. Apple neglected labor
    rights violations in its supply factories in China and has
    removed the VPN apps from its app store in China. The company
    restricted the use of AirDrop soon after the Sitong Bridge
    protest. Apple should tell the public where it received the
    instructions and where it has been complicit--and why it has
    been complicit--in China's suppression and censorship.
        Because of my human rights work, I have been repeatedly
    kidnapped, detained, and tortured. But so many Chinese people
    have suffered and sacrificed so much. Many activists have even
    lost their lives, including the Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo. The
    recent A4 revolution has shown the world how eager the Chinese
    people are to demand freedom and democracy, and how much they
    are willing to risk in fighting against the dictatorship. It's
    our moral and political obligation to support the freedom
    fighters. The bottom line is, a business based in the free
    world facilitating the dictatorship should not be tolerated.
        Thank you very much.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much. Now we'll turn to Dr.
    Inboden.

     STATEMENT OF RANA SIU INBODEN, SENIOR FELLOW, ROBERT STRAUSS
    CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND LAW, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
                               AT AUSTIN

        Ms. Inboden. Thank you. Distinguished commissioners, fellow
    witnesses, and guests, it is an honor to be a part of today's
    hearing. In the 20 years since the CECC was established, one of
    the most profound changes is an emboldened China that actively
    works to dilute U.N. human rights procedures and norms. This
    manifests in a number of ways.
        First, China is leading a coalition comprised primarily of
    Global South nations, as well as Russia, that constrains the
    international human rights regime. This group, which numbers
    nearly 50 nations, goes by the generic title the Like-Minded
    Group, and advances a regressive human rights vision that
    downplays civil and political rights and prioritizes
    sovereignty over international monitoring, even in cases of
    gross human rights violations. This group acts as a mutual
    defense network, shielding each other from scrutiny.
        China, for example, defended Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Belarus,
    Eritrea, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Sri Lanka. Beijing also
    mobilizes these countries to divert attention from its human
    rights record. Earlier this fall, when a resolution on Xinjiang
    was introduced in the Human Rights Council, it failed with 17
    nations voting for, 19 nations voting against, and 11
    registered abstentions. Among the 19 nations voting against the
    resolution, 11 have affiliated with the Like-Minded Group.
        The U.S. must respond by seeking to draw nations away from
    this group. Although a number of these countries are severe
    human rights violators, not all of them fit neatly into the
    autocratic camp. They align with this group partly out of a
    sense of global solidarity, rather than a zeal for
    authoritarian practices. Some of these countries could even be
    described as swing states, such as India and Indonesia. The
    U.S. State Department should make clear to these states that
    their affiliation with this group undermines human dignity.
        The lack of a vigorous U.S. presence on the Human Rights
    Council has allowed China to co-opt this body and secure
    passage of resolutions that defend dictators instead of human
    rights victims, challenge the universality of human rights, and
    favor anemic dialogue over robust accountability. The insertion
    of Xi Jinping's slogans also indicates that the PRC uses these
    resolutions to extend the CCP's influence abroad. The U.S.
    retreat from the Council served China's interests and enabled
    it and other autocrats to fill this vacuum. Unfortunately, we
    now see a mushrooming of authoritarian influence.
        China and a number of other repressive nations devote
    considerable resources to staffing their missions, enabling
    their diplomats to master U.N. rules and build relationships
    with other states in Geneva. The U.S. must respond with a
    proactive presence by increasing staffing for its mission and
    ensuring that American diplomats have the resources and
    opportunities to gain relevant U.N. expertise and build bridges
    with other members of the Council. A reinvigorated posture in
    Geneva that includes paying diplomatic attention to smaller
    states and identifying shared human rights concerns with other
    nations, can counteract China's influence.
        The U.S. should use its speaking time during the Universal
    Periodic Review process not only to list China's myriad human
    rights violations, but to specifically call for the release of
    prisoners such as Uyghur Ilham Tohti, house church pastor Wang
    Yi, Tibetan Yeshe Choedron, and human rights defender Qin
    Yongmin. While China has sought to debilitate from within, the
    U.S. needs to think about strengthening from within.
        China has also misused its seat on the U.N.'s Economic and
    Social Council's NGO Committee to block the applications of a
    number of civil society groups seeking U.N. consultative
    status. China has actively blocked applications from
    organizations working on human rights. Between 2016 and 2019,
    repressive countries were responsible for blocking the
    applications of 964 NGOs, with Beijing leading this
    obstruction. The U.S. State Department has begun rectifying the
    authoritarian dominance on the NGO Committee by calling for
    votes on stalled applications.
        Using this maneuver, earlier this month the Economic and
    Social Council voted to award nine NGOs U.N. accreditation.
    While the State Department, especially the U.S. mission in New
    York, should be commended for this, roughly 1,000 NGOs,
    including a number of organizations that work on North Korea,
    remain in limbo in this committee. The U.S. should continue to
    use this kind of proactive and inventive diplomacy.
        Even as the Chinese government contests the universality of
    human rights, the protests last month remind us that the desire
    for human dignity resonates deeply with the Chinese people.
    Thank you.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Doctor, in particular
    for illuminating the Like-Minded Group and the importance of
    the U.S. strengthening our response.
        Dr. Richardson.

                    STATEMENT OF SOPHIE RICHARDSON,
                   CHINA DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

        Ms. Richardson. Chairman Merkley, Co-chairman McGovern,
    distinguished members of the Commission and fellow panelists,
    thank you for inviting me to join you today. And many
    congratulations on two decades of the Commission's work. It has
    been an extraordinary partner in its exemplary research and
    advocacy, and its genuine bipartisanship.
        My written testimony details the methods and implications
    of the Chinese government's increasingly active anti-rights
    posture across the United Nations human rights system, a system
    that matters because too often it is the only means of redress
    and accountability for people living under governments that
    either fail to protect them or violate their rights. At the
    time this Commission was formed, Beijing was content to merely
    try to block scrutiny of China within the U.N. human rights
    system. Two decades later, Beijing aspires to remake it.
        We have documented obstruction of independent civil society
    organizations, roadblocks put up to weaken treaty body reviews,
    efforts to strip peacekeeping operations of human rights
    funding, and increasingly vitriolic attacks on the mandates of
    independent human rights experts. Beijing is now also chipping
    away at established human rights norms, with a view, we fear,
    toward trying to change black-letter human rights law.
        Beijing's goal is not just to weaken scrutiny of its own
    appalling human rights record. It is also to weaken the
    architecture as a whole, making it harder to address other
    global human rights crises. In September, the Chinese
    government was one of only three states voting against a
    resolution to renew the mandate of a special rapporteur on
    Afghanistan. In November, it was one of only six governments to
    vote against a fact-finding mission on Iran.
        The system is showing some signs of resilience--the August
    publication of a strong report by the Office of the High
    Commissioner for Human Rights, detailing possible Chinese
    government crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and
    others, and the recent remarks by the new High Commissioner
    Volker Turk taking ownership of that report. Key treaty bodies,
    including the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
    Discrimination and the Committee against Torture, and
    extraordinary collaboration by special procedures, have kept a
    focus on Beijing, despite the Chinese government's hostility.
        Just last week, as Professor Inboden just mentioned,
    Beijing and other authoritarians lost a long-running battle to
    block accreditation of several civil society groups. But it
    bears pointing out that at least one of them had waited 15
    years for such status. And the reality is that the threats are
    far greater. The U.N. human rights system is byzantine,
    susceptible to politicization, and deprioritized by
    democracies--precisely the kind of vacuum in which the Chinese
    government has thrived. That there has not yet been a debate at
    the Human Rights Council about Beijing's ongoing crimes against
    humanity speaks to its capacity to ensure impunity. That
    activists for the people across China have no meaningful access
    to this system does too.
        What needs to change? First, democracies should exceed
    Beijing's anti-rights ambition, determination, and resources,
    partly by forming a coalition to strengthen the human rights
    system. They should work together to ensure that every human
    rights space--every position, election, fund, agency, norm, and
    pro-rights reform across the U.N. system--is protected. It is
    encouraging to hear that with bipartisan support the State
    Department has created a new office, the Office of Multilateral
    Strategy and Personnel, to take on some of this critical work.
    But please consider whether these resources are sufficient to
    the task of coordinating with other democracies to challenge
    Beijing.
        Second, democracies should be wholly committed to pressing
    for an investigation into Chinese government crimes against
    humanity, both because of the scope, scale, and severity of the
    crimes but also as a critical test of the U.N. human rights
    system's resilience. There should be no political or diplomatic
    wavering. Some in Congress or the administration may see the
    October Human Rights Council vote as a loss. We strongly
    encourage everyone to see it as a victory in the longer effort
    toward holding Chinese government officials accountable. It
    would be a loss for human rights and a big win for Beijing if
    there were no further efforts to discuss the U.N. Xinjiang
    Report at the Council and to establish an independent
    international investigation.
        Third, democracies should support civil society
    organizations, particularly ones from China blocked by Beijing,
    to share their work and perspective directly in capitals and
    across the international system. Democracies should press at
    the highest level at the United Nations for better protection
    of these activists and to ensure that all cases of state
    reprisals against them are investigated and addressed.
        A last thought: In early 2000, around the same time that
    the 106th Congress was drafting the legislation to establish
    this Commission, Liu Xiaobo was starting to write again
    following a three-year ``reeducation through labor'' sentence.
    In an essay from around that time, he urged attention to ``the
    people who have suffered terribly because of abuses of power or
    dereliction of duty in government,'' noting that ``whoever
    remembers such people, even if it is only to stop for a moment
    to say a silent prayer for them, is honoring the fundamental
    human condition.''
        So our sincerest thanks to the CECC for two decades of
    precisely such efforts to honor the human rights, the
    fundamental human condition, of people across China. Thank you.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you, Dr. Richardson.
        We'll now enter a period of questions. I'll ask you to keep
    your responses as concise as possible. We'll try to get through
    them.
        Dr. Teng, I observed your comment that the Chinese
    government seeks to monitor every movement at every moment of
    its citizens, as a way to describe the overwhelming high-tech
    surveillance and oppression. I particularly want to observe the
    white paper protest, often referred to as A4, because of the
    size of the paper.
        The idea that you protest by saying nothing is so powerful,
    because you know why people are protesting, but they can't say
    so because they'll be arrested for saying so. And maybe they'll
    be arrested for saying nothing. But holding up that white paper
    I thought was just an extraordinarily innovative way to say the
    system must change. And I want to applaud every member of the
    Chinese citizenry that has stood up holding that white paper.
    It's been very, very powerful.
        We have seen these protests and wondered whether these are
    fueled not so much by the COVID lockdown, but by so many other
    concerns and grievances, particularly among younger Chinese. So
    what does that protest say, as we look to the future? Is this a
    limited event or is this an event that paves a path for much
    more resistance to the overwhelmingly oppressive tactics of the
    Chinese government?
        Mr. Teng. Thank you very much. Yes, there's nothing on the
    white paper, but everything is already on it. On the white
    paper, you know, there was anger, the frustration of the COVID
    lockdown, and also the desire for freedom and democracy in
    China. It's really amazing, under such totalitarian
    surveillance, that so many Chinese people took to the streets
    to demand freedom and democracy. Not only the end of the zero-
    COVID policy, but also in Shanghai and Chengdu, people were
    chanting: Communist Party, step down! Xi Jinping, step down! No
    autocracy, we want democracy! Like that.
        And now the protest has been crushed by mass arrests and
    detentions. The Chinese Communist Party is still arresting
    protesters. And many of them have been tortured. And we don't
    know how many have been detained. But this wave of protest and
    the A4 revolution are extremely important, though this time
    Chinese people are not able to change the political system. But
    so many Chinese people have overcome their fear, and if the
    Communist Party does not change the zero-COVID policy, then
    that kind of anger will accumulate.
        But if the current COVID policy is loosened, it could be
    seen as encouragement to the protesters, to the Chinese people.
    And then it provides more opportunity for further protest. So
    generally, I don't know when the next protest will be, but we
    have seen more and more that the Chinese people do not want to
    tolerate this brutal dictatorship, especially the one-man--
    that's Xi Jinping--dictatorship. And I believe there will be a
    larger-scale peaceful movement for democracy.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much.
        Dr. Inboden, in recent years Freedom House has identified
    authoritarian collaboration--a subject you have studied
    extensively--as an enabler of transnational repression, with
    China taking a leading role, something that we have been
    holding hearings on and illuminating here on the Commission.
    How do you assess the problem of authoritarian states
    collaborating with one another to suppress rights outside their
    borders? And what is our best response?
        Ms. Inboden. Thank you for that excellent question. The
    problem of transnational repression is one that reaches even
    into the United States. Teng Biao, my fellow witness, can
    testify to that, having personally known people or perhaps
    himself feeling the long reach of the Chinese government. In
    order to combat this, the U.S. should do several things. First,
    at the U.N. Human Rights Council, the U.S. should consider
    advancing a resolution that tackles the problem of
    transnational repression.
        Also, because the problem of transnational repression is
    abetted by authoritarian collaboration, the U.S. needs to
    respond with a transnational coalition that pushes back against
    this. The U.S. can build this within the U.N. Human Rights
    Council, as well as outside this body. And finally, even as
    Freedom House, civil society groups, and the State Department
    have become increasingly aware of transnational repression, law
    enforcement in the United States also needs to be aware of the
    kinds of help that people like Teng Biao and others who have
    fled repression in their countries need when they face
    repression here in the United States. Thank you.
        Chair Merkley. Within the context of that response, of
    countries working together to respond, what is the thing that
    would be most effective in persuading Chinese officials to say,
    Yeah, we're no longer going to send people out to threaten a
    Chinese expatriate in the United States, to threaten their
    family back in China, because the U.S. will respond in this
    fashion? In other words, what is the single most effective
    thing that would make Chinese authorities think twice about
    this strategy?
        Ms. Inboden. I think the U.S. move to raise several court
    cases highlighting this problem, and prosecuting, is an
    incredibly important step. The U.S. also needs to be aware of
    how the Chinese might use their presence here in the United
    States under the cover of diplomacy and others to place agents
    here to engage in repression. And so there needs to be a
    thorough investigation into this. And finally, China is still
    sensitive to its global image. So I commend the U.S. Government
    for advancing three court cases in the same day. I think this
    sends a very powerful message.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much.
        Co-chair McGovern.
        Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. Dr. Richardson, this
    Commission's mandate is to monitor China's compliance with
    international human rights standards. According to the U.N.,
    United Nations human rights treaty bodies have confirmed that
    sexual orientation and gender identity are included among
    prohibited grounds of discrimination under international human
    rights law. This Commission has found that the LGBTQ community
    in China continues to face persistent stigma, widespread
    discrimination, and harassment and that Chinese government
    authorities increased restrictions on LGBTQ advocacy and
    organizing, as they have done with other advocacy groups.
        Do you believe that the Chinese government is obligated to
    respect the rights of LGBTQ persons in China? And is it
    appropriate for this Commission to monitor its compliance? What
    is Human Rights Watch's view on the subject?
        Ms. Richardson. Yes--to all of those questions. I mean,
    first of all, it's an issue that we have tracked and reported
    on. The most recent full-length report we documented on this
    topic was about forced conversion therapy in medical settings
    in which mostly adult LGBT people had been forced by their
    parents to go to clinics that promised to ``cure'' them,
    regarding their sexual orientation. But LGBTQ rights are
    protected, as is every other human right, by way of all of the
    core international and human rights instruments. And even if
    the text of the treaties themselves does not explicitly make
    reference to sexual orientation, comments by the Human Rights
    Committee, which is the entity that interprets the treaties,
    have made clear that those rights are absolute. So, yes, it is
    appropriate to expect that of the Chinese and, yes, it's an
    appropriate issue for the Commission.
        Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
        Dr. Inboden, your testimony gives an insightful look at how
    China uses its allies to deflect human rights criticism within
    the U.N. system. I appreciate that you've written a book on the
    subject. My question is whether there is a way to avoid blocs
    in the Human Rights Council, or other bodies, so that debates
    over human rights don't devolve into power contests between one
    group and another. How do we keep the focus on international
    principles and law?
        Ms. Inboden. I love that question. I think, first of all,
    even if we are facing a geopolitical contest of sorts, we
    should not let this seep into the U.N. Human Rights Council.
    The U.S. needs to have a principled position in the Council and
    when it raises China, be clear that we are raising it out of a
    concern for the violations in Xinjiang, not about our own
    concerns about geopolitics. I also strongly think that the U.S.
    needs to build more bridges across regions so that when it does
    advance resolutions it has those relationships to secure
    support. I also think that the U.S. needs to be open to
    providing training or opportunities for diplomats from smaller
    states that have fewer resources to gain expertise in U.N.
    procedures and norms and could even host that in the United
    States.
        Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. I guess this is a question
    for you and probably Dr. Richardson. In both of your
    testimonies you speak to the importance of working from within
    an imperfect U.N. system. Regarding the advantages of being in
    the room when debates actually happen: In June 2018, the Trump
    administration unilaterally withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights
    Council at a time when China had a seat. From the perspective
    of winning over allies on human rights advocacy, is that
    withdrawal a model to be repeated or avoided?
        Ms. Richardson. No, of course it's not a model. Look,
    democracies need to not just show up and defend human rights
    issues; they actually need to make the U.N. system as
    expansive, with respect to rights, as they possibly can. But
    they also have to invest in these initiatives. You know,
    Professor Inboden's testimony spoke to the resources that some
    governments invest in thwarting scrutiny and weakening these
    institutions. I think it is critically important for the U.S.
    and other democracies to meet and match that.
        It's hard to do, I think, because people in the United
    States have other means. And other democracies can expect free
    presses, and functional court systems, and hope to find
    accountability or redress within their own systems. But I think
    if democracies want people in authoritarian systems to be best
    equipped to argue for their own rights and to find
    accountability, this is the system that has to be made to work.
        Is it flawless? Of course it isn't. Is it the system that
    Human Rights Watch would design? Of course there are changes
    and reforms that are necessary, but ceding the field to a
    regime like the one in Beijing is not helpful. I mean, we're
    all familiar with the phrase, ``nature abhors a vacuum.''
    Nature has not met the Chinese Communist Party. And leaving
    this system to that government's instincts has profound
    implications not just for 1.4 billion people across China, but
    people all over the world, including the United States. It has
    to be made to work well.
        Ms. Inboden. I'd like to add that I think the United States
    needs to start thinking about the U.N. Human Rights Council in
    a different way; thinking about fighting from within. You can't
    win these fights if you're standing outside the Council. And I
    would build on Dr. Richardson's point. The CCP loves a vacuum.
    And they have taken advantage of this. I would also say that
    the Xinjiang resolution was actually winnable. If you look at
    the votes, there were several abstentions. There were several
    states that, with more vigorous lobbying, I believe the United
    States and other democratic allies could have convinced those
    countries to vote with us.
        There's also a bright spot in the U.N. human rights system
    that Dr. Richardson and I have spoken about or included in our
    written testimony. And that's the special procedures system.
    Many of them have been speaking out jointly with very strongly
    worded statements condemning China for the violations in
    Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Keeping those mandates healthy is very
    important, and those mandates are renewed through resolutions.
    If the U.S. is not there fighting to keep the language strong
    and make sure that the people who are appointed to those
    mandates have integrity and character and the right kind of
    expertise, the autocratic camp will start chipping away at that
    part of the U.N. human rights system.
        Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. My time has expired. Thank
    you very much.
        Chair Merkley. Congressman Smith.
        Representative Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Oh, Mr.
    Suozzi, you were here first?
        Representative Suozzi. Mr. Chairman, I have to go to
    another meeting. Would it be OK if I just did this quickly?
        Chair Merkley. I think everyone is yielding to you.
        Representative Suozzi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let
    me put on the record that I discussed with you earlier that I
    have a constituent from Syosset, New York who is being
    imprisoned in China, Mr. Kai Li. The U.N. has declared that
    he's being held arbitrarily, and there's not been any proper
    process whatsoever. And I need the Commission's help to
    continue to try and advocate for his release. We'd like to try
    and get a meeting between his family and President Biden.
    Anything you can do to help, I would appreciate.
        I want to thank the witnesses so much for the great work
    that they do, not just here today but throughout their lives.
    We're so grateful to them for the work that they do. Looking
    back at the 20 years, so much good work has been done by this
    Commission, but there's more work ahead. I want to take
    advantage of the opportunity of your expertise to just ask:
    What do you think the next three hearings of this Commission
    should be about?
        You know, we've had hearings under the chairman recently on
    transnational repression. I think a great idea coming from the
    things we're hearing today is, What should the U.S. role be in
    the U.N. to hold China accountable, and what can we do as the
    U.S. Government and as a Commission to hold the U.N. more
    accountable for their treatment of China, and to bring in
    expert testimony on that. But I'd like to ask each of you to
    give me one suggestion as to what you think a hearing of this
    committee should be over the next two years that you would love
    to see us delve into in detail.
        Mr. Teng.
        Mr. Teng. One suggestion is, as I just mentioned--we should
    investigate the role that American and global companies play in
    the repression of freedom in China. Many, many tech giants and
    other American companies are involved in human rights
    violations, like labor rights violations and censorship and
    surveillance. These companies provide technology, the
    equipment, and training to the Chinese government to facilitate
    surveillance and censorship. So that's one thing we should
    organize a hearing on.
        The second I can recommend is political prisoners. So many
    people, like writers, bloggers, lawyers, and human rights
    defenders, even foreign citizens, and religious practitioners--
    the believers--and, of course, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, and
    Uyghurs are in prison or in the camps. We should know the
    details of how the Chinese government treats these people--you
    know, how these people have been arbitrarily detained and
    tortured. So that's two ideas.
        Representative Suozzi. Okay. Thank you.
        Ms. Inboden. Thank you. That's an excellent question.
    First, I think the U.S. should have a hearing on how to work
    with other allies, especially in Europe. This is because even
    though the U.S. took the wonderful step of passing legislation,
    the risk is that some of the tainted cotton that is produced
    with Uyghur forced labor will just be diverted to other
    markets. I really think that the U.S. needs to be a leader on
    this and figure out how to convince other democratic allies to
    take similar steps.
        Representative Suozzi. Even a joint hearing would be a good
    idea, with some of our European allies.
        Ms. Inboden. That's an excellent idea. I also echo Teng
    Biao's mention of the private sector. We need to figure out how
    to exert the right kind of pressure, because the private sector
    on its own has not been a partner in this. In fact, over the
    decade that I've been working on this, I've seen how the
    private sector has, at critical times, undermined efforts. But
    they can play a positive role, because I think there are
    opportunities--especially the tech sector. We need to look at
    encrypted technology and how that can help dissidents.
        Finally, I think that an effort to help people think about
    how to build bridges across communities that are repressed by
    the Chinese government is a useful one. Figuring out how
    Tibetans and Uyghurs can work together, figuring out how house
    church pastors who are repressed can work with human rights
    defenders. I mentioned the case of house church Pastor Wang Yi.
    He also has a background in political activism. The combination
    of his work leading a vibrant church in Chengdu and his
    political activism has landed him in prison, and so I think
    figuring out how to have a united front against the CCP would
    be very useful.
        Representative Suozzi. Good idea.
        Ms. Richardson. I came up with five, sorry. [Laughs] First,
    companies, please, please. From Apple to Thermo Fisher, please
    get them in here and ask them questions about their human
    rights due diligence strategies; second, a discussion about
    both domestic and international means for accountability for
    crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs. You know, there are
    opportunities under U.S. law, not just through an institution
    like the Human Rights Council.
        Okay, I'll just add one other, which is we continue to be
    extremely concerned about Chinese government threats to
    academic freedom in the United States, particularly as it
    pertains to students and scholars of and from China. Schools
    keep saying to us, We've got rules; it's under control;
    everybody has the same degree of academic freedom. We beg to
    differ. I think it would be very important to have a discussion
    in a forum like this with people who are informed both about
    the nature of the problem, but also who are well equipped to
    offer up suggestions about solutions. I think it is an enormous
    problem that people come to campuses in the U.S. expecting to
    be able to freely study and debate certain ideas, but then have
    an experience that leads them to say to us things like, Why did
    I come? That's a fixable problem.
        Representative Suozzi. Thank you for your excellent
    suggestions. Mr. Smith, thank you so much for yielding. Mr.
    Chairman, thank you so much.
        Chair Merkley. Congressman Suozzi, thank you for your, I
    believe, four years of service on the Commission. And as you
    head into new chapters, I want to thank you for spotlighting
    Kai Li, your constituent from Syosset. I'll follow up with you
    to brainstorm about how we might bring even more attention to
    that case.
        Representative Suozzi. Thank you so much.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you.
        Congressman Smith.
        Representative Smith. Thank you very much. I too want to
    thank Tom Suozzi for his extraordinary contributions, not just
    to this Commission but to the issue of human rights in China.
    He formed the Uyghur Caucus and invited me to come and co-chair
    it with him. We've worked on issues related to Xinjiang ever
    since it became apparent that not only are they being
    discriminated against but actually genocide on a huge scale is
    being committed against the Uyghur people and others in that
    area. So I want to thank him for that. The Hong Kong Human
    Rights and Democracy Act, he and I did that together.
        I also want to thank Scott Flipse. It was his idea in the
    first place, back in 2014, that we do it. I think that makes a
    difference. We have tremendous staff on this Commission. And it
    does make a difference, because it helps us do a better job. We
    get unbelievably effective and informed witnesses, as we have
    here today. It's always good to see Sophie, and the others. But
    again, Tom, I want to thank you. You have made such a
    difference and will continue to do so as we go forward. So
    thank you.
        Just a few very brief remarks, Mr. Chairman. I would ask
    that my full statement be made a part of the record. Oddly
    enough, I voted against creating this Commission. Why? It was
    part of the PNTR vote. It was put into the PNTR ending MFN and
    annual reviews as a way of saying, See, we still care about
    human rights. And I said, Do a separate bill on a China
    commission. Don't try to sweeten what I think is an egregious
    mistake, and it was--getting rid of at least the annual review
    of MFN.
        You know, my good friend Jim McGovern made a very good
    point about how foolish it was for us to leave the Human Rights
    Commission, flawed as it is. We need to be a voice that becomes
    even more powerful, not less. I openly criticized the Trump
    administration when they did that, and I wrote letters to them
    asking that they reconsider, because I think having that voice
    and the ability to organize inside even a council that is
    filled with rogue nations can help mitigate some of the worst
    abuses that they commit, and they do commit huge abuses.
        We all know that we missed an opportunity when the
    commission became the council, and all the fanfare about how
    the Human Rights Council was different and was a reformed
    product of the flawed commission which preceded it. It's the
    same thing. It's just turning the page, putting a different
    name on it. I remember speaking to people like Kofi Annan and
    others to say, Get this right.
        You know, having rogue nations sitting in judgement,
    forming partnerships--the way China and so many others do--to
    prevent scrutiny and to go after other countries, including
    Israel--you know, for a country that is that small, and is a
    democracy, for it to get the focus at the UN almost
    exclusively--there are more resolutions on Israel than all the
    other countries in the world combined. That's ludicrous. And it
    shows, I think, an antisemitism that is very, very unseemly.
    That being what it is, we need to be there. And we are there.
    And we need to work it very, very hard. And maybe some good
    things occasionally will come out of it, and some of the worst
    abuses that get overlooked and trivialized will get the kind of
    hearing that they need.
        I just want to say too, that this Commission has a
    tremendous staff. And our prisoners list--in 2008, Frank Wolf
    and I went over, three weeks before the Olympics, because they
    were rounding up all the dissidents so the press wouldn't be
    able to talk to them. It was the last time I got a visa for a
    very long time because they penalized Frank and me for that.
    But what did we bring? Our big prisoners list. And we had a
    press conference there. We went through names. We said, This
    isn't about the Olympic Games. You know, they should go to a
    country that at least isn't abusing its own people, even while
    the Games are going on, and rounding up the usual suspects, the
    best and the brightest, so they can't talk to the press.
        We went through that and they threatened to throw us out,
    but they didn't. But again, it was the prisoners list produced
    by this tremendous Commission and its staff. And I put emphasis
    on the staff, because they're the ones who did it. I've chaired
    a number of hearings of this Commission. I've served as
    chairman, co-chairman, ranking member. And when you add it all
    up, with my subcommittee on human rights over on the House
    side, and working with Jim over on the Lantos Commission, I've
    chaired 76 hearings on human rights abuse in China. Still not
    enough. We need more laws. We need more implementation of those
    laws. Jim, great job on the Uyghur legislation, but how well is
    it really being implemented? We need to hold the
    administration's feet to the fire.
        And I don't care who is in the White House. When it comes
    to somebody who is being tortured and languishing in a
    political prison, or a gulag, or a laogai, reform through labor
    camp--which they say they got rid of--we've got to be very,
    very honest and aggressive in calling that out. I called Bill
    Clinton out, and I know my colleagues know this, when he
    delinked human rights from China on May 26th, 1994, and I was
    all in for applauding Clinton for linking them one year before
    by executive order. And it was a tremendous executive order. We
    lost so much. They took the measure of the United States of
    America and our government and said: All they care about is
    profits; and human rights is a sidebar issue, if it's even
    that.
        Many of the people--and I think some were very well
    meaning, thought if we just traded more, they would matriculate
    from a dictatorship to a democracy. That's been blown apart.
    That is false. I always thought it was false. Others, like
    Nancy Pelosi, our Speaker, with whom we worked very closely,
    along with Frank Wolf and others--we all thought that was
    false. Have the linkage. You know, say it matters. And we'll
    even get a carry-over effect on intellectual property, because
    the rule of law is more likely going to be adhered to.
        Much has to be done going into next year. Chairman, thank
    you for your leadership. Thank you, Co-chair, for your
    leadership this year and last on the Commission. And you know,
    we've got to work very hard. I love the question about what we
    need to do next year in terms of hearings and thank you for
    that. Please feel free to convey that to all of us as we go
    forward. We've got much to do.
        The organ harvesting issue--as Jim and I know, we did a
    hearing in the Lantos Commission. Fifty to a hundred thousand
    people every single year are having their organs ripped out,
    two to three organs per person, and they're the healthiest
    people in China. They're believers. They're Falun Gong
    especially, and others who are picked out. Average age, 27 to
    28, as you know so well. We have not done enough to rein in
    that horrible Josef Mengele-type abuse that's being committed
    as we sit here in a hearing.
        So thank you. Thanks to our staff. Thanks to our co-chairs
    for a great two years of leadership. And may it continue. I
    yield back.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much for your advocacy over
    so many years, and the intensity and passion that you have
    brought to standing for human rights of all citizens, but in
    particular in regard to China.
        Dr. Richardson, we've banned the import of products of
    forced labor from Xinjiang, and other coercive labor
    arrangements in China. We're working to make sure the United
    States Government robustly implements the law, but it's more
    effective if the United States is not acting alone. What do we
    need to do to broaden the coalition to send this message that
    the slave labor in Xinjiang is unacceptable and that the
    products will not be allowed anywhere in the rest of the world?
        Ms. Richardson. First, I think Congress is particularly to
    be complimented on the overwhelming support with which the
    UFLPA was adopted, because I think that sent a very powerful
    message to parliaments in other democracies about the
    unacceptability of subsidizing forced labor and that nobody
    should want to buy products that have been made that way. There
    are initiatives underway, both across the European Union and in
    Germany and a few other democracies, to adopt somewhat similar
    constraints. They're structured in different ways. They don't
    necessarily apply to companies of all sizes. I think they will
    be helpful in limiting goods. They are not as, I think,
    definitive or broad as what the UFLPA imagines.
        I also think it would be very important--and if I may seize
    the opportunity to suggest another possible hearing topic--to
    revisit the UFLPA regularly and publicly, to understand what's
    working, what's not. There are a lot of people across the
    community--Human Rights Watch is a proud member of the
    Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region--looking at
    whether, for example, adequate resources have been provided to
    CBP to inspect goods properly. It's early days, right? It's a
    new piece of legislation. It asks for different things of the
    regulatory authorities. And I think it will be useful to
    revisit that, but also maybe use that as an opportunity to
    coordinate with some democratic allies to push for a similar
    approach. Because obviously the effect is much greater the more
    states adopt similar legislation.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you. I think that's something we
    really have to follow up on. And Dr. Teng, I wanted to ask you
    about the state of the lawyers who defend rights in China. So
    many of them have been imprisoned or silenced. Is it still
    possible for a Chinese citizen to get any true legal assistance
    when being unjustly held or imprisoned for expressing an
    opinion or perhaps holding up a piece of white paper?
        Mr. Teng. Since 2015, in the 709 Crackdown, more than 320
    human rights lawyers were detained or were disappeared. Some of
    them are still in prison. Now it's extremely difficult for the
    human rights lawyers and other human rights defenders to defend
    human rights and freedom in China. Some human rights lawyers
    still continue their activism; they try to take human rights
    cases, politically sensitive cases, but they face harassment
    and intimidation from the authorities. Now it's very dangerous.
        For the past two or three years, more than 60 human rights
    lawyers have been disbarred. They have difficulty even earning
    a living. I know recently a group of human rights lawyers in
    China publicly announced that they wanted to provide legal
    assistance to the protesters of the A4 revolution, but they
    were harassed and prevented from doing so. One of them, Wang
    Quanzhang--all of her case files were taken away by the local
    authorities. It's a clear message that the Chinese government
    doesn't want to see any human rights lawyers in any sensitive
    cases.
        Chair Merkley. Well, I believe when there are no human
    rights lawyers, there's no human rights. And that's a real sign
    of that. I'm going to defer now to Congresswoman Wexton, who
    has joined us electronically.
        Representative Wexton. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and
    Jim. I also want to thank the witnesses for being here today,
    and for the very important work that you do to preserve human
    rights in China.
        I do have some questions for you, Dr. Richardson, about the
    U.N. report from the commissioner of human rights. It was
    published in August. It actually went a little bit further than
    people really thought that it would, so I'm curious as to
    whether you can speak a little bit more to that report, and
    just talk a little bit more about whether there are any updates
    or critical facts that we need to be aware of that have been
    happening since that August report.
        Ms. Richardson. Thanks for the question. It is our view
    that the report was quite strong, both in its findings that
    drew on interviews but also drew extensively on Chinese
    government documents, press conferences, and other state
    materials. I think it's worth pointing out that the Chinese
    government has not dismissed any of the material on which the
    report is based. It has not rejected its own materials in
    trying to undermine the credibility of that report. I think it
    is very important that the report suggests the possibility that
    the Chinese government has committed crimes against humanity.
        It may be worth mentioning here that it's our understanding
    that the report phrases it as ``may possibly constitute
    international crimes, including crimes against humanity,''
    simply because the Office believes that that judgement--whether
    it is crimes against humanity or not--ultimately falls to a
    court, and not to them. They are not, I think, in any sense
    trying to underestimate the scope or the scale of the crimes.
        I think the most important developments since the report
    was actually published involve the new high commissioner having
    publicly taken ownership of the report. The Chinese government,
    and a number of other governments, tried to say that because
    the report was not a product of a voted resolution, for
    example, that it did not have legitimacy. I think the new high
    commissioner, having said that he owns the contents and
    respects them, is important.
        The key now, I think, is that a report like this, meaning
    one that makes such strong allegations, actually be the basis
    of a briefing for member states, possibly an intersessional
    briefing, in order to maintain the momentum toward the
    establishment of an investigation.
        Representative Wexton. Right, because there hasn't been
    much follow-up and action items as a result of what the report
    says. I'm glad that it goes as far as it does, but there still
    needs to be more action, clearly.
        Can we get an update from you about what things look like
    on the ground in Xinjiang? You know, how many people have been
    transferred to long-term prisons, forced labor centers? Do you
    have any update about what things are like there? Are things
    improving or are they getting worse in the wake of this report?
        Ms. Richardson. I think it's fair to say that the situation
    is a bit changed. I would certainly not say that it has
    improved. You know, we're talking about a region that's
    effectively an open-air prison. Even if the Chinese government
    radically changed its policies tomorrow, it's our view that the
    government officials who are responsible for crimes against
    humanity still need to be investigated and prosecuted. We
    published in September an analysis of the shocking number of
    cases that have been prosecuted through the formal legal
    system, we think with a view toward trying to create a veneer
    of legitimacy, to try to suggest or somehow substantiate that
    there are such profound problems in the region that the
    authorities have had to prosecute unprecedented numbers of
    people.
        We found this particularly strange logic. You know, we're
    talking about one of the most heavily policed regions of an
    already heavily policed country. And the idea that there had
    suddenly been a crime wave that would have yielded such a high
    number of prosecutions strained credulity, to put it politely.
        Representative Wexton. It was horrible, horrible that 40
    people died in Xinjiang in the apartment fire in Urumqi. But it
    did spark these protests, which you're seeing across the
    country. As we have always seen in China, whenever there are
    protests, there's pushback. What do you think this means about
    the future of the resistance and government rule in Xinjiang
    and beyond?
        Ms. Richardson. I don't think there's much evidence to
    suggest that the protests across the country were in any way
    coordinated. I would certainly defer to my fellow panelists to
    add to this. But I think what's very clear is that people had
    not just had a guts full with respect to the lockdowns, but
    also, as Professor Teng spoke about earlier, people went out on
    the streets and called for Xi Jinping to step down and for an
    end to Chinese Communist Party rule.
        Even if we are all tracking in this moment, in the days and
    weeks and months to come, what's happening to protesters who
    have been detained, often it takes a long time to find out
    what's happening to people. Even if people may feel deterred in
    this particular moment as a result of the kinds of detentions
    right after these protests, I think it's fairly clear that
    people across the country are very interested in their rights.
    They are willing to go out onto the streets. They are taking
    the risk of being identified and seeing, I think, in a sense,
    the fruit of their protests, that the government has backed
    down, that there have been relaxations of the restrictions.
        Some of the authorities have now said that they will even
    dial back some of the means of electronic surveillance that
    were implemented specifically around COVID. We'll believe that
    when we see it. I want to be clear that just because they've
    said they're going to do it doesn't mean it's actually
    happened. But surely this is encouraging to people, the idea
    that they can protest and demand respect for rights, and that
    policy changes ensue, I think, is emboldening. We'll see what
    that means in the coming weeks and months.
        Representative Wexton. It would not be at all surprising if
    the CCP then decided to crack down even more on people, because
    that is historically what has happened in the past. That's one
    other thing I'm worried about. I hope that we in the U.S. and
    throughout the international community will continue to support
    these protesters. Thank you so much. I'll yield back at this
    time.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. We'll
    now turn to Co-chair McGovern. Congressman Smith also has
    additional questions.
        Co-chair McGovern. I just have one question for all of you.
    Do you think it's warranted for the United Nations to appoint a
    special rapporteur on China? And if so, how would the U.S.
    Government go about this?
        Ms. Inboden. I would love to see the appointment of a
    special rapporteur on China. That would have to be done through
    a resolution. The fate of the Xinjiang resolution tells us that
    if the U.S. is going to pursue that, the U.S. needs to be very
    concerted in its lobbying, start earlier than it did in the
    session, whereas the Xinjiang resolution was introduced
    relatively late. The U.S. presence in Geneva also needs to be
    stepped up, with a bigger delegation, higher level delegation.
    The U.S. needs to be lobbying other states for this kind of
    resolution to create a special rapporteur on China by the very
    highest levels of our government. The President, the Secretary
    of State, and others need to reach out to countries to secure
    their votes. I think that would be an incredibly important
    step.
        Co-chair McGovern. Mr. Teng.
        Mr. Teng. Every time a special rapporteur visits China, the
    Chinese government tries their best to harass these independent
    investigators. Sometimes the interviewees are prevented from
    meeting them, and interviewees are intimidated and sometimes
    detained. Then the Chinese government actually harasses the
    dissidents and activists at the U.N. in different forums.
    That's something we should pay more attention to. The Chinese
    government also tried to send their own experts to the U.N.
    There is a report that a U.N. ``expert'' got $200,000, and then
    she became kind of a propagandist for the Communist Party.
        Co-chair McGovern. Dr. Richardson.
        Ms. Richardson. Yes, three quick reasons why I think that's
    a good idea. First of all, just to have somebody who's already
    well informed. Second, to have somebody who can be a focal
    point for civil society groups, particularly ones who don't
    have access to the U.N. human rights system. But third, one of
    the realities, I think, of the October vote was that some
    governments saw it as just another battle in a fight between
    the U.S. and China. And they didn't want to take sides in that.
    I think having a position like a special rapporteur really
    keeps the focus specifically on human rights violations
    committed by the Chinese government. It's not tied to a
    particular capital. It's not appointed by a particular
    government. It's a mandate that's created across a system that
    is grounded in adherence to international human rights law and
    standards.
        Co-chair McGovern. Thanks. I think it's a good idea,
    personally, and I'm hoping we can find a way to pursue it. I
    thank you all for your testimony and for your responses. And I
    yield back.
        Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Co-chair McGovern.
    We'll turn now to Ranking Member Smith.
        Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        One of the many lawyers that I and members of this
    Commission have followed closely over the years is Gao
    Zhisheng. A tremendous, heroic man. He wrote a book, A China
    More Just. Right around when you started taking up your work,
    Sophie, back in 2006--right around that time his troubles
    began. He was convicted in 2011. He was let out. The torture
    that was committed against him, frankly, was barbaric. I mean,
    putting cigarettes all over his face, putting electric prods on
    his genitals, in order to cause the most extreme pain
    imaginable. This man has gone through all of this, and we don't
    know exactly where he is. Maybe you could speak to it.
        One of the things I'm hoping we'll do next year is really
    focus on the human rights lawyers who have suffered so
    horribly. I would just say, parenthetically, we had Gao
    Zhisheng's wife, Geng He, testify before our committee a couple
    of times. We had his daughter, Grace, along with four other
    daughters of incarcerated political prisoners--I called it
    ``the five daughters hearing.'' She made an emotional plea, in
    that case, to President Obama, to meet with him. Month after
    month after month, I would call down to the White House, and my
    staff would, and said: Will you please just meet with the five
    daughters?
        They said something at the hearing I'll never forget, Grace
    and the other daughters. They said: President Obama has two
    daughters. He'll understand and he'll raise it with the right
    leaders in China to get our fathers freed. It was very
    impassioned. I will never forget that hearing, ever. It was so
    powerful, because I have two daughters, too. And I know a
    father's love for his daughters is so powerful, and there is
    Grace, pleading for her dad. So we will invite them back next
    year.
        Do any of you know about Gao's situation? Are we doing
    enough? What more can we, and the administration, be doing?
    When the President talks to Xi Jinping for up to two hours,
    please mention--with all respect, Mr. President--please mention
    the prisoners by name. One of the things that we all learned
    during the Soviet Union days, and my first trip on human rights
    was to Moscow and Leningrad in 1982, in my first term, with the
    National Conference on Soviet Jewry. The biggest takeaway was
    that silence enables. Name names. It helps the individual. It
    helps to mitigate some of the harshness of what they suffer.
        One of the leading dissidents, the father of the Democracy
    Wall, I had him at a hearing and he said, When you don't speak
    out, they beat us more in the prisons. When you speak out, and
    it's paradoxical and seemingly not true, but it is true, they
    beat us less. So I would encourage all of us to ask
    respectfully that the White House and Secretary of State
    Blinken name names and do it over and over. Every contact. Our
    Green New Deal czar, John Kerry, an accomplished United States
    Senator, sat in hearings here for years, and as leader of the
    Foreign Relations Committee. He gets it. He always raises
    names.
        Gao, in my opinion--and there are others--needs to be at
    the top of the list. Chen Guangcheng got out, I believe, in
    large part--a heroic man--because there was so much focus on
    securing his freedom, and so we need to do it for Gao. And we
    will be inviting the wives and children back to appeal to our
    own President and to appeal to Xi Jinping to show some
    semblance of humanitarianism. So if you could speak to that.
        Secondly, on religious freedom, Xi Jinping has done a lot
    in the area of crushing all faiths--all faiths. There's nobody
    who gets an exception, even the officially recognized patriotic
    church and the Three-Self Movement. All of them are being
    crushed now and told that they need to comport with his Marxist
    principles. And he calls it sinicization. Any updates you can
    give us on that and how we might push back on that?
        And finally, when it comes to our colleges and
    universities, I have been concerned for years--held hearings on
    this as well with the chancellor of NYU--and I even invited
    myself--he was gracious enough to have me go to Shanghai to
    speak about human rights. But still, what role are these
    colleges and universities actually playing when domestically,
    they allow such influence peddling, as we see at the Confucius
    Centers. We also have, obviously, others who then seem to mouth
    and curb their own criticism of all things human rights in the
    People's Republic of China. If you want to speak to that. I
    know there's not much time. But, Gao, if you could speak about
    him as well.
         Gao Zhisheng has been disappeared for almost five years
    and four months. Nobody knows whether or not he's still alive.
    I have two daughters. I can feel the pain, you know, how Gao
    Zhisheng's daughter and son suffer every day, every second. The
    Chinese government is using forced disappearance more and more.
    We know not only Gao, but many other Tibetans and Uyghur and
    Chinese dissidents have also been disappeared. So I totally,
    totally agree with you. It's very, very important to name
    names. When the American President, when all the senators--
    every leader, every world leader--the U.K. Prime Minister, the
    German Chancellor, everyone, has a chance to meet Chinese
    leaders, they should name names and ask them where Gao Zhisheng
    is. Where are Peng Zaizhou and Li Kangmeng?
        Ms. Inboden. Thank you very much. I also have to say, I'm
    familiar with your work even from my time at the State
    Department, where your concern for human rights was very
    evident. I am going to answer the question a little bit
    differently, because there are so many people like Gao who are
    suffering. I'd just like to raise the case of Rahile Dawut, a
    Uyghur professor who has been disappeared since 2017. Her case
    is extremely troubling, because her only crime really was
    researching and celebrating Uyghur folklore. I think not enough
    has been done around her case.
        I want to mention again my recommendation that the U.S. use
    its speaking time during the Human Rights Council Universal
    Periodic Review to mention names specifically, and even to say
    something about the stories behind some of these people,
    because I do think that in some of the ``swing states'' that
    are not necessarily hard autocracies but are also not in the
    democratic camp--I think the more they hear about the
    individual suffering, it's un-deniable the scale of human
    rights violations in China.
        Ms. Richardson. I'll just add that it's been good to see
    more Magnitsky sanctions against Chinese government officials.
    I think that's an important way of naming people, too. But we,
    of course, share the view that naming people who have been
    wrongfully detained, and calling for their release--it's not
    just saying their names; it's explicitly calling for their
    release--is an incredibly important thing to do. I think one of
    the problems is that the lists have gotten so much longer.
    We're no longer talking about hundreds and hundreds of people
    across China.
        I think if the U.S. is going to be serious about
    transnational repression, it should also be publicly calling,
    where family members have given their consent, for the release
    of the wrongfully detained family members of U.S. citizens and
    lawful permanent residents. I think it could be potentially
    very effective, for example, for Secretary Blinken to sit and
    literally read out loud a list of every single person the
    United States Government thinks should be released, whether
    they're people inside China, whether they're relatives of
    people who live here. I think that would be a very powerful way
    of underscoring this point.
        Mr. Smith, on the point about the sinicization of religion,
    I think there are few governments in modern history as powerful
    as the Chinese government, that have set themselves the task
    of, and tried to justify, essentially eradicating independent
    religious practice and reshaping it in ways that suit a very
    specific political agenda. We see this across Islam. We see it
    across Buddhism. We see it across Christianity.
        You name it, whether it is taking down signs outside of
    mosques in Ningxia, whether it is remaking the curriculum of
    Buddhist communities across the Tibetan region, we don't have
    time to go into all the details today, but I think it is a
    profoundly frightening phenomenon that a government decides it
    is going to make religion into particular formats that suit its
    political imperatives. That's not what international human
    rights law has to say about religious freedom and the freedom
    of belief.
        Chair Merkley. Well, thank you.
        As we approach the end of this hearing, I'm just pondering
    how much change we've seen in China. You know, this hearing was
    about the arc of the 20 years. It is now 11 years since former
    Majority Leader Reid led a bipartisan delegation of 10 senators
    to China. At that point, there was considerable hope for a
    lessening of restrictions.
        We were seeing some signs of increased permission for
    religious activities across a range. We were talking to
    reporters who were allowed free range of movement within China,
    and who no longer had a companion at their elbow monitoring
    their every movement. We were starting to see some opportunity
    for those within China who were raising issues about labor
    concerns and environmental concerns not being imprisoned and
    actually, on occasion, having their reports welcomed as a
    necessary observation for potential improvement.
        All of that's completely gone under leader Xi Jinping, and
    now we see that he's been reelected or appointed to another
    five years, and perhaps for life. I'm very concerned that this
    trajectory is going to get locked in, this massive electronic
    surveillance state, this massive repression of human rights,
    over a billion-plus people. Really affecting freedom of the
    press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, every freedom--
    freedom of movement. It's almost like watching a science
    fiction movie about the future, but it is here now.
        It has been important work of this Commission over the last
    two years to illuminate many dimensions of that. We need to
    continue that in an aggressive and bold fashion on behalf of
    all humanity. My concern is that this model, using high-tech
    surveillance--as you reference, Dr. Teng--of every movement and
    every moment is something that will appeal to other
    authoritarian leaders. I'm concerned about the use of facial
    recognition expanding here in the United States, and the
    encroaching power of government to monitor what we do here in
    America. We absolutely need to double down in the years ahead
    on this important work.
        I want to thank all the members, all the commissioners. I
    will no longer be the chair, as we rotate between the Senate
    and the House, but I hope to remain very involved in this
    incredibly important work. Huge thanks to the staff for what
    they have done over the last two years. We've done a lot of
    hearings on a lot of different dimensions, working hard to
    shine a spotlight on all the places where a spotlight needs to
    be shined.
        With that, we will close this hearing. I thank the three of
    you for your testimony. The record will remain open until the
    close of business on Friday, December 16th for any items
    members would like to submit for the record or any additional
    questions for the witnesses. With that, this hearing is
    adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the hearing was concluded.]

    ?

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

                                A P P E N D I X

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

                              Prepared Statements

                                    ------

                        Prepared Statement of Teng Biao

             High-tech Totalitarianism and Xi Jinping's War on Law

        Since the reform and opening-up policy was adopted in the late
    1970s, the legal system in China had been re-established from the chaos
    and brutality of the Cultural Revolution. Laws and regulations were
    made, the judiciary and lawyer system were recovered, and market-
    oriented economic and administrative reforms were implemented. Space
    for traditional media was enlarged, after the 1990s, and the internet
    played an important role in the growth of China's civil society.
    Cellular phones, social media and new communication technologies
    greatly facilitated the ability of social movements to mobilize and
    organize and offered rights activists convenient channels to find and
    connect with other like-minded users across China. Publishers
    introduced many liberal works and translations, and intellectual
    circles expressed enormous interest in liberal thought, though the
    Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never given up censorship on media,
    internet, schools and publishing.
        The ``Rights Defense Movement'' (Weiquan movement) emerged in the
    early 2000s as a new focus of the Chinese democracy movement,
    succeeding the Xidan Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the
    Tiananmen Democracy movement of 1989. Lawyers, activists, human rights
    defenders and NGOs asserted their constitutional and legal rights
    through lawful means and within the legal framework.
        But not long after the emergence of the rights defense movement,
    the Chinese government came to see it as a real threat to the regime
    and engaged in a concerted campaign to harass and crack down on human
    rights activists and NGOs. The government adopted a flexible and
    comprehensive strategy, from oral warnings, disbarment, house arrest,
    travel bans, criminal charges, and reeducation camps, to abduction,
    torture and collective punishment.
        When Xi came to power in late 2012, the CCP was facing an
    accumulation of post-1989 new social energies--in the form of the
    internet, the market, the spread of liberal ideas, the rights defense
    movement--and on the other hand, official corruption, conflicts between
    officials and citizens, an ecological crisis, and, most alarmingly, the
    economic decline. The CCP already eliminated democratization--whether
    gradual or sudden--from its menu of options for responding to crises.
    And so all it is left with is strengthening centralized power and
    enhancing the forces of repression.
        This is why Xi Jinping has hugely intensified the crackdown on
    human rights. He actually waged a war on law. Just as in 1989, when the
    CCP believed that social liberalization and a democratic movement had
    threatened its one-party rule, it did not hesitate to crush the
    peaceful protests with tanks and machine guns.
        Xi Jinping abolished the two-term limit for the presidency, shut
    down thousands of NGOs, rounded up human rights lawyers and dissidents,
    persecuted Falun Gong, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Christians, and
    other religious groups, destroyed mosques, temples, and churches,
    intensified censorship on the internet, media, and in schools, arrested
    entrepreneurs, journalists, artists, academics, and anyone who
    disobeyed its dictates.
        The CCP has brazenly and deliberately violated its international
    promise of ``one country, two systems'' in Hong Kong by eliminating the
    umbrella revolution and the anti-extradition movement and eventually in
    2020, by implementing the National Security Law in Hong Kong. Hong
    Kong's freedom and rule of law have been totally destroyed by the CCP
    since 2020.
        Since 2017, between one million and three million Uyghurs, Kazakhs,
    and other Turkic people in Xinjiang (East Turkestan) have been detained
    in concentration camps (which are called ``reeducation centers'' by the
    CCP). Women were systematically raped and sexually harassed in the
    camps, Turkic intellectuals and elites were purged, children were
    forcibly separated from their parents, a million Han Chinese officials
    were sent to live with Uyghur families, closely monitoring them, and
    the Chinese government is systematically imposing forced inter-ethnic
    marriages on Uyghur women. As of late 2022, the Xinjiang Victims
    Database has documented 210 deaths in the camps since January 2017, but
    the real number must be much higher than this, given the extreme danger
    and difficulty of collecting information. (https://shahit.biz/eng/
    #lists)
        Since 2009, 159 TIBETANS HAVE SELF-IMMOLATED IN TIBET AND CHINA to
    call for freedom and human rights. Most of what the Chinese government
    has been doing in Xinjiang is taken from the playbook of how it ruled
    in Tibet after the protests in March 2008.
        What is extremely terrifying is that the CCP has established an
    unprecedented totalitarian surveillance system in China. I coined the
    term ``high-tech totalitarianism'' to describe this surreal dystopia.
    At least half a billion surveillance cameras are installed throughout
    the country, and the number is still increasing sharply. A social
    credit system, which documents people's transactions, moral and
    political behavior, and punishes them for any variation from its rules,
    is expanding rapidly. Powerful phone trackers can connect one's digital
    footprint, real-life identity and physical whereabouts, and facial,
    voiceprint, and gait recognition capability, together with government-
    controlled big data, make privacy hardly possible. Virtual reality (VR)
    was used to test party members' level of loyalty to the CCP. The
    authorities have collected DNA data from hundreds of millions of
    Chinese by cheating or by force. Social media controlled by the CCP--
    Weibo, WeChat, TikTok and others, are also effective tools to surveil
    all Chinese internet users. By strengthening ``high-tech
    totalitarianism,'' the Chinese government's goal is to maximize its
    capacity to monitor everyone's every movement in every corner at every
    moment.
        Furthermore, Covid-19 has become a perfect excuse for the Communist
    Party to strengthen its control of Chinese society. At least 400
    million people and hundreds of cities, are under covid lockdown. Every
    citizen is required to show a Green Health Code (and also a Venue Code
    and Itinerary Code) to leave home. Before two human rights lawyers
    departed to meet their client, a citizen journalist sentenced to four
    years for her reports of the outbreak of Covid-19, their health codes
    suddenly turned red, which was obviously a manipulation of the
    authorities to restrict their travel. This has happened to thousands of
    petitioners in Henan Province, as well. The Zero-Covid policy has been
    purposed more to tighten its perfect dictatorship, ``controlocracy'' as
    Norwegian sociologist Stein Ringen put it, than to fight the
    coronavirus. It can be called ``COVID totalitarianism.''
        Ridiculously enough, the collateral damage has been much greater
    than that caused by the pandemic. Whistleblowers and activists have
    been arrested and silenced, doors and windows were sealed, patients in
    urgent medical need have been denied care by hospitals, people locked
    in their own homes have been left with a lack of food (some even
    starved to death), students were not allowed to attend exams and
    farmers were forced not to plant or harvest. The ``white guards'' have
    arbitrarily humiliated, detained, and assaulted civilians. Uyghurs have
    also died as a result of poisoning from disinfectants sprayed in their
    homes--the list goes on.
        Because of my human rights work in China, I have been disbarred,
    banned from teaching and fired by the university, kidnapped, detained
    and severely tortured, and my wife and children were targeted. But so
    many people have suffered and sacrificed so much. Some activists have
    even lost their lives. Li Wangyang, Cao Shunli, Zhang Liumao, Peng
    Ming, Yang Tianshui, Tenzin Delek Renboche, the Nobel laureate Liu
    Xiaobo, and many others.
                                recommendations
        Democracies should urge the Chinese government to release all the
    human rights defenders, dissidents, journalists, and citizens who were
    imprisoned because of their political opinions and religious beliefs. I
    call your attention to the jailed prisoners of conscience, Ilham Tohti,
    Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi, Wang Binzhang, Gao Zhisheng, Gulshan Abbas, Go
    Sherab Gyatso, and Jim Lai. Especially, the Chinese government should
    immediately and unconditionally release all the protesters arrested and
    detained during the A4 revolution. I have confirmed that many
    protesters have been tortured by the police. Peng lifa, who hung the
    banners at Beijing Sitong bridge, is the new Tank Man, who inspired the
    A4 revolution. A girl reportedly named Li Kangmeng, was the first
    person to hang a white paper at Nanjing Communication College. Both
    were taken away by the police and their whereabouts remain unknown.
        Democracies should urge the Chinese government to shut down the
    concentration camps in Xinjiang and stop the practice of forced
    marriage, torture, systematic rape, brainwashing, forced labor, and
    homestay of Han officials.
        Democracies should urge the Chinese government to stop all of its
    repressive policies in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, including
    restrictions of their native languages, mandatory or quasi-mandatory
    boarding schools, travel restrictions, destruction of cultural
    heritage, religious persecution, and purges of elites and activists.
        Democracies should make it easier for the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong
    Kongers, and Chinese activists/dissidents to seek political asylum.
    There's an urgent need to prevent these people from being deported to
    China.
        Democracies should stop appeasing the CCP regime. Human rights
    issues should be linked to trade and technology talks. Human rights
    should not be sacrificed for short-term economic and political profit.
    Every time world leaders meet CCP leaders, they should not be silent or
    soft on human rights issues. When genocide and crimes against humanity
    still continue, silence is complicity.
        ``Not seeking regime change'' is the wrong message to send the CCP.
    The CCP will continue to suppress freedom and manipulate international
    human rights laws, and has become the biggest threat to the liberal
    international order.
        It's extremely important and necessary to help the Chinese people
    jump the Great Firewall (GFW). When the Chinese people can access
    information from the free world, many of them will be awakened and will
    tend not to tolerate the brutal rule of the CCP. A bit more budget on
    affordable technologies or equipment (like VPNs) will make a great
    difference.
        Congress should categorize the ongoing atrocities against Uyghurs
    and Kazakhs in Xinjiang as genocide. Democracies should sanction human
    rights abusers and put more Chinese officials on the list of the Global
    Magnitsky Act. Democracies should sanction the global companies that
    are complicit in the CCP's censorship and surveillance. Cisco and some
    other tech giants facilitated China's GFW. Zoom terminated meetings
    organized by Chinese activists and suspended host accounts upon the
    instructions of the Chinese government.
        Today I request a congressional investigation of Apple. Apple has
    ceded legal ownership of its customers' data to Guizhou-Cloud Big Data
    (GCBD), a company owned by the Chinese government. Apple did not care
    about labor rights violations in its supply factories in China. Apple
    removed the VPN apps from its App Store in China. Apple restricted the
    use of AirDrop soon after the Sitong bridge protest (Apple limited
    AirDrop sharing to 10 minutes in China after its use in protests).
    Apple should tell the public where it received the instructions, and
    why it has been complicit in China's suppression and censorship.
        The recent A4 revolution has shown the world how eagerly the
    Chinese people demand freedom and democracy and how much they want to
    risk to fight the dictatorial regime. It is our moral and political
    obligation to support the freedom fighters, and the bottom line is, a
    business based in the free world facilitating the dictatorship should
    not be tolerated.
                                     ______

                     Prepared Statement of Rana Siu Inboden

        Distinguished Commissioners, fellow witnesses, and guests, it is an
    honor to be a part of today's hearing. I also want to thank Senator
    Merkley and Representative McGovern for their leadership and service on
    this commission.
        My main focus today will be on China's ambitions in the
    international human rights system. Unfortunately, as China has grown in
    wealth, power, and international influence over the past three decades,
    it has used its rise to undermine international human rights
    instruments rather than support them. There are three particular points
    I want to emphasize. First, under Xi Jinping an emboldened Chinese
    Communist Party (CCP) is on the offensive in the international human
    rights system as it actively is working to dilute UN human rights
    procedures and norms. This trend has become particularly evident over
    the last five years as the PRC has begun introducing UN human rights
    resolutions intended to propagate China's human rights views, assumed
    more of a leadership role among illiberal nations, marshaled protective
    statements for other repressive governments, and subjected UN experts
    who seek to hold China accountable for its human rights violations to
    bombastic vitriol. Second, although China's more assertive posture
    presents challenges, there remain a number of strengths within the UN
    system. Third, as my recommendations demonstrate, there are important
    contributions the U.S., in partnership with other nations committed to
    human rights and democracy, can make to uphold and strengthen the
    international human rights architecture.
                         beijing's human rights assault
        There are multiple layers and components to China's drive to weaken
    the UN's human rights system and assert its own vision globally.
        First, China is not only part of a coalition of nations drawn
    primarily from the Global South as well as Russia that collectively
    acts to constrain the international human rights regime but has begun
    organizing and leading this group. In the Human Rights Council (HRC),
    this group of nations, which goes by the generic moniker, the ``Like-
    Minded Group'' (LMG) has come to number roughly 50 nations.\1\ What
    these nations are like-minded about is advancing a regressive human
    rights vision that downplays civil and political rights and prioritizes
    sovereignty over international monitoring even in cases of gross human
    rights violations. While China has consistently been a member of this
    group since it first emerged in the UN Commission on Human Rights in
    the late 1990s, it previously avoided a prominent leadership role until
    2012 when it began delivering statements on behalf of the group in the
    HRC.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ Rana Siu Inboden, China and the International Human Rights
    Regime: 1982-2017 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 73.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The LMG, which includes a number of autocracies, impairs the UN
    human rights regime in multiple ways. These nations form a base of
    support that Beijing has relied on to secure adoption of several Human
    Rights Council resolutions that advance its regressive human rights
    views, its national prerogatives, and even Xi Jinping's political
    slogans.\2\ This coalition also acts as a mutual defense network that
    reflexively shields each other from human rights scrutiny. This
    behavior corrodes UN procedures that were meant to hold nations
    accountable for their human rights abuses. For example, in 2018 Belarus
    exploited the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to state that China
    should ``Continue to promote participation, integration and the sharing
    of development benefits by vulnerable groups.'' \3\ The use of the word
    ``continue'' and the amicable wording portrayed Beijing's existing
    policies in a positive light despite credible and extensive reporting
    about repression of ethnic minorities, particularly Tibetans and
    Uyghurs. In turn, when Belarus was reviewed by the Council in 2021,
    China stated that it ``supported the achievements of Belarus in
    protecting human rights and its efforts to maintain its independence,
    sovereignty, security and development.'' \4\ Cumulatively, these kinds
    of statements during the UPR from the LMG form a chorus of praiseworthy
    or softball comments, even for rights-violating countries, that drowns
    out expressions of concern from liberal democracies. Moreover, the LMG
    undercuts the effectiveness of the UN human rights system by resisting
    the use of ``country-specific'' human rights monitoring, including the
    appointment of special procedures, special sessions and resolutions
    even though human rights abuses often occur along national lines.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \2\ Rana Siu Inboden, ``China and Authoritarian Collaboration,''
    Journal of Contemporary China, Volume 31, Issue 136, 505-517.
        \3\ United Nations General Assembly, ``Draft report of the Working
    Group on the Universal Periodic Review, China'' December 26, 2018, UN
    Doc. A/HRC/40/6.
        \4\ UN General Assembly, ``Draft report of the Working Group on the
    Universal Periodic Review, Belarus,'' January 4, 2021, UN Doc. A/HRC/
    46/5.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Beijing mobilizes many of these countries to prevent and deflect
    attention from its human rights record, particularly its genocidal
    campaign against ethnic Uyghurs and its strangling of Hong Kong's
    democracy. In this vein, the PRC recruited over 60 countries to sign a
    letter addressed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urging
    her not to release a report that ultimately verified and corroborated
    reports of mass detention, state control, and repression of Uyghurs.
    Over the last several years, each time nations committed to democratic
    values and human rights jointly expressed concern about Xinjiang and
    Hong Kong, the PRC mobilized a swath of like-minded nations to come to
    its defense.\5\ In 2020 when Germany delivered a statement at the UN on
    behalf of 39 countries that expressed concerns about Hong Kong and
    Xinjiang, Cuba offered a statement signed by 45 countries defending
    China's record in Xinjiang, and Pakistan delivered a statement that
    supported China's actions in Hong Kong that was joined by 55
    nations.\6\ Earlier this fall, when a resolution on Xinjiang was
    introduced in the Human Rights Council by the United States, Canada,
    Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the
    resolution failed with 17 nations voting for, 19 voting against, and 11
    registering abstentions.\7\ Among the 19 nations voting against the
    resolution, 11 have affiliated with the LMG.\8\ Although many of the
    PRC's supporters appear to be motivated by a sense of developing world
    solidarity, the PRC is known to engage in vigorous pressure and
    inducements, including using its economic power, to secure votes. In
    turn, China is steadfast in protecting its autocratic allies and
    opposing ``country-specific'' human rights monitoring of their own
    abuses. For example, during the HRC's special session on Iran last
    month, China tried to stymie the creation of a fact-finding mission by
    introducing a poison-pill amendment to the resolution.\9\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \5\ In addition to China's reaction to the German-led statement, in
    2021, after Canada delivered a joint statement on behalf of 44 nations,
    including the U.S., that expressed deep concern about the treatment of
    Uyghurs, China mobilized a statement in the HRC that was delivered by
    Belarus and signed by 65 countries that defended China's human rights
    abuses.
        \6\ ``Statement by Ambassador Christoph Heusgen on behalf of 39
    Countries in the Third Committee General Debate, October 6, 2020,''
    Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United
    Nations, June 10, 2020, https://new-york-un.diplo.de/un-en/news-corner/
    201006-heusgen-china/2402648
        \7\ ``51st regular session of the Human Rights Council:
    Resolutions, decisions and President's statements,'' UN Human Rights
    Council, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/regular-
    sessions/session51/res-dec-stat
        \8\ Among those voting to shield the PRC from being held
    accountable were Bolivia, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea,
    Gabon, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan,
    Qatar, Senegal, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.
        \9\ Emma Farge, ``China fails to weaken Iran motion before UN
    rights body,'' Reuters, November 24, 2022.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Many of these nations have supported the resolutions in the HRC
    that Beijing has introduced over the last five years. This has allowed
    China to co-opt the Council as a forum to propagate China's regressive
    human rights vision rather than advance accountability for rights-
    abusing states and protection for human rights victims. Beijing has
    secured passage of resolutions that protect repressive states over
    individual human rights victims, prioritizes claims to sovereignty over
    universal human rights, and favors anemic and diversionary ``dialogue''
    over robust accountability for states. The extensive insertion of some
    of Xi Jinping's favored slogans also indicates that the PRC seeks to
    use HRC resolutions to extend the CCP's ideational influence
    abroad.\10\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \10\ Inboden, ``China and Authoritarian Collaboration,'' 510-517.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        China also seeks to intimidate and dissuade other actors from
    drawing attention to its human rights violations. In particular,
    Beijing's diplomats have employed hyperbolic language to counter
    attention from the UN's Special Procedures system, which is comprised
    of independent experts who investigate, report on, and draw attention
    to, a variety of human rights abuses. Because of their independent
    status and the wide variety of human rights topics they cover, this
    part of the human rights system is often considered to be particularly
    effective. In response to the repression of Uyghurs, Hong Kong
    protesters and Chinese human rights lawyers, the independent experts
    serving in the Special Procedures system have responded with strongly
    worded joint statements, including a 2020 statement signed by over 50
    mandate holders and a 2022 statement joined by over 40 of these
    experts. China reacted by slandering and criticizing the mandate
    holders by name and pushing for changes to the Special Procedures that
    would curtail the autonomy of these experts to speak out against human
    rights abuses.\11\ These ad hominem attacks should also be viewed in
    the context of China's behavior in the UN that has become increasingly
    aggressive, where Beijing's actions go beyond normal diplomacy as it
    uses bullying and intimidation.\12\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \11\ See, for example, ``Chinese Mission Spokesperson Refutes the
    Smears by Certain Special Procedure Mandate Holders,'' Permanent
    Mission of the People's Republic of China to the UN in Geneva, http://
    geneva.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/ryrbt/202206/t20220610_10701825.htm and
    Rana Siu Inboden, ``China and the United Nations Special Procedures:
    Emerging Threats to the Human Rights System's `Crown Jewels,' ''
    manuscript submitted to the Special Issue project ``Power shifts and
    international organisations: China at the United Nations''.
        \12\ Human Rights Watch, The Costs of International Advocacy:
    China's Interference in United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms, (New
    York: Human Rights Watch, 2017.)
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        This destructive behavior is not limited to the UN's Geneva-based
    bodies but extends to other parts of the United Nations. In particular,
    China has misused its seat on the UN's Economic and Social Council's
    (ECOSOC) NGO Committee to thwart civil society participation in the
    United Nations by stonewalling the applications of a number of civil
    society groups seeking UN consultative status. This status enables NGOs
    to participate in UN activities and meetings, host side events, gain
    access to observing sessions in person, and speaking at UN events and
    meetings. China, along with other LMG countries, has actively blocked
    applications from civil society organizations working on human rights,
    including NGOs working to combat abuse perpetrated by China's
    authoritarian allies, such as North Korea, Russia, and Iran.\13\
    Between 2016 and 2019, LMG countries were responsible for blocking the
    applications of almost 1,000 NGOs, with Beijing being the leader in
    effectively vetoing NGO applications.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \13\ Rana Siu Inboden, ``China at the UN: Choking Civil Society,''
    Journal of Democracy, Volume 32, Number 3 (July 2021): 124-135.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 challenges, accomplishments and opportunities
        Over the last twenty years, China has amassed economic power and
    global political influence that provide it with new tools to obstruct
    and undermine the international human rights regime. Moreover, after
    years of focusing primarily on avoiding resolutions on its record,
    China is no longer content with merely playing defense, and is now
    pairing its efforts to weaken the international human rights system
    with transnational repression that targets human rights activists
    overseas and utilizes illicit influencing campaigns in other countries
    in an attempt to forestall open discussion and debate about China.
    These developments present new challenges to the U.S. and other nations
    committed to the ideals of freedom and democracy.
        At the same time, the U.S. can point to some accomplishments. Over
    the last twenty years, American efforts to nurture civil society in
    China have helped spawn activists and groups that tenaciously seek to
    engage with the UN. Cao Shunli, the human rights defender who died in
    police custody in 2014 (after attempting to attend a training event in
    Geneva) is emblematic of this drive. Even when they cannot engage
    directly due to concerns about safety and security, many of these
    China-based advocates provide information to civil society groups
    overseas who are then able to disseminate reporting to a wider
    international audience.
        The United States must be cognizant that there remain important
    avenues to bolster the international human rights system and that
    American engagement matters. Energetic and inventive U.S. diplomacy at
    the UN and other multilateral institutions can make a meaningful
    difference. The independent human rights experts who serve in the
    treaty body and special procedures system remain a bright spot in the
    UN human rights system, and have actively used press releases, joint
    statements, decisions and reports to highlight China's human rights
    violations.\14\ Moreover, while the CCP has sought to repudiate the
    universality of human rights norms, the remarkable protests that sprang
    up across China last month demonstrate that these ideals resonate
    deeply with the Chinese people. These opportunities form the basis of
    my recommendations below.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \14\ For example, see UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human
    Rights, ``China: Human rights defenders given long jail terms,
    tortured--UN expert,'' press release, June 28, 2021, https://
    www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-human-rights-defenders-
    given-long-jail-terms-tortured-un-expert.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Proactive Engagement With the UN
        Even as we recognize some inadequacies of the UN Human Rights
    Council, including the lack of membership criteria, the U.S. should not
    only remain involved with the Council but should increase its
    engagement in Geneva. Retreating from the Council only served China's
    interests, and enabled it and other autocrats to fill this vacuum. It
    is not surprising that we now see a mushrooming in authoritarian
    influence and collaboration in these bodies. Instead, a vigorous
    presence in Geneva will position the U.S. and our allies to push back
    against China's attempt to hijack the Human Rights Council. For
    example, in 2022, when China introduced a resolution titled ``Realizing
    a Better Life for Everyone,'' that was full of blandishments and
    Chinese slogans, resistance from the U.S. and a range of other
    countries forced China to withdraw the resolution. A more proactive
    posture in Geneva that includes paying diplomatic attention to smaller
    states on the HRC and seeking out their views will also help the U.S.
    regain credibility. While China has sought to debilitate from within,
    the U.S. needs to think about strengthening from within.
    Bolster Resources and Expertise
        In contrast to the PRC, which devotes considerable staff time to
    lobbying in Geneva and developing expertise on the rules and diplomacy
    of the Council, the U.S. State Department has failed to adequately
    staff and support the U.S. mission in Geneva. The U.S. must exceed
    efforts by China and other members of the LMG, including Cuba, which
    have not only allocated significant staff resources but have encouraged
    their diplomats to do multiple tours in Geneva, enabling them to master
    UN rules and procedures as well as diplomatic lobbying of other HRC
    member states. This imbalance in resources and expertise enables China
    to secure votes for its initiatives and to protect itself from
    scrutiny, even demonstrating that it can mobilize votes in less than 24
    hours.\15\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \15\ Human Rights Watch, The Costs of International Advocacy, 88.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Divide the Like-Minded Group
        The U.S. Government should pursue a two-pronged approach toward the
    LMG. First, the U.S. should try to draw countries away from this
    grouping. Although a number of the countries are some of the most
    severe human rights violators, such as Belarus, not all of the
    countries in the LMG fit neatly into the autocratic camp but rather
    align with this group partly out of a sense of Global South residual
    anti-imperialist solidarity, rather than a zeal for authoritarian
    practices. Some of these countries could be described as ``swing
    states,'' such as India and Indonesia. India's LMG role in particular
    has been disappointing, especially since it contrasts with its more
    favorable developments such as its participation in the Quad with the
    U.S., Japan, and Australia. The U.S. State Department should put on the
    bilateral agenda with these swing states that their affiliation with
    the LMG is not helpful, and undermines human dignity. Moreover,
    bolstering civil society and even journalists in some LMG countries to
    enable them to monitor their own government's behavior in Geneva will
    be key to shifting the behavior of their governments in the UN.
    Build a Regionally Diverse Group of Nations
        While the other liberal democracies coming from the Global North
    are some of America's natural allies and a transatlantic alliance might
    be a natural starting point in securing the future of the UN human
    rights system, countering the transnational assault on the UN will
    require a transnational response. Thus, the U.S., in partnership with
    other nations, needs to build a regionally diverse, flexible group of
    states that champions initiatives in the Council.\16\ In order to do
    so, the U.S. could initiate and catalyze this by going on a listening
    tour in Geneva and learning about issues of import to other countries,
    being attentive to their ideas, identifying shared human rights
    concerns, and encouraging other nations to exercise leadership so that
    this is not viewed as a primarily American effort. This endeavor should
    not be cast as being part of a geopolitical competition between the
    U.S. and China but rather being driven by shared human rights interests
    and concerns. Costa Rica, which has in the past played a key role in
    drafting international standards to combat torture, will begin its term
    on the HRC and might be well-positioned to build bridges.\17\ The U.S.
    has recently demonstrated an ability to organize this kind of coalition
    in the UN Economic and Security Council where it, along with over 20
    other nations, overcame authoritarian blocking efforts in the NGO
    Committee and secured UN consultative status for 9 NGOs by pushing for
    an ECOSOC vote.\18\ The U.S. can build on this momentum by taking up
    the cases of NGOs that are of import to other nations.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \16\ Yaroslav Trofimov, ``Can the U.S. Lead a Human-Rights Alliance
    Against China?'' The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2021.
        \17\ Jared Cohen and Richard Fontaine, ``The Case for
    Microlateralism: With U.S. Support, Small States Can Ably Lead Global
    Efforts,'' Foreign Affairs, April 29, 2021, https://
    www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2021-04-29/case-microlateralism
        \18\ ``Remarks on Presenting the Draft Decision in ECOSOC on
    Bringing NGO Applications to a Vote in the ECOSOC Management Segment,''
    United States Mission to the United Nations, https://
    usun.usmission.gov/remarks-on-presenting-the-draft-decision-in-ecosoc-
    on-bringing-ngo-applications-to-a-vote-in-the-ecosoc-management-
    segment/ and Edith M. Lederer, ``After years of delay 6 rights groups
    get UN accreditation,'' AP News, July 22, 2022, https://apnews.com/
    article/russia-ukraine-united-states-social-issues-
    9377aa5124589c8a84bab1f81adbfc21
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Use Existing Tools in Novel and More Effective Ways
        There are a number of existing tools that the U.S. can use more
    actively. While U.S. and other diplomats from the Western European and
    Others Group have sought to use their speaking time during the
    Universal Periodic Review to highlight China's myriad human rights
    violations, the U.S. could also begin using the UPR as an opportunity
    to call for the release of specific prisoners in both its verbal
    remarks as well as its recommendations to China. This might even be
    coordinated with other nations to jointly highlight the cases of
    specific prisoners of conscience, such as Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti,
    house church pastor Wang Yi, Tibetan Yeshe Choedron, and human rights
    defender Qin Yongmin. Of course there are many other prisoners who
    could be added.
        The UN Secretary General's annual report on reprisals against
    individuals who seek to report human rights abuses to the UN has
    included the cases of a number of Chinese human rights defenders, and
    is another potential tool. While a number of UN bodies such as the
    ECOSOC NGO Committee and the HRC lack membership criteria, when China
    comes up for election, the U.S. should draw more attention to China's
    inclusion in this report and the stories of the human rights activists
    who were targeted by the state in order to show that China is unfit for
    membership.
    Be Creative About International Fora
        The U.S. should not be dissuaded by the failure of the HRC to pass
    a resolution on Xinjiang. Aside from the HRC, there are other
    multilateral bodies to consider, such as the International Labor
    Conference or the UN's Third Committee. The Third Committee's remit
    includes social, humanitarian, and cultural issues, and last year the
    Committee passed country-focused resolutions on North Korea, Myanmar,
    Iran, Ukraine, and Syria.\19\ The ILC, which passed a resolution on
    forced labor in Myanmar in 1999, is another candidate organization
    where the U.S. and other countries concerned with China's abuses could
    pursue action. Because the ILO is composed of not only governments but
    labor and industry groups, recruiting sufficient votes to secure
    passage of a resolution on China might be more feasible.\20\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \19\ ``Social, Humanitarian & Cultural Issues (Third Committee)
    Status of action on draft proposals,'' UN General Assembly, https://
    www.un.org/en/ga/third/77/proposalstatus.shtml.
        \20\ Inboden, China and the International Human Rights Regime, 159-
    220 and Kellie Currie, ``How to Stop China Killing Human Rights at the
    U.N.'' Foreign Policy, November 9, 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/
    2022/11/09/china-human-rights-un-xinjiang-resolution-international-
    system/
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     ______

                    Prepared Statement of Sophie Richardson,
                       China Director, Human Rights Watch

        Remarks Addressing the Chinese Government's Human Rights Record
           and Its Approach to the International Human Rights System

                                  introduction
        Over the course of the two decades since the establishment of the
    Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the Chinese government has
    transformed from a relatively benign actor in the international human
    rights system to a significant threat to human rights globally. Under
    Xi Jinping, who in October awarded himself a third term as General
    Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the government has not only
    launched an unprecedented rollback of human rights domestically, but
    also made clear its intentions to remake the international human rights
    order to protect its interests. Allowing Beijing to do so will not only
    have catastrophic outcomes for the victims of Chinese government human
    rights violations--including crimes against humanity--inside China, it
    will also significantly weaken protection for victims of abuses
    worldwide. It is essential that democracies match Beijing's ambition to
    protect the norms, laws, and institutions currently under threat.
        the chinese government role in international human rights bodies
        In recent years, the Chinese government has become considerably
    more active in a wide range of United Nations and other multilateral
    institutions, including in the global human rights system. These
    include developments that on their face are positive: ratifying several
    core UN human rights treaties, serving as a member of the UN Human
    Rights Council, and seconding Chinese diplomats to positions within the
    UN human rights system. Beijing has launched various undertakings
    abroad that have major human rights implications: it has created the
    Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment
    Bank (AIIB) under the mantra of promoting economic development, and it
    has become a significant global actor in social media platforms and
    academia.
        This new activism on issues from economics to information by one of
    the most consequential actors in the international system, if
    underpinned by a serious (albeit unlikely) commitment among senior
    Chinese leaders to uphold human rights, could have been transformative.
    But the opposite has happened. Particularly under President Xi
    Jinping's leadership, the Chinese government does not merely seek to
    neutralize UN human rights mechanisms' scrutiny of China, it also
    aspires to neutralize the ability of that system to hold any government
    accountable for serious human rights violations. Increasingly, Beijing
    pursues rights-free development worldwide, and tries to exploit the
    openness of institutions in democracies to impose its world view and
    silence its critics.
        It is crucial--particularly for people who live in democracies and
    enjoy the rights to political participation, an independent judiciary,
    a free media, and other functioning democratic institutions--to recall
    why the international human rights system exists. Quite simply, it is
    because states often fail to protect human rights, particularly in
    countries that lack credible systems for redress and accountability for
    rights violations. People need to appeal to institutions beyond their
    government's immediate control.
        Beijing is no longer content simply denying people accountability
    inside China: it now assertively seeks to bolster other countries'
    ability to do so even in the international bodies designed to deliver
    some semblance of justice internationally when it is blocked
    domestically. Within academia and journalism, the Chinese Communist
    Party seeks not only to deny the ability to conduct research or report
    from inside China, it also increasingly seeks to do so at universities
    and publications around the world, punishing those who study or write
    on the topics it considers sensitive--an endlessly arbitrary realm. The
    rights-free development the state has sanctioned inside China is now a
    foreign policy tool being deployed around the world.
        Beijing's resistance to complying with global public health needs
    and institutions in the Covid-19 crisis, and its crushing of democratic
    aspirations in Hong Kong, should not be seen as anomalies. They are
    clear and concerning examples of the consequences for people worldwide
    not only of a Chinese government disdainful of international human
    rights norms but, increasingly, also seeking to rewrite those rules in
    ways that may affect human rights protections globally. Chinese
    authorities act as if they fear that the exercise of these rights
    abroad can directly threaten the party's hold on power, whether through
    criticism of the party itself or as a result of holding the leadership
    accountable for its human rights violations.
        Human Rights Watch has tracked Beijing's efforts to undermine the
    UN human rights system, publishing a report in September 2017, The
    Costs of International Advocacy: China's Interference in United Nations
    Human Rights Mechanisms. This detailed the ways the Chinese government
    obstructs the participation of independent civil society organizations,
    manipulates the accreditation process for those actors, and thwarts the
    work of treaty bodies, special procedures, the Office of the High
    Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Human Rights Council. Since that
    time, we have also exposed Beijing's efforts to strip human rights
    funding from UN peacekeeping budgets, its increasingly vitriolic
    attacks on not just the mandates of independent human rights experts
    within the UN system, but also on the individual experts themselves,
    and its reprisals against independent civil society groups from China
    for their efforts to engage the UN human rights system.
        China routinely opposes efforts at the Human Rights Council to hold
    states responsible for even the gravest rights violations. When the
    Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the European Union jointly
    presented a resolution to address Myanmar's international crimes
    against Rohingya Muslims in 2017, China called a vote and was one of
    only two countries to vote against. In September 2022, China was one of
    only three states voting against a resolution to renew the mandate for
    a Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan; that initiative prevailed with the
    support of 29 member states. In November, China was one of only six
    countries to vote against the establishment of a Fact-Finding Mission
    on Iran in response to the recent protests.
        Over the past five years, Human Rights Watch documented the Chinese
    government's mass arbitrary detentions, pervasive surveillance
    technology, and crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other
    Turkic communities across Xinjiang. The UN human rights system's
    engagement on the Uyghur issue reflects Beijing's power: denying access
    to the region for UN human rights investigators, stalling and then
    constraining a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
    lobbying intensely to prevent the release of that office's report on
    the crisis, then lobbying even more intensely to block even
    discussion--let alone movement towards an investigation--on the issue.
        There is however some cause for optimism. Since 2018, UN special
    procedures, treaty bodies, and the Office of the High Commissioner for
    Human Rights have consistently documented grave human rights violations
    by the Chinese government and offered myriad recommendations on fixing
    the proximate and systemic abuse. The former high commissioner,
    Michelle Bachelet, under intense diplomatic pressure, in August 2022
    published a report, based largely on interviews with victims and
    Chinese government sources, on possible crimes against humanity in
    Xinjiang. In October, the Human Rights Council fell short by only two
    votes in an effort to advance a discussion about the report; Human
    Rights Watch believes this was a critical first step towards securing a
    positive outcome in the future. Several states otherwise reluctant to
    criticize Beijing over its human rights record voted in support of the
    initiative out of concerns about institutional integrity: the basic
    idea that no state is above scrutiny for its rights record. It is also
    an encouraging sign that in late November the new High Commissioner for
    Human Rights, Volker Turk, said, ``It's my office's report, and I'm
    invested in it.'' OHCHR also called on Chinese authorities to respect
    people's rights to peaceful protest as people took to the streets to
    protest ``zero-Covid'' lockdowns.
    Chinese Government Role in Changing Human Rights Norms
        When the Chinese government began ratifying international human
    rights instruments in the 1980s, it made little effort to challenge the
    contents or the norms informing those documents. In 2004 the government
    amended the Constitution to explicitly recognize a state obligation to
    respect human rights, and at varying times senior officials have
    expressed support for the universality of human rights.
        But towards the late 2000s, the Chinese government took an
    increasingly more repressive approach. And under Xi Jinping, the
    government takes the position that human rights norms and law must be
    subordinated to ``Chinese characteristics'' or ``national conditions.''
    It has resisted bringing domestic law on key human rights issues, such
    as torture, into conformity with the definition as set out under the UN
    Convention against Torture, despite being cited in multiple reviews of
    the convention for failing to do so.
        Chinese authorities also increasingly seek to replace existing
    norms and concepts with ones that undermine established human rights.
    The notion of ``mutually beneficial cooperation'' is just one example.
    In March 2018, China introduced a resolution on ``Promoting the
    International Human Rights Cause through Win-Win Cooperation'' at the
    Human Rights Council. The title sounded innocuous, but the resolution
    gutted procedures to hold countries accountable for human rights
    violations, suggesting ``dialogue'' instead and the important role of
    ``mutually beneficial cooperation.'' It failed to specify any course of
    action when rights violators do not cooperate with UN experts,
    retaliate against rights defenders, or actively reject human rights
    principles. And it even did not acknowledge any role for the Human
    Rights Council itself to address serious human rights violations when
    ``dialogue'' and ``cooperation'' did not produce results. The
    resolution was adopted by a distressingly strong majority.
        The resolution requested a report from the Council's Advisory
    Committee. Many delegations expressed concern, but gave the resolution
    the benefit of the doubt, abstaining so they could wait to see what the
    Advisory Committee produced. Beijing's intentions soon became crystal
    clear: its submission to the Advisory Committee hailed its own
    resolution as heralding ``the construction of a new type of
    international relations.'' The submission claims that human rights are
    used to ``interfere'' in the internal affairs of others, thus
    ``poisoning the global atmosphere of human rights governance.''
        The Advisory Committee report, published just before the June 2020
    Council session, only reinforced these concerns: it acknowledges that
    ``serious conflicts of views exist with regard to the concept of
    `mutually beneficial cooperation,' '' but offers no clear definition,
    identifies no value-added that the term brings over more established
    concepts such as technical cooperation and capacity-building--already
    part of the Council's agenda--and even calls into question the
    universality of rights, referring to ``so-called `universal' values.''
                                recommendations
        * Democracies should respond to the Chinese government's efforts to
    remake the international human rights system with ambition, principle,
    discipline, and resources.
        * Democracies should form a coalition to protect the UN human
    rights system. This should include working together to leave no space
    across the UN human rights system uncontested--these are vacuums that
    Beijing is highly skilled at filling. They should strongly support the
    candidacies of democracies for the Human Rights Council, and truly
    independent experts for treaty body, special procedure, key committee,
    and thematic group openings. They should be tracking and vigorously
    pushing back against Beijing's efforts to weaken norms, and should
    especially watch for attempts to advance soft law that could undermine
    international human rights law. It is encouraging to hear that with
    bipartisan support the US State Department has been able to create a
    new effort within the International Organizations Bureau, and the
    Office of Multilateral Strategy and Personnel, to take on this critical
    work. Please consider whether those resources are sufficient to the
    task of coordinating with other democracies and challenging Beijing.
        * Second, democracies should be committed to pressing for an
    investigation into Chinese government crimes against humanity targeting
    Uyghurs and other Turkic communities because of the scope and scale of
    the crimes. But they should also do so as a test of the UN human rights
    system's resilience. In this sense there should be no political or
    diplomatic wavering about this challenging but critical project. Some
    in the Congress or administration may see the October Human Rights
    Council vote as a loss--we strongly encourage everyone to see it as a
    victory in the longer effort towards holding Chinese officials
    accountable. It would be a loss for human rights, and a big win for the
    Chinese government, if there were no further efforts to discuss the
    Xinjiang report at the council and to establish an independent
    international investigation.
        * Finally, democracies should support civil society organizations--
    particularly ones from China, blocked by Beijing from accessing the UN
    human rights system--to share their work and perspective. They are
    critical sources of information and policy recommendations, yet are
    systematically denied an opportunity to share their work and
    perspective throughout the UN system. These governments should also
    press the UN, the Human Rights Council, and the Office of the High
    Commissioner for Human Rights to bolster protection of these activists,
    and ensure that all cases of state reprisals are investigated and
    addressed.

                    Prepared Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley

        Good morning. Today's hearing of the Congressional-Executive
    Commission on China entitled ``CECC at 20: Two Decades of Human Rights
    Abuse and Defense in China'' will come to order.
        This year marked the start of the Commission's third decade
    monitoring the People's Republic of China's compliance with
    international human rights standards and developments related to the
    rule of law in China. The Commission's annual report, hearings, and
    other products provide a detailed multi-year accounting.
        Over that time, our work documents a dramatic arc, from the early
    2000s of a movement within China to stand up for and defend human
    rights, to the current situation, the Chinese Communist Party's
    escalating efforts to constrict space for internet freedom, civil
    society, and the exercise of citizens' basic rights. In that same
    period, the hope some held on to that China's inclusion in global
    institutions would be accompanied by improvements in human rights has
    met the harsh reality: Chinese authorities are using those institutions
    to debase and discredit the very notion of universal rights.
        As we close out the 117th Congress, this hearing aims to take stock
    of where the last two decades leave us and where those fighting for
    fundamental freedoms can go from here. We are joined by some of the
    leading experts in the field, who will shed light on the evolution of
    the domestic situation in China, the international legal landscape, and
    the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to shape both.
        Before we hear their testimony, our examination of this topic will
    be framed by special remarks from a very special friend to this
    Commission. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spoke from the dais at
    the first hearing of the CECC 20 years ago, just a floor above us in
    this very building, to help launch a Commission she had played a key
    role in creating. As we thank her for her historic leadership in
    Congress and tireless work on behalf of human rights everywhere, but
    especially in China, there is nobody more fitting for us to hear from
    to mark two decades of the Commission's work and to help chart what we
    can do to keep fighting for the people against the powerful.
        That is the essence of what the Commission tries to do. The
    talented and professional staff has published 21 annual reports,
    compiled over 10,000 Political Prisoner Database records, and met with
    countless stakeholders over the years. In this Congress alone, we've
    passed the groundbreaking Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, advanced
    legislation establishing a China Censorship Monitor and Action Group,
    held 15 hearings that ran the gamut of issues within our mandate, sent
    dozens of advocacy letters, and published analysis on the treatment of
    Muslim minorities, economic coercion against American companies, the
    case for sanctioning those responsible for political prosecutions, and
    the dismantling of Hong Kong's civil society.
        Since its first days, the backbone for all of this work has been
    Judy Wright. The first person hired to staff the CECC, Judy Wright has
    been the only Director of Administration the Commission has ever had.
    After nearly 21 years in this role and almost 40 working for the U.S.
    Congress, Judy will begin a richly deserved retirement at the end of
    this month. She has kept the Commission running smoothly, supported
    research staff through thick and thin, maintained institutional memory
    over the many political transitions in Congress over the years, and
    been a treasured friend to generations of CECC staffers and
    commissioners. Judy, this team will miss you dearly. We wish you all
    the best in retirement and thank you for your service.
        This is my last hearing as chair before we transition to the next
    Congress. It has been an honor to serve with my co-chair, Congressman
    McGovern, who has shown tremendous leadership these last four years in
    translating the work of the Commission into meaningful legislation
    defending Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, and others experiencing
    abuse. That work has been truly bipartisan and bicameral, and as we
    prepare for the next Congress, I look forward to continued close
    partnership with Congressman Smith, with Senator Rubio, and with all of
    this Commission's champions for human rights and the rule of law in
    China.

                  Prepared Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern

        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for scheduling this hearing. I look
    forward to the testimony from our witnesses.
        I want to thank you for your incredible leadership. It has been an
    honor to serve alongside you, as well as with my friend Congressman
    Suozzi from New York. I've really admired your style and your
    commitment to the human rights of the Chinese people.
        Today we take stock of the changes in China and the evolution of
    international law in the two decades since the CECC was established.
    Our intent is not to look back but to plan for the future by assessing
    our work amidst a changing landscape.
        Xi Jinping will continue to lead a government that employs the
    newest tools to suppress dissenting viewpoints, impose social control,
    and repress critics domestically and across borders. We want to make
    sure that the Commission is properly equipped and oriented to fulfill
    its mandate and to serve our constituents--Congress, the executive
    branch, the China human rights community, and most important of all,
    the people of China.
        Chinese, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Southern Mongolians, Hong Kongers, and
    all others who live in the PRC deserve to have their rights and dignity
    respected. Human rights are inherent in all human beings, as enshrined
    in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and protected by the
    covenants and agreements that have flowed from it.
        The Chinese Communist Party would have us believe that some rights
    count more than others, citing ``Chinese values'' to discount certain
    civil and political rights. Some in the United States also believe that
    some rights count more than others, citing ``American values'' to
    discount certain social and economic rights.
        Under international law, both are wrong. Human rights are
    universal, interdependent, and mutually reinforcing. This Commission,
    by statute, is mandated to assess China's compliance with international
    human rights standards. These standards are not determined by any party
    in China, and not by any party in the United States. These standards,
    codified at the United Nations and widely adjudicated, apply to every
    person in every country and territory on Earth. We do a disservice to
    the people of China if the Commission's work is shaped by personal or
    political preferences, rather than based on the universal human rights
    that the people of China are entitled to. Over two decades the
    Commission has earned a reputation for objective and informative
    analysis. Let's keep it that way.
        On a personal note, this is my last hearing as cochair of this
    Commission. With my cochairs, Senators Rubio and Merkley, along with
    Congressman Smith, we have sought to translate the Commission's
    expertise into advocacy and legislative impact. We helped get into law
    the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy
    Act, the PROTECT Hong Kong Act, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, and
    the Tibetan Policy and Support Act.
        I give special mention to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act,
    which was the product of Commission staff research, that led to a
    report, a hearing, legislation, and then law. I propose it as a model
    both for how the Commission can be effective and how to craft robust
    human rights policy. I hope to be able to continue to serve on this
    Commission and to work on a bipartisan basis to promote human rights in
    China.
        Lastly, none of this would be possible without the hard-working
    non-partisan staff of the Commission. They are experts in the field and
    committed to both the cause of human rights and to the accuracy in
    reporting that has made the Commission's work so respected. I cannot
    thank them enough.
        One staffer I will mention by name is Judy Wright. She is retiring
    after 20 years at the Commission, and many before that in the House. As
    Director of Administration, she has made everything possible. We will
    miss her. I wish her a well-deserved and fulfilling retirement.
        I also want to acknowledge our lead staffer in the House, Todd
    Stein. I have worked with nobody who knows more about China, who is
    more fluent in human rights law, who cares more deeply about this issue
    than him. It has really been a privilege and an honor to work alongside
    him, and we're going to continue to work together on this issue for
    many years to come.
        I want to pay a special tribute to Speaker Pelosi. She reminds us
    all the time, even when it's inconvenient, about how important focusing
    on human rights is. With regard to human rights in China, she reminds
    us that if we don't have the courage and the guts to speak out against
    human rights abuses in China, then we don't have the moral authority to
    speak out against human rights abuses anywhere on this planet.
        The legislation that both of us have pointed out, that has been a
    product of this Commission, would not have become law unless had it not
    been for the leadership of Speaker Pelosi in the House. I cannot thank
    her enough for her commitment.
        Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from our
    witnesses, and hearing their recommendations for how this Commission,
    the Congress, and the U.S. Government can best advocate for the
    universal rights of the people of China.

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                              Witness Biographies

        Teng Biao, Hauser Human Rights Scholar, Hunter College, and Pozen
    Visiting Professor, University of Chicago

        Teng Biao, an academic lawyer, is currently Hauser Human Rights
    Scholar at Hunter College, City University of New York. He was formerly
    a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law and Pozen
    Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. His research focuses
    on China's criminal justice, human rights, social movements, and
    political transition. He co-founded two human rights NGOs in Beijing--
    the Open Constitution Initiative, and China Against the Death Penalty,
    in 2003 and 2010, respectively. Teng is one of the earliest promoters
    of the Rights Defense Movement and the New Citizens Movement in China
    and has received various international human rights awards including
    the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic (2007) and the Democracy
    Award from the National Endowment for Democracy (2008). He is
    completing a book on China's threat to global freedom and democracy.

        Rana Siu Inboden, Senior Fellow, Robert Strauss Center for
    International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin

        Rana Siu Inboden is a senior fellow with the Robert Strauss Center
    for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at
    Austin. She serves as a consultant on human rights, democracy and rule
    of law projects in Asia for a number of NGOs and conducts research
    related to international human rights, Chinese foreign policy, the
    effectiveness of international human rights and democracy projects and
    authoritarian collaboration in the United Nations. Her book, China and
    the International Human Rights Regime, examines China's role in the
    international human rights regime between 1982 and 2017. Dr. Inboden
    has served in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human
    Rights, and Labor, where her primary responsibilities included managing
    the State Department's Human Rights and Democracy Fund China Program
    and promoting U.S. human rights and democracy policy in China and North
    Korea. She also served at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, in the Office
    of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, and in the Bureau of Intelligence and
    Research. Dr. Inboden holds a DPhil from the Department of Politics and
    International Relations at Oxford University. She received an M.A. from
    Stanford University in East Asian Studies and a B.S. from the School of
    Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

        Sophie Richardson, China Director, Human Rights Watch

        Sophie Richardson is China Director at Human Rights Watch. She has
    overseen the organization's research and advocacy on China since 2006
    and has published extensively on human rights and political reform in
    the country and across Southeast Asia. She has testified at the
    Canadian Parliament, European Parliament, and the United States Senate
    and House of Representatives. Dr. Richardson is the author of China,
    Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (Columbia
    University Press, Dec. 2009), an in-depth examination of China's
    foreign policy since 1954's Geneva Conference, including rare
    interviews with Chinese policy makers. She speaks Mandarin and received
    her doctorate from the University of Virginia and her B.A. from Oberlin
    College.

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