[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.


[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                          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.


                                 [all]