[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                THE PRC'S UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW AND
                     THE REAL STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
                                IN CHINA

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                            FEBRUARY 1, 2024

                               __________

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

                               __________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
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              CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

        House                                     Senate

CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey, Chair       JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon, Co-chair
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts     STEVE DAINES, Montana
BRIAN MAST, Florida                  MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia            TOM COTTON, Arkansas
MICHELLE STEEL, California           ANGUS KING, Maine
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania             TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
ANDREA SALINAS, Oregon               DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska
ZACHARY NUNN, Iowa
RYAN ZINKE, Montana

                     EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

               DANIEL K. KRITENBRINK, Department of State

                  MARISA LAGO, Department of Commerce

                   THEA MEI LEE, Department of Labor

                     UZRA ZEYA, Department of State

                   ERIN BARCLAY, Department of State

                      Piero Tozzi, Staff Director

                   Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director

                                  (ii)


                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                               Statements

Opening Statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from 
  New Jersey; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.     1
Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley, a U.S. Senator from Oregon; Co-
  chair, 
  Congressional-Executive Commission on China....................     3
Statement of Hon. Andrea Salinas, a U.S. Representative from 
  Oregon.........................................................     5
Statement of Hon. Michelle Steel, a U.S. Representative from 
  California.....................................................     5
Statement of Rana Siu Inboden. senior fellow, Robert Strauss 
  Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas 
  at Austin......................................................     7
Statement of Benedict Rogers, co-founder and chief executive of 
  Hong Kong Watch................................................     9
Statement of Sophie Luo, wife of detained Chinese human rights 
  lawyer Ding Jiaxi..............................................    11
Statement of Emile Dirks, research associate at The Citizen Lab, 
  Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy..................    12
Statement of Rushan Abbas, founder and executive director, 
  Campaign for Uyghurs...........................................    14

                            A P P E N D I X
                          Prepared Statements

Inboden, Rana Siu................................................    37
Rogers, Benedict.................................................    44
Dirks, Emile.....................................................    52
Luo, Sophie......................................................    58
Abbas, Rushan....................................................    61

Smith, Hon. Chris................................................    63
Merkley, Hon. Jeff...............................................    65
McGovern, Hon. James P...........................................    65

                       Submissions for the Record

Stakeholder Submission by Campaign for Uyghurs to the Human 
  Rights Council in Advance of the Fourth Universal Periodic 
  Review of the People's Republic of China, submitted by Rushan 
  Abbas..........................................................    69
Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review--China, 22 
  January-2 February 2024, Compilation of Information Prepared by 
  the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 
  submitted by Rushan Abbas, Campaign for Uyghurs, and at the 
  request of Representative McGovern.............................    77
`` `Sell Out My Soul': The Impending Threats to Freedom of 
  Religion or Belief in Hong Kong,'' November 7, 2022, Hong Kong 
  Watch, submitted by Benedict Rogers............................    91
Statement of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders.......   127
Statement of Enghebatu Togochog, Director of Southern Mongolian 
  Human Rights Information Center................................   133
Statement of the International Campaign for Tibet................   139
Statement of Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, Transitional Justice Working 
  Group..........................................................   147
Statement of Ma Ju, human rights advocate........................   151

CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form..........................   153
Witness Biographies..............................................   155

                                 (iii)

 
                  THE PRC'S UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW
                   AND THE REAL STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
                                 IN CHINA

                              ----------                              


                       THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2024

                            Congressional-Executive
                                       Commission on China,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The hearing was held from 10:18 a.m. to 12:24 p.m., in Room 
2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Representative Chris 
Smith, Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China, 
presiding.
    Also present: Senator Jeff Merkley, Co-chair, and 
Representatives Zinke, Steel, Salinas, and Nunn.

   STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW 
   JERSEY; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

    Chair Smith. This hearing will come to order. And welcome 
to everybody. The distinguished Senator Merkley, who's the co-
chair of our Commission--and I will both give opening comments, 
and Ms. Salinas might want to give opening remarks as well. 
Jennifer Wexton will do it remotely, I believe, and some of the 
other members might be coming.
    Thank you for being here. We're a little late starting. We 
had a vote on the floor and there were some disturbances 
outside the building that caused some of us to get there even 
later than we wanted to. Today's hearing, ``The PRC's Universal 
Periodic Review and the Real State of Human Rights in China,'' 
will come to order. Last week at the Universal Periodic Review 
of the People's Republic of China at the United Nations, the 
Chinese Communist Party thought that it could drown out the 
truth of its shameful human rights record, enlisting its allies 
to offer pampering praise instead of probing questions, while 
giving a platform to party-controlled civil society groups over 
independent nongovernmental organizations, something that is 
covered in a stand-alone special CECC report that was released 
just yesterday. I invite you to take a copy and read it. Our 
staff did a wonderful job in putting this together. I commend 
it to you.
    But even Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party, and the 
PRC's massive 60-person delegation could not make a lie true. 
It is indeed a bald-faced lie that the Chinese Communist Party 
respects, honors, or abides by international human rights 
norms. The truth is that Xi Jinping intends to rewrite and 
reshape these norms to manipulate even international bodies 
dedicated to protecting human rights, to serve his agenda. The 
truth on stark display at last week's UPR is that Xi Jinping 
and the Chinese Communist Party constitute a systemic challenge 
to the international rules-based order and reject the very 
concept of universal human rights. In its sham submission to 
the Universal Periodic Review, the PRC claims that it protects 
freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and looks out 
for workers' rights, women, and ethnic minorities, all who are 
vulnerable. And they assert just the opposite. It's an 
Orwellian view of the world, and hopefully people will not 
accept it, even the most gullible.
    In reality Xi Jinping poses an existential threat to these 
and other rights essential for human flourishing. He tells 
journalists that they must be so loyal to the Chinese Communist 
party that ``party'' becomes their last name. He tells leaders 
of religions whose roots in China date back to the middle of 
the first millennium that they must sinicize, which means 
putting allegiance to the party and to Xi himself before their 
faith and their God. He claims that women's equality is a state 
policy while the Chinese Communist Party decides how many 
children a woman should have. And, of course, the infamous one-
child-per-couple policy has led to massive numbers of sex-
selection abortions directed at girls, and they're missing tens 
of millions of girls particularly--because of this policy.
    Of course, there's still the terrible reality in Uyghur and 
ethnic minority communities, even as restrictions have been 
eased on Han women, of blatantly eugenic policies. So they're 
using it as a terrible tool--a repressive tool of genocide.
    Despite Xi's best efforts, China has not succeeded in 
silencing those courageous men and women who insist on telling 
the truth about the real state of human rights in China, often 
at great cost to themselves; some have paid with their very 
lives. Today we will hear from some of those courageous men and 
women. Rana Siu Inboden has devoted her distinguished academic 
and professional career to exposing the PRC's insidious 
attempts to undermine human rights in international 
organizations. Ben Rogers has been a passionate and effective 
advocate for religious freedom in China and for democracy and 
human rights in Hong Kong, for which he has been denied entry 
to Hong Kong, threatened with prison, and repeatedly harassed. 
I know I read his reports all the time. He is a truth teller 
and has made such a difference in making sure everyone who has 
ears knows the truth of what they're doing, in Hong Kong 
especially.
    Emile Dirks has conducted groundbreaking research exposing 
China's totalitarian surveillance and censorship regimes, 
documenting the PRC's use of dystopian technology to target 
ethnic and religious groups for biometric monitoring and data 
collection, and scrubbing China's internet to create 
alternative realities.
    We are particularly honored to have with us today two women 
who have taken extraordinary risks for the cause of human 
rights, fighting on behalf of their family members who are 
imprisoned by the CCP--Rushan Abbas, a powerful advocate for 
the Uyghur people, whose sister was abducted by the Chinese 
government in retaliation for Rushan's activism, and Sophie 
Luo, wife of imprisoned rights defender Ding Jiaxi, who is 
herself a dedicated advocate for victims and their families, 
all while working by day as an accomplished engineer.
    Ms. Luo, it is my privilege to share with you that the CECC 
has nominated your husband for the Nobel Peace Prize for his 
tremendous service to the dream of a democratic China. We've 
also nominated his ally and close collaborator, Xu Zhiyong, and 
democracy campaigner and free speech champion Jimmy Lai. I 
would remind everyone that we in this Commission had the 
privilege and honor of hearing his son Sebastien give very 
passionate, strong, and principled testimony on behalf of his 
dad and all the others. We're very thankful for that.
    Today I am keenly aware of those who are not here, whose 
voices can no longer be heard--especially the voice of Cao 
Shunli, who died in 2014 at the hands of the Chinese Communist 
Party precisely because of her work to amplify the voices of 
independent civil society as part of China's Universal Periodic 
Review--the very process we're here to talk about. She was 
taken into custody on her way to Geneva in 2013, where she was 
to participate in a training on human rights for the UPR. The 
Chinese Communist Party cruelly objected to even a moment of 
silence for her at the U.N. Human Rights Council per the 
hearing I held on the Commission after her death. She is 
exactly the type of person the Chinese government should 
embrace, not jail, discredit, and leave to die.
    She is not here, but her voice is not silent. She speaks 
along with Liu Xiaobo, who also died in PRC custody and who 
wrote from jail--of their hopes for a democratic China. They 
made enormous sacrifices to tell the truth about the real state 
of human rights in China because they believed in and fought 
for a better China. And someday, when China is free and 
democratic, these will be the heroes that everybody in a free 
China will honor and revere. There are many, but it's just 
amazing how many people have sacrificed so much. I urge my 
colleagues and all those joining us today to insist that the 
United Nations and its member states demand the truth about the 
PRC's human rights violations and hold Xi Jinping--a man who's 
committing genocide as we meet--and demand the truth about his 
record, and to hold them to account.
    With that, I'd like to yield to my very good friend and 
colleague, co-chair of our Commission, Senator Merkley.

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

    Co-chair Merkley. Thank you so much, Chairman Smith, for 
convening this particular hearing. The topic's appropriate for 
our first period in 2024, because it covers a spectrum of human 
rights challenges in China. Both this Commission and the 
Universal Periodic Review serve as mechanisms to review China's 
compliance with international human rights standards, in their 
own ways. The review of China, the fourth since the creation of 
the UPR process, gives us an opportunity to assess its outcomes 
and help us prioritize our work, while it informs the 
recommendations we make to Congress and the administration.
    Members of the Commission will find the issues raised at 
the UPR very familiar. We have documented in our annual reports 
and explored in our hearings genocide against Uyghurs, the 
decimation of freedom in Hong Kong, colonial boarding schools 
of Tibet, and China's pervasive surveillance state, among other 
brutal behavior. These are facts--facts this Commission has 
reported, facts that member states raised in their UPR 
questions, facts submitted by the U.N. and the stakeholder 
nongovernmental groups to the review session. The Chinese 
government is obligated by international law to address these 
matters and put itself in compliance with the law.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how 
these issues were discussed in Geneva and recommendations on 
next steps in terms of holding the Chinese government 
accountable for its numerous violations of law. We also hope to 
hear about the methods the Chinese government employs to avoid 
facing these facts. As one NGO put it, the Chinese Communist 
Party ``gaslights'' the world on its record by self-servingly 
redefining concepts and recruiting allies to deflect attention 
away from its actual conduct; and that conduct is, in fact, 
atrocious.
    I commend the attention of commissioners and the public to 
our new staff report, which hopefully you all have copies of or 
will soon get, on the prevalence of PRC-sympathetic groups at 
the UPR, and how they distort the process. My appreciation to 
our staff for working so hard to put this excellent piece 
together. The UPR remains a valuable platform for the 
international community to assess the human rights record of 
China and of every country, including our own.
    It's far from perfect, and we will hear criticism of the 
process and how the PRC manipulates it. But we must also take 
care not to let such criticism erode support for the U.N. 
system. Its treaty bodies and instruments are the places where 
international human rights law is defined. It's where it's 
adjudicated. These universal standards are those that this 
Commission is mandated to assess the PRC's conduct against. Let 
us not undermine that work.
    Last, let us remember our most essential role, to help give 
voice to those who cannot freely express themselves, who 
languish unjustly in jail, who suffer repression. Earlier this 
month I joined Senators Rubio, Kaine, and Blackburn on a letter 
asking the State Department to raise specific names of 
political prisoners at the UPR of China. Chairman Smith and 
Commissioner Wexton led a similar letter on the House side, and 
thank you so much for doing so. I hope our witnesses will 
update us on cases of concern.
    I also note that the Chair and I have nominated our 
witness's husband, Ms. Luo's husband, as well as Jimmy Lai, Xu 
Zhiyong, and Ilham Tohti for the Nobel Peace Prize. And thank 
you, Chairman, for mentioning that as well because it's another 
way that we seek to shine a light on prisoners of conscience. 
Thank you to our witnesses for joining us today, bringing your 
expertise to bear--your courageous expertise. I look forward to 
your testimony and insight.
    Chair Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Merkley.
    I'd now like to yield to Commissioner Salinas.

               STATEMENT OF HON. ANDREA SALINAS,
                  A REPRESENTATIVE FROM OREGON

    Representative Salinas. Thank you to our co-chairs, 
Representative Smith and Senator Merkley, for holding this 
important hearing, and thank you to our witnesses for taking 
the time to be with us today. Recently, this Commission looked 
at China's human rights violations on the high seas and deep in 
the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but this 
is an opportunity to align our work with that of the United 
Nations to peek behind the curtain and evaluate China's human 
rights abuse domestically.
    With that, I must also thank Ambassador Michele Taylor, the 
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations High Human 
Rights Council, for questioning China on their surveillance and 
harassment of citizens in the Xinjiang region and Hong Kong, as 
well as their mistreatment of Tibetans. In her allotted 45 
seconds during the U.N. Universal Periodic Review of China, she 
also managed to question China on forced assimilation 
activities, forced labor, family separation, and sterilization 
in Xinjiang, and their repressive laws against other 
marginalized groups in China.
    Fortunately for this Commission and our esteemed witnesses 
who have taken the time to be with us today, we have more than 
45 seconds to evaluate China's human rights record. I look 
forward to robust discussion from my colleagues and our 
witnesses today. So thank you.
    Chair Smith. Thank you very much.
    We are joined by Commissioner Michelle Steel, remotely. 
She'll be getting on right now, I hope.

               STATEMENT OF HON. MICHELLE STEEL,
                A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA

    Representative Steel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having 
this important meeting. I'm so grateful for that. From the 
mining of critical minerals to manufacturing, the human rights 
abuses happening at the hands of the CCP should horrify every 
one of us. We have to let the whole world know. That's what 
this Commission has been doing. I'm so grateful to the members 
and all the witnesses coming out, with their courage. These 
abuses are happening all over the world, including Vietnam. I 
have a big Vietnamese constituency, and I've been hearing from 
them all the time saying, what's going on with that country?
    I'm glad that we're having this meeting to discuss the 
continued attempts by the CCP to subvert the U.N. human rights 
system. The U.N. has to work harder than ever on this. In 2021, 
Congress worked together to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor 
Prevention Act. I'm glad this Commission continues to review 
implementation and we are working to shine a light on all CCP 
human rights abuses.
    Thank you to the witnesses for sharing with us your 
expertise on further congressional oversight and other changes 
needed to improve on this key issue. Thank you very much.
    Chair Smith. Thank you very much, Commissioner Steel.
    One of our commissioners couldn't be here today, but she 
asked that I read her statement. It's the very distinguished 
Member of Congress, Jennifer Wexton, who is one of our 
commissioners. And these are her words.
    The latest UPR review marked the fourth time that China's 
human rights record has been examined at the U.N. Since the 
first review in 2009, the deterioration of human rights for 
Chinese citizens in its autonomous regions has been deeply 
concerning to the world. After Chinese President Xi Jinping 
came to power in November 2012, all aspects of human rights--
from Tibet to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, to Hong 
Kong, to Chinese civil society--have been in a downward spiral, 
causing more than 160 countries to address the 2024 hearings in 
Geneva.
    Among them, more than 50 states made targeted and detailed 
recommendations to Beijing on urgent issues. On January 18th, 
along with Chair Smith and 12 others, we sent a bipartisan 
letter to the State Department--the distinguished Co-chair 
mentioned a moment ago that they did the same on the Senate 
side--calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to raise the 
ongoing atrocities and human rights violations committed by the 
People's Republic of China, during the UPR. We highlighted 
specific cases of imprisoned Uyghurs, persecuted Hong Kongers 
and Tibetans, and silenced human rights defenders, and 
condemned the Chinese government's transnational repression of 
outspoken critics of the regime residing in the United States 
and in other countries.
    I'm glad to see that in the advance questions submitted by 
the U.S. Government, several individuals mentioned in our 
letter were highlighted, including Uyghur scholars Ilham Tohti, 
Rahile Dawut, and retired Uyghur medical doctor Gulshan Abbas, 
whose sister, Rushan Abbas, is in attendance today. Hong Kong 
activists Chow Hang-tung and Jimmy Lai, as well as prominent 
Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng, were mentioned as well. Although 
they represent only a small fraction of all the arbitrarily 
detained in China, the list will help ensure that Beijing faces 
scrutiny at the largest international organization.
    During the review, dozens of member states zeroed in on 
issues related to atrocity crimes in the Xinjiang area, 
including mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, the 
destruction of--and the marginalization of--cultural heritage, 
religious persecution, coercive family planning policies, and 
reprisals against human rights defenders and civil society. 
Eighteen countries made recommendations related to human rights 
violations in Hong Kong, while six called for the repeal of 
Hong Kong's draconian national security law. At the last China 
UPR in 2018, only six countries mentioned Hong Kong in their 
statements. It goes without saying that Hong Kong's worsening 
human rights after 2019 pushed more member states to take 
action.
    The same can be said for Tibet, as China faced an 
unprecedented challenge to its human rights violations there, 
with a total of 20 member states making 24 recommendations and 
3 mentions at the UPR. Yet the Chinese government continues to 
deny the scope and scale of violations of human rights 
documented in U.N. reports, while offering up its anti-human 
rights approach as a model for other countries. On the same day 
as the UPR, the Chinese government released a white paper 
titled ``China's Legal Framework and Measures for 
Counterterrorism,'' justifying its policies in Xinjiang as 
anti-terrorism responses.
    Beijing argues that ``as a victim of terrorism, [our] 
counter-
terrorism efforts have brought security and stability to the 
region.'' In all future engagements, I urge--this is, again, 
Commissioner Jennifer Wexton--I urge the U.S. Government to 
hold the Chinese government accountable and ask it to end its 
ongoing gross human rights violations toward its own people, 
and respect its human rights obligations through meaningful 
cooperation with the U.N. system. China has yet to implement 
key recommendations from U.N. bodies, including the OHCHR's 
Xinjiang report and findings by committees on racial 
discrimination, women's rights, economic, social, and cultural 
rights.
    China has not accepted the numerous pending requests for 
visits by U.N. special procedures experts. We need to be firm 
and consistent in our response as we work in tandem with civil 
society and the many courageous activists present today, to 
ensure that China acts responsibly toward its citizens and to 
the world. Thank you.
    I want to thank Commissioner Wexton for an excellent 
statement that just summarized it all so very well, and for her 
leadership on this Commission.
    I'd now like to recognize our first witness, please.

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

    Ms. Inboden. Distinguished commissioners, it is an honor to 
be part of today's hearing. My remarks will focus on the 
Chinese government's actions to manipulate the Universal 
Periodic Review. My written statement expands on other ways the 
PRC is undermining the U.N. human rights system. I commend it 
to you.
    China's manipulation of the UPR is occurring in tandem with 
repression that includes persecution of Uyghurs, a crackdown on 
dissent in Hong Kong, suppression in Tibet, and an onslaught on 
human rights defenders. The PRC's efforts to undermine scrutiny 
is intended to conceal its violations, including the 
politically motivated detention of individuals such as Chinese 
Pastor Wang Yi; Uyghurs Ilham Tohti and Rahile Dawut; Tibetan 
Yeshe Choedron; human rights defenders Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi, 
and Gao Zhisheng; and the trial of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong.
    The UPR was intended to ensure that every nation underwent 
routine scrutiny. It includes a dialog where government 
representatives make a presentation and where other nations put 
forward questions and recommendations. It also relies on 
written documentation submitted by the government, the United 
Nations, and civil society. The procedure was developed with a 
vision of vigorous scrutiny, yet the PRC has tried to render it 
a meaningless exercise and whitewash its violations. One of 
China's strategies is soliciting soft comments from other 
nations in order to flood the proceedings with weak 
recommendations and perfunctory remarks.
    In the lead-up to China's UPR last week, the PRC mission 
circulated a letter to other nations encouraging them to make 
supportive comments. As a result, during China's UPR 163 
nations had signed up to speak, which meant that each country 
only had 45 seconds to deliver their remarks. Thus, many of the 
statements merely congratulated the PRC, including mentioning 
its ability to lift 100 million people out of poverty and reach 
U.N. Sustainable Development Goals ahead of schedule, without 
mentioning the use of torture, arbitrary detention, and forced 
disappearance. In exchange, Beijing makes similar statements 
for other governments, such as Belarus, stating that ``it 
supported the achievements of Belarus in protecting human 
rights and its efforts to maintain its independence and 
sovereignty.''
    China also appeals to Global South solidarity to protect 
itself, framing scrutiny of its record as unfair treatment of 
developing countries. As part of this effort. China is fueling 
a grievance culture in the Council and sowing north-south 
divisions that are harmful to U.S. interests.
    The PRC government claims to meet the guideline of 
involving civil society in developing its report, but it only 
consults with government-affiliated organizations. 
Consequently, China's report was full of propaganda, including 
claiming that it was one of the safest countries in the world. 
The PRC also stated that the imposition of the National 
Security Law in Hong Kong meant that the days of ``social 
disturbance and fear are over, and that stability and order are 
restored.''
    These claims about safety and stability are inexcusable 
given the persecution of Uyghurs and the bounties that it's 
placed on individuals who seek exile abroad. Instead, it is 
actively sowing fear.
    China's machinations have also resulted in the U.N.'s 
compilation to the UPR omitting the finding in the report by 
the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that the 
PRC's actions in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against 
humanity. China further attempts to crowd out independent civil 
society and has also used GONGOs to intimidate and harass human 
rights defenders at the U.N.
    As a result, I recommend the following:

      Commit to continued participation in the U.N. The 
U.S. can have greater impact if it remains in the Council. For 
example, American diplomats did a laudable job by putting 
forward 15 very well-stated questions in advance of China's 
UPR.

      Support human rights defenders as much as we can, 
both inside and outside the country, including those who have 
fled to the United States in exile.

      Counter the PRC's efforts to sow north-south 
divisions in the Council and find ways to puncture the false 
narrative that developing countries are not supported by the 
West.

      Expand cooperation with non-Western nations. 
Brazil, Chile, and the Marshall Islands actually delivered 
relatively good remarks during China's UPR, and Somalia voted 
for the Xinjiang resolution. So there are opportunities outside 
of Western Europe and North America.

      Support creative advocacy. The U.S. mission in 
Geneva could host the performance ``Everybody Is Gone.'' It is 
an immersive performance that portrays the detention camps that 
Uyghurs are sent to.

      You asked about the case of people in detention. 
I do pro bono advocacy for Wang Yi. Nobody has been able to 
verify his health, his mental status, in 3 years. His wife has 
not been allowed to visit him. I encourage the United States to 
run a thematic resolution at the Human Rights Council on access 
to prisoners and prisoner rights. This would also help ease 
some of the repression that Uyghurs are suffering, especially 
Rahile Dawut and Ilham Tohti.

      I also would encourage the U.S. to bolster 
resources for the U.S. mission in Geneva. (The PRC mission in 
Geneva is twice the size of the United States mission.) This 
would allow the U.S. to hold more side events. It would be 
ideal to have a U.N. side event on China during every single 
session. Thank you.

    Chair Smith. Ms. Inboden, thank you very much for your 
testimony and your recommendations. I really appreciate it.
    I'd now like to recognize Mr. Rogers.

                 STATEMENT OF BENEDICT ROGERS,

                CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE,

                        HONG KONG WATCH

    Mr. Rogers. Chairman Smith, Senator Merkley, distinguished 
commissioners, it's a great privilege to testify before your 
Commission. And I thank you for the opportunity and for your 
leadership. I've been asked to focus on the real state of 
religious freedom in China and also in Hong Kong. I've been 
involved with human rights in China for over 30 years and have 
myself experienced, to some degree, transnational repression. 
I've received, for example, dozens of anonymous threatening 
letters at my home, in a suburb of London--not an address that 
I make public--and even my mother has received letters telling 
her to tell her son to stop doing what he's doing. This is 
detailed further in my written testimony and also in my book, 
``The China Nexus.''
    Religious freedom has always been suppressed by the Chinese 
Communist Party regime, but under Xi Jinping's rule, it has 
intensified. Responsibility for religious affairs has been 
centralized. Xi has introduced a campaign of sinicization of 
religion aimed at the co-optation and control of religion. New 
regulations strengthen state control over religion. 
Unregistered house churches have been outlawed and ordered to 
join the government-controlled church system. Many Christians 
have been imprisoned, such as Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain 
Church, whose case has already been mentioned, who was 
sentenced in 2019 to 9 years.
    In July last year, leaders of Linfen Covenant Church were 
accused of forming ``a criminal clique.'' On January 2nd of 
this year, the Catholic bishop of Wenzhou, Bishop Peter Shao 
Zhumin, was arrested yet again. At least 20 Catholic priests 
were arrested in China last year alone. Hundreds of churches 
have been destroyed, crosses dismantled, portraits of Xi 
displayed in churches, and surveillance cameras installed. The 
persecution of Falun Gong and forced organ harvesting 
continues. In 2019, an independent tribunal chaired by the 
British lawyer Sir Geoffrey Nice KC concluded that this is 
indeed a crime against humanity.
    In Tibet, atrocities continue with religious practice 
restricted, including through colonial boarding schools in 
which a million Tibetan children who have been coercively 
separated from their families and indoctrinated into Chinese 
language, culture, and CCP ideology, are cut off from their 
Buddhist religion and their Tibetan culture. The predominantly 
Muslim Uyghurs face genocide, as recognized by both the 
previous U.S. administration and the current administration, by 
several parliaments around the world, and by the independent 
Uyghur tribunal. Forced abortions, forced sterilization, forced 
labor, torture, and incarceration have accompanied widespread 
violations of religious freedom against the Uyghurs.
    The crackdown on Muslims now goes further than the Uyghurs. 
Human Rights Watch has recently reported that in other 
provinces ``Chinese authorities have decommissioned, closed 
down, and demolished mosques.'' So whether you are a Christian, 
a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Falun Gong practitioner, or you follow 
another belief, in China today it is incredibly dangerous to 
practice your faith. In 2019, the then Ambassador-at-large for 
international religious freedom, Ambassador Sam Brownback, said 
in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong, 
at a time when it was possible to make such speeches in Hong 
Kong, that ``The Chinese government is at war with faith.''
    In the recent UPR, as has already been mentioned, 18 U.N. 
member states raised recommendations on Hong Kong. Over the 
past decade, and especially since the imposition of the 
National Security Law, the Chinese Communist Party has totally 
dismantled Hong Kong's freedom, the rule of law, and autonomy, 
in total breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. And the 
announcement this week that the Hong Kong government will bring 
forth legislation on Article 23, a further security law, will 
only intensify and worsen the situation. Freedom of expression, 
assembly, and association, and democratic participation have 
been destroyed. Over 1,000 political prisoners are in jail in 
Hong Kong today, and over 68 civil society organizations were 
forced to close.
    In addition, as Hong Kong Watch documents in its new report 
titled `` `Sell Out My Soul': The Impending Threats to Freedom 
of Religion or Belief in Hong Kong,'' religious freedom in Hong 
Kong is being undermined in insidious ways. If I may, Mr. 
Chairman, request that this report, ``Sell Out My Soul,'' be 
entered into the record, I'd be very grateful.
    Chair Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Rogers. Thank you. The international community must 
monitor the situation of religious freedom in Hong Kong very 
closely. The new repressive laws under Article 23 and other 
laws expected should be closely watched and analyzed for their 
impact on religious freedom. Hong Kong's plight is illustrated 
most starkly with the current trial of Jimmy Lai, the 76-year-
old entrepreneur and pro-democracy activist. He's a British 
citizen, and I'm privileged to call him a friend. He has spent 
the last 3 years of his life in prison, and he may well remain 
there until he dies.
    He's accused of conspiring to collude with foreign forces, 
but the reality is, as the head of his international legal 
team, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, so aptly puts it--the real 
charge against him is conspiracy to commit journalism, 
conspiracy to talk about politics with politicians, and 
conspiracy to raise human rights concerns with human rights 
organizations. I, along with several other foreigners, 
including some American citizens and British nationals, have 
been named in Jimmy Lai's trial as collaborators. I woke up on 
January 2d of this year to find that our headshots were 
displayed in court.
    The outrageous imprisonment of Jimmy Lai is emblematic of 
the CCP's assault on human rights, including religious freedom, 
because he is a Catholic motivated by his faith to fight for 
freedom. We must stand by him. We must call out this gross 
injustice. And we must demand his immediate and unconditional 
release. Thank you.
    Chair Smith. Thank you very much, Ben.
    I'd now like to recognize Sophie Luo.

                    STATEMENT OF SOPHIE LUO,

        WIFE OF DETAINED HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER DING JIAXI

    Ms. Luo. Mr. Smith, Senator Merkley, and distinguished 
members of the Commission, thank you so much for holding this 
hearing and for inviting me to testify. Today's hearing is so 
important to me, as the wife of imprisoned Chinese human rights 
lawyer Ding Jiaxi, and as the director of advocacy for the NGO 
Humanitarian China. That is an organization that pays attention 
to political prisoners. We must continue to speak out about the 
horrific human rights violations committed by the Chinese 
government. This is all the more important in the wake of the 
Chinese official delegation's denials about its human rights 
abuses and the Chinese government's allies' empty praise of 
poverty alleviation and the so-called rights safeguards, at 
China's Universal Periodic Review in Geneva last Tuesday.
    First, I want to thank the Commission for tweeting the 
cases of political prisoners before the UPR. That is so 
important and highlights the problem. I would also like to 
thank the U.S. Government for the robust statement it made 
during the UPR and for its advance questions, including the 
focus on political prisoners and human rights defenders 
arbitrarily detained by the Chinese government.
    Since my testimony at CECC 2 years ago, at the time of the 
Beijing Winter Olympics, I've spoken at length about the case 
of my husband, Ding Jiaxi, and the legal scholar Xu Zhiyong. 
Chinese authorities secretly tried them and sentenced them to 
12 and 14 years in prison, respectively. To date, no verdict 
has been issued to the families. After the Shandong High 
People's Court rejected their appeals, authorities sent Ding 
Jiaxi to a prison in Hubei province and Xu Zhiyong to a prison 
in Shandong province. Actually, yesterday Xu Zhiyong's sister 
tried to go see him but was warned not to talk with me and was 
threatened with jail.
    In April 2023, following the announcement of the verdicts 
of Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong, I had the honor of testifying 
before Chairman Smith at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs 
Committee. We discussed how Chinese authorities persecute human 
rights defenders through forced disappearance, secret 
detention, torture, coerced confession, fabrication of criminal 
evidence, and closed-door trials and sentencing, highlighting 
that the Chinese government has absolutely no respect for any 
law.
    Today, I am holding up an image that shows many current 
political prisoners in China. My heart aches terribly every 
time I see this picture. But I put it on my desk at home, and I 
look at it every day, because I know I must let the world know 
about human rights abuse in China and call for the release, and 
fight for the rights, of all political prisoners. In my written 
testimony, I highlight the many unlawful tactics used against 
human rights defenders by Chinese authorities, with specific 
examples which include forced disappearance, torture, lengthy 
pretrial detention, lack of access to medical treatment, heavy 
prison sentences, and restrictions on the rights of defense 
lawyers, or the imposition of officially assigned lawyers.
    Other human rights abuses inflicted on rights defenders 
include forced labor in prison and randomly depriving political 
prisoners of their right to be visited by family members. Right 
now, actually this morning, my friends were highlighting for me 
that torture usually starts before--and during--the 
investigation. But some are tortured in prison also. Actually, 
to not allow family members to visit them is already mental 
torture for the prisoners. And also, after they are released, 
the government often still keeps them under surveillance. That 
is what we call non-release release.
    There is also the persecution or harassment of the families 
of human rights defenders, which includes imprisoning their 
wives or loved ones and depriving their children of the right 
to attend school, as well as the imposition of travel bans and 
the forced deprivation of their livelihood. I deeply appreciate 
the countries in addition to the U.S. that specifically asked 
the Chinese government to end arbitrary detention and forced 
disappearance, and its abusive treatment of human rights 
defenders, during the UPR. And I look forward to your continued 
support for the families of human rights defenders as we fight 
for their basic rights and seek the unconditional release of 
political prisoners. Thank you very much.
    Chair Smith. Ms. Luo, thank you so much for your testimony. 
I don't think you will mind me mentioning that you were 
baptized in December, and that has given you an enormous amount 
of strength and encouragement. Thank you for what you are doing 
in bearing witness to the ugly truth of what the PRC is doing 
to your family, and to everyone else. Thank you.
    I would now like to recognize Emile Dirks, who's coming to 
us via--he's in Toronto. So he'll be coming in through Zoom.

  STATEMENT OF EMILE DIRKS, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE AT THE CITIZEN 
LAB, MUNK SCHOOL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS & PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY 
                           OF TORONTO

    Mr. Dirks. Thank you, distinguished members of the 
Commission, for holding this important hearing on the state of 
human rights in China, and for the opportunity to testify 
today. My name is Emile Dirks, and I am a research associate at 
The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.
    Today I will discuss three aspects of Chinese state-backed 
online censorship. One, online censorship profoundly impacts 
Chinese citizens' freedom of opinion and expression. Two, both 
Chinese and U.S. companies contribute to online censorship. And 
three, censorship is linked to repression in and outside China. 
I'll conclude with recommendations for how the U.S. Government 
can demand accountability from perpetrators and provide 
assistance to victims.
    First, the Chinese government severely restricts Chinese 
citizens' freedom of opinion and expression through online 
censorship. Inside China, authorities block access to thousands 
of websites, including foreign media, human rights 
organizations, and the website of this very Commission. One of 
the clearest measurements of state-mandated censorship comes 
from Great Firewall Watch, a platform created by researchers at 
Stony Brook, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, UC 
Berkeley, and The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. 
Since its inception in March 2020, GFWatch.org has discovered 
more than 640,000 blocked domains.
    Now censorship is pervasive even on platforms accessible in 
China. Yet while authorities stipulate what content is 
prohibited, it is tech companies themselves that are 
responsible for day-to-day censorship. Citizen Lab researchers 
have discovered over 60,000 censorship rules on eight China-
accessible search platforms--rules that fully or partially 
censor search results for key terms, including references to 
human rights abuse and criticism of the Communist Party. 
Citizen Lab researchers have also detailed how platforms censor 
discussion of political events, including activism in Hong 
Kong, crackdowns on human rights lawyers, and the COVID-19 
pandemic.
    Second, it is not only Chinese companies that are 
responsible for censorship. Citizen Lab research shows that the 
Chinese version of Microsoft Bing, the only major non-Chinese 
search engine accessible in China, engages in extensive 
censorship. In China, Bing only displays censored search 
results for authorized websites. Bing targets political 
material related to Xi Jinping and religious material related 
to banned spiritual movements. Furthermore, Citizen Lab 
researchers found that Bing's censorship of search suggestions, 
though not search results, was applied to users in the United 
States and other countries for at least 8 months from October 
2021 to May 2022. Bing's extensive censorship shows that U.S. 
tech companies cannot introduce services in China without 
integrating restrictions on expression, and that these 
restrictions will be applied to users outside of China.
    Third, online censorship is linked to offline harm. As 
detailed by Citizen Lab researchers, a 2019 to 2021 harassment 
campaign used Chinese social media to distribute personal 
information about Hong Kong activists. Victims are also outside 
China. This Commission has previously discussed the Chinese 
government's silencing of overseas critics through 
transnational repression. On Chinese and U.S. social media, 
state-backed proxies and online nationalists harass Chinese, 
Hong Kong, Tibetan, Uyghur, and other diaspora members. Since 
2009, Citizen Lab researchers have investigated digital attacks 
and espionage against Tibetan diaspora communities.
    Some of the most vicious instances of digital transnational 
repression are directed at women. As Citizen Lab researchers 
have documented, Chinese and Hong Kong women activists in 
Canada have suffered online threats of physical and sexual 
violence. Diaspora women in the United States, Australia, and 
other liberal democracies have also been attacked online, due 
to their criticism of the Chinese government. Now, through 
online censorship, the cooperation of technology companies, and 
digital transnational repression, the Chinese State severely 
restricts the freedom of opinion and expression of people in 
and outside China. Addressing this problem requires holding 
companies responsible for their role in online censorship and 
supporting victims of digital harassment and intimidation.
    Therefore, I recommend that the U.S. Government do three 
things: One, publicly request that Microsoft and other U.S. 
companies like Apple explain how they implement political and 
religious censorship on their platforms in China. Two, publicly 
request that Microsoft explain how political and religious 
censorship was applied to the search suggestions of users 
outside China and what safeguards will ensure that this will 
not reoccur. And three, train U.S. Government officials--
including law enforcement and immigration authorities--to 
recognize digital transnational repression and properly assist 
victims and their families.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I look 
forward to your questions and comments.
    Chair Smith. Mr. Dirks, thank you so much for your 
testimony and your recommendations. We will follow up.
    I'd now like to recognize Rushan Abbas.

                   STATMENT OF RUSHAN ABBAS,

                FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

                      CAMPAIGN FOR UYGHURS

    Ms. Abbas. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Chairman Merkley, 
members of the Commission and the staff. Thank you for this 
opportunity to testify. Today I stand before you to speak about 
my experience and observations during the PRC's fourth 
Universal Periodic Review held in Geneva last week. UPRs are 
intended to provide genuine exchange within the U.N. framework. 
This one, however, occurred amid an ongoing Uyghur genocide. It 
underscored the difficulty in holding China accountable for its 
human rights atrocities against the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong 
Kongers, Southern Mongolians, and Chinese dissidents. China's 
genocidal policies include forced sterilization, forced 
abortions, institutionalized mass rape, forced marriages, child 
abduction, modern-day slavery, organ harvesting, and crematoria 
for a culture that doesn't practice cremation.
    Twelve countries and parliaments, including the United 
States, recognize these atrocities as genocide. I would like to 
underline by providing a telling example that the U.N. system 
is under immense pressure by the People's Republic of China. 
The main takeaways of the August 2022 report by the Office of 
the High Commissioner for Human Rights was that Beijing's 
actions in the Uyghur region could constitute crimes against 
humanity. This is a grave allegation that the U.N. could not 
and did not raise without compelling evidence. However, it was 
disheartening to see that the U.N.'s official compilation of 
its own reports as a part of the UPR process conspicuously left 
this conclusion out.
    As much as Campaign for Uyghurs was relieved to see that 
this damning conclusion of the report by the U.N. itself was at 
least mentioned through our organization in the summary of the 
civil society reporting produced by the United Nations, the 
fact that the U.N. is debilitated to the point of not being 
able to refer to its own reporting without hiding behind a 
civil society organization shows the level of China's undue 
pressure under which the U.N. system currently operates.
    In the lead-up to the UPR session, Campaign for Uyghurs 
filed with the U.N. its stakeholder submission, which was 
referenced extensively in the U.N. Summary of Stakeholders' 
Submissions, shedding a light on China's atrocities. We seek 
your permission, Mr. Chairman, to enter this document into the 
record as well.
    Chair Smith. Without objection.
    Ms. Abbas. Thank you. In Geneva, I witnessed how a 
totalitarian state aiming to silence dissent and legitimize its 
oppression worldwide, works to exploit this U.N. mechanism to 
receive an international seal of endorsement. I was there last 
week with my team and my niece Ziba to attend the UPR. It was 
heartbreaking to see her sitting in the room with the very 
people that put her innocent mother in jail, and who 
continuously whitewash their crimes against humanity. Before 
the session began, pro-CCP students and the Chinese government-
organized NGOs were sent to overcrowd the venue, restricting 
access to authentic human rights defenders. They attempted to 
limit civil society participation. And it took our persistent 
efforts with the U.N. Secretariat to secure access to a hall 
that clearly had more available space.
    Defying the U.N. rules, pro-China individuals spent hours 
in the upstairs gallery photographing member-state delegates 
and activists from Uyghur, Tibetan, and other Chinese dissident 
groups, including myself. Another pro-China attendee was taking 
pictures of Tibetan and Uyghur rights defenders as we were 
standing in line to enter the hall. Unfortunately, it took 
repeated demands from the activists to get U.N. security to 
stop this individual. I saw a pro-Chinese attendee jotting down 
notes on his phone while looking over at a Uyghur activist's 
computer. This deliberate surveillance occurred inside the 
United Nations, a space meant for secure and open discussion on 
human rights.
    These are common tactics used by the CCP to intimidate and 
monitor human rights advocates in international forums, 
especially those dedicated to unveiling the true state of human 
rights in China. One hundred sixty-three countries requested to 
speak. Each was granted just 45 seconds to provide 
recommendations. Over 120 countries either ignored China's dark 
record or commended its so-called progress. This included 
nations that by their own account should stand against the 
repression and not endorse it. It was jarring how sharply this 
orchestrated praise contradicted the realities of PRC rule that 
subjects marginalized groups to indefensible persecution.
    As Representative Salinas did in her opening remarks, I 
also want to applaud U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor for her 
resolute stance among the 28 countries that spoke against the 
human rights atrocities. In just 45 seconds, Ambassador Taylor 
delivered eight recommendations on the ongoing Uyghur genocide, 
and the violations in Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, and mainland 
China. As Chairman Smith mentioned, while the session was 
underway, China released a white paper on counterterrorism, 
trying to distort the facts and spread misinformation about the 
Uyghurs. This move aimed to divert attention from the ongoing 
genocide and shape a narrative more favorable to China's 
interests.
    Despite conclusive research, survivor testimony, and 
witness accounts, as well as several leaked documents from the 
CCP itself, side events organized by the Chinese government and 
government-sponsored NGOs presented propaganda to cast doubt on 
the established evidence, which I've discussed further in my 
written testimony. China's manipulation of the U.N. and blatant 
abuse of the international system undermines the principles of 
justice, human rights, and fair representation. Their maneuvers 
compromise the U.N.'s integrity and pose a direct threat to 
global stability and human dignity.
    In my opinion, China's calculated attempts were indeed 
successful in shielding its egregious crimes from scrutiny and 
eroded the U.N.'s founding principles and purpose. The 
international community must unite against such tactics to 
preserve the U.N. as a beacon of peace--free from exploitation. 
Mr. Chairman, what transpired in Geneva last week was not an 
isolated case, but a symptom of a much larger issue. The PRC's 
conduct at the UPR and the permissive attitude in that room 
serve as a microcosm of China's broader disregard for 
international norms, human rights, and the dignity of the 
Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and other persecuted 
communities.
    I am defending human rights at the cost of my own sister's 
freedom as a result of China's transnational repression against 
American citizens living on American soil. Exercising my 
freedom of speech put her in jail. It's clear that in Geneva 
the PRC operates with an audacious sense of impunity, treating 
the U.N. as if it were their own playground, and getting what 
they want. The United States must recognize the gravity of the 
situation and the urgency with which it demands a response. 
It's high time nations stood firm against such bold affronts, 
ensuring that the U.N. remains true to the vision of Eleanor 
Roosevelt rather than becoming a rubber stamp for a global 
offense on freedom. Thank you so much.
    Chair Smith. Thank you so very much. Thank you for your 
courage. And your sister, she's in my prayers, believe me, and 
we will continue to raise her case as well. You know, one of 
the things I learned about political prisoners was learned from 
dissidents and prisoners themselves. One of them was Wei 
Jingsheng in 1994. I went to Beijing to raise the issue that 
they should not get the 2000 Olympics unless they released 
political prisoners. And he told me something. He was out of 
jail. He had been beaten senseless by the Chinese Communist 
Party, and then when they didn't get the Olympics, they 
rearrested him and hurt him severely again. He is a great human 
rights activist, as you know, and defender.
    But he told me something I'll never forget. He said--very 
politely--``You people in the West don't understand. When you 
kowtow, when you try to curry favor with the Chinese Communist 
Party, when you fail to mention the names, by name, of 
prisoners, they beat us more in prison. When you're strong, 
assertive, and you don't give up, they beat us less.'' I've 
heard that from others, but he said it so powerfully. They knew 
when we were raising issues because even the warden would be 
well aware that the world was watching. So we need to 
accelerate that very, very significantly.
    To your point, Ms. Inboden, and others, we just have to 
continue. Our data base is second to none. And we need--every 
delegation that goes or anyone--interlocutors with Chinese 
officials on any issue, from environmental to trade, especially 
trade, who has a list of prisoners--raise them by name. Why is 
this person being tortured? You know, Manfred Nowak, special 
rapporteur for torture for the United Nations, did a scathing 
report on China, the pervasive use of torture. And, you know, 
it was all denied. The Chinese Communist Party just said, Nope, 
doesn't happen. And then accused us, the United States, of 
practicing torture. It was just--it's Orwellian and it's never 
ending.
    And 45 seconds to make presentations--I mean, that's 
absurd. There should have been an attempt to turn the clock off 
and say, You've got as much time--even if it goes for a day or 
two or more. How dare they, on the worst violator of human 
rights on the planet, let them get away with a review--with 
good content coming from the United States and others--but it 
doesn't get the airing that it deserves. On the prisoners, we 
all need to double down on that and make sure that every 
parliamentarian, every government official--when people from 
the Commerce Department meet, they have to bring it up.
    I brought it up with John Kerry once and he said, Well, I 
want to keep it on the Green New Deal and things like that. I 
said, please, you know how bad it is. Please raise it in all of 
those venues as well, because every time you do you might be 
saving the life of one or of many. Someday we will see 
democracy and freedom there and it will come out, because we 
have a new bill we're working on right now, the Gao Zhisheng 
bill. I'm going to introduce it very shortly. I'm looking for 
co-sponsors, and I want to thank Bob Fu, who's been just never 
ending. Pastor Fu runs ChinaAid. He was a Tiananmen Square 
activist and was imprisoned. He has been a light to all of us. 
So has Gao Zhisheng; his wife and daughter, who are here, have 
both testified in the past. So we really need to elevate his 
case and the others who are political prisoners. If anyone 
wants to come in on any of that with the prisoners, please do.
    The National Security Law is one of the worst laws ever. 
Jimmy Lai and so many other great people, the best and the 
bravest and the brightest of Hong Kong, are being prosecuted 
and the key thrown away, as they go to prison. You know, the 
Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and all the other 
levers we have, need to be more robustly applied--both the 
United States, the U.K., and everyone else wherever we have 
those kinds of laws. The Global Magnitsky Act is a great tool 
as well. So I do hope we will redouble our efforts there. And 
this Commission did a great job, I think, in trying to rally 
people there--we met with a lot of those who are harassed by 
the Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks, to use an old Soviet 
expression.
    And, you know, there's our businessmen paying tens of 
thousands of dollars to sit with Xi Jinping, to curry favor 
with him while he should be at The Hague for crimes against 
humanity and for genocide, being prosecuted. You mentioned--and 
maybe you might want to speak further on this--that yesterday 
our great Speaker strongly raised, at the Religious Freedom 
summit, the issue of forced organ harvesting. I've had two 
hearings on it, one here at the Commission. We have a great 
bipartisan bill. It passed the House almost a year ago with 
only two people voting no. You never get that, right? 
Especially in recent times.
    It was totally bipartisan because everybody realizes that 
there are tens of thousands of Uyghurs, Falun Gong 
practitioners, and other people of faith who are targeted--
Christians, Tibetan Buddhists--but especially the first two, 
Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners. Tens of thousands a year 
who are killed, murdered for their organs, two to three per 
person. That's something that Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor, 
would love. We have a bill that would go after that. It would 
criminalize those who, with knowledge, procure those organs. To 
just put it in neon lights: Stop this horrendous, horrific 
human rights abuse, and stop it now, or we'll do everything we 
can legally to come after you.
    It's sitting in the Senate. It's H.R. 1154. I ask the 
Senate, again, to please mark it up and let's get it down to 
the President. We worked with the State Department. They had 
some initial concerns--I've been pushing it for 3 years. We met 
those concerns, and now we have a bill that I believe, based on 
their input, will be signed. So, you know, forced organ 
harvesting--I can't even think how horrible that is for someone 
as they are being strapped down and a doctor is coming over--
some don't even get anesthesia. One of the doctors who 
testified said somebody was in shock and that person, as his 
organs were being taken out, started moving around because he 
was feeling the knife. I mean, it's barbaric, so we've got to 
get that bill passed.
    So if any of you want to comment on any of that--yes, Ms. 
Inboden.
    Ms. Inboden. Thank you. I would like to comment on access 
to prisoners and prisoner rights. First, I would love to see a 
bi-
partisan CECC letter to the executive branch asking 
specifically for the president, the secretary of state, and the 
national security adviser and other Cabinet-level officials to 
be mentioning these cases specifically in their in-person 
meetings. I think that conveys a very strong message and it is 
something that our Nation has not done consistently.
    I would also encourage the U.S. to push for the 
International Committee of the Red Cross, for U.N. special 
rapporteurs who have relevant expertise, such as those on 
arbitrary detention, torture, and forced disappearance, to be 
allowed access to China, even though China is very manipulative 
during those visits. As you mentioned, Special Rapporteur Nowak 
had a very powerful report. That report is almost 20 years old. 
We need access again.
    There is another instrument that China has not signed, 
which is called the Optional Protocol to the Convention against 
Torture. It allows for a rotating visiting monitoring process 
to investigate prisons and other places where people are 
detained. I think these are all very concrete steps. I would 
also encourage the United States to work with Latin American 
countries. That region's own experience with the dirty wars and 
forced disappearances may make them very sympathetic allies in 
this battle.
    Chair Smith. Thank you.
    Mr. Rogers.
    Mr. Rogers. Thank you. And could I, first of all, very 
enthusiastically and passionately applaud and endorse 
everything that you said and all the initiatives that you and 
the Commission are taking. I'd like to comment just briefly on 
Hong Kong specifically. First of all, I would really welcome 
scrutiny of the implementation of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act 
and the various sanctions and measures that are in that. The 
legislation is there, thanks to your leadership. To what extent 
is the administration actually implementing it? That would be 
one point.
    The existence of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices 
(HKETOs). I know there's an initiative on this which we really 
welcome, because they are now functioning not as they were 
originally intended to, as representatives of an autonomous 
Hong Kong, but rather as a second Chinese Communist Party 
embassy. And so I welcome efforts to look at that. We are doing 
everything we can to push the British government to implement 
sanctions, which it has not yet done. The United States has. 
The U.K. has not. Obviously, the U.K. has a particular 
responsibility to Hong Kong. Anything that the U.S. can do to 
encourage my own friends in my own country, in the U.K., to 
move on sanctions, would be appreciated.
    And then last, I agree 100 percent with your point about 
naming political prisoners. I spoke about Jimmy Lai in my 
testimony, and it's really important that we keep the spotlight 
on his case. But naming, for example, Chow Hang-tung, the Hong 
Kong barrister who has now spent several years in prison simply 
for organizing a commemoration of the Tiananmen Square 
massacre--she's a brave lawyer in jail in Hong Kong--keeping 
her profile named. The 47 former legislators and pro-democracy 
activists who've now spent the last 3 years in prison awaiting 
trial--they haven't even been sentenced yet. They've been 
denied bail. They were elected legislators. Their only crime 
was holding a primary election, something perfectly normal in 
this country and elsewhere. They've been imprisoned for that. 
Highlighting the trial of the 47 and keeping the spotlight on 
that would be really important.
    Chair Smith. I have many questions, but I would like to 
yield to my distinguished commissioners and then come back for 
a second round.
    Representative Salinas. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Dr. Inboden, I want to thank you so much for your testimony 
and for providing suggestions for how the United States can 
continue to engage in a meaningful way with the U.N. Human 
Rights Council. You listed several actions that the United 
States can take with the U.N. structure. What else can Congress 
do to bolster this effort?
    Ms. Inboden. Well, Congress does control the budget, and 
so, as I mentioned, the U.S. mission needs to have more 
staffing, better training. I also, having started my career at 
the State Department, know that your letters are powerful, so I 
would also be making several specific ``asks.'' Obviously, your 
letter on naming individuals was very important.
    Chair Smith. We'll do that, thank you. We'll do the letter. 
Thank you. Great idea.
    Ms. Inboden. Thank you for that. But the U.S. needs to be 
doing more to defend the U.N. human rights system. Not just the 
UPR, but the appointment of the independent experts who serve 
in the special procedure system, as well as the experts who 
help implement the human rights treaty body system. Having 
individuals with the relevant expertise, integrity, and who are 
proponents of vigorous scrutiny, no matter which country, is 
very important. The U.S. State Department should be monitoring 
all of those vacancies, being ready to support candidates with 
strong records, even candidates who are not Americans. Those 
are some very specific things that I would love to see the 
administration do.
    Representative Salinas. Well, thank you. And following up 
on that, you also mentioned that China's not only trying to 
manipulate the periodic review system and deliberately suppress 
reporting on its human rights record, but it's now challenging 
the universality of human rights altogether. As you 
specifically mentioned, it appears that they're doing this by 
creating a north-south divide and asserting that human rights 
are contingent on economic development. In your suggestions, 
you said the U.S. needs to find creative ways to poke holes in 
this false narrative and support developing countries. Can you 
just elaborate on how to best counteract these efforts by 
China?
    Ms. Inboden. The PRC Ambassador will make a very big effort 
to meet with smaller countries in Geneva. The U.S. needs to do 
the same, needs to lavish diplomatic attention on them. Our 
people need to be going on a listening tour, listening to what 
is important to these countries, and finding some common areas 
to push forward. I think also, as I mentioned, some creative 
diplomacy or advocacy by the U.S. mission could include a film 
festival featuring films from Uyghur artists, Hong Kongers, and 
Tibetans. As well as--I can't emphasize how powerful this 
``Everybody Is Gone'' immersive performance is. You actually 
experience what it's like to enter a detention camp.
    So I think these are all things that could really raise 
awareness. In Geneva, doing those things could make it more 
difficult for some of those countries who have gone along with 
China so that maybe instead they will just not speak up during 
China's UPR and won't make the weak recommendations, just 
abstain--even if China threatens to withdraw your aid.
    Representative Salinas. Thank you. One more question, if I 
may. Thank you. Ms. Luo, thank you so much for being here today 
and for your sincere and heartfelt story. I want to offer my 
sympathy for what you're going through and what you've done to 
endure all of this. While all your testimony about the 
treatment of political prisoners is shocking, I was really 
struck by the lack of communication and access that family 
members and attorneys have to these individuals. Is this the 
norm for all court proceedings in China? Or do you--and I'm a 
new commissioner, so forgive me--or do you think this is an 
additional scare tactic imposed on people like your husband who 
dare to speak out?
    Ms. Luo. Excuse me. You are asking, is it a norm? What do 
you mean?
    Representative Salinas. Yes.
    Ms. Luo. Normally, it is a right that family members, by 
law, are allowed to meet the prisoner. At least they can 
communicate by letter. And also, the prisoner can call the 
family at home, paid for by the family. But this is happening 
less and less. In past years, as Rana just mentioned, Pastor 
Wang Yi's family had difficulty getting to see him. And right 
now, although they are able to meet him, they are not allowed 
to speak to anyone. The same as Xu Zhiyong's sister, as I just 
mentioned. And right now, my husband's family dare not go see 
him because the moment they do, the security person starts to 
harass them and threaten them. So it's a law, but totally not 
being respected in China.
    Representative Salinas. Thank you. And, truly, the reason 
for my question is just to highlight this duality. The out-
facing to the rest of the world, but then really how they treat 
people who speak out against their practices. Thank you.
    Ms. Luo. Thank you.
    Chair Smith. Commissioner Zinke.
    Representative Zinke. Thank you for all your testimony. It 
is important.
    I guess to bring it home to the University of Montana--it's 
been in the news, at least in Montana recently, that there have 
been exchanges funded by the China-United States Exchange 
Foundation, which is currently connected to the CCP influence 
entity. I was noticing that the University of Austin rejected 
those similar requests and funding overtures. So could you 
explain to me what the exchanges are, the purpose, in your 
opinion, and why you rejected them?
    Ms. Inboden. Sir, that's an excellent question. I think 
that there are many reasons to be worried about CCP-backed 
programs like the Confucius Institutes and others. The 
Confucius Institutes are only part of the broader effort that 
the PRC is making in terms of propaganda in the academies. In 
all honesty, it was my husband, Professor William Inboden, who 
was deeply involved in speaking with university leadership and 
making them aware of some of those dangers. I'm very proud of 
his work on that, but I need to give credit that it was that 
Inboden that took on that battle.
    Representative Zinke. And do you have any advice for the 
University of Montana?
    Ms. Inboden. Why don't you have me come and talk to them 
about some of the dangers of CCP propaganda and the CCP's 
vision for world order?
    [Applause.]
    Representative Zinke. Thank you so much. The president is a 
personal friend of mine and a Special Forces individual. I'll 
reach out, and I'd love to see that.
    Shifting to TikTok, it seems to me TikTok is an influencer 
that is emanating from--or at least controlled in the data base 
by--China. It seems that influencers and those that participate 
in the platform are young, largely. The demographic would point 
to the X generation, and the influencers in that. And we've 
seen a recent influence on LNG, probably as a trial as we go 
forward in the election. I would imagine there's going to be 
others, to either try to manipulate popular opinion, etc., 
targeted on certain objectives.
    I guess my comment is for those of us that perhaps are a 
little past the X generation. I guess, Dr. Dirks, you seem to 
be the youngest participant. Is there some advice as to what 
language our generation can use to talk to the younger 
generation about some of the dangers involved in broad 
participation and utilization of TikTok as a platform of 
preference?
    Mr. Dirks. Well, thank you for your question. And thank you 
for acknowledging me as maybe the youngest person here. I don't 
know if that's true. But what I would recommend--The Citizen 
Lab has produced a short document, which looks at the 
comparison of TikTok with its Chinese counterpart, Douyin. I 
believe that would be the best resource for looking at the 
particular privacy concerns that surround both platforms.
    I'll note that in the analysis that Citizen Lab researchers 
have done on TikTok, they've found that TikTok collects similar 
kinds of data to other social media platforms, such as 
Facebook. A lot of this is for the purpose of creating targeted 
ads toward users. Now, one thing to be clear about is that our 
analysis at the Lab was very explicit about our having no 
visibility into what happened to user data once it was 
collected and transmitted by TikTok back to its servers. It's 
possible that the Chinese government may use un-
conventional ways to obtain user data, for example through 
National Security Law legislation, which you could apply to 
TikTok's parent company, ByteDance. This is a plausible 
scenario, but it's also a speculative scenario.
    However, again, the focus of that research was looking at 
comparing TikTok and Douyin. Researchers found no particular 
evidence that the Chinese government was using any measures to 
pressure ByteDance. What I will say as well is that it also 
seems perhaps unlikely that TikTok is spreading views which are 
overly favorable of the Chinese government on its own platform. 
What's more, I think that if we're looking at general privacy 
concerns or content concerns on TikTok, I think what this 
really highlights is the need for a broader discussion about 
data privacy and content moderation, not just on TikTok but on 
a variety of social media platforms--be it Facebook, be it X, 
Instagram, or anything else.
    Representative Zinke. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I 
appreciate what you do. Mr. Chairman, I yield.
    Chair Smith. Thank you very much, Commissioner Zinke.
    Commissioner Nunn.
    Representative Nunn. First of all, well said, Commissioner 
Zinke.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the bipartisan members of 
this Commission. And most important, thank you to the panel 
here today. This is just very powerful testimony that you've 
shared, not just in this committee room but the rest of the 
world is watching. As we look at the lies and deception that 
are being facilitated by the Chinese Communist Party, this is 
not new to the realm of China. I'm a military officer, you 
know, and one of the first things we read here is 
``Unrestricted Warfare.'' The idea here is that China is going 
to use every method to its ends to advance the goals of 
Beijing--not just on the battlefield, but right in its social 
media, in how it engineers its economy, and, painfully, as 
you've highlighted, how it exploits its own people to achieve 
political goals, most notably, retaining power within China and 
expanding that power across the world.
    Whether it be by, most recently, falsifying COVID 
statistics that leaves the rest of the world unprepared for a 
vicious pandemic, telling the world that it's not interested in 
territorial expansion, while it gobbles up islands, or simply 
downplaying their military buildup in the Pacific, China has 
become known as infamous when providing for the West false 
information. It's truly broken down a trust that could have 
been established between Beijing and for the rest of the world. 
Now on the world stage, the United Nations Human Rights 
Council, China has fudged the numbers once again. However, the 
falsification here of human rights violations reported by the 
CCP not only shows they are lying, it indicates that those that 
are vulnerable populations, that they're not even worth 
accounting in their statistics internally to China.
    The Chinese Communist Party continues to lie about human 
rights violations that they themselves not only are allowing to 
happen but are actually the director of the infliction of pain 
that's incurred on it, as we just saw, Ms. Luo, from your 
testimony. So I want to applaud Chairman Smith and my fellow 
commissioners for their continued efforts to hold Beijing's 
feet to the fire, not just in these committee hearings but in 
the important legislation that has been moving forward on this 
that's now on the President's desk. This truly must be a 
comprehensive approach, not just from the United States but 
with our allies as well. So the bottom line is that if China 
wishes to amend its rocky relationship, not just with the West 
but with the entire world, it needs to start by telling the 
truth and being transparent in that truth.
    So I'd like to get to our witnesses, Mr. Chair. Mr. Rogers, 
I'll begin with you. Obviously, we have seen a dramatic 
transition in all of our lifetimes. One of the first things we 
saw is the extrajudicial procedures that were put in place to 
pull people out of Hong Kong, in violation of the commitment 
that Beijing made to take them to courts outside. Can you speak 
to us briefly on how that has had a chilling effect on 
democracy in Hong Kong?
    Mr. Rogers. Thank you. Yes, the most significant 
development in the last year has been the issuing of arrest 
warrants and million HK dollar bounties on the heads of now 13 
Hong Kong activists, including those in the United States, in 
the United Kingdom, and in Australia. Certainly that has had a 
chilling effect. Some of those individuals, who are courageous, 
long-standing activists, have, very understandably, rethought 
how public they should be, not so much for their own safety but 
because their family members in Hong Kong, after the issuing of 
these arrest warrants, were then called in for questioning. The 
threat and the use of families of exiled activists in Hong Kong 
is a really horrific tactic by the CCP.
    Representative Nunn. I want to dig deeper here. Xi Jinping 
has identified religious work as being a priority. Can you tell 
us, in his mind, what religious work would mean, and what 
impact that has had on people across China?
    Mr. Rogers. Absolutely. This is his campaign of the 
sinicization of religion. He's now made several unprecedented 
speeches. His predecessors, leaders of the Chinese Communist 
Party, seldom if ever made speeches on religion. He's now made 
several. But what he means by sinicization is not inculturation 
of religion. It's not about adapting religion to Chinese 
culture. It's about coercing religion to the Chinese Communist 
Party's propaganda, to become a tool of the United Front Work 
Department, and to preach not the tenets of any particular 
religion, but rather the teachings of the Chinese Communist 
Party.
    Representative Nunn. The religion of Xi Jinping, and Xi 
Jinping alone.
    Ms. Abbas, you obviously are a religious minority. You 
represent the voice of so many millions who have been unheard 
inside China today. Could you talk to us about both what the 
Chinese say publicly--again, going back to the lies and 
misdirection--about religious freedom according to the law, and 
how China has used this ``according to the law'' standard to 
really suppress people using that law?
    Ms. Abbas. Thank you so much, Mr. Nunn.
    You're absolutely right. They define in the books and the 
constitution that religious beliefs are guaranteed for the 
citizens, but with this recent campaign of genocidal policies 
against the Uyghur ethnic group and the other Muslims in East 
Turkistan, what we call Xinjiang province, the Chinese 
government is criminalizing every single aspect of the 
religion--like praying, or fasting during Ramadan, or even a 
simple greeting of ``assalamu alaikum,'' which means ``peace be 
with you.'' Those are all reasons that Uyghurs can be detained. 
And they are using the pretext ``war on terror'' and 
``deradicalization'' and putting everyone in jail.
    We had millions of people disappeared in detention. My 
husband sitting behind me right now, his entire family has been 
missing since the summer of 2017--24 people. My parents-in-law, 
three of my sisters-in-law, their husbands, my brother-in law 
and his wife, 14 of his nieces and nephews. Then when I spoke 
out about this at the Hudson Institute in September 2018, my 
own sister, a retired medical doctor, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was 
taken in retaliation for my freedom of speech, as I mentioned 
in my opening remarks.
    When Cui Tiankai, a former Chinese Ambassador to the United 
States, was questioned by one of the CNN reporters, he said 
very clearly when he was asked about those detention centers. 
He said, by holding those Uyghurs in so-called reeducation 
centers, we are trying to make them normal persons. So imagine, 
because of the language we speak, the religion we believe in, 
and the beautiful culture that we represent, in the eyes of the 
Chinese government we are not even normal commodities, we are 
not even normal persons.
    Representative Nunn. Ms. Abbas, first of all, I think we--
all the commissioners--express our empathy to you. As a fellow 
person of faith, my prayers are with you and your husband's 
family. I can only pray for the best. But we also have to 
recognize the systematic elimination by the CCP is something 
that we equally have responsibility here on Earth to address 
immediately.
    Dr. Dirks, I know you're remote with us, but I wanted to 
see if you could chime in here to speak specifically about how 
China manipulates this data when it comes to its own domestic 
surveillance program. I want to bring in the fact that it's not 
just the role of the United States. It's the role of the entire 
world to address internationally China's growing use of digital 
surveillance. We worked hard on the Huawei prevention bill and 
the efforts that China is making, using technology to spy on 
the West. It is probably even more invasive inside China, and 
really has provided a testing ground for the CCP to hone its 
ability to surveil, assess, and ultimately detain or destroy 
its own population, a tactic that can quite easily be used on 
operatives outside of China. Would you be able to speak to 
that, Dr. Dirks?
    Mr. Dirks. Certainly. I just want to say thank you to the 
members of the Commission, as well as members of the Tibetan 
diaspora, specifically Students for a Free Tibet, people at 
Human Rights Watch, and other researchers who focused on this 
specific issue--we're talking about domestic surveillance in 
China--the specific issue of mass DNA collection. I wrote a 
report on this in September 2022, as did Human Rights Watch, 
and this led to a lot of pressure being placed on a U.S.-based 
company, Thermo Fisher, which was implicated in the mass DNA 
collection program in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
    It was because of the public efforts of members of this 
Commission, as well as Tibetan diaspora groups, that Thermo 
Fisher ultimately made the decision to cease selling human 
identification kits within the Tibet Autonomous Region, just as 
they did in Xinjiang in 2019. What I think this highlights is 
that there is a large role, an important role, to be played by 
people in the public sector--in civil society, in the media, 
researchers, as well as members of legislatures in liberal 
democracies, to put pressure on both Chinese and non-Chinese 
companies for their involvement in these kinds of programs.
    Second, when we're talking about the expansion of Chinese 
state surveillance, perhaps outside of its borders, I think 
where we see the greatest risk is to members of diaspora 
communities. These can be Chinese, Hong Kong, Uyghur, Tibetan, 
or others--individuals who by citizenship are Chinese or, 
because of their family ancestry, have links to China. We've 
certainly seen under the Xi Jinping administration a real 
increase in efforts by the Chinese government to harass, 
intimidate, attack, and even forcibly return members of these 
communities back to China.
    So in thinking about solutions, in thinking about how to 
address these problems, we really need to be thinking about 
those particular diaspora communities, and vulnerable members 
of those communities. There's a lot of discussion today about 
political prisoners, who deserve a discussion. These are people 
who are under intense surveillance, detention, abuse within 
China's borders. Many of the diaspora members who are being 
targeted by the Chinese government outside of China are often 
quite anonymous. These are not well-known individuals.
    And so I think it requires great sensitivity, a lot of 
training on the part of U.S. Government officials--again 
specifically, as I said in my remarks, law enforcement, 
immigration--to be able to correctly recognize what 
transnational repression is, including its digital component, 
harassment and intimidation of people online, and how to 
provide necessary and reasonable support to individuals and 
their families. That will also require a lot of trust building 
between law enforcement agencies, immigration, and members of 
those communities and the communities at large.
    Representative Nunn. Thank you, Dr. Dirks. I think it's 
worth noting here that the tactics that are being honed, as you 
highlighted, within China's borders, have already spilled over 
to the diaspora in other countries. In fact, right here in the 
United States we were proud to just pass legislation shutting 
down 40,000 Chinese shell companies that have set up shop. I'm 
a farm kid from Iowa. It's not just the buying of farmland, it 
is the wholescale establishment of a clandestine operation 
working here in the United States and around the world, buying 
up so that China can target its own diaspora, but also be a 
collection agent for U.S. interests on our own soil. This is an 
immediate national security concern. And while our hearts are 
absolutely with everyone in this room, we have to recognize 
that the CCP does not intend to operate only on Chinese soil 
but to export that, to be able to influence activities around 
the globe.
    Ms. Inboden, you have some very important recommendations 
here on what the United States can do. I think that it's 
important, as we saw with Huawei and other companies, that in 
the technology space alone it cannot be one country trying to 
turn back this red tide. I'm not talking about Alabama 
football. I'm talking about what's coming out of Beijing right 
now. The question is--if we're going to move forward on this, 
how do we get our international partners to go along with the 
good recommendations you made for what we're trying to do here 
in the United States?
    Ms. Inboden. That's an excellent question. I have said that 
transnational repression needs a transnational response. I 
think that there are many countries that are starting to 
understand the threat that this presents--Australia, for 
example. I've also noticed a real change within Europe, where 
China experts themselves have started to face some level of 
transnational repression. And so I think those governments are 
starting to understand the risks. I would encourage the U.S. to 
pursue within the U.N. and other bodies joint resolutions, 
shared initiatives to combat transnational repression, a U.N. 
Human Rights Council resolution on transnational repression, 
and information sharing between Federal agencies, especially 
law enforcement, on transnational repression.
    I would also like to see the U.S. Government taking more 
steps. At the Federal level the U.S. has made great strides in 
recognizing it--but I think that it needs to be much broader 
and include also state-level officials being aware of 
transnational repression. I would also like to see, frankly, 
U.N. Security understand transnational repression, because, as 
my fellow witness indicated, on U.N. grounds people feel 
threatened by Chinese representatives from GONGOs, and I think 
that is really not excusable. Five years ago, many of us 
started making recommendations to the U.N. on what U.N. 
Security could do. And I don't think that has been implemented 
to date.
    Representative Nunn. I want to thank each member of the 
panel here, and highlight specifically, Ms. Inboden, to your 
point, both what we can do at the international level, but, as 
you highlighted, at the federated state levels here as well, to 
have a unified front. And, Mr. Rogers, you noted earlier, those 
bilateral relationships with countries that have the capacity 
to stand up--Australia, the United States, Japan, Korea, Great 
Britain, certainly--these are the countries that have to lead 
the way.
    The United States has certainly been on board with this, 
but we have to stand with our neighbors and communities that 
don't have the ability to stand on their own. And I look at 
some of our friends in Southeast Asia and the island nations--
they need the support as well, with the large percentage of 
Chinese living in those communities, that also face this direct 
threat--both economically, socially, religiously, but most 
importantly, politically as well.
    Thank you very much, Commissioners. I appreciate the 
opportunity to be here, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Smith. Commissioner Nunn, thank you very much, as 
always, for your incisive questioning.
    Let me just ask some additional questions, and then 
anything else you would like to say to us, to the Commission 
today, as well. You know, on transnational repression, I've 
introduced the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Act, which is going 
after those three outposts. It's a natural follow-up to the 
Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and it has passed in 
committee. It'll be on the floor shortly. It empowers the White 
House, the Secretary of State, to end it, to get them out of 
here. They're a malign influence. We saw it at the APEC summit, 
when they were coordinating the efforts to suppress especially 
Uyghurs and others, who were all demonstrating. I mean, it was 
horrible to see.
    I spent the better part of five, six hours reading every 
one of their websites, for all three of them. And there they 
were, defending aggressively, Ben Rogers, the National Security 
Law in Hong Kong, how great it is. And you know, they're 
supposed to be the teller of truth for economic transparency 
for the Chinese Communist Party. It couldn't be further from 
the truth. So that's one way. Senator Merkley has an excellent 
bill on the Senate side. We have the companion bill here on the 
House side on transitional repression. Again, they're both 
bipartisan. We're hoping to get that legislation passed. His 
bill number is S. 831. Mine is H.R. 3654.
    And it protects targeted individuals, trains law 
enforcement so that they're more equipped and aware of what to 
look for. Because sometimes--we've seen this with other human 
rights abuses, like trafficking--it could be standing right in 
front of you and you don't really understand--you know--they 
don't know. There just needs to be a very significant training 
capacity for each of those. There are also other aspects to it, 
but they're both great bills. They're identical. We're hoping 
to get those passed as well. It's got to be done. I've heard 
from so many in the diaspora on how they're surveilled--worse, 
they're threatened. And Bob Fu went through it. He had to move 
out of his home because of what these Chinese Communist Party 
apparatchiks were doing to him. And he got through it.
    Let me just say too, you know, I am requesting again 
today--we're going to do another letter. I've done several. 
After we got the forced organ harvesting bill passed, the 
Chinese embassy here went into overdrive, saying how untrue it 
all is, which is par for the course. They were also making 
comments about how anybody can go to Xinjiang. They have 
nothing to hide. So we put together a letter immediately and 
said: I'd like to lead a congressional delegation to go there, 
to go to the camps, to spend a week or two there. And we still 
haven't heard back. We've done several follow-ups. From this 
podium, I'm asking that the Chinese Communist Party allow me, 
and other members, to come. You have nothing to hide? We want 
to come. You know, we've done it before, Frank Wolf and I, back 
in the 1980's, went to Perm Camp 35 in the Ural Mountains, 
where all the political prisoners were, and the religious 
prisoners, under the Soviet Union. Not all of them, but some of 
the best of the best, like Natan Sharansky and others.
    It took 2 years, but we got there. And we interviewed and 
talked to every one of those prisoners, and we worked to get 
them out. It was such an eye opener. The warden couldn't 
believe it when we walked in the doors, even though he knew we 
were coming. He goes, How did you get here? Well, China has 
made that bold statement about Xinjiang, and we're following it 
up. We want to go. The sooner the better. So I again make that 
request.
    Dr. Dirks, thank you for your great testimony and your 
leadership. Back in 2006 I had a hearing--it was the longest 
hearing I've ever chaired. It was 8 hours long. We had 
Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and Yahoo, their top people, all 
testify because of their work to enable the Chinese Communist 
Party to surveil and to censor all things from the dissident 
community, religious community. And one of the most telling 
things that we got from them--because I asked them all, swore 
them all in and asked them: Why are you doing it? They said, 
Well, when a police request is made, we honor it. They give out 
personal, identifying information. They just fork it all over 
to people who then go round up human rights activists and put 
them in prison. There was one particular person that Yahoo gave 
all the information on, and they arrested him. Shi Tao. We had 
his mother at a subsequent hearing. And here, an NGO in New 
York City is being told what you can and can't do when the 
Tiananmen Square time comes around, you know, to remember it 
and to focus on it.
    He got 10 years in prison. And Yahoo facilitated the entire 
thing. They did say they were going to move that kind of 
information offsite, but who knows how well or poorly that has 
been done. Google may be one of the worst. And Microsoft! When 
I saw the former leader of Microsoft kowtowing to Xi Jinping 
last June in Beijing, it made my heart sick. Why didn't he have 
a prisoner list with him? Not only do we ask every government 
official, every lawmaker, to raise names--you know, this 
Commission has got the best list imaginable, and very 
accurate--we've got to get our people in the private sector, 
especially big tech, with that prisoner list, and stop looking 
the other way, because they are enabling the cruelty of 
cruelties, like against your sister, Rushan, when they're 
silent.
    Silence means you're okay with it. You've got to speak up. 
So we're going to make that request again of the private sector 
as well in the letter, like you have asked for, Rana. We will 
do that immediately. Maybe, Mr. Dirks, you might want to speak 
about this. I think Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Cisco and the 
others have to own up to the complicity and the conveyance of 
high tech that they have now given to the Chinese. Now when 
they take it over, they might even make it more efficient. But 
it's all used for repression. Why don't they know that? Where's 
the apology from Google?
    I was at an internet cafe in Beijing on one of my many 
trips there. I'm now barred from going. Hopefully, I'll get to 
go to Xinjiang with a delegation. But I went to an internet 
cafe. I typed in ``torture,'' because I was looking for Manfred 
Nowak's report. And I got Gitmo in Cuba. I got this harsh 
attack. You know, everything else I couldn't get--you know, I 
pushed the hyperlink, couldn't get to any of it. I put my name 
in. That wasn't good. I put in the Dalai Lama. That was even 
worse--far worse. It just tells you--all of that was enabled by 
high-tech companies in the United States of America, and that 
is outrageous.
    Anyway, at that hearing I started off--I'd just read a book 
about IBM and the Holocaust, an excellent book, well footnoted. 
And it talked about how the Gestapo always had these great 
lists, particularly of Jews, whom they hunted down and put into 
concentration camps and killed. And how did they always have 
those? IBM was a major reason. And I said, past is prologue. 
They are now enabling the Chinese Communist Party to repress in 
the cruelest of fashions these wonderful people.
    So, Mr. Dirks, do you want to speak to that? Why don't 
these companies ever come clean? We had hearings leading up to 
the last Olympics. And we had some of the companies, Coca-Cola 
and the others--they're not high tech, but they certainly are a 
very big company--just to say, what about the genocide that's 
going on in Xinjiang? Will you speak out against that? And it 
was like, Hmm . . ., one of them did but all the others 
wouldn't say a word. If anyone wants to respond to any of that, 
I would appreciate it.
    Mr. Dirks, why don't these companies ever come clean? You 
know, it's just troubling beyond words and it also has military 
implications, as we all know. That came out in our hearing with 
Cisco--and the others, but especially Cisco. You know, they had 
a control capability they sold called Police Net. Now the 
Chinese Communist Party police could better track down and 
share with each other the dissident community, and the human 
rights activists, and religious freedom people. You might want 
to speak to that, Dr. Dirks.
    And let me just say to all of you--maybe you want to 
respond to this--what happens now? Yes, there will be a 
response period pursuant to the Periodic Review. But this 
should be the beginning of a new focus, a pivot to a new focus, 
not a one-and-done. Some report shows up on a bureaucrat's desk 
and he goes, Oh, look at this--and throws it into the shredder. 
There's got to be real follow-up. I'm glad that so many did 
raise, including our government, very serious questions. I 
mean, that is--you know, we've got to take this to a new level. 
That's why we're having this hearing, so I would ask you as 
well if you could speak to what's next.
    Mr. Dirks. Well, thank you for your question. In terms of 
tech companies, you mentioned Microsoft and Apple. As I stated 
in my recommendations at the end of my prepared remarks, I 
would encourage the U.S. Government to publicly request that 
Microsoft and other U.S. companies operating within the 
People's Republic of China and Hong Kong, to publicly explain 
how they're implementing or why they're implementing political 
and religious censorship on their platforms in China. Often 
these companies are not transparent about what particular 
content moderation or censorship practices they're putting in 
place. That would be a major step that the U.S. Government 
could take, simply demanding that these companies actually 
explain how they're implementing content censorship on their 
Chinese-based platforms.
    More broadly, I think this raises the question of what the 
ethical commitments are of any company that is engaging with 
Chinese state actors, and in particular the Ministry of Public 
Security. So this was an issue, again, that was raised in the 
discussions around mass DNA collection in the Tibet Autonomous 
Region; and previous to that, in Xinjiang, specifically as it 
related to the involvement of Thermo Fisher in selling human 
identification kits in those regions. Within the Ministry of 
Public Security, China's state security apparatus, there's a 
long, well-documented history of human rights abuses there, 
documented by researchers, advocacy organizations, journalists, 
and members of this Commission.
    It is not conceivable that corporate entities that are 
engaging or pursuing a commercial relationship with state 
actors, specifically the police in China, are unaware of this 
history of human rights abuse by the Ministry of Public 
Security, by Chinese state security agencies. So I think it's 
incumbent on those companies to be able to publicly explain to 
governments, to the public, to journalists, to shareholders, 
why they feel comfortable engaging in commercial relationships 
with a state entity that is known to commit human rights abuses 
against Chinese citizens within its borders, and who are 
potentially implicated in human rights abuses against diaspora 
members outside Chinese borders.
    Chair Smith. Thank you, Dr. Dirks.
    Ms. Abbas.
    Ms. Abbas. It's extremely important for our administration 
to take some necessary tangible steps, especially at the U.S. 
mission in Geneva. They should be provided with enough 
resources and the capability to push back China's influence in 
the U.S. So whatever we can do to provide the resources, the 
staff, and the funding. They cannot do their job while the 
Chinese government has 100 times more money and resources. The 
U.S. mission in Geneva is at the forefront of this. Our 
administration really needs to take seriously, as you 
mentioned, Chairman Smith, at the beginning, any kind of 
kowtowing or leaning into the engaging and dialogue with the 
Chinese government. They take it as a sign of being weak, and 
it will embolden them, empower them more. So if we want to hold 
the Chinese government accountable, we really need to take real 
tangible steps. Thank you.
    Ms. Luo. Sorry, because my English is not very good, and 
also I don't quite understand the rule. When Ms. Salinas asked 
me about the situation, I didn't put forward my recommendation. 
I am a project manager. On everything, I think we need a 
solution or, let's say, a suggestion or proposal. Regarding the 
situation of the prisoners--in China, right now I have a very 
simple but maybe difficult recommendation, because I know each 
of the countries have diplomats in China. We have the human 
rights officer in Beijing, in Shanghai, and maybe in other 
places. Right now I understand the difficulty is that the human 
rights officer is not able to do anything publicly. Anytime he 
meets with the family, the family gets harassed and even 
imprisoned, like Yu Wensheng and Xu Yan. The only reason Xu Yan 
was imprisoned is because she went to meet the U.N.-EU 
delegation when they came to China.
    I mean, this is a very bad case for the Chinese government 
to be showing the world. To the outside world: Pay attention to 
the political prisoners. They still can detain their family. So 
what I want to say is, I hope the next more tangible step is 
that the human rights officer in China should directly request 
to visit the detention centers, the prisons. As Rana just said, 
of course they will cover everything up, but even just the 
request will put pressure on them to follow the law they wrote 
themselves. We're not asking them to do anything else. Just do 
what you write in your law. This is one recommendation.
    Another thing I want to highlight, in my written statement 
I mentioned that when a couple is detained or imprisoned, their 
children are in real difficulty. The people taking care of them 
have a big problem. And I wish we could have some way that the 
human rights officer, just from a humanitarian point of view, 
be paid attention to. This is my second point.
    The third point, regarding the term of life in prison; for 
some of the prisoners, like Wang Bingzhang, he is already 75 
years old. I talked to his family. I said, should we ask him to 
give up what he's doing at 75 years old? He just wants to come 
back home. But he was sentenced to life. For these kinds of 
cases the human rights officer can reach out to do some 
negotiation, because the political prisoners--there are just so 
many cases--we have all kinds of circumstances. But we have to 
go case by case.
    Sorry, maybe I spoke too long, but I have a lot of 
recommendations I could put forward into my prepared statement. 
Thank you.
    Chair Smith. I appreciate it.
    Mr. Rogers.
    Mr. Rogers. Thank you. I'd like to answer your question, 
What's next?, very briefly. I'll do so in respect to three 
areas. First on the United Nations, second, in regard to Hong 
Kong, and third, more broadly on China itself. At the United 
Nations, I very much agree with Rana Inboden that our 
experience at Hong Kong Watch, when we were advocating for the 
UPR, we had some very encouraging meetings with nontraditional 
allies--countries that we hadn't worked with before that are 
not totally in China's camp. Countries like Peru, Costa Rica, 
Chile, Mexico. In the end, they didn't come forth with the 
recommendations we hoped they would on Hong Kong, but they were 
very receptive to hearing from us, at least their diplomats in 
Geneva were. So I would encourage a greater engagement with 
non-Western potential allies to try to counter China's 
influence at the U.N.
    I think we need to really engage the special procedures, 
the special rapporteurs, on all of the issues we've talked 
about. It's worth putting on the record the fact that just 
before the UPR, a group of special rapporteurs issued a 
statement calling for the release of Jimmy Lai. And then just a 
day or so ago, one particular special rapporteur came out with 
a finding that a key witness who is due to appear soon in Jimmy 
Lai's trial, Andy Li, who is himself a political prisoner, has 
been subjected to severe torture, and that he's testifying 
against Jimmy Lai, but under coercion and pressure and torture. 
The special rapporteur has found that and has said, therefore, 
that Li's testimony will not be valid because it is a result of 
torture.
    Coming on to Hong Kong and Jimmy Lai, I know there is a 
proposal--which, I think, Mr. Chairman, you are aware of, from 
Nina Shea, to create a Jimmy Lai Way somewhere close to the 
Chinese Embassy. I think that would be a fabulous step to take. 
And I will certainly be looking to encourage that in the United 
Kingdom and elsewhere as well. This week, the Hong Kong 
government announced a so-called public consultation on the 
Article 23 security legislation. While we know that's not going 
to be a genuine public consultation, I wonder whether--in the 
same way that you have requested to go to Xinjiang--whether the 
CECC might request the opportunity to contribute to Hong Kong's 
public consultation on Article 23, and see how far you get with 
that.
    Then, just more broadly, I'd like to put on the record the 
issue of pension funds that are invested in companies in China 
that are complicit with facilitating surveillance, repression, 
and genocide, but also the issue of the pension fund providers 
that are withholding Hong Kongers' pensions under the Mandatory 
Provident Fund, the MPF scheme. I won't go into detail on that, 
but that is something that I think should be addressed to allow 
Hong Kongers who are leaving Hong Kong and coming, particularly 
to the U.K., but also elsewhere, to withdraw their hard-earned 
pensions. And finally, if there is an opportunity to do more to 
highlight Jimmy Lai, perhaps in the form of a resolution on his 
case, during the course of his trial to put a spotlight on the 
trial, that would be very welcome. So thank you.
    Chair Smith. Great suggestions. On the Jimmy Lai Lane, we 
are working on a piece of legislation. We're more likely to try 
to do it in front of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices 
and put it there. Hopefully, they won't be there much longer, 
but that would be one thought. It might be easier than doing it 
in front of the embassy, because when we do that it's amazing 
how much opposition there is, and the ability to spike that, 
particularly if it passes the House and the Senate, has 
happened before.
    Did you want to say something, Rana? I wasn't sure.
    Ms. Inboden. I'll try to be brief on your request about 
next steps.
    Chair Smith. Yes.
    Ms. Inboden. I still believe in American energetic 
diplomacy. The Xinjiang resolution in the Human Rights Council 
could have passed if the U.S. Government had advocated for it 
more vigorously. For China, it was a full court press. For the 
United States, I honestly think that more calls at higher 
levels to certain other governments would have secured at least 
an abstention, if not some votes in favor of it, including, for 
example, Ukraine. The U.N.'s commissioner for human rights has 
said that he will follow up on his predecessor's report on 
Xinjiang. I would like the U.S. to push to be talking to that 
office, letting them know that mere engagement with the PRC is 
not enough. It needs to be pressure. It needs to be public. And 
I would love to see the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights 
himself mentioning these cases by name.
    Then finally, I support Sophie Luo's suggestion. I would 
love to see American diplomats in China asking for access to 
these prisoners. Finally, in other academic writings, I have 
written about China's authoritarian collaboration in the United 
Nations, including with a group that goes by the moniker Like-
Minded Group. They're like-minded about trying to hold back the 
U.N. human rights bodies from scrutiny. I would love to see 
American diplomats try to chip away and weaken that group, 
making it smaller and less powerful. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you so much.
    You know, let me just ask a follow-up. Can that resolution 
on Xinjiang be reconsidered or reintroduced?
    Ms. Inboden. It could be. My understanding is there's a lot 
of hesitancy about doing that. We can't go back in time, but I 
think also that the configuration of the Human Rights Council, 
with China being reelected again, is still not in our favor. I 
really would have liked to see more vigorous American lobbying 
for that resolution. It was a travesty that it did not pass, 
because there was the potential for it to pass.
    Chair Smith. Thank you. Just one issue I'd like to bring up 
that we've been working on as a Commission--our staff and I 
have been pushing hard on it, and that is the North Koreans who 
left North Korea, made their way into China, and now in 
absolute contra-
vention of the Refugee Convention, China is sending them back 
to North Korea--there are at least 600, of an estimated 2,000--
that was the UNHCR suggestion, that about 2,000 are at risk of 
refoulement. There's not enough being done to raise it. We've 
raised it repeatedly here in the Commission, and I have done so 
with many, including with UNHCR. But there needs to be a 
resolution there. Those people go back, and most are women. 
They go back to a situation where they will be tortured. Many 
will be executed. Six hundred is the estimation of how many 
have been sent back against the clear obligations pursuant to 
the Refugee Convention.
    There's another rule of law issue where they signed on. 
They're signatories to the Refugee Convention--``they'' being 
China. And yet they are just violating it with impunity. And 
that's a larger question; they sign things, and then what do 
they do? I remember for years--year after year--with one of the 
major human rights treaties--every time a delegation was 
coming, they would say, you know, they're reconsidering this. 
All the China hands that make money from Beijing would be 
saying, Oh, they're about to sign it. It went on for, like, a 
half dozen years, and it's useless. And there's no limitation, 
as you know, on any of this. But if any of you want to speak to 
the Refugee Convention, please do. I wanted to get that on the 
record because that is really, really serious.
    Ms. Abbas. May I have permission to speak, Chairman?
    Chair Smith. Of course.
    Ms. Abbas. In regard to the issue that you mentioned, we 
have some Uyghur cases around the world. Specifically, we have 
someone in Morocco, actually, for the last few years, Idris 
Hasan, in limbo, and, as well, we have some Uyghurs in 
detention in Thailand. Also, recently, there is one more 
refugee that we spoke to Piero about confidentially yesterday. 
So these are the cases that we need to do something about 
immediately. Our administration, our posts, our embassies, 
should take steps. If the previous administration and this 
administration both declared that what's happening to Uyghurs 
is genocide, they would not be facing the risk of being 
deported back to China.
    Also, on the second related issue, we have a few hundred 
Uyghurs in the United States. Their political asylum is not 
even being reviewed, or after the interview they are not 
getting approved. So if we cannot do anything for the millions 
of Uyghurs back in the Uyghur region, at least we should do 
something for those Uyghurs here and around the world. That's 
something that is really important and immediate--if we can do 
something. Thank you.
    Chair Smith. Let me just say one other thing. You know, I 
mentioned Wei Jingsheng earlier. And I'll never forget this. 
I've heard it several times since from political prisoners, how 
important it is that their names be visible and that we 
persistently bring this up, that everyone bring this up. I got 
another insight. You know, I worked a lot on the Soviet Union 
in the 1980s. Went to Perm Camp, like I said before. I 
befriended a man named Irwin Cotler, who was a senator in 
Canada and became the Minister of Justice there. His daughter, 
parenthetically, is the head of combating antisemitism for the 
State of Israel. I met with her recently as well.
    She told me a story about Natan Sharansky, who was one of 
the greatest human rights activists ever. And he was in Perm 
camp. Irwin Cotler became Sharansky's lawyer, he met with 
Gorbachev, you know, and it was very visible. When Sharansky 
learned that he had a lawyer it gave him renewed hope. Here he 
is languishing, and word gets back to him, Hey, you got a 
lawyer, and he's a very prominent Canadian. But he asked--this 
is Cotler, Senator Cotler. He asked Gorbachev--he wanted to 
know, Why did you let Sharansky out? And Gorbachev goes, 
Because every time I turned around somebody was raising the 
name ``Sharansky.'' So I said, Okay, I don't know who this man 
is. Let him go.
    Now, that won't always happen, but I think we have to 
realize--Ronald Reagan and Shultz, his Secretary of State, were 
famous for having a list--every time they met with a Soviet 
interlocutor, they would talk about releasing political 
prisoners and many got out. So we need to renew that, you know, 
when President Biden talks to Xi Jinping on those phone calls, 
go through some names. Say: We want--please, let them out. 
Don't plead, but you can use the word ``please,'' I think. 
We've got to make that a priority for all of us, not just the 
China Commission. I just heard that story a couple of months 
ago about Gorbachev saying, That's why I let him go.
    Anything further you would like to add before we conclude? 
You've been a great panel. So much leadership in this room. We 
do have a few statements for the record that will be included. 
The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, the 
International Campaign for Tibet, Ma Ju, Hong Kong Watch, 
Transitional Justice Working Group, Chinese Human Rights 
Defenders. Without objection, their statements will be made a 
part of the record.
    Thank you so much. Your leadership is extraordinary and you 
give guidance. Pastor Pan is here from Taiwan. Okay, we could 
almost recognize everybody in this room for your leadership. So 
thank you. The hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:24 p.m., the hearing was concluded.]

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


                            A P P E N D I X

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


                          Prepared Statements

                              ----------                              


                 Prepared Statement of Rana Siu Inboden

                                 ______
                                 
    Distinguished Commissioners, it is an honor to be a part of today's 
hearing.
    The recent Universal Periodic Review of the People's Republic of 
China (PRC) at the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) provides 
an opportune time to assess the PRC's record and examine ways it is 
continuing to attempt to subvert the U.N. human rights system.\1\ 
Beijing not only attempts to stymie a fair and thorough assessment of 
its human rights record by manipulating the Universal Periodic Review 
(UPR) of China, but it is working to impair the vitality of the U.N. 
human rights system in other ways as well.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ This was the PRC's 4th UPR with its previous review occurring 
in 2018.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's assault on the U.N. human rights system comes in tandem 
with severe domestic repression that includes pervasive persecution of 
ethnic Uyghurs, including arbitrary detention; a crackdown on any form 
of dissent in Hong Kong; extensive state control and suppression in 
Tibet that includes forcibly removing children from their families; and 
an ongoing onslaught on human rights defenders through the use of black 
jails, extensive jail sentences, and forced disappearances.\2\ Just as 
Beijing's policy toward the Uyghur community is said to be intended to 
``break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections and 
break their origins,'' the PRC also appears to be attempting to break 
the U.N. human rights system. The PRC's efforts to undermine robust 
human rights scrutiny of its record are intended to conceal its 
extensive human rights violations, including the politically motivated 
detention of individuals, such as Pastor Wang Yi, Uyghurs Ilham Tohti 
and Rahile Dawut, Tibetan Yeshe Choedron, human rights defenders Xu 
Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi and Gao Zhisheng, and the trial of Jimmy Lai in 
Hong Kong. These individual cases are not isolated ones, but rather are 
emblematic of the politically repressive landscape in China.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ ``2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China 
(Includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet),'' U.S. State Department, 
https://www.State.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-
practices/china/, accessed January 22, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China's actions over the last decade show that the PRC has become 
intent on using its presence in the U.N. to alter international human 
rights norms and rewire the system in ways that will make it easier for 
states to escape scrutiny of their human rights records. There are 
several specific features of China's assault on the international human 
rights regime that I outline below.

               Manipulating the Universal Periodic Review

    The Universal Periodic Review was initially intended to ensure that 
every nation underwent routine human rights scrutiny before the 
international community.\3\ It includes a three-and-a-half-hour session 
where representatives of the country under review appear in person to 
participate in a dialog that includes both a government presentation 
and an opportunity for questions from other nations during a session of 
the Human Rights Council. Other nations can also put forward 
recommendations for the government under review.\4\ The UPR also relies 
on documentation submitted by the government in question, the United 
Nations, and civil society. The procedure was developed with a vision 
of vigorous scrutiny, yet the PRC has tried to render the UPR a 
meaningless exercise and actively works to whitewash its violations.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Due to the rotational nature, each nation usually undergoes 
review about every 4.5 years.
    \4\ The nation under review can accept, reject or note 
recommendations. Some nations, particularly China, have indicated that 
certain recommendations have already been implemented even though this 
has often not been the case.
    \5\ ``China Attempts to `gaslight' international community at U.N. 
human rights review,'' Amnesty International, January 23, 2024, https:/
/www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/01/china-
attempts-to-gaslight-international-community-at-un-human-rights-review/
, accessed January 24, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One of China's key strategies toward this goal is soliciting 
fawning or softball comments from compliant nations in order to flood 
the proceedings with weak recommendations and perfunctory remarks. This 
was a strategy that the PRC initiated shortly after the HRC was formed 
in 2006. During the first round of the UPR, held during the first years 
of the Council, countries like China and Cuba heavily recruited (and at 
times pressured) other nations to sign up to speak during their 
reviews.\6\ Speaking during the UPR is voluntary and ideally nations 
that are concerned about that country's human rights record should be 
able to have sufficient time to query the country under review, but the 
PRC and other authoritarian-leaning nations manipulated the process so 
that the speaking list is filled with many countries offering bland 
statements and insipid or meaningless recommendations.\7\ In the lead-
up to China's UPR in January 2024, according to Reuters, the PRC 
mission circulated a diplomatic note to other nations that read, ``I 
would kindly request your delegation to render valuable support to 
China and make constructive recommendations in the interactive dialogue 
. . . taking into account the friendly relations and cooperation 
between our two countries.'' \8\ For developing countries, that are 
reliant on PRC economic assistance or other forms of support, the 
language ``friendly relations and cooperation'' could easily feel like 
pressure to ensure that they remain in the PRC's good graces. Beijing's 
machinations meant that during its January 2024 UPR 163 nations had 
signed up to speak, which meant that each country only had 45 seconds 
to deliver remarks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\ Other authoritarian nations, including Cuba, have also used 
this tactic.
    \7\ During the first round of the UPR, this PRC tactic resulted in 
time running out so that a number of countries did not get to deliver 
their statement. The queue was initially a physical one so China and 
other countries could see which delegations bothered to line up early.
    \8\ Emma Farge, ``China lobbies countries to praise its rights 
record ahead of U.N. review,'' Reuters, January 22, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Some of the statements delivered on the PRC's behalf not only 
congratulated the PRC about its economic development achievements, but 
even endorsed some of the PRC's rights-abusing policies. According to 
press reporting, the Chinese government also requested praise from at 
least a couple of (and possibly more) non-western countries and 
specifically suggested that they mention China's record on disability 
rights and women.\9\ A number of countries also appeared to parrot the 
content in Beijing's state report and employed phrases from the Chinese 
government, particularly slogans used by Xi Jinping, such as ``whole 
process people's democracy.'' \10\ As a result, several delegations 
commended China for lifting 100 million people out of poverty and 
reaching some U.N. Sustainable Development goals ahead of schedule and 
recommended China share lessons with other developing countries, make 
progress in agriculture, continue to address rural development, and 
deforestation.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ Ibid.
    \10\ ``China Review--45th Session, Universal Periodic Review,'' 
U.N. Web TV, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1z/k1z43db5bt, accessed 
January 25, 2024. Although many observers see China as playing a 
destructive role in the international human rights system, India's UPR 
statement encouraged China to continue playing a constructive role in 
representing developing countries in the U.N. human rights system, 
including through `reform' of multilateral institutions. For background 
on China's negative influence on the human rights system, see Sophie 
Richardson, ``China's Influence on the Global Human Rights System,'' 
Brookings Institute, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-
influence-on-the-global-human-rights-system/, accessed January 25, 
2024.
    \11\ ``China Review--45th Session, Universal Periodic Review,'' 
U.N. Web TV, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1z/k1z43db5bt, accessed 
January 25, 2024. In response to the PRC's oft-repeated claims about 
the number of people lifted out of poverty, Dr. Sophie Richardson 
pointed out that the level of economic development might be due more to 
the PRC lifting its boot off the people enough to allow them to be 
economically productive. ``World Report 2020: Live from the United 
Nations,'' Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhTUiIey00A, 
accessed January 27, 2024. This point also makes sense given that much 
of China's development occurred prior to Xi's reimposition of Mao-like 
State control.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In exchange for these dutiful remarks for Beijing, other rights-
abusing nations appear to receive reciprocal treatment from China.\12\ 
For example, Belarus put forward the following advance question, 
``China upholds that all ethnic groups are equal and works for all-
round development of the cause of ethnic minorities. Would you please 
share the efforts and practices by the Chinese government in protecting 
the rights of ethnic minorities,'' \13\ and in 2021 when Belarus 
underwent its UPR, the PRC stated that ``it supported the achievements 
of Belarus in protecting human rights and its efforts to maintain its 
independence, sovereignty, security and development.'' \14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ Rana Siu Inboden, China and the International Human Rights 
Regime: 1982-2017 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), see 
Chapter 5.
    \13\ ``Advance Questions to China,'' U.N. Human Rights Council, 
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/cn-index, accessed January 25, 
2024.
    \14\ U.N. Human Rights Council, ``Report of the Working Group on 
the Universal Periodic Review, Belarus,'' January 4, 2021, U.N. Doc. A/
HRC/46/5. China also recommended that Belarus, ``Continue to pursue the 
human rights development path suitable to its national conditions.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The PRC also manipulates the process by attempting to control and 
influence the information that is used for the UPR, including the 
compiled written information and civil society access to the 
proceedings. For example, while the PRC government claims to meet the 
UPR guideline of involving civil society and allowing for domestic 
consultations in developing the report that it submits to the United 
Nations, the organizations that were cited as having input into the PRC 
government report were government-affiliated ones.\15\ As a result, the 
content of the PRC's national report is divorced from the reality of 
the repression that Tibetans, Uyghurs, residents of Hong Kong, and 
human rights defenders face, as well as the overall surveillance and 
control that all Chinese citizens face.\16\ Instead, China's report was 
full of propaganda and blandishments and in its oral statement the PRC 
delegation claimed that China was one of the ``safest countries in the 
world'' and that the Chinese people ``are the masters of their country 
and society.'' The delegation further claimed that with the imposition 
of National Security Law in Hong Kong ``the days of social disturbance 
and fear are over'' and that ``stability and order are restored'' to 
the city.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ ``Universal Periodic Review Fourth Cycle--China--Reference 
Documents,'' U.N. Human Rights Council, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-
bodies/upr/uprcn-add-info-s45, accessed January 25, 2024.
    \16\ U.N. Human Rights Council, ``China National report submitted 
in accordance with Human Rights Council resolutions 5/1 and 16/21,'' 
November 3, 2023, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/WG.6/45/CHN/1*. Moreover, given 
Beijing's pattern of using transnational repression and engaging in 
reprisals against human rights advocates who engage with the United 
Nations, independent Chinese civil society activists could justifiably 
fear consequences of putting forward statements or information for the 
UPR. U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 
``Cooperation with the United Nations, its representatives and 
mechanisms in the field of human rights--Report of the Secretary-
General,'' August 21, 2023, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/54/61, https://
www.ohchr.org/en/
documents/reports/ahrc5461-cooperation-united-nations-its-
representatives-and-mechanisms-field. China is regularly cited in this 
annual report for engaging in reprisals.
    \17\ ``China Review--45th Session, Universal Periodic Review,'' 
U.N. Web TV, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1z/k1z43db5bt, accessed 
January 25, 2024. The statement on the Hong Kong National Security Law 
was especially untrue given that this piece of legislation has been 
described as draconian and a threat to freedom in Hong Kong. Javier 
Hernandez, ``Harsh Penalties, Vaguely Defined Crimes: Hong Kong's 
Security Law Explained,'' New York Times, June 30, 2020, https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/world/asia/hong-kong-security-law-
explain.html, accessed January 24, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition, there have been instances when China has attempted to 
control the information compiled by the U.N. In 2018, when China was 
last reviewed, the PRC succeeded in temporarily removing critical 
submissions from Hong Kong, Tibetan, and Uyghur groups.\18\ Given 
previous reports of the PRC pressuring or trying to influence the U.N. 
secretariat, it is highly likely that the PRC sought to ensure that the 
U.N.'s compilation did not include the August 2022 report on Xinjiang 
by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights or mention 
of that report's finding that the PRC's actions in Xinjiang ``may 
constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against 
humanity.'' \19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ Sophie Richardson and Rana Siu Inboden, ``Beijing Is Pouring 
Resources into Its U.N. Human Rights Review--All to Prevent Any Real 
Review from Taking Place,'' ChinaFile, January 22, 2024, https://
www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/China-UPR, accessed 
January 25, 2024.
    \19\ ``OHCHR Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang 
Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China,'' U.N. Office of 
the High Commissioner for Human Rights, https://www.ohchr.org/en/
documents/country-reports/ohchr-assessment-human-rights-concerns-
xinjiang-uyghur-autonomous-region, accessed January 22, 2024. On ways 
the PRC might apply pressure to the United Nations, see Rana Siu 
Inboden, ``China, power and the United Nations Special Procedures: 
Emerging threats,'' Global Policy (forthcoming).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, China attempts to crowd out independent civil society 
organizations with government-affiliated ones (often referred to as 
GONGO's) through both the submission of information to the U.N. and 
even filling up the section allotted for NGO representatives to observe 
the UPR.\20\ Moreover, GONGO representatives have at times attempted to 
intimidate independent human rights defenders at the United 
Nations.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\ ``Briefing Paper: Strategies for Making China's 4th UPR 
Effective in Stopping Atrocity Crimes,'' Chinese Human Rights 
Defenders, https://www.nchrd.org/2023/12/briefing-paper-
strategies-for-making-chinas-4th-upr-effective-in-stopping-atrocity-
crimes/, accessed January 25, 2024.
    \21\ See Human Rights Watch, The Costs of International Advocacy: 
China's Interference with United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms 
(Washington DC: Human Rights Watch, 2017), 18-20.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

          Rejecting of the Universality of Human Rights Norms

    China is asserting positions that challenge the universality of 
international human rights norms.\22\ One of the PRC's strategies in 
this regard is insisting that the ``significance of national, and 
regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious 
backgrounds must be borne in mind'' in promoting international human 
rights.'' \23\ The PRC repeatedly makes this point, including asserting 
that ``There is no one-size-fits-all development path for human 
rights.'' \24\ China employs this resistance to universal human rights 
standards to shield itself and other rights-abusing governments. For 
example, during an HRC Special Session on Iran related to the crackdown 
on the September 2022 protests, PRC Permanent Representative Chen Xu 
offered a statement that opposed the convening of a special session on 
Iran and called on other nations to ``respect each countries' own 
choice of human rights development path (sic).'' \25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ Previously, there were sporadic PRC statements that offered 
some rhetorical acceptance of the universality of human rights. See 
Inboden, China and the International Human Rights Regime, 52-53 and 75.
    \23\ The PRC's language in rejecting the universality of 
international human rights norms is becoming sharper. In a submission 
to the UNHRC's Advisory Committee, the Chinese government stated that 
``Different countries have different historical and cultural 
traditions, levels of economic and social development and political 
systems, different human rights concepts and practices, and different 
priority areas and specific plans for human rights development.'' 
``Reply to the Questionnaire of the Human Rights Council Advisory 
Committee on the Role of Technical Assistance and Capacity Building in 
Fostering Mutually Beneficial Cooperation,'' PRC government, https://
www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/
AdvisoryCom/TechnicalAssistance/China_English.pdf, accessed December 
14, 2023.
    \24\ ``Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press 
Conference on November 8, 2022,'' http://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/
fyrth/202211/t20221108_10834174.htm, accessed January 25, 2024.
    \25\ ``35th Special Session of the Human Rights Council,'' U.N. Web 
TV, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1l/k1lbchotfp, accessed January 22, 
2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China does not merely express these views in its national documents 
and statements. Beginning in 2017, it also began proactively injecting 
these ideas into U.N. debates and texts, particularly HRC 
resolutions.\26\ For example, the PRC's HRC resolutions on ``The 
Contribution of Development to the Enjoyment of Human Rights'' erodes 
universality by introducing the idea that the realization of human 
rights is contingent on economic development, particularly that the 
international community should ``take into account different national 
realities, capacities, and levels of development.'' \27\ Although 
economic development can support human rights, this position risks 
giving developing countries a pass on vigorous protection of political, 
civil and religious rights.\28\ HRC resolutions convey the positions of 
the Council's members (or the majority of them) on human rights issues, 
and over time can alter other key aspects of the human rights regime, 
such as forming ideas about U.N. human rights priorities, the HRC's 
functioning and work, including the mandates of the HRC's independent 
experts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\ For background on the PRC's introduction of these kinds of 
resolutions see Andrea Worden, ``With Its Latest Human Rights Council 
Resolution, China Continues Its Assault on the U.N. Human Rights 
Framework,'' China Change, April 9, 2018, https://chinachange.org/2018/
04/09/with-its-latest-human-rights-council-resolution-china-continues-
its-assault-on-the-un-human-rights-framework/, accessed January 22, 
2024.
    \27\ U.N. Human Rights Council, ``The contribution of development 
to the enjoyment of all human rights, resolution'' July 12, 2019, U.N. 
Doc. A/HRC/RES/41/19.
    \28\ Moreover, instead of using its economic wealth to benefit 
Chinese society, the CCP has used its growing wealth to build an 
extensive and draconian digital surveillance system.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

          Redefining the Substance of the Human Rights Regime

    Taking a page from the old Soviet Union Cold War playbook to 
undermine human rights, China is also seeking to shift consensus on the 
main content of the international human rights regime to focus on 
issues such as a ``right to development'' and an emphasis on the aid 
and assistance that is owed to the developing world from the Global 
North.\29\ In this vein, the PRC has introduced and secured passage of 
resolutions on the right to development that include language on the 
obligations of developed countries to aid their less developed 
counterparts. For example, the PRC asserts that ``Developed countries 
should honor their official development assistance commitments, help 
developing countries accelerate economic and social development, 
eradicate hunger and poverty, and ensure the right to survival and 
development.'' \30\ While development is a laudable goal, using the HRC 
to introduce the idea that the international system is unfair to under-
developed nations diverts the HRC away from considering oppression such 
as torture or forced disappearance.\31\ These PRC efforts further alter 
the raison d'etre of the human rights regime away from protecting 
people from harm and preventing atrocities to a development forum.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\ See for example, U.N. Human Rights Council, ``The contribution 
of development to the enjoyment of all human rights, resolution,'' July 
27, 2021, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/RES/47/11.
    \30\ PRC government, ``Reply to the Questionnaire of the Human 
Rights Council Advisory Committee on the Role of Technical Assistance 
and Capacity Building in Fostering Mutually Beneficial Cooperation,'' 
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents /HRBodies/
HRCouncil/AdvisoryCom/TechnicalAssistance/China_English.pdf, accessed 
December 14, 2023. The PRC has also sought to shift attention in the 
HRC toward issues that could be perceived as intended to sow further 
divisions between the Global South and the Global North, such as a 
resolution on the legacies of colonialism. U.N. Human Rights Council, 
``Negative Impacts of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of 
human rights, resolution'' 14 October 2021, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/RES/48/7.
    \31\ U.N. Human Rights Council, ``Promotion of a democratic and 
equitable international order, resolution'' October 15, 2021, U.N. A/
HRC/RES/48/8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The PRC's rhetoric and resolutions also appear to be aimed at 
turning the HRC into a venue where a grievance culture prevails that 
creates divisions between the Global South and the Global North. China 
regularly claims that developing countries are unfairly targeted for 
human rights scrutiny. In response to the introduction of a resolution 
on Xinjiang, PRC Permanent Representative Chen Xu claimed that ``today 
China is targeted, tomorrow it could be another developing country'' 
and that ``all country-specific resolutions are targeted at developing 
countries.'' \32\ The PRC's claim about unfair scrutiny of developing 
countries is clearly aimed at trying to marshal developing world 
support to shield itself. China's attempt to couch itself as a 
developing country is also incongruous with its assertions about its 
success in lifting people out of poverty and becoming a ``moderately 
prosperous society.'' In a similar vein, the HRC resolutions on the 
``Negative impact of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of 
human rights'' and ``A Democratic and Equitable Order'' appear intended 
to create rifts.\33\ This tactic is ironic given the PRC's neocolonial 
oppression of places and people groups such as Tibetans, Uyghurs and 
Hong Kong.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\ ``51st session of the Human Rights Council,'' U.N. Web TV, 
https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1w/k1w9tube8v, accessed January 25, 
2024.
    \33\ U.N. Human Rights Council, ``Promotion of a democratic and 
equitable international order, resolution,'' October 15, 2021, U.N. 
Doc. A/HRC/RES/48/8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Corroding Human Rights Accountability Procedures

    The PRC is also among the nations weakening country-specific 
scrutiny, including country-focused resolutions, Special Procedures, 
and special sessions. For decades the PRC has taken aim at country-
specific scrutiny, especially resolutions, that were aimed at its own 
record by calling for cooperation and dialog to advance human rights, 
but now its statements are much more insistent on ``mutually beneficial 
cooperation'' in lieu of accountability. It is also appropriating 
arguments about sovereignty to weaken international scrutiny. China's 
statement on behalf of the Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter 
of the United Nations, a grouping that includes a number of rights-
abusing governments, asserts that ``there is no other option than 
cooperation, engagement, and national ownership,'' in promoting human 
rights.\34\ This group, which is comprised of 19 states, including 
Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cambodia, China, Cuba, the Democratic 
People's Republic of Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, the Islamic 
Republic of Iran, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mali, 
Nicaragua, the State of Palestine, the Russian Federation, Saint 
Vincent and the Grenadines, Syria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, is 
exploiting sovereignty to resist human rights accountability and weaken 
key tools.\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\ ``Statement Delivered by H.E. Mr. Chen Xu, Ambassador 
Permanent Representative of the People's Republic of China to the 
United Nations Office in Geneva, During the Interactive Dialogue on the 
Annual Report of the United Nations High-Commissioner for Human 
Rights,'' The Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United 
Nations, https://www.gof-uncharter.org/_files/ugd/
6140e8_b80ea090c64741b9b19f7b0df8e90745.pdf.
    \35\ The Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United 
Nations, ``About Us,'' https://www.gof-uncharter.org/about-us, accessed 
December 14, 2023.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Chinese government also asserts that human rights scrutiny that 
is not based on the consent of and cooperation with the government in 
question, is a violation of national sovereignty and constitutes 
interference in internal affairs.\36\ China employed this position in 
its statement opposing the HRC resolution on Xinjiang, stating that the 
``so-called assessment'' was not consented to by the PRC so it was 
``null and void.'' \37\ Similarly, in defense of Syria, the PRC issued 
the following statement: ``China supports Syria in opposing external 
interference, opposing unilateral bullying, and safeguarding national 
independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity . . . .'' \38\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\ China also attacks the use of sanctions, referring to them as 
unilateral coercive measures. During the HRC's 2022 special session on 
Iran, the PRC bemoaned that ``UCM's [unilateral coercive measures] have 
caused harm to Iran and other developing countries.''
    \37\ The PRC statement also appeared to describe it as an ``illegal 
assessment.'' ``51st session of the Human Rights Council,'' U.N. Web 
TV, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1w/k1w9tube8v, accessed January 25, 
2024.
    \38\ ``Xi Jinping Meets with President of Syria Bashar al-Assad,'' 
PRC Ministry for Foreign Affairs, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/
zxxx_662805/202310/t20231008_11157381.html, accessed
December 14, 2023.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            Recommendations

    China is strongly motivated to continue this assault on the U.N. 
human rights regime because the ideals enshrined in the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights present an existential threat to the CCP's 
continued one-party rule. Even though a Chinese diplomat was involved 
in the drafting of this watershed document, the PRC now shows 
resistance to the U.N. human rights system. The U.N. human rights 
system emerged in the aftermath of the horrors of World War II, of the 
gulag and the Holocaust, and our Nation must again be prepared to 
advance the cause of protecting the rights of individuals around the 
world. Despite the U.N.'s flaws, the U.S. must remain engaged in it to 
prevent China and other authoritarian nations from coopting it.

    As part of this effort, the U.S. Government should:

      Continue to utilize U.N. tools and commit to 
participation. Despite the U.N.'s manifest shortcomings, the U.S. can 
have a greater impact if it remains in the U.N. Human Rights Council 
and continues to stand for election as often as it can. American 
diplomats also did a laudable job of using the opportunity to put 
forward questions in advance of China's January 2024 UPR by submitting 
15 strongly worded questions, including one that asked about twenty-six 
prisoners of conscience.\39\ In addition to continued membership in the 
HRC, the United States should also pursue participation and leadership 
in other bodies, including ones that appear primarily technical but 
that have human rights implications, such as the International 
Telecommunication Union (ITU).\40\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\ ``Advance Questions to China,'' U.N. Human Rights Council, 
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/cn-index, accessed January 25, 
2024.
    \40\ Tom Wheeler, ``The most important election you never heard 
of,'' Brookings Commentary, August 12, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/
articles/the-most-important-election-you-never-heard-of/, accessed 
December 14, 2023.

      Support independent civil society, especially Chinese 
human rights defenders. The U.N. human rights system relies heavily on 
independent human rights defenders being willing to report and 
communicate about the abuses they face and the situation in their 
country. The U.S. has important opportunities to bolster civil society, 
including by continuing to work with other nations to overcome China's 
efforts to withhold U.N. consultative status from genuine civil society 
groups. Despite the severe level of repression there, I encourage the 
U.S. to persist in finding safe and resourceful ways to support and 
nurture activists in China. The U.S. must also consider ways to support 
those human rights defenders who seek exile because the persecution in 
China has grown too pervasive and abusive to withstand. This can be 
done through fellowships, research and small grants, as well as mental 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
health support.

      Better protect people from PRC transnational repression, 
especially those who engage with the U.N. Federal level U.S. law 
enforcement agencies have begun to better understand the threat that 
the PRC poses to human rights activists in the United States through 
transnational surveillance, intimidation, and repression. These efforts 
must continue but also need to include state and local law enforcement. 
The U.S. Government should also ensure that Federal agencies have the 
resources they need to continue to investigate and halt PRC 
transnational repression efforts, such as overseas police stations.

      Counter the PRC's efforts to sow north-south divisions. 
The U.S. and many other western nations have been supportive of 
developing countries, including funding generous foreign aid programs. 
Yet the PRC's rhetoric and actions in the HRC is making it a divisive 
venue. The U.S. needs to find creative ways to puncture this false PRC 
narrative that developing nations are not supported by the west and 
that they receive unfair human rights scrutiny.

      Expand efforts with allies. The U.S. cannot defend the 
human rights system on its own and needs to prioritize working with 
other countries with a commitment to human rights. This should include 
both western nations as well as nations from other regions.\41\ The 
U.S. has shown an ability to do this and in ECOSOC it partnered with 36 
other countries to grant U.N. accreditation to NGOs that had been 
blocked by authoritarian governments from gaining accreditation. 
Because of this, cross-regional action organizations such as the Syrian 
American Medical Society Foundation and the Belarusian Helsinki 
Commission have been granted U.N. accreditation.\42\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\ During China's UPR there were several non-western nations that 
raised important concerns about China's human rights abuses or made 
strong rights-friendly, such as Brazil, Chile and the Marshall Islands. 
See, ``China Review--45th Session, Universal Periodic Review,'' U.N. 
Web TV, https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1z/k1z43db5bt, accessed January 
25, 2024.
    \42\ ``EU Statement--U.N. ECOSOC: Committee on NGO's,'' Delegation 
of the European Union to the United Nations in New York, https://
www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/un-new-york/eu-statement-%E2%80%93-un-
ecosoc-committee-ngos_en, accessed December 14, 2023.

      Support creative advocacy. While China and its allies 
attempt to drown out incisive human rights questions during the UPR and 
other formal U.N. proceedings, the U.S. should also match America's 
formal participation in the Human Rights Council by also supporting 
creative advocacy that helps elucidate China's human rights abuses. For 
example, the U.S. Mission in Geneva could organize a festival featuring 
films by Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong residents and host the 
immersive performance ``Everybody Is Gone,'' which depicts the horrors 
of the detention camps in the Uyghur region.\43\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\ ``Everybody Is Gone,'' The New Wild, https://
www.thenewwild.org/everybody-is-gone, accessed December 14, 2023.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                 Prepared Statement of Benedict Rogers

    Representative Smith, Senator Merkley, distinguished Commissioners, 
it is a privilege to have this opportunity to testify today at this 
important hearing, just over a week after the People's Republic of 
China (PRC)'s Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations in 
Geneva. I have been requested to focus my testimony on the situation of 
freedom of religion or belief in China today, and the situation in Hong 
Kong.

Brief personal background and examples of harassment, intimidation, and 
threats received

    I have been involved with human rights in China, and especially 
freedom of religion or belief, for over 30 years, and worked in various 
capacities with the human rights organization Christian Solidarity 
Worldwide (CSW), which specializes in freedom of religion or belief for 
all, for much of the past 30 years. I have lived, worked, and traveled 
extensively throughout China and Hong Kong, visiting China regularly 
and living in Hong Kong for 5 years from 1997 to 2002. In October 2022, 
I published a new book, The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the 
Chinese Communist Party's Tyranny (Optimum Publishing International, 
2022), which includes chapters on the persecution of Christians in 
China, the genocide of the Uyghurs, the atrocities in Tibet, the 
persecution of Falun Gong and the practice of forced organ harvesting, 
as well as the crackdown on civil society, human rights defenders, 
dissidents, and journalists across China and the dismantling of Hong 
Kong's freedoms.
    It is important to note that in October 2017 I was denied entry to 
Hong Kong on the orders of the regime in Beijing, becoming one of the 
first Westerners to be refused entry to Hong Kong,\1\ and in March 
2022, I and the organization I co-founded and lead, Hong Kong Watch, 
were threatened by the Hong Kong Police Force, accused of violating the 
National Security Law which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.\2\ I 
received two letters, one from both the Hong Kong Police Force and the 
National Security Department, informing me that the work of Hong Kong 
Watch, a UK-registered non-governmental organization (NGO), was a 
threat to China's national security and a violation of Hong Kong's 
National Security Law. The letters stated that unless we shut down our 
website and ceased our activities within 72 hours of receipt of these 
letters, I as the Chief Executive of the organization could face a fine 
of HK$100,000 (US$12,790) and a prison sentence. It is important to 
note that Hong Kong Watch has never had any presence on the ground in 
Hong Kong, any personnel or assets in Hong Kong itself, and these 
threats were explicitly issued exercising the extraterritoriality 
clause set out in Article 38 of the National Security Law.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ BBC, ``UK `concerned' as Hong Kong denies Benedict Rogers 
entry,'' 11 October 2017--https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-
41586529. See also reports in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/
world/2017/oct/11/british-conservative-party-activist-benedict-rogers-
hong-kong and the statement by the UK Foreign Secretary at the time 
https://www.gov.uk/
government/news/foreign-secretary-expresses-concern-over-uk-national-
denied-entry-to-hong-kong and this question in the UK House of Commons: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch'v=njHRQTak8Sg. Congressman Smith also 
issued a statement at the time.
    \2\ BBC, ``Briton accused of jeopardising China's security,'' 14 
March 2022 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60732949. See also The Times, 
``Hong Kong threatens British human rights activist,'' 14 March 2022 
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hong-kong-threatens-british-human-
rights-activist-3k5zvjdfk and The Guardian report https://
www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/14/hong-kong-watch-rights-group-
website-national-security-law-china-benedict-rogers, as well as the 
statement by the UK Foreign Secretary at the time: https://www.gov.uk/
government/news/foreign-secretary-statement-on-hong-kong-watch-march-
2022.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    More recently, on January 2nd of this year and on several occasions 
since then, I have been named by the prosecution in the National 
Security trial of the entrepreneur and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy 
Lai (which I will detail later in my testimony) as a ``collaborator.'' 
Messages from Jimmy Lai to me have been cited as evidence in the 
prosecution's case against him, including a message in 2019 asking me 
to request the last British Governor of Hong Kong, Lord (Chris) Patten 
of Barnes, to provide a comment to journalists from Mr. Lai's Apple 
Daily newspaper. It is standard and unquestionably legal for a 
newspaper to ask a politician for comments.
    In addition, I have received numerous attempts at harassment and 
intimidation in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, including anonymous 
threatening letters stamped and postmarked from Hong Kong sent to my 
private home address, to my neighbors in the residential area where I 
live in London, and to my mother who lives in a different part of the 
country,\3\ as well as anonymous email threats, including on one 
occasion a message when I was traveling in Canada disclosing the name 
of the hotel in Vancouver where I was due to stay.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ South China Morning Post, ``Threatening letters sent from Hong 
Kong make British human rights activist `more determined' to speak up 
for the city,'' 13 July 2018 https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/
politics/article/2155147/threatening-letters-sent-hong-kong-make-
british-human-rights. See also: Hong Kong Free Press https://
hongkongfp.com/2018/07/13/rights-activist-
benedict-rogers-condemns-menacing-letters-sent-hong-kong-mother-
neighbours/ as well as The New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/
politics/2018/09/hong-kong-threatening-letters-mailboxes and The 
Washington Examiner https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/
1250927/chinese-intimidation-comes-to-benedict-rogerss-mailbox/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For all these reasons, I take additional safety precautions when in 
the UK and traveling abroad. I have also been unable to visit Hong Kong 
or China since 2017 and would not even risk transiting in Hong Kong.

Freedom of religion or belief in China

    Freedom of religion or belief has always been suppressed and 
violated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime, ever since the 
founding of the PRC in 1949. At various times over the past 75 years 
the CCP has attempted to eradicate religion, and at other times control 
and restrict religious practice. Over the past 12 years of Chinese 
leader Xi Jinping's rule, the crackdown on freedom of religion or 
belief has intensified significantly. In particular, responsibility for 
policy on religious affairs has been centralized. Whereas in the past 
the situation for religious practice across the country varied, 
depending on the attitudes of the provincial or municipal governments, 
today, under Xi Jinping, there has been a new focus on religion at the 
highest levels of government.
    Xi Jinping himself has made several speeches on religion, including 
in May 2015 to the Central United Front Conference held by the CCP's 
United Front Work Department (UFWD), in which he introduced the 
principle of `Sinicization of religion.' This policy requires religions 
in Mainland China to be independent of foreign influences and aligned 
to the CCP's goals and values and under the Party's control. ``We must 
manage religious affairs in accordance with the law and adhere to the 
principle of independence to run religious groups on our own accord,'' 
Xi said. ``Active efforts should be made to incorporate religions into 
socialist society.'' \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ The Guardian, ``President Xi Jinping warns against foreign 
influences on religions in China,'' 21 May 2015 https://
www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/21/president-xi-jinping-warns-
against-foreign-influence-on-religions-in-china.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In a further speech at the National Conference on Religious Work in 
April 2016, Xi outlined the CCP's policies regarding religious 
activities, emphasizing that ``religious affairs carry special 
importance'' in the work of the CCP and the government and that the 
``relationship of national security and the unification of the 
motherland'' has a place within ``socialist religious theory with 
Chinese characteristics.'' \5\ He added that ``religious groups must 
adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China'' and that the 
Party ``should guide and educate the religious circle and their 
followers with the socialist core values.'' \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ The Sasakawa Peace Foundation, SPF China Observer, ``Why Does 
the Xi Jinping Administration Advocate the `Sinicization' of 
Religion,'' No. 8 2018/08/11 https://www.spf.org/spf-china-observer/en/
document-detail008.html.
    \6\ Hong Kong Free Press, ``Religious groups must `adhere to the 
leadership of the Communist Party,' Pres. Xi Jinping,'' 24 April 2016 
https://hongkongfp.com/2016/04/24/religious-groups-must-adhere-to-the-
leadership-of-the-communist-party-pres-xi-jinping/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In his most recent speech about religious affairs, in 2021, 
according to a Chinese-language report on the website of the United 
Front Work Department of the Party's Central Committee, ``Xi emphasized 
the need to further promote the Sinicization of China's religions, 
guide and support China's religions to be led by socialist core values 
and enhance the identification of religious people and believers with 
the great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture, the CPC and 
socialism with Chinese characteristics. Education on patriotism, 
collectivism and socialism should be carried out in religious circles, 
and education on the history of the Party, new China, reform and 
opening-up, and the development of socialism should be strengthened in 
a targeted manner, so as to guide religious figures and believers in 
cultivating and practicing socialist core values and promoting Chinese 
culture. It is necessary to adhere to the overall concept of national 
security, adhere to the principle of independence and self-management, 
and promote related work in a coordinated manner. The management of 
religious affairs on the internet should be strengthened. Outstanding 
problems affecting the healthy transmission of religion in China should 
be effectively addressed.'' \7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, 6 
December 2021 https://www.zytzb.gov.cn/zytzb/2022-10/27/
article_2022102720260292972.shtml.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Xi Jinping's campaign of the Sinicization of religion has nothing 
to do with healthy inculturation, adapting a religion to Chinese 
culture, but rather its objective is the total co-optation of religion 
to the CCP's agenda, aimed at absorbing religious communities into the 
United Front to further the CCP's indoctrination, propaganda, 
surveillance and control. Any religious teachings that are not in 
conformity with the CCP's teachings must be discarded. As a 
consequence, religious leaders are restricted in what they can preach 
in their sermons, and--moreover--they are required to actively support 
and promote the CCP in their sermons.
    A range of new regulations regarding religious affairs have been 
introduced in recent years, notably the revised Regulations on 
Religious Affairs which took effect on February 1, 2018. These 
regulations, according to CSW, strengthen State control over religious 
activities in mainland China, closing down the gray area in which 
unregistered churches had until then been tolerated by some local 
authorities. Un-
registered `house' churches and other independent religious groups are 
under increasing pressure to either register or disband. According to 
the China Aid Association, ``non-government churches, called `house 
churches,' have been outlawed completely. Many of them are ordered to 
join the official church system and submit to government censorship.'' 
\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ Evidence submitted by CSW and China Aid Association to the UK 
Conservative Party Human Rights Commission's China inquiry and cited in 
the report The Darkness Deepens: The Crackdown on Human Rights in China 
2016-2020 https://conservativepartyhumanrights
commission.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CPHRC-China-Report.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Many Protestant pastors and Catholic priests have been arrested and 
imprisoned in recent years. A notable example is Pastor Wang Yi of 
Early Rain Church in Chengdu, Sichuan province, who was arrested in 
December 2018 along with his wife and 100 members of his congregation, 
and sentenced on December 26, 2019 to 9 years in prison. Pastor John 
Cao, a missionary working in Burma/Myanmar's Wa state, along the border 
with China, was arrested by authorities in Yunnan province in 2017 and 
sentenced to 7 years in prison in March 2018.
    More recently, in July of last year CSW reported that three leaders 
of Linfen Covenant House Church (Shengyue Jiayuan) \9\ in Shanxi 
province have been accused of forming a ``criminal clique'' and 
obtaining ``illegal income,'' and of establishing an ``illegal 
organization.'' In recent years there has been a notable increase in 
the number of religious leaders prosecuted with alleged fraud charges, 
which could carry a prison sentence of more than 10 years.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\ Church members have established this blog in Chinese https://
jiayuan.homes/.
    \10\ CSW, ``House church leaders prosecuted as `criminal clique','' 
5 July 2023 https://www.csw.org.uk/2023/07/05/press/6034/article.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On January 2d of this year, the Catholic bishop of Wenzhou, Bishop 
Peter Shao Zhumin, was arrested again and his whereabouts are unknown. 
He has been repeatedly arrested and detained multiple times in recent 
years.\11\ According to Aid to the Church in Need, at least 20 Catholic 
priests were arrested in mainland China in 2023.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ UCANews, ``Arrested dissident Chinese bishop remains 
untraced,'' 8 January 2024 https://www.ucanews.com/news/arrested-
dissident-chinese-bishop-remains-untraced/103748.
    \12\ Aid to the Church in Need, ``Record number of priests 
arrested, kidnapped or murdered in 2023,'' 17 January 2024 https://
acnuk.org/news/international-record-number-of-priests-arrested-
kidnapped-or-murdered-in-2023/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Furthermore, hundreds of churches have been destroyed, crosses 
dismantled, and in state-controlled churches portraits of Xi Jinping 
and CCP propaganda banners are displayed alongside or sometimes instead 
of religious imagery. Surveillance cameras are installed to monitor the 
congregation, and minors under the age of 18 are prohibited from going 
to places of worship.
    The persecution of Falun Gong continues. According to Bitter 
Winter, Falun Gong practitioners claim to have verified 209 cases of 
persecution to death in 2023, bringing the total documented number of 
victims killed to over 5,000 since 1999. On January 18, 2024, the 
European Parliament adopted a resolution on ``the ongoing persecution 
of Falun Gong in Mainland China, notably the case of Mr. Ding Yuande.'' 
\13\ The practice of forced organ harvesting, primarily from Falun Gong 
practitioners, continues. In 2019 an independent tribunal chaired by 
the British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, KC, who prosecuted former 
President of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic, concluded ``beyond reasonable 
doubt'' that this practice is continuing and that it constitutes a 
``crime against humanity,'' describing the PRC as ``a criminal state.'' 
\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ Bitter Winter, ``The European Parliament Condemns China for 
Persecuting Falun Gong, Mentions Organ Harvesting Again,'' 22 January 
2024 https://bitterwinter.org/the-european
-parliament-condemns-china-for-persecuting-falun-gong-mentions-organ-
harvesting-again/.
    \14\ The China Tribunal judgment https://chinatribunal.com/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Church of Almighty God (CAG), a new religious movement 
established in 1991, also continues to face brutal suppression and 
persecution. Categorized as an ``evil cult'' or ``heterodox teaching'' 
(xie jiao) by the CCP, along with Falun Gong and other groups, it 
claims that since 2011 at least 400,000 of its members have been 
arrested and over 159 killed.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ Evidence submitted to the UK Conservative Party Human Rights 
Commission's China inquiry and cited in the report The Darkness 
Deepens: The Crackdown on Human Rights in China 2016-2020 https://
conservativepartyhumanrightscommission.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/
01/CPHRC-China-Report.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In regard to the `xie jiao' regulations, CSW stated in a January 
2024 briefing that: ``The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme 
People's Procuratorate interpreted `xie jiao' as `illegal 
organisations, which, through fraudulent use of religion, qi gong, or 
any other name, by defying and promoting their ringleaders, or by 
fabricating and spreading superstitious fallacies to confuse and 
deceive others, grow membership and control group members, and harm 
society.' Such a vague definition gives the authorities power to target 
legitimate religious activities. A lawyer recalled a case where a house 
church pastor was accused for their `unbiblical teaching' on suspicion 
of `spreading superstition.' Much to his amusement, the evidence 
produced was a doctrine document provided by a pastor affiliated with 
the government-approved Three Self Patriotic Movement (TPSM).'' \16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\ CSW, Briefing: `Socialist rule of law' in China, 16 January 
2024 https://www.csw.org.uk/2024/01/16/report/6149/article.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to CSW, ``in July 2022, China's Anti-Xie Jiao Association 
published an article listing 25 groups which the author claims have 
been designated `xie jiao' by `relevant national departments' since the 
1980's. This is not an official document, and there are no official 
government or legal documents defining any particular group as `xie 
jiao' that are accessible to the public. The process by which public 
security, procuratorate and courts identify `xie jiao' appears to be 
completely arbitrary. Some groups are frequently targeted while others 
in the same region are largely left alone. Some house church leaders 
receive a fine while others are arrested and handed harsh prison 
sentences with a `xie jiao' label.''
    In Tibet, atrocities continue, with Tibetan Buddhists' religious 
practice tightly controlled. There are ongoing reports of Tibetan 
Buddhist monasteries and other institutions being intrusively 
monitored, disrupted or closed, property confiscated and monks arrested 
and detained. One of the most egregious practices which has recently 
gained some international attention is the use of colonial-style 
boarding schools in which almost a million Tibetan children, almost 80 
percent of the population, have been coercively separated from their 
families and indoctrinated into Han Chinese language and culture and 
CCP ideology, cut off from their Buddhist religion, Tibetan culture and 
their families and communities in a form of cultural genocide.\17\ In 
February 2023, U.N. experts expressed their concerns about this large-
scale program of forced assimilation.\18\ The CCP is actively pursuing 
a campaign to rename Tibet as ``Xizang,'' the Chinese name for the 
region, in an attempt to eradicate Tibet's identity.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\ Foreign Affairs, ``Erasing Tibet'', by Tenzin Dorjee and Gyal 
Lo, 28 November 2023 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/south-asia/erasing-
tibet#::text=.
    \18\ United Nations, ``UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 
million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at 
residential schools,'' 6 February 2023 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-
releases/2023/02/china-un-experts-alarmed-separation-1-million-tibetan-
children-families-and.
    \19\ Newsweek, ``China is slowly erasing Tibet's name,'' 14 
November 2023 https://www.newsweek.com/china-changing-tibet-english-
name-1843391.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, the most egregious of the litany of violations of freedom 
of religion or belief and the many atrocity crimes which are being 
perpetrated by the CCP is the genocide of the predominantly Muslim 
Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups in Mainland China's western 
region of Xinjiang, which is also known as East Turkestan. This has 
been recognized as a genocide by both the previous and current U.S. 
Secretary of State, several Parliaments around the world, and in 
December 2021 by the independent Uyghur Tribunal, chaired by British 
barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice, KC.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\ Uyghur Tribunal judgment https://uyghurtribunal.com/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to the well-documented use of forced abortions, forced 
sterilization, forced labor, torture, sexual violence, and the 
incarceration of at least a million Uyghurs in prison camps in 
Xinjiang, the Uyghurs are subjected to widespread violations of freedom 
of religion or belief. Uyghur Muslim men may be arrested if they have a 
beard beyond a certain length and women could be targeted if they wear 
a headscarf. Basic religious practices such as praying, fasting, going 
to the mosque, reading the Quran, or abstaining from pork or alcohol 
can result in arrest and imprisonment. Many mosques have been either 
closed, desecrated or destroyed.
    The crackdown on Muslims now extends beyond Xinjiang. In November 
2023, Human Rights Watch reported that ``the Chinese government is 
significantly reducing the number of mosques in Ningxia and Gansu 
provinces under its `mosque consolidation' policy, in violation of the 
right to freedom of religion.'' According to Human Rights Watch, 
``Chinese authorities have decommissioned, closed down, demolished, and 
converted mosques for secular use as part of the government's efforts 
to restrict the practice of Islam. The authorities have removed Islamic 
architectural features, such as domes and minarets, from many other 
mosques.'' \21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ Human Rights Watch, ``China: Mosques Shuttered, Razed, Altered 
in Muslim Areas,'' 22 November 2023 https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/
22/china-mosques-shuttered-razed-altered-
muslim-areas#::text=.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Falun Gong 
practitioner, or practice another religion or belief, in mainland China 
today it is increasingly difficult and dangerous to practice your 
faith. In March 2019, the then U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for 
International Religious Freedom, Ambassador Sam Brownback, said in a 
speech at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong that ``the 
Chinese government is at war with faith. It's a war they will not win. 
The Chinese Communist Party must hear the cry of its people for 
religious freedom.'' \22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ International Christian Concern, ``Ambassador Brownback: China 
is At War With Faith,'' 10 March 2019 https://www.persecution.org/2019/
03/10/Ambassador-brownback-china-war-faith/.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hong Kong

    In the U.N. Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of China on January 
23rd this year, 18 U.N. Member States raised recommendations on Hong 
Kong at the United Nations, including the United States and the United 
Kingdom, principally calling for the repeal of the National Security 
Law. This is a welcome step.\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\ Hong Kong Watch, ``Hong Kong Watch welcomes Recommendations on 
Hong Kong at the U.N. Universal Periodic Review,'' 23 January 2024 
https://www.hongkongwatch.org/all-posts/2024/1/23/hong-kong-watch-
welcomes-recommendations-on-hong-kong-at-the-un-universal-
periodic-review.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The U.S. urged Beijing to ``cease harassment, surveillance, and 
threats against individuals abroad and in China including Xinjiang, 
Tibet, and Hong Kong . . . repeal vague national security, counter-
espionage, counter-terrorism, and sedition laws, including the National 
Security Law in Hong Kong . . . end repressive measures against women, 
LGBTQI+ persons, laborers, and migrant workers, including in Hong Kong 
and Macau.'' The U.S. also condemned the ongoing genocide and crimes 
against humanity in Xinjiang, as well as the CCP's transnational 
repression aimed to silence Hong Kongers, Uyghur Muslims, Tibetans and 
other Chinese dissidents abroad.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ Hong Kong Watch, ``Hong Kong Watch welcomes Recommendations on 
Hong Kong at the U.N. Universal Periodic Review'', 23 January 2024 
https://www.hongkongwatch.org/all-posts/2024/1/23/hong-kong-watch-
welcomes-recommendations-on-hong-kong-at-the-un-universal-
periodic-review.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In 2022, the U.N. Human Rights Committee recommended the repeal of 
the Hong Kong National Security Law and found the Hong Kong government 
in violation of its international legal obligations. Similarly, in 
2023, the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and 
the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women 
also raised concerns regarding the Hong Kong National Security Law's 
violations of human rights, among other violations of rights and 
freedoms in Hong Kong.
    The UPR and previous U.N. Committee recommendations exemplify how 
over the past decade and especially since the imposition of the 
draconian National Security Law in Hong Kong, the CCP has dismantled 
Hong Kong's freedoms, the rule of law, and autonomy in total breach of 
its promises under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration which paved 
the way for Hong Kong's handover to Beijing in 1997. The CCP has also 
continued to be in complete violation of Hong Kong's obligations as a 
party to the ICCPR, as well as Hong Kong's own mini-constitution, the 
Basic Law, and the `one country, two systems' principle. Freedom of 
expression, particularly media freedom, freedom of assembly and 
association, and the right to democratic participation in politics have 
all been almost completely destroyed. There are over 1,000 political 
prisoners in Hong Kong, and over 68 civil society organizations have 
been forced to close. In Hong Kong today, it is almost impossible to 
operate openly as a civil society organization if you are engaged in 
any activity that might be regarded as `political.' In addition, as 
Hong Kong Watch documents in its November 2023 report `` `Sell Out My 
Soul': The Impending Threats to Freedom of Religion or Belief in Hong 
Kong,'' freedom of religion or belief in Hong Kong is now being 
undermined.\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\ Hong Kong Watch, `` `Sell Out My Soul': The Impending Threats 
to Freedom of Religion or Belief in Hong Kong,'' 7 November 2023 
https://www.hongkongwatch.org/all-posts/2023/11/7/hong-kong-watch-
launches-groundbreaking-new-report-on-threats-to-freedom-of-religion-
or-belief-in-hong-kong.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Hong Kong today it is fair to say that freedom of worship, 
narrowly defined, remains intact. People are still free to go to 
church, to the mosque, to the synagogue or temple. Religious believers 
can still access the Bible, the Quran or other religious scriptures and 
educational materials. Unlike in mainland China, persecution of 
religion, including the dismantling of crosses, closure, destruction or 
desecration of places of worship, and the arrest and imprisonment of 
religious leaders and practitioners because of their religious practice 
is not occurring. However, there are clear signs of violations of 
freedom of religion or belief and early warning signs of worse to come.
    There are four main indicators of threats to freedom of religion or 
belief in Hong Kong:

      The impact of the National Security Law and potential new 
restrictive, repressive laws to come, such as Article 23;
      Self-censorship;
      The impact on the education sector, and particularly 
church-run schools;
      Beijing's campaign of Sinicization of religion and the 
``patriotism'' test.

    The undermining of freedom of religion or belief in Hong Kong is 
subtle, slow and insidious. It involves the creation of a ``chill'' 
factor which results in religious leaders themselves making 
compromises. Christian clergy will now avoid certain topics in their 
sermons and will certainly not touch on anything that hints of human 
rights, justice, or freedom. In August 2020, Cardinal John Tong--
Apostolic Administrator of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese at the time--
instructed all Catholic priests to ``watch your language'' when 
preaching and avoid ``political'' issues. Since 2022, the Catholic 
Church in Hong Kong has stopped the annual commemorative masses which 
used to be held in parishes to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. 
One Protestant pastor who has left Hong Kong claims his church removed 
all his sermons from the past 30 years from its website, and that many 
churches no longer share sermons online.
    At least three prominent pastors, including Hong Kong's 91-year-old 
Bishop Emeritus, Cardinal Joseph Zen, have been arrested. One, Pastor 
Garry Pang, was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 1 year in jail. 
Another, Roy Chan, went into exile but his church, which had provided 
pastoral support and sanctuary to pro-
democracy protesters in 2019, was raided by the police, and HSBC froze 
his and the church's bank accounts. Of course these cases relate to 
what may be regarded as ``political'' rather than ``religious'' 
activities, but the individuals concerned were acting according to 
their consciences, informed and inspired by their religious beliefs. 
The ability of anyone in Hong Kong today to follow their conscience is 
now severely curtailed.
    Perhaps as many as 60 percent of government-funded schools in Hong 
Kong are church-run, whether by Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran or other 
denominations. Like all schools in the city, faith-based schools are 
required to introduce National Security Law education and promote 
Beijing's propaganda in the curriculum. According to one Protestant 
pastor, faith-based schools are now ``diluting their religious 
education.'' School boards are believed to be infiltrated by CCP 
sympathizers, eroding their faith-based ethos. Many of these church-run 
schools are associated with parishes, and that spells a potential 
threat to the churches themselves--parishes could be held responsible 
if the school does not comply with the National Security Law, and could 
then be shut down as a result.
    Xi's campaign of Sinicization of religion is now creeping into Hong 
Kong, with at least three conferences between Hong Kong's religious 
leaders and representatives of Beijing's religious affairs apparatus. 
Even Hong Kong's new Cardinal, Stephen Chow, has called on Hong Kong 
Catholics to be ``patriotic,'' which is a euphemism for surrender to 
and co-optation into the CCP.
    In some respects, this is inevitable. Once Beijing exerted direct 
control of Hong Kong, the death knell for religious freedom was 
sounded. First, freedom itself is indivisible. When freedom of 
expression, assembly, and association are dismantled, freedom of 
religion--which is interlinked and interdependent on other basic 
freedoms--is unsustainable. Second, because the regime in Beijing has 
always been hostile to religion, and at various times since 1949 has 
sought either to eradicate, repress, control, coerce, or co-opt 
religion. Beijing's hostility to religion in Hong Kong is likely 
exacerbated by the fact that many of the city's pro-democracy activists 
are people of faith. From the father of the democracy movement Martin 
Lee to the founder of the now closed Apple Daily newspaper Jimmy Lai, 
who faces the rest of his life in jail, and from the organizer of the 
2014 Occupy Central demonstrations Benny Tai, who also initiated the 
2020 pro-democracy primaries to choose candidates for the Hong Kong 
Legislative Council and is now serving a long prison sentence, to the 
teenage activist Joshua Wong and the Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, people of 
faith were at the forefront of the city's fight for freedom. Let us not 
forget, in 2019 for a time, one of the anthems of the protesters was 
``Sing Hallelujah to the Lord.''
    Where will all this lead? Strangulation of religious freedom by 
stealth. Pro-Beijing media in Hong Kong has already sounded the 
warnings, publishing articles last year attacking religion from various 
angles and calling for new regulations to restrict religious practice 
and establish a government department to vet, license and monitor 
religious groups.
    Beijing is unlikely to use headline-grabbing physical repression 
against religious groups in Hong Kong because, despite the dismantling 
of its freedoms and autonomy, it is still an international financial 
center with a degree of global scrutiny and foreign presence. Instead, 
it is opting for coercion, co-optation and forcible compromise of 
conscience.
    As one religious scholar from Hong Kong puts it, ``the most violent 
form of attack on religious freedom is not necessarily the burning of 
churches and the killing of believers, for the persecutors kill the 
bodies but not the souls. Rather, the more dangerous and insidious 
attack on a religion could be its corruption from within, so that its 
believers can only practice the faith in name rather than in essence. 
In this regard, the CCP is about to use the latter strategy to attack 
religious freedom in Hong Kong.'' Beijing can restrict religious 
freedom in Hong Kong by ``exerting total control on churches without 
closing them.''
    For this reason, the international community must monitor the 
situation closely. New repressive laws in Hong Kong--likely to be 
introduced in the coming months--should be analyzed for their impact on 
freedom of religion or belief. Diplomats in Hong Kong should engage 
with religious communities in the city, and people of conscience should 
speak out for people of faith in Hong Kong, when they are no longer 
able to speak for themselves.
    As a leader in championing freedom of religion or belief worldwide, 
the U.S. should pay close attention to the practice of freedom of 
religion or belief in Hong Kong and continue to pressure the CCP and 
the Hong Kong authorities to abide by international human rights law. 
In its 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China (Includes 
Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet)--Hong Kong, the U.S. Department of State 
noted, ``For the first time in 33 years, Hong Kong Catholic churches 
did not hold memorial masses on June 4 for the victims of the 1989 
massacre, out of concern the masses would be deemed a violation of the 
National Security Law (NSL).''
    The U.S. Department of State also raised concern following credible 
evidence of ``arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners or 
detainees; cruel or degrading treatment or punishment by government 
agents; transnational repression against individuals outside of Hong 
Kong; serious problems regarding the independence of the judiciary; 
arbitrary interference with privacy; serious restrictions on freedom of 
expression and media, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions of 
journalists and censorship; substantial interference with the freedom 
of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly 
restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of 
nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations; 
restrictions on freedom of movement and on the right to leave the 
territory; the inability of citizens to change their government 
peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable 
restrictions on political participation; serious government 
restrictions on domestic and international human rights organizations; 
and significant restrictions on workers' freedom of association, 
including coercive actions against independent trade unions and arrests 
of labor union activists.'' The U.S. should continue to observe the 
practice of these freedoms in Hong Kong, especially given the 
increasing threat to the freedom of religion or belief in the city.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\ U.S. Department of State, ``2022 Country Reports on Human 
Rights Practices: China (Includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet)--Hong 
Kong,'' 20 March 2023 https://www.State.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/
415610_HONG-KONG-2022-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, let me end with some brief words on the trial of Jimmy 
Lai, which began on December 18th last year and is underway as we 
speak.
    Hong Kong's plight is illustrated most starkly with the trial of 
Jimmy Lai, the 76-year-old Hong Kong entrepreneur, media tycoon, and 
pro-democracy activist who has spent the past 3 years of his life in 
prison and may well remain there until he dies. He is accused of 
conspiring to collude with foreign forces, a crime under the National 
Security Law, and publishing allegedly seditious materials. In reality 
he is charged, as the head of his international legal team Caoilfhionn 
Gallagher, KC puts it so brilliantly, with the crimes of conspiracy to 
commit journalism, for daring to publish stories and opinions which 
Beijing dislikes, conspiracy to talk about politics to politicians, and 
conspiracy to raise human rights concerns with human rights 
organizations.
    As mentioned, on January 2nd and on several occasions during the 
court proceedings since, I have been named as one of a number of 
foreigners with whom Mr. Lai had communicated or collaborated with. 
According to media reports, in court the prosecution displayed a chart 
labeled ``Lai Chee-ying's external political connections,'' showing 
headshots of me, several other British citizens, and several U.S. 
officials, including the former U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong 
Ambassador James Cunningham, former U.S. Army General Jack Keane, and 
former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Several foreign 
``co-conspirators'' have also been named, including the U.S.-born 
financier and campaigner Bill Browder, who leads the Global Magnitsky 
Justice Campaign, and U.S. citizen Mark Simon, Mr. Lai's closest aide.
    On January 22nd, the day before the UPR, four U.N. experts--
including the U.N. Special Rapporteurs on torture and other cruel, 
inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment; on the protection and 
promotion of freedom of opinion and expression; on the independence of 
judges and lawyers; on the rights of freedom of peaceful assembly and 
of association--called for all charges against Jimmy Lai to be dropped 
and for his immediate release.\27\ In its recommendations to the UPR, 
the United Kingdom made the same call.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ Hong Kong Watch, ``Hong Kong Watch welcomes U.N. experts' call 
for immediate release of Jimmy Lai ahead of UPR,'' 22 January 2024 
https://www.hongkongwatch.org/all-posts/2024/1/22/hong-kong-watch-
welcomes-un-experts-call-for-immediate-release-of-jimmy-lai-ahead-of-
upr.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The outrageous imprisonment and prosecution of Jimmy Lai is 
emblematic of the CCP's all-out assault on human rights, including 
freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief. Jimmy Lai is a 
devout Catholic who, while not specifically in prison for his faith, 
certainly was motivated and inspired by his faith to campaign for 
freedom and democracy.
    At the start of the trial of Jimmy Lai in December 2023, the U.S. 
Department of State released a statement condemning Mr. Lai's trial and 
calling for his release and the release of ``all others imprisoned for 
defending their rights.'' Responding to the deteriorating situation in 
Hong Kong more generally, the statement also says, ``We urge Beijing 
and Hong Kong authorities to respect press freedom in Hong Kong. 
Actions that stifle press freedom and restrict the free flow of 
information--as well as Beijing and local authorities' changes to Hong 
Kong's electoral system that reduce direct voting and preclude 
independent and pro-democracy party candidates from participating--have 
undermined Hong Kong's democratic institutions and harmed Hong Kong's 
reputation as an international business and financial hub.'' \28\ The 
United States should continue to speak out for him, monitor his trial 
closely, and demand an end to the prosecution and his immediate and 
unconditional release.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\ U.S. Department of State, ``Trial of Jimmy Lai Under the Hong 
Kong National Security Law,'' 17 December 2023 https://www.State.gov/
trial-of-jimmy-lai-under-the-hong-kong-national-security-law/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Thank you again for this opportunity and for your continued 
leadership on these issues.

                   Prepared Statement of Emile Dirks

    Representative Smith, Senator Merkley, and distinguished Members of 
the Commission, thank you for holding this important hearing on the 
state of human rights in the People's Republic of China and for the 
opportunity to testify. The conclusion of the United Nations Human 
Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group's review 
of China provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the current 
State of human rights in China.
    My testimony today draws upon the work of myself and other 
researchers at The Citizen Lab. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary 
research laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public 
Policy at the University of Toronto, focused on research, development, 
and strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of 
information and communication technologies, human rights, and global 
security.\1\ Citizen Lab research has explored transnational 
repression, spyware, censorship, algorithmic policing, and biometric 
surveillance.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ ``About The Citizen Lab,'' The Citizen Lab, https://
citizenlab.ca/about/.
    \2\ Noura Al-Jizawi, Siena Anstis, Sophie Barnett, Sharly Chan, 
Niamh Leonard, Adam Senft, and Ron Deibert, ``Psychological and 
Emotional War: Digital Transnational Repression in Canada,'' The 
Citizen Lab, March 1 2022, https://citizenlab.ca/2022/03/psychological-
emotional-war-digital-transnational-repression-canada/; Bill Marczak, 
John Scott-Railton, Bahr Abdul Razzak, and Ron Deibert, ``Triple 
Threat: NSO Group's Pegasus Spyware Returns in 2022 with a Trio of iOS 
15 and iOS 16 Zero-Click Exploit Chains,'' The Citizen Lab, April 18 
2023, https://citizenlab.ca/2023/04/nso-groups-pegasus-spyware-returns-
in-2022/; Jeffrey Knockel, Jakub Dalek, Levi Meletti, and Ksenia 
Ermoshina, ``Not OK on VK: An Analysis of In-Platform Censorship on 
Russia's VKontakte,'' The Citizen Lab, July 26 2023, https://
citizenlab.ca/2023/07/an-
analysis-of-in-platform-censorship-on-russias-vkontakte/; Kate 
Robertson, Cynthia Khoo, and Yolanda Song, ``To Surveil and Predict: A 
Human Rights Analysis of Algorithmic Policing in Canada,'' The Citizen 
Lab, September 1 2020, https://citizenlab.ca/2020/09/to-surveil-and-
predict-a-human-rights-analysis-of-algorithmic-policing-in-canada/; 
Emile Dirks, ``Mass Iris Scan Collection in Qinghai: 2019-2022,'' The 
Citizen Lab, December 14 2022, https://citizenlab.ca/2022/12/mass-iris-
scan-collection-in-qinghai/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Today I will focus my remarks on a particular aspect of China's 
human rights record: Chinese state-backed online censorship. My 
testimony will highlight three key points concerning online censorship. 
One, state-backed online censorship profoundly impacts Chinese 
citizens' freedom of opinion and expression, as well as the freedom of 
opinion and expression of those accessing the internet from within 
China or using China-accessible online platforms. Two, both Chinese and 
U.S. companies contribute to online censorship on China-accessible 
platforms. And three, online censorship is linked to repression inside 
China and transnational repression outside China, both of Chinese 
citizens and Chinese, Hong Kong, Uyghur, Tibetan, and other diaspora 
members.
    Drawing on these three points, I will conclude with three 
recommendations for how the U.S. Government can demand accountability 
from perpetrators and provide assistance to victims. One, the U.S. 
Government should publicly request that Microsoft, Apple, and other 
U.S. companies explain how they implement political and religious 
censorship on their platforms in China. Two, the U.S. Government should 
publicly request that Microsoft explain how political and religious 
censorship was applied to the search suggestions of users outside China 
and what safeguards will ensure that this will not reoccur. And three, 
the U.S. government should provide training to relevant U.S. government 
officials, including law enforcement and immigration authorities, to 
recognize digital transnational repression and properly assist victims 
and their families.

Part One: State-Backed Online Censorship

    The Chinese government severely restricts Chinese citizens' freedom 
of opinion and expression through online censorship, as detailed by the 
United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and 
stakeholders' submissions for China's most recent periodic review.\3\ 
Using a sophisticated filtering system known as the ``Great Firewall,'' 
authorities block access to thousands of websites which provide 
information which challenges the preferred narratives of the Chinese 
government.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ``Concluding 
observations on the third periodic report of China, including Hong 
Kong, China, and Macao, China,'' United Nations Social and Economic 
Council, March 22 2023, https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g23/048/
63/pdf/g2304863.pdf?token=FHXzbyZoVrkAggrFCD&fe=true; Office of the 
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, ``Summary of 
stakeholders' submissions on China,'' United Nations Human Rights 
Council, November 30 2023, https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g23/
238/40/pdf/g2323840.pdf?token=lBtK9ZRWexoI5WMxLo&fe=true.
    \4\ ``China: Freedom on the Net 2023,'' Freedom House, 2023, 
https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-net/2023.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One of the clearest measurements of state-mandated censorship comes 
from Great Firewall Watch, a platform created by researchers at Stony 
Brook University, the University of Massachusetts--Amherst, the 
University of California, Berkeley, and The Citizen Lab at the 
University of Toronto.\5\ Since its inception in March 2020, 
GFWatch.org has discovered more than 640,000 blocked domains.\6\ 
GFWatch.org can also be used to test whether a particular domain is 
accessible within China.\7\ Blocked domains include the website of the 
congressional-Executive Commission on China, as well as the websites of 
groups whose members have previously testified before the Commission, 
including Tibet Action Institute, Human Rights Watch, Hong Kong 
Democracy Council, Uyghur Human Rights Project, and the Australian 
Strategic Policy Institute.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Nguyen Phong Hoang, ``GFWatch: A Longitudinal Measurement 
Platform Built to Monitor China's DNS Censorship at Scale,'' The 
Citizen Lab, November 4, 2021 https://citizenlab.ca/2021/11/gfwatch-a-
longitudinal-measurement-platform-built-to-monitor-chinas-dns-
censorship-at-scale/
    \6\ Great Firewall Watch, 2023, https://gfwatch.org/.
    \7\ ``Censored domains,'' Great Firewall Watch, 2023, https://
gfwatch.org/censored_domains.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Blocking websites is not the only way that the Chinese government 
attempts to restrict freedom of opinion and expression. Online 
censorship is pervasive even on platforms accessible in China. Numerous 
Chinese government offices participate in online censorship, including 
the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Public 
Security. To clarify what broad categories of online materials are 
prohibited, the Chinese government has issued a number of documents, 
including the Measures for the Administration of Security Protection of 
Computer Information Networks with International Interconnections 
(1997), the Cybersecurity Law (2017), Norms for the Administration of 
Online Short Video Platforms and Detailed Implementation Rules for 
Online Short Video Content Review Standards (2019), and Provisions on 
the Governance of the Online Information Content Ecosystem  (2020).\8\ 
Prohibited content listed in these documents includes ``content harming 
the image of revolutionary leaders or heroes and martyrs'' and 
information which is ``damaging the reputation or interests of the 
state'' or ``detrimental to State religious policies, propagating 
heretical or superstitious ideas.'' \9\ The Chinese government also 
routinely conducts ``internet purification campaigns'' by which State 
organs compel websites, platforms, and accounts to remove prohibited 
content and punish violators through warnings or administrative or 
criminal penalties.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ ``Computer Information Network and Internet Security, 
Protection and Management Regulations--1997,'' Lehman, Lee & Xu, 
https://www.lehmanlaw.com/resource-centre/laws-and-_regulations/
information-technology/computer-information-network-and-internet-
security-
protection-and-management-regulations-1997.html; ``Translation: 
Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China (Effective June 1, 
2017),'' DigiChina, https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/
translation-cybersecurity-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china-
effective-june-1-2017/; ``Norms for the Administration of Online Short 
Video Platforms and Detailed Implementation Rules for Online Short 
Video Content Review Standards,'' China Law Translate, https://
www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/norms-for-the-administration-of-online-
short-video-platforms-
and-detailed-implementation-rules-for-online-short-video-content-
review-standards/; ``Provisions on the Governance of the Online 
Information Content Ecosystem,'' World Intermediary Liability Map, 
https://wilmap.stanford.edu/entries/provisions-governance-online-
information-content
-ecosystem.
    \9\ Jeffrey Knockel, Ken Kato, and Emile Dirks, ``Missing Links: A 
comparison of search censorship in China,'' The Citizen Lab, https://
citizenlab.ca/2023/04/a-comparison-of-search-censorship-in-china/.
    \10\ Jeffrey Knockel, Ken Kato, and Emile Dirks, ``Missing Links: A 
comparison of search censorship in China,'' The Citizen Lab, https://
citizenlab.ca/2023/04/a-comparison-of-search-censorship-in-china/..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet while government authorities stipulate what broad categories of 
content are prohibited, it is technology companies which are 
responsible for day-to-day censorship. Technology companies operating 
in China are required to ensure that content which appears on their 
platforms complies with legal requirements or political directives from 
the Chinese State. Companies which fail to moderate content on their 
platforms can be fined or have their business licenses revoked.\11\ 
This form of intermediary liability or corporate ``self-discipline'' is 
a characteristic feature of information control and online censorship 
in China.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ Rebecca MacKinnon (2009), ``China's Censorship 2.0: How 
companies censor bloggers,'' First Monday, 14(2), https://
firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2378.
    \12\ Rebecca MacKinnon, ``Commentary: Are China's demands for 
Internet 'self-discipline' spreading to the West?,'' McClatchy DC, 
January 18, 2010, https://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/
article24570625.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Citizen Lab researchers have discovered over 60,000 censorship 
rules on eight China-accessible search platforms: Baidu, Baidu Zhidao, 
Bilibili, Microsoft Bing, Douyin, Jingdong, Sogou, and Weibo.\13\ 
Examples of censored content covered by these rules include various 
creative homoglyphs for the name ``Xi Jinping,'' references to the June 
4 massacre, material related to religious communities, and criticisms 
of the Communist Party. Citizen Lab research also demonstrates that 
platforms institute different levels of censorship which fully or 
partially censor search results for key terms. Partial or ``soft'' 
censorship provides results from authorized sources like Chinese 
government websites or state media, while full or ``hard'' censorship 
provides no results.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\ Jeffrey Knockel, Ken Kato, and Emile Dirks, ``Missing Links: A 
comparison of search censorship in China,'' The Citizen Lab, https://
citizenlab.ca/2023/04/a-comparison-of-search-censorship-in-china/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Citizen Lab researchers have also detailed how China-accessible 
platforms including WeChat censor discussion of political events. These 
events include activism in Hong Kong, crackdowns on human rights 
lawyers, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deaths of Nobel Peace Prize 
winner Liu Xiaobo and former premier Li Keqiang.\14\ Results from these 
research investigations demonstrate how China-
accessible platforms suppress politically sensitive information and 
promote narratives favourable to the Chinese state.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ ``Censored Commemoration: Chinese Live Streaming Platform YY 
Focuses Censorship on June 4 Memorials and Activism in Hong Kong,'' The 
Citizen Lab, June 4 2019 https://citizenlab.ca/2019/06/censored-
commemoration-chinese-live-streaming-platform-yy-focuses-
censorship-june-4-memorials-activism-hong-kong/; Lotus Ruan, Jeffrey 
Knockel, and Masashi Crete-Nishihata, ``We (can't) Chat: `709 
Crackdown' Discussions Blocked on Weibo and WeChat,'' The Citizen Lab, 
April 13 2017, https://citizenlab.ca/2017/04/we-cant-chat-709-
crackdown-discussions-blocked-on-weibo-and-wechat/; Lotus Ruan, Jeffrey 
Knockel, and Masashi Crete-Nishihata, ``Censored Contagion: How 
Information on the Coronavirus is Managed on Chinese Social Media,'' 
The Citizen Lab, March 3 2020, https://citizenlab.ca/2020/03/censored-
contagion-how-
information-on-the-coronavirus-is-managed-on-chinese-social-media/; 
Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Jeffrey Knockel, Blake Miller, Jason Q. Ng, 
Lotus Ruan, Lokman Tsui, and Ruohan Xiong, ``Remembering Liu Xiaobo: 
Analyzing censorship of the death of Liu Xiaobo on WeChat and Weibo,'' 
The Citizen Lab, June 16 2017, https://citizenlab.ca/2017/07/analyzing-
censorship-of-the-death-of-liu-xiaobo-on-wechat-and-weibo/; Jeffrey 
Knockel and Emile Dirks, ``Chinese censorship following the death of Li 
Keqiang,'' The Citizen Lab, November 21 2023, https://citizenlab.ca/
2023/11/chinese-censorship-following-the-death-of-li-keqiang/.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part Two: The Role of U.S.-Based Companies in Online Censorship

    While Chinese tech companies are the key players in online 
censorship in China, U.S. companies are also involved. For instance, in 
2018 leaked documents revealed that Google was planning to release an 
app in China that would implement political censorship, a plan they 
abandoned in 2019 after criticism from within and outside the 
company.\15\ On their China-accessible platforms, U.S. companies have 
imposed restrictions on political and religious content. And like the 
restrictions imposed by Chinese counterparts, those imposed by U.S. 
companies have impacted users both inside China and in other world 
regions, including the United States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ Ryan Gallagher, ``Google Plans To Launch Censored Search 
Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal,'' The Intercept, August 1 
2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-
censorship/; Sarah McKune and Ronald Deibert, ``Google's Dragonfly: A 
Bellwether for Human Rights in the Digital Age,'' Just Security, August 
2 2018, https://www.justsecurity.org/59941/googles-dragonfly-
bellwether-human-rights-digital-age/; ``Google's Project Dragonfly 
`terminated' in China,'' BBC News, July 17 2019, https://www.bbc.com/
news/technology-49015516.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Citizen Lab research shows that the Chinese version of Microsoft's 
Bing, the only major non-Chinese search engine accessible in China, 
engages in extensive censorship.\16\ In China, Bing only displays 
results for censored search queries from authorized websites, such as 
government and state media websites. Like Chinese search platforms, 
Bing's censorship rules target political material related to Xi 
Jinping, religious material, references to Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu 
Xiaobo, and terms related to the June 4 massacre. Compared with Baidu, 
Bing's political censorship rules are also broader, affect more search 
results, and lead to search results for a greater number of websites 
being restricted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\ Jeffrey Knockel and Emile Dirks, ``Chinese censorship 
following the death of Li Keqiang,'' The Citizen Lab, November 21 2023, 
https://citizenlab.ca/2023/11/chinese-censorship-following-the-death-
of-li-keqiang/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The impact of censorship on Bing is not limited to users within 
China. Citizen Lab researchers found that Bing's censorship of search 
suggestions, though not search results, was applied to users in the 
United States and other countries for at least 8 months from October 
2021 to May 2022.\17\ Bing's censorship of politically sensitive search 
suggestions in both English and Chinese applied to multiple regions 
outside China, including the United States and Canada.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\ Jeffrey Knockel and Lotus Ruan, ``Bada Bing, Bada Boom: 
Microsoft Bing's Chinese Political Censorship of Autosuggestions in 
North America,'' The Citizen Lab, May 19 2022 https://citizenlab.ca/
2022/05/bada-bing-bada-boom-microsoft-bings-chinese-political-
censorship-
autosuggestions-north-america/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Suggestions including the names of politically sensitive figures 
were censored, including those of Xi Jinping, the doctor Li Wenliang 
who had warned his colleagues about early Covid-19 infections in Wuhan, 
religious figures including the 11th Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, 
and references to the ``Tank Man'' photographed standing in front of a 
column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. In response 
to a May 10, 2022 letter addressed to Microsoft's Chief Digital 
Security Officer, Microsoft communicated to The Citizen Lab that it had 
discovered and resolved a misconfiguration on Bing which had prevented 
valid autosuggestions from appearing for users outside China.\18\ 
However, while Microsoft ceased Chinese political censorship of 
autosuggestions in countries outside of China including the United 
States, there is no indication that Microsoft has ceased censoring 
autosuggestions for users of Bing in China.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ ``Citizen Lab Letter to Microsoft,'' The Citizen Lab, May 10, 
2022, https://citizenlab.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2022/05/Citizen-Letter-to-Microsoft.pdf; Jeffrey 
Knockel and Lotus Ruan, ``Bada Bing, Bada Boom: Microsoft Bing's 
Chinese Political Censorship of Autosuggestions in North America,'' The 
Citizen Lab, May 19 2022, https://citizenlab.ca/2022/05/bada-bing-bada-
boom-microsoft-bings-chinese-political-censorship-autosuggestions-
north-america/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Microsoft is not the only U.S. company which performs Chinese 
political censorship. In 2021, Citizen Lab researchers found that Apple 
applied censorship to product engravings in China.\19\ Censored 
political content included the names of Chinese leaders, Chinese 
dissidents, and independent news organizations, as well as general 
terms related to religion, democracy, and human rights. Apple applied 
these censorship rules not only in China, but in Hong Kong and Taiwan 
as well. Research findings also indicated that Apple did not fully 
understand what content they censored. Instead, many censored keywords 
appeared to have been reappropriated from other sources, including 
censorship lists compiled by Chinese companies. Since the release of 
this report, Apple eliminated Chinese political censorship in Taiwan, 
but has continued keyword-based political censorship in both mainland 
China and Hong Kong.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\ Jeffrey Knockel and Lotus Ruan, ``Engrave Danger: An Analysis 
of Apple Engraving Censorship across Six Regions,'' The Citizen Lab, 
August 18, 2021, https://citizenlab.ca/2021/08/
engrave-danger-an-analysis-of-apple-engraving-censorship-across-six-
regions/.
    \20\ Jeffrey Knockel and Lotus Ruan, ``Engrave Condition: Apple's 
Political Censorship Leaves Taiwan, Remains in Hong Kong,'' The Citizen 
Lab, March 22 2022, https://citizenlab.ca/2022/03/engrave-condition-
apples-political-censorship-leaves-taiwan-remains-in-hong-kong/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Bing and Apple's extensive censorship inside China shows that U.S. 
tech companies cannot introduce services in China without integrating 
restrictions on expression. Furthermore, our findings show that it is 
inevitable that such censorship will be applied, either accidentally or 
otherwise, to users outside of China, including Taiwan and the United 
States.

Part Three: The Offline Harms of Online Censorship

    State-backed restrictions on political and religious expression do 
not exist in a vacuum. Online censorship is linked to offline harms. 
Chinese citizens who attempt to access or share sensitive information 
online do so at risk to their personal freedom. Authorities have jailed 
Chinese citizens for a range of offenses, including selling software 
that allows people to circumvent the Great Firewall, making comments in 
private chat groups, sharing videos of protests, and even posting on 
social media platforms like X (Twitter) which are blocked in China.\21\ 
Such cases highlight the severe rights impacts that censorship has on 
the people of China.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ Benjamin Haas, ``Man in China sentenced to 5 years' jail for 
running VPN,'' The Guardian, December 22, 2017, https://
www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/22/man-in-china-sentenced-to-five-
years-jail-for-running-vpn; Eva Dou, ``Jailed for a Text: China's 
Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups,'' The Wall Street Journal, 
December 8 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-for-a-text-chinas-
censors-are-spying-on-mobile-chat-groups-1512665007; Amy Hawkins, 
``Uyghur student convicted after posting protests video on WeChat,'' 
The Guardian, June 8, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/
08/uyghur-student-convicted-posting-protests-video-wechat-kamile-wayit; 
Chun Han Wong, ``China Is Now Sending Twitter Users to Prison for Posts 
Most Chinese Can't See,'' The Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2021, 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-is-now-sending-twitter-users-to-
prison-for-posts-most-chinese-cant-see-11611932917.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While some Chinese citizens risk detention and even torture for 
their online activities, state-affiliated actors use these same 
platforms to launch attacks against opponents of the party-State. As 
detailed by Citizen Lab researchers, a 2019-2021 harassment campaign 
nicknamed ``HKLEAKS'' used websites and social media to distribute 
personal information about Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.\22\ 
Actors involved in the campaign used proprietary websites and social 
media accounts to publish personal identifiable information about 
targeted activists. Those connected to the campaign claimed they were 
members of Hong Kong volunteer committees. However, Citizen Lab 
researchers uncovered indications that this was a coordinated 
information operation conducted by professional actors aligned with the 
Chinese State.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ Alberto Fittarelli and Lokman Tsui, ``Beautiful Bauhinia: 
``HKLeaks''--The Use of Covert and Overt Online Harassment Tactics to 
Repress 2019 Hong Kong Protests,'' The Citizen Lab, July 13 2023, 
https://citizenlab.ca/2023/07/hkleaks-covert-and-overt-online-
harassment-tactics-to-repress-the-2019-hong-kong-protests/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Victims of other online harassment campaigns live outside China. 
This Commission has previously discussed how the Chinese government 
silences overseas critics through transnational repression.\23\ For 
years, the Chinese government has used transnational repression to 
intimidate, threaten, and surveil diaspora members it views as 
threats.\24\ Many of these victims are Tibetan.\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\ ``Countering China's Global Transnational Repression 
Campaign,'' CECC, September 12, 2023, https://www.cecc.gov/events/
hearings/countering-chinas-global-transnational-repression-campaign; 
``Preserving Tibet: Combating Cultural Erasure, Forced Assimilation and 
Transnational Repression,'' CECC, March 28, 2023, https://www.cecc.gov/
events/hearings/
preserving-tibet-combating-cultural-erasure-forced-assimilation-and-
transnational; ``The Threat of Transnational Repression From China and 
The U.S. Response,'' CECC, June 15 2022, https://www.cecc.gov/events/
hearings/the-threat-of-transnational-repression-from-china-and-the-us-
response.
    \24\ Eric Hsu and Ai-Men Lau, ``Silenced Voices, Hidden Struggles: 
PRC Transnational Repression on Overseas Human Right Activists,'' 
Doublethink Lab, June 1 2023, https://doublethinklab.medium.com/
silenced-voices-hidden-struggles-prc-transnational-repression-on-
overseas-human-right-activists-8f34aeee7ae6; ``China: Transnational 
Repression Origin Country Case Study,'' Freedom House, 2021, https://
freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/china; `` `They Don't 
Understand the Fear We Have': How China's Long Reach of Repression 
Undermines Academic Freedom at Australia's Universities,'' Human Rights 
Watch, June 30, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/06/30/they-dont-
understand-fear-we-have/how-chinas-long-reach-repression-undermines.
    \25\ ``Chinese Transnational Repression of Tibetan Diaspora 
Communities 2024,'' Tibetan Centre for Human Rights & Democracy, 2024, 
https://tchrd.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Chinese-Transnational-
Repression-of-Tibetan-Diaspora-Communities.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Since 2009, Citizen Lab researchers have investigated digital 
attacks and espionage against Tibetan diaspora communities. These 
attacks include cyber espionage programs targeting Tibetan 
institutions, one-click mobile exploits and malware used to install 
spyware in a target's phone, and phishing operations conducted against 
diaspora Tibetan organizations.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\ Jane, ``Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage 
Network,'' The Citizen Lab, March 28 2009, https://citizenlab.ca/2009/
03/tracking-ghostnet-investigating-a-cyber-espionage-network/; Adam 
Hulcoop, Matt Brooks, Etienne Maynier, John Scott-Railton, and Masashi 
Crete-Nishihata, ``It's Parliamentary KeyBoy and the targeting of the 
Tibetan Community,'' The Citizen Lab, November 17, 2016, https://
citizenlab.ca/2016/11/parliament-keyboy/; Jakub Dalek, Masashi Crete-
Nishihata, and John Scott-Railton, ``Shifting Tactics: Tracking changes 
in years-long espionage campaign against Tibetans,'' The Citizen Lab, 
March 10, 2016, https://citizenlab.ca/2016/03/shifting-tactics/; Katie 
Kleemola, Masashi Crete-Nishihata, and John Scott-Railton, ``Tibetan 
Uprising Day Malware Attacks,'' The Citizen Lab, March 10 2015, https:/
/citizenlab.ca/2015/03/tibetan-uprising-day-malware-attacks/; Geoffrey 
Alexander, Matt Brooks, Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Etienne Maynier, John 
Scott-Railton, and Ron Deibert, ``Spying on a Budget: Inside a Phishing 
Operation with Targets in the Tibetan Community,'' The Citizen Lab, 
January 30, 2018, https://citizenlab.ca/2018/01/spying-on-a-budget-
inside-a-phishing-operation-with-targets-in-the-tibetan-community; Bill 
Marczak, Adam Hulcoop, Etienne Maynier, Bahr Abdul Razzak, Masashi 
Crete-Nishihata, John Scott-Railton, and Ron Deibert, ``Missing Link: 
Tibetan Groups Targeted with 1-Click Mobile Exploits,'' The Citizen 
Lab, September 24, 2019, https://citizenlab.ca/2019/09/poison-carp-
tibetan-groups-targeted-with-1-click-mobile-exploits/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    State-backed proxies and online nationalists also harass Chinese, 
Hong Kong, Tibetan, Uyghur, and other diaspora members on Chinese and 
U.S. social media platforms. Some of the most vicious instances of 
digital transnational repression are directed at women.\27\ As Citizen 
Lab researchers have documented, Chinese and Hong Kong women activists 
in Canada have suffered online threats of physical and sexual 
violence.\28\ Digital transnational repression has profound 
consequences for victims and their relatives. Many suffer intense 
psychological harm, while others self-censor or limit their online 
activities. Still others have had to contend with state harassment of 
family members in China, a form of transnational repression known as 
coercion-by-proxy.'' \29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ Albert Zhang and Danielle Cave, ``Smart Asian women are the 
new targets of CCP global online repression,'' The Strategist, June 3, 
2022, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/smart-asian-women-are-the-new-
targets-of-ccp-global-online-repression/.
    \28\ Noura Al-Jizawi, Siena Anstis, Sophie Barnett, Sharly Chan, 
Niamh Leonard, Adam Senft, and Ron Deibert, ``Psychological and 
Emotional War: Digital Transnational Repression in Canada,'' The 
Citizen Lab, March 1, 2022, https://citizenlab.ca/2022/03/
psychological-emotional-war-digital-transnational-repression-canada/.
    \29\ Fiona B. Adamson and Gerasimos Tsourapas, ``At Home and 
Abroad: Coercion-by-Proxy as a Tool of Transnational Repression,'' 
Freedom House, 2020,https://freedomhouse.org/report/
special-report/2020/home-and-abroad-coercion-proxy-tool-transnational-
repression.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommendations

    Through state-backed online censorship, the cooperation of Chinese 
and U.S. technology companies, and domestic and transnational 
repression, the Chinese state severely restricts the freedom of opinion 
and expression of people in and outside China. Addressing restrictions 
on these freedoms requires holding Chinese and U.S. companies 
responsible for their role in online censorship and supporting victims 
of digital harassment and intimidation. Therefore, I recommend that the 
U.S. Government do three things:

        One, publicly request that Microsoft, Apple, and other U.S. 
        companies explain how and why they implement political and 
        religious censorship on their platforms in China. Citizen Lab 
        researchers have discovered censorship rules that U.S. 
        companies have implemented on China-accessible platforms and 
        measured the breadth and impact of these rules. However, it is 
        not clear how U.S. companies develop and implement these 
        censorship rules, nor why U.S. companies are willing to censor 
        political and religious content on their China-accessible 
        platforms. Requesting Microsoft, Apple, and other U.S. 
        companies to provide this information would contribute to more 
        informed and effective policies pertaining to addressing the 
        rights and privacy impacts of online platforms and digital 
        technologies.

        Two, publicly request that Microsoft explain how political and 
        religious censorship was applied to the search suggestions of 
        users of Bing outside China and what safeguards will ensure 
        that this will not reoccur. Citizen Lab researchers discovered 
        that for a period of at least 8 months from October 2021 to May 
        2022 Microsoft's Bing search engine censored politically 
        sensitive Chinese search suggestions in different world 
        regions, including the United States. It is unclear why 
        Microsoft censored these suggestions and what steps Microsoft 
        has taken to prevent this kind of censorship from reoccurring. 
        Requesting Microsoft answer these questions would deepen 
        understanding of how individuals outside China, including in 
        the United States, are impacted by Chinese state-backed 
        censorship on China-accessible platforms.

        And three, train U.S. Government officials, including law 
        enforcement and immigration authorities, to recognize digital 
        transnational repression and properly assist victims and their 
        families. Many victims of transnational repression, including 
        digital transnational repression, live in the United States. 
        The U.S. Government has a duty to protect both U.S. and non-
        U.S. citizens who are victims of transnational repression. 
        Providing protection requires recognizing the severity of the 
        problem. Personnel working in relevant government offices, 
        including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and 
        Federal, State, and local law enforcement, should receive 
        training to help them identify both victims and perpetrators of 
        transnational repression. Training should also include learning 
        how to conduct outreach to victims and their families and how 
        to provide appropriate assistance to those at risk of 
        transnational repression. By helping victims of transnational 
        repression in the United States, the U.S. government will 
        demonstrate support for those exercising their freedom of 
        expression and opinion on and offline.

    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to 
your questions and comments.

                    Prepared Statement of Sophie Luo

    Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cochairman, and distinguished members of the 
Commission, thank you so much for holding this hearing and for inviting 
me to speak. Today's hearing is so important to me, as the wife of 
imprisoned Chinese human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi. We must continue to 
speak out about the horrific human rights violations committed by the 
PRC government and the Chinese Communist Party. This is all the more 
important in the wake of the Chinese official delegation's denials 
about its human rights abuses and the Chinese government's allies' 
empty praise of poverty alleviation and so-called rights safeguards at 
the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva last Tuesday, January 23, 
2024.
    As I begin my testimony, I want to thank the Commission for 
tweeting about cases of political prisoners on social media in advance 
of the PRC's UPR. More broadly, I would like to publicly thank the U.S. 
Government for its robust statement during the UPR and its advance 
questions, including the focus on political prisoners and human rights 
defenders arbitrarily detained by the PRC government.
    Since my testimony 2 years ago at the CECC hearing in February 2022 
at the time of the Beijing Winter Olympics, I have spoken at length 
about the cases of my husband Ding Jiaxi and his colleague and co-
defendant, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, whom Chinese authorities detained 
after they held a private gathering of friends to discuss civil society 
and the rule of law in China. Chinese authorities held Ding and Xu in 
pre-trial detention for nearly 2 years and 6 months before trying them 
secretly in June 2022 and sentencing them in April 2023 to 12 and 14 
years in prison. To date, no verdict has been issued to the families. 
After the Shandong High People's Court refused their appeal, 
authorities sent my husband Ding Jiaxi to Jiangbei Prison in Hubei 
province, and Xu Zhiyong to Lunan Prison in Shandong province in 
November 2023.
    In April 2023, following the announcement of Jiaxi's verdict, I had 
the honor of testifying before Chairman Smith at a hearing of the House 
Foreign Affairs Committee together with Ms. Geng He, the wife of 
disappeared lawyer Gao Zhisheng. Geng He and I discussed how Chinese 
authorities persecute human rights defenders through forced 
disappearance, secret detention, torture, coerced confession, 
fabricating criminal evidence, closed-door trials and sentences, and 
the use of ongoing surveillance even after human rights defenders are 
released. These constitute violations of the Chinese constitution and 
laws as well as the international laws and conventions that the Chinese 
government is obligated to adhere to and respect.
    Today, I am holding up an image that shows many current political 
prisoners in China. My heart aches terribly every time I see this 
picture, but I put it on my desk at home, and I look at it every day. I 
must let the world know the true human rights situation in China. I 
must fight for their rights and call for the release of all of them!
    There are many more prisoners beyond this image. Some of their 
cases are documented in the Commission's Political Prisoner Database 
(PPD)--the research staff informed me that there are now 11,116 records 
in the CECC's PPD, among which 2,714 are cases of currently detained 
individuals. Human rights NGOs such as Chinese Human Rights Defenders, 
Hong Kong Watch, the Dui Hua Foundation, various Uyghur and Tibetan 
groups, the China Aid Association, Falun Gong groups, and others have 
also documented detentions.
    For the remainder of my testimony, I will highlight the main human 
rights-
violating tactics used by Chinese authorities against human rights 
defenders with specific case examples.

    No. 1: Forced disappearance. Prominent human rights lawyer Gao 
Zhisheng was ``disappeared'' in August 2017, and his family in the U.S. 
have had no news of him since then. Sun Wenguang, an outspoken retired 
professor at Shandong University, was in the middle of an interview 
with Voice of America (VOA) when police broke into his home in Jinan 
and forced him off the air on August 1, 2018. A few days later, the 84-
year-old scholar and his wife disappeared. Their well-being and 
whereabouts were unknown until March 2022, when news emerged that he 
died in secret detention in 2021, age 86, and his family and friends 
had been silenced. The circumstances surrounding his death remain 
unclear. In October 2020, pregnant public health activist He Fangmei 
was disappeared together with her husband and two children, after she 
splashed paint on the gate of a government office in Huixian. The 
family was not heard from for more than a year. In March 2022, Ms. He's 
sister received a notice about her arrest. Then through a lawyer the 
family learned that Ms. He had given birth to a baby girl in a 
psychiatric hospital in Huixian; her two young daughters, including the 
older girl who had become disabled as a 1-year-old due to a faulty 
vaccine, are still locked up in the hospital, even after their mother, 
He Fangmei, was taken to a detention center; her husband Li Xin, also 
an activist, was sentenced to 5 years in prison; her son has been 
placed in foster care. He Fangmei is still waiting for a verdict. Dong 
Yaoqiong, who famously splashed ink on Xi Jinping's portrait on July 4, 
2018, was locked up in a psychiatric hospital in Zhuzhou, Hunan for the 
third time on February 6, 2021. She has not been heard from since. Her 
father, Dong Jianbiao, died in prison under suspicious circumstances in 
September 2022. Another Hunan-based human rights activist, Wang Yifei, 
who was previously jailed for commemorating the Tiananmen Square 
Massacre, disappeared in May 2022. He had written several articles 
about his experience in the detention center and prison. He is believed 
to have been taken by State security in Changsha but no details are 
known. Peng Lifa disappeared in October 2022 after he held an 
individual protest on a bridge in Beijing, calling on Xi Jinping to 
step down due to the Chinese government's harsh zero-COVID policy. The 
whereabouts of Peng's wife and child are also unknown, and they are 
believed to be held under some form of detention. Qiao Xinxin (a.k.a. 
Yang Zewei), who was a passionate fighter against China's censorship 
apparatus, the ``Great Firewall,'' was taken into incommunicado 
detention by Chinese police from his residence in Laos and extradited 
back to China in June 2023, and his whereabouts were unknown for more 
than 2 months before news emerged that he had been held in a detention 
center in Hunan province.

    No. 2: Torture, especially while held under ``residential 
surveillance at a designated location'' (RSDL). RSDL is a form of 
incommunicado detention that allows authorities to hold individuals for 
up to 6 months. Political prisoners are extremely vulnerable to torture 
and other forms of maltreatment during RSDL. Both Ding Jiaxi and Xu 
Zhiyong were held for months in RSDL and reported that they were 
severely tortured. In recent years, torture also has been reported in 
prison--in other words, after rights defenders have spent considerable 
time in detention centers, and then are tried, sentenced, and 
transferred to prisons. One such example is the torture of the unjustly 
imprisoned young computer coder Niu Tengyu, the Guangdong-based female 
veteran rights activist Li Biyun, and Nanjing-based dissident Shao 
Mingliang. Both Li and Shao have disabilities and were subjected to 
horrendous mistreatment and torture in prison.

    No. 3: Lengthy pre-trial detention. Li Yuhan is a defense lawyer, 
and she represented one of the ``709'' lawyers, Wang Yu. Li was 
detained, tortured, and suffered many health problems in the detention 
center for 6 years before her first trial was held in October 2023.

    No. 4: Lack of access to medical treatment in detention and denial 
of medical parole. Li Qiaochu was detained because she spoke up for her 
partner, the legal scholar Xu Zhiyong. She had mental health challenges 
even before being detained. After detention, she experienced severe 
auditory hallucinations and needed medical treatment. Her mother 
submitted over 10 requests for medical parole, but all were denied. 
Most detainees who were tortured suffered from many types of health 
issues in the detention center or in prison but had no access to 
medical treatment. Zhang Zhan, who is serving 4 years in prison in 
Shanghai for reporting on COVID-19 from Wuhan, has been gravely ill as 
she has been on hunger strikes to protest her innocence since her 
arrest in May 2020. Her family and lawyer's applications for medical 
parole were declined too. Yang Maodong (a.k.a. Guo Feixiong) was 
arrested in December 2021. His health also steadily declined as a 
result of a hunger strike following his request to leave China and 
visit his terminally ill wife in the U.S. She died in January 2022. 
Yang is now serving 8 years in prison for ``inciting subversion.''

    No. 5: Heavy prison sentences for human rights defenders. Uyghur 
scholar and ethnic rights advocate Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life 
imprisonment in 2014 on the charge of ``splitting the country.'' China 
democracy advocate Wang Bingzhang was sentenced to life in prison in 
2003 for alleged espionage and organizing and leading a terrorist 
group. Many rights defenders have been sentenced to more than 10 years 
on fabricated or trumped-up charges.

    No. 6: Restricting defense lawyers' rights or imposing officially 
assigned lawyers on the detainee. Defense lawyers face multiple 
obstacles in representing human rights defenders, such as authorities 
not allowing lawyers to meet with their detained clients and 
withholding case documents and evidence, all of which are in violation 
of Chinese lawyers' legal practice rights. The Chinese authorities also 
pressure or coerce legal counsel representing human rights defenders to 
sign confidentiality agreements, thus preventing defense lawyers from 
speaking publicly about cases that authorities deem to be politically 
sensitive. This has a further negative impact in that Chinese 
authorities thus have space to malign human rights defenders or 
publicize false information about them. Chinese authorities often 
assign a lawyer of their choosing to legally represent rights defenders 
in order to cover up the truth of the case. This was evident in the 
case of Ruan Xiaohuan, a computer engineer who provided information to 
the public about how to circumvent the ``Great Firewall.'' Since Ruan's 
first trial, his family has been fighting very hard to authorize a 
lawyer for Ruan during the appeal trial instead of the officially 
assigned lawyers.

    No. 7: Forced labor in prison. Cheng Yuan, the managing director of 
an NGO and rights advocate, and Ou Biaofeng, another rights advocate, 
reportedly had to engage in forced labor at Chishan Prison in Hunan 
province. Cheng Yuan recently was moved to a different unit in Chishan 
Prison where he no longer has to do forced labor, according to his wife 
Shi Minglei, who now lives in the U.S. The Taiwanese rights defender 
Lee Ming-che, who also was held in Chishan Prison, reported that he 
worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day at Chishan Prison while he 
served a 5-year prison sentence.

    No. 8: Randomly depriving political prisoners of their lawful right 
to be visited by family members. The Sichuan-based rights defender 
Huang Qi is serving a 12-year prison sentence and has not been allowed 
to see his mother since 2019. His mother is now 90 years old and is 
suffering from cancer. Similarly, both Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong have 
been deprived of their right to meet with their families and to 
communicate with them by letter to this day.

    No. 9: ``Non-release release.'' Shanghai authorities released 
rights defender Cheng Jianfang in October 2024, but a group of 
plainclothes police have been outside her home surveilling her since 
that time, preventing her from enjoying her right to freedom of 
movement and association, including for medical appointments or to meet 
with friends. Another veteran activist Yin Xu'an served a 4-year 
sentence for commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre and was 
released in November 2023. He was immediately placed under house arrest 
and has not been given medication for his extremely high blood 
pressure. On December 5, 2023, he told friends that his blood pressure 
was 270/170 mm Hg and he urgently needed to seek medical treatment. 
Since then, Yin has been out of contact. He is believed to be in a 
hospital under surveillance. His phone must have been confiscated and 
his family has not been told where he is. Other ``non-release release'' 
cases include the aforementioned Li Biyun and Shao Mingliang, who have 
been under around-the-clock surveillance and deprived of the right to 
seek medical treatment.

    No. 10: Persecution and/or harassment of the families of human 
rights
defenders:

     1. Detain and put into prison the rights defender's wife or loved 
ones: Representative cases include Xu Yan, wife of detained human 
rights lawyer Yu Wensheng; Wang Liqin, wife of imprisoned poet Wang 
Zang; and Li Qiaochu, girlfriend of Xu Zhiyong. The children of rights 
defenders often suffer mental and physical health challenges due to the 
heavy pressure and surveillance placed on them. Additionally, the 
children are frequently prevented from accessing an education when both 
their parents are in prison. Among the most worrying cases currently 
are the three young children of He Fangmei and Li Xin, both rights 
defenders.

     2. Deprive the children of rights defenders of their right to 
attend school. For example, authorities have prevented the children of 
human rights lawyers Li Heping and Wang Quanzhang from going to school 
in China for more than 8 years.

     3. Impose travel bans not only on the rights defenders but also on 
their families. There are many human rights defenders who have been 
banned from traveling, including Ding Jiaxi and lawyer Lu Siwei, who 
was sent back to China while trying to cross the border into Laos. 
Lawyers Wang Quanzhang and Li Heping and their families have not been 
allowed to go abroad. Chinese authorities also banned their children 
from going abroad. Children of rights defenders have been severely 
harassed and prevented from leaving China to receive an education 
abroad. This reflects a wider problem of the harassment of family 
members.

     4. Pressure landlords to revoke rental agreements. Lawyers Wang 
Quanzhang and Li Heping and their families were forced to move many 
times last year and continue to expect that their housing may suddenly 
be revoked.

     5. Economically destroy the rights defender's capacity to support 
himself and his family. The Chinese authorities confiscated the life 
savings of Ilham Tohti shortly after he was sentenced, leaving his 
family in China to face severe economic difficulties. Plainclothes 
police officers often harass rights defenders when they are trying to 
find a job, leaving them jobless and their families in a difficult 
economic situation.

    I could go on and on, but due to time constraints, I am not able to 
describe all the forms of persecution that Chinese human rights 
defenders and their families are facing.
    Before ending my testimony, I would like to put forward a few 
recommendations for action that I think the U.S. Government and 
international society could take to help political prisoners and their 
families:

    1.  Human rights officers based in China from the United States and 
other countries should request to visit detention centers and prisons 
and should report whether these detention facilities are not compliant 
with Chinese detention center regulations or Chinese prison law. 
Routinely ask for such access so that Chinese authorities can't say no 
easily.

    2.  Apply visa restrictions on those working at the Public Security 
Bureau, the Procuratorate, and the Courts who are directly involved in 
the human rights defender persecution cases, especially those who are 
involved in implementing various forms of torture, for example, the 
perpetrators who inflicted grievous harm on lawyer Gao Zhisheng and 
were named by Gao in his written testimony.

    3.  Human rights officers based in China from the U.S. and other 
countries should visit human right defenders' families instead of 
inviting them to go to the foreign embassy only to be blocked or 
detained on their way.

    4.  Call for humanitarian assistance and education for the children 
of rights defenders when both parents have been detained or imprisoned 
by Chinese authorities.

    5.  Call for international attention to the children of rights 
defenders who are not allowed to go to school because of their parents' 
rights activism.

    6.  Request medical parole or call for humanitarian assistance to 
political prisoners serving life sentences and require the release of 
elderly political prisoners and those in bad health, such as Wang 
Bingzhang and Qin Yongmin.

    I deeply appreciated the countries, in addition to the U.S., that 
specifically asked the Chinese government to end arbitrary detention 
and forced disappearance, and its abusive treatment of human rights 
defenders, during the UPR. I look forward to your continuous support of 
the families of human rights defenders to fight for basic rights and to 
seek the unconditional release of these arbitrarily detained political 
prisoners!
    Thank you!
                                 ______
                                 

                   Prepared Statement of Rushan Abbas

    Chairman Smith, Chairman Merkley, Ranking Members, members of the 
Commission and staff, I express my gratitude for this opportunity to 
submit my testimony. My purpose is to document my observations during 
the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group session held in 
Geneva on January 23, 2024, where the international community took 
stock of China's human rights record. I will also provide an account of 
reports, side events, and claims made by the Chinese Communist Party 
during the UPR session.
    Universal Periodic Reviews are intended for a genuine exchange 
within the U.N. framework. This one, however, occurred amid an ongoing 
genocide that the United Nations and its member states have chosen to 
ignore, except for a select few. More than anything else, this UPR 
session underscored the difficulty in holding China accountable for its 
human rights atrocities against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, 
Southern Mongolians, and Chinese dissidents, as well as the systemic 
challenges China poses against the international system.
    In Geneva, I witnessed how a totalitarian state aiming to silence 
dissent and legitimize its oppression worldwide worked to exploit this 
U.N. mechanism to receive an international seal of endorsement. The 
event that unfolded in Geneva made it evident that a significant 
accountability gap exists within our global framework concerning human 
rights and justice.
    I would like to underline, by providing a telling example, that the 
U.N. system is under immense pressure from China. The main takeaway of 
the August 2022 report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human 
Rights was that Beijing's actions in the Uyghur region could constitute 
``crimes against humanity.'' This is a grave allegation that the U.N. 
cannot--and did not--raise without compelling evidence. However, it was 
disheartening to see that the U.N.'s official compilation of its own 
reports, as part of the UPR process, conspicuously left this conclusion 
out.
    As much as Campaign for Uyghurs was relieved to see that this 
damning conclusion of a report by the U.N. itself was at least 
mentioned through our organization in the summary of the civil society 
reporting produced by the United Nations, the fact that the U.N. is 
debilitated to the point of not being able to refer to its own 
reporting without hiding behind a civil society organization shows the 
level of China's undue pressure under which the U.N. system currently 
operates.
    This UPR was marred by the PRC's manipulative tactics aimed at 
stifling genuine critique and dialogue. Before the session began, we 
could see droves of pro-Chinese students and Chinese government-
organized NGOs sent to overcrowd the venue to restrict access for 
authentic human rights representatives. The mission of these operatives 
was clearly to limit civil society participation, and it took our 
persistent efforts with the U.N. Secretariat to secure access to the 
hall that clearly had more available space.
    Defying the U.N.'s clear protocols, pro-China individuals spent 
hours in the upstairs gallery photographing member state delegates and 
activists from Uyghur, Tibetan, and Chinese dissenter groups, including 
myself, during the review. Another pro-China attendee was taking 
pictures of Tibetan and Uyghur rights defenders as we were standing in 
line to enter the hall, and unfortunately, it took repeated calls from 
activists to get U.N. security to stop this individual.
    I saw a pro-Chinese attendee jotting down notes on his phone while 
looking over at an Uyghur activist's computer. This deliberate 
surveillance occurred inside the United Nations, a space meant for 
secure and open discussion on human rights. These are common tactics 
used by the CCP to intimidate and monitor human rights advocates in 
international forums, especially those dedicated to unveiling the true 
state of human rights in China.
    At the session, a record number of 163 countries requested to speak 
during the interactive dialog between member states, and each was 
granted just 45 seconds to provide recommendations. Of these, over 120 
countries either chose to ignore China's dark record or commend its so-
called progress. This included nations that, by their own account, 
should stand against repression--and not endorse it. It was jarring how 
sharply this orchestrated praise contradicted the realities of PRC rule 
that subjects marginalized groups to indefensible persecution in so-
called re-education camps.
    Surreal praise from countries, such as for ``bolstering religious 
tolerance in Xinjiang,'' and hailing of China's so-called ``commitment 
to guaranteeing the right to freedom of religion or belief,'' ring 
hollow against the backdrop of over a million Uyghurs detained in an 
ongoing genocide, with their basic human rights stripped away. 
Similarly, endorsements of China's policies by nations like Russia 
reflected a disturbing alignment with the PRC's attempts to eradicate 
Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, and Hongkongers along with 
their rich cultural diversity and identity. Witnessing the subversion 
of the UPR process was a gravely worrying sight to behold.
    At this point, I want to applaud U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor for 
her resolute stance among the 28 countries that spoke against human 
rights atrocities. In just 45 seconds, Ambassador Taylor delivered 
eight recommendations on the ongoing Uyghur genocide and violations in 
Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao, and mainland China.
    As the session got underway, we became aware that China had 
released a white paper on ``counterterrorism'' timed to distort facts 
and spread misinformation about the Uyghur people. This move aimed to 
divert attention from the ongoing genocide and shape a narrative more 
favorable to China's interests. Despite conclusive research and 
survivor testimony, side events organized by the Chinese government and 
NGOs presented propaganda that cast doubt on the established evidence.
    This white paper alleges to provide a legal framework for what 
China misleadingly calls counterterrorism, when reports from several 
credible sources show that Uyghurs are being arbitrarily detained on 
false terrorism charges, even for uttering a common Islamic greeting, 
``Assalamualaikum,'' which means ``Peace be unto you''--a common wish 
of Abrahamic religions.
    Participating in religious activities such as attending religious 
classes, fasting, and going on religious pilgrimages is also considered 
grounds for arrest. The release of this new white paper, strategically 
timed to be published as the UPR session was underway, should be 
understood as an indicator of China's confidence on the overall outcome 
of its Universal Periodic Review, a victory lap as China successfully 
cajoled and coerced many nations into silence on its abysmal human 
rights record.
    At side events organized by pro-China groups and aided by the 
Chinese mission in Geneva, several speakers tried to whitewash China's 
human rights atrocities. In one such attempt, a so-called scholar from 
the Chinese Medical Association presented fabrications on the Uyghur 
region, disputing the evidence of forced medical treatment and forced 
sterilization among ethnic minority groups to suppress Uyghur 
birthrates. In another instance, the China Society for Human Rights 
Studies had brought a ``token'' Uyghur by the name of Remina Xiaokaiti 
who showered praise for what she called significant progress in 
employment and human rights in Xinjiang, attributing it to Chinese 
modernization efforts. This individual also accused Western countries 
of fabricating ``forced labor'' claims as a means of imposing sanctions 
and undermining China's prosperity.
    Another individual by the name of Suolang Zhuoma from another 
government-
organized NGO, China Tibetology Research Center, praised China for its 
efforts to sustain traditional Tibetan culture through investments in 
preserving key cultural relics, encouraging young people's interest in 
traditional art, and supporting cultural festivals. Continued 
references to Xizang, a name constructed for Tibet by the Chinese 
Communist Party, unfortunately pointed to a worrying trend adopted by 
the CCP to improve its efforts to gradually erase the name of Tibet 
from the United Nations system.
    China's manipulation of the U.N. and its blatant abuse of the 
international system undermines principles of justice, human rights, 
and fair representation. Their maneuvers compromise the U.N.'s 
integrity and pose a direct threat to global stability and human 
dignity. In my opinion, China's calculated attempts were indeed 
successful in shielding its egregious crimes from scrutiny and eroded 
the U.N.'s founding principles and purpose. The international community 
must unite against such tactics to preserve the U.N. as a beacon of 
peace, free from exploitation.
    Overall, my observation is that what transpired in Geneva was not 
an isolated incident but a symptom of a much larger issue. The PRC's 
conduct at the UPR, and the permissive attitude in that room, served as 
a microcosm of China's broader disregard for international norms, human 
rights, and the dignity of Uyghurs and other persecuted communities.
    It must be said: China is bent on trying to silence those who can 
speak about the real state of human rights in China. It became clear to 
me that in Geneva, the PRC operates with an audacious sense of 
impunity, treating the U.N. as if it were their own playground and 
getting what they want. The United States must recognize the gravity of 
this situation and the urgency with which it demands a response. It's 
high time nations stood firm against such bold affronts, ensuring that 
the U.N. remains true to the vision of Eleanor Roosevelt rather than a 
rubber stamp for a global offense on freedom.
    According to the rules of the UPR's interactive session, civil 
society organizations are not granted an opportunity to speak. I am 
grateful for this opportunity to correct the record and speak on the 
real state of human rights in China.
    Thank you.
                                 ______
                                 

                 Prepared Statement of Hon. Chris Smith

    Good morning. Today's hearing, ``The PRC's Universal Periodic 
Review and the Real State of Human Rights in China,'' will come to 
order.
    Last week, at the Universal Periodic Review of the People's 
Republic of China at the United Nations, the Chinese Communist Party 
thought that it could drown out the truth of its shameful human rights 
record, enlisting its allies to offer pampering praise instead of 
probing questions, while giving a platform to Party-controlled civil 
society groups over independent non-governmental organizations--
something that is covered in a stand-alone special CECC report that was 
released just yesterday.
    But even Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party, and the PRC's 
massive 60-person delegation could not make a lie true.
    And it is indeed a baldfaced lie that the Chinese Communist Party 
respects, honors, or abides by international human rights norms.
    The truth is that Xi Jinping intends to rewrite and reshape these 
norms, to manipulate even international bodies dedicated to protecting 
human rights to serve his agenda. The truth--on stark display at last 
week's UPR--is that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party 
constitute a systemic challenge to the international rules-based order, 
and reject the very concept of universal human rights.
    In its sham submission for the Universal Periodic Review, the PRC 
claimed that it protects freedom of religion and freedom of expression, 
and looks out for workers, women, ethnic minorities and the vulnerable.
    In reality, Xi Jinping poses an existential threat to these and 
other rights essential for human flourishing.
    He tells journalists that they must be so loyal to the Chinese 
Communist Party that ``Party'' becomes their middle name.
    He tells leaders of religions whose roots in China date back to the 
middle of the first millennia that they must ``sinicize''--which means 
putting allegiance to the Party and to Xi himself before their faith 
and their God.
    He claims that women's equality is a state policy, while the 
Chinese Communist Party decides how many children a woman should have, 
including by the appalling practice of forced abortion, which is still 
a terrible reality in Uyghur and ethnic minority communities, even as 
restrictions have been eased for Han women, a blatantly eugenic policy.
    Despite its best efforts, China has not succeeded at silencing 
those courageous men and women who insist on telling the truth about 
the real state of human rights in China, often at great cost to 
themselves--some have paid with their lives.
    Today, we will hear from a distinguished panel of witnesses. Rana 
Siu Inboden has devoted her academic and professional career to 
exposing the PRC's insidious attempts to undermine human rights.
    Ben Rogers has been a passionate and effective advocate for 
religious freedom in China and now for democracy and human rights in 
Hong Kong, for which he has been denied entry to Hong Kong, threatened 
with prison, and repeatedly harassed.
    Emile Dirks has conducted groundbreaking research exposing China's 
totalitarian surveillance and censorship regimes, documenting the PRC's 
use of dystopian technology to target ethnic and religious groups for 
biometric monitoring and data collection, and scrubbing China's 
internet to create alternate realities.
    And we are particularly honored to have with us today two women who 
have taken extraordinary risks for the cause of human rights, fighting 
on behalf of their family members who are imprisoned by the CCP: Rushan 
Abbas, a powerful advocate for the Uyghur people, whose sister was 
abducted by the Chinese government in retaliation for her activism, and 
Sophie Luo, wife of imprisoned rights defender Ding Jiaxi, herself now 
a dedicated advocate for victims and their families, all while working 
as an accomplished engineer by day.
    Ms. Luo, it is my privilege to share with you that the CECC has 
nominated your husband, Ding Jiaxi, for the Nobel Prize, for his 
tremendous service to the dream of a democratic China. We have also 
nominated his ally and close collaborator, Xu Zhiyong, democracy 
campaigner and free speech champion Jimmy Lai--whose son Sebastien 
testified before this commission last May--and, finally, Uyghur 
activist and scholar Ilham Tohti.
    Today I am also keenly aware of those who are not here, whose 
voices we can no longer hear from--especially the voice of Cao Shunli, 
who died in 2014 at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party precisely 
because of her work to amplify the voices of independent civil society 
as part of China's Universal Periodic Review--the very process we are 
here to talk about today.
    She was taken into custody on her way to Geneva in 2013, where she 
was to participate in a training on human rights for the UPR. The 
Chinese Communist Party cruelly objected to even a moment of silence 
for Cao at the U.N. Human Rights Council. In a hearing I held with this 
Commission after her death, I said Cao Shunli is exactly the type of 
person the Chinese government should embrace--not jail, discredit, and 
leave to die!
    She is not here but her voice is not silent. She speaks, along with 
Liu Xiaobo, who also died in PRC custody, and with Ding Jiaxi and Xu 
Zhiyong, who wrote from jail about their hopes for a democratic China. 
They made enormous sacrifices to tell the truth about the real state of 
human rights in China because they believed in and fought for a better 
China.
    I urge my colleagues and all those joining us today to insist that 
the U.N. and its member states demand the truth about the PRC's human 
rights violations and hold Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party 
to account, in the names of Cao Shunli, Liu Xiaobo, Ding Jiaxi, Xu 
Zhiyong, Jimmy Lai, Ilham Tohti, our brave witnesses and all of those 
who have risked so much for the sake of these most fundamental rights 
and freedoms.
    With that, I'd like to yield to my good friend and colleague, Co-
chair of our Commission, Senator Merkley.

                Prepared Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing. The topic is 
appropriate for our first hearing of 2024, as it covers the wide 
spectrum of human rights challenges in China.
    Both this Commission and the Universal Periodic Review serve as 
mechanisms to review China's compliance with international human rights 
standards, in their own ways. The review of China, the fourth since the 
creation of the UPR process, gives us an opportunity to assess its 
outcomes to help us prioritize our work and inform the recommendations 
we make to Congress and the Administration.
    Members of this Commission will find the issues raised at the UPR 
very familiar. We have documented in our annual reports and explored in 
our hearings genocide against Uyghurs, decimation of freedom in Hong 
Kong, colonial boarding schools in Tibet, and China's pervasive 
surveillance state, among other brutal behaviors.
    These are facts--facts this Commission has reported, facts that 
member states raised in their UPR questions, and facts submitted by the 
U.N. and the stakeholder non-governmental groups to the review session. 
The Chinese government is obligated by international law to address 
these matters and put itself in compliance with the law.
    I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how these issues 
were discussed in Geneva, and recommendations on next steps in terms of 
holding the Chinese government accountable for its numerous violations 
of the law.
    We also hope to hear about the methods the Chinese government 
employs to avoid facing these facts. As one NGO put it, the Chinese 
Communist Party ``gaslights'' the world on its record by self-servingly 
redefining concepts and recruiting allies to deflect attention away 
from its actual conduct. And that conduct is in fact atrocious.
    I commend the attention of Commissioners and the public to our new 
staff report on the prevalence of ``PRC-sympathetic'' groups at the UPR 
and how they distort the process. I offer my appreciation to the staff 
for working so hard to put this piece together.
    The UPR remains a valuable platform for the international community 
to assess the human rights record of China and of every country, 
including our own. It is far from perfect, and we will hear criticisms 
of the process and how the PRC manipulates it.
    But we must also take care not to let such criticism erode support 
for the U.N. system. Its treaty bodies and instruments are the places 
where international human rights law is defined and adjudicated. These 
universal standards are those that this Commission is mandated to 
assess the PRC's conduct against. Let us not undermine that work.
    Last, let us remember our most essential role, to help give voice 
to those who cannot freely express themselves, who languish unjustly in 
jail, who suffer repression. Earlier this month I joined Senators 
Rubio, Kaine, and Blackburn on a letter asking the State Department to 
raise specific names of political prisoners at the UPR of China. 
Chairman Smith and Commissioner Wexton led a similar letter on the 
House side. I hope our witnesses will update us on cases of concern. 
Thank you so much for doing so,
    I also note that the Chair and I have nominated our witness Sophie 
Luo's husband Ding Jiaxi, along with Jimmy Lai, Xu Zhiyong, and Ilham 
Tohti, for the Nobel Peace Prize. This is another way we seek to shine 
a light on prisoners of conscience.
    Thank you to our witnesses for joining us today, and I look forward 
to your testimony and your insight.
                                 ______
                                 

              Prepared Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern

    Good morning. I join my colleagues in welcoming the witnesses and 
the public to this morning's hearing on the Peoples Republic of China's 
Universal Periodic Review, the UPR, held on January 23rd.
    I would like to begin by recognizing that the UPR is not just ``a 
valuable platform'' for analyzing China's human rights record, as noted 
in the hearing announcement.
    First, the UPR is the only universal mechanism that exists to 
examine states' compliance with international human rights law and 
norms. Every U.N. member state is subject to universal periodic review 
every 5 years. In principle, this gives the UPR greater legitimacy--
greater weight--than views expressed by any single government.
    Second, the UPR reviews each country's human rights record against 
the obligations the country itself has taken on through its sovereign 
decisions to ratify or accede to international human rights treaties.
    China is a State Party to several core human rights treaties--more, 
I regret to say, than the United States. Those treaties include the 
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention 
against Torture; and conventions to eliminate racial discrimination and 
discrimination against women.
    China's acceptance of obligations under these human rights 
instruments is, in fact, the basis for this Commission's work. It means 
that we can directly examine the PRC's compliance with a broad range of 
rights: civil and political rights, and also labor rights, women's 
rights, the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and the rights 
of other vulnerable populations, including the LGBTQ+ community. It 
means that the PRC's effort to change the international conversation to 
development, rather than rights, fails--because China's development 
claims must be interrogated using a rights lens.
    All of this is to say that UPR recommendations go to the heart of 
the China Commission's efforts to promote and defend the human rights 
of the Chinese people, and I am glad to have this opportunity to focus 
on them.
    I would like to highlight some of the recommendations coming out of 
last week's UPR session that address issues I care deeply about.
    Last December I led a bipartisan letter with 23 House colleagues 
urging the Biden Administration to ``highlight the increasingly severe 
human rights violations the PRC is perpetrating against the Tibetan 
people.'' The letter focused attention on ``PRC policies [that] are 
eroding Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan language, and the Tibetan way of life 
in ways that are widespread and systematic and constitute a fundamental 
threat to the survival and well-being of the Tibetan people.''
    The Administration did draw attention to these human rights abuses 
against the Tibetan people, both in its advance questions and its 
statement during the UPR session. Twenty countries joined the U.S. in 
insisting that, with respect to Tibet, China must:

      end forced assimilation policies;

      end discrimination and protect the rights of ethnic and 
religious minorities, including the right to language;

      implement the recommendations of the recent Economic, 
Social and Cultural Rights treaty review; and

      permit visits by human rights bodies.

    Governments made similar, often overlapping recommendations with 
regard to the egregious repression and denial of the fundamental rights 
of the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, which this 
Commission has found may constitute genocide and crimes against 
humanity.
    Clearly, many countries around the world share the United States' 
profound concern about the ongoing and systematic violations of the 
human rights of religious and ethnic minorities in China.
    Similarly, on Hong Kong, 20 countries echoed this Commission's 
calling upon China to:

      respect civil and political rights;

      repeal the National Security Law;

      end censorship and surveillance of activists;

      restore judicial independence; and

      release writers, bloggers, journalists, human rights 
defenders and others arbitrarily detained.

    More than 30 countries, including many from the ``global south,'' 
advocated for women's rights and gender equality in China; an end to 
gender-based violence and trafficking; and full implementation of the 
recommendations from the recent CEDAW treaty review.
    I am especially glad to see that 11 countries specifically raised 
the need to end discrimination based on gender identity and protect the 
rights of the LGBTQ community in China. I am proud that this Commission 
has documented and reported on serious rights abuses against the LGBTQ 
community in the past and we will continue to do so going forward.
    We will hear from the witnesses today about the limitations of the 
UPR process, the obstacles the PRC puts in the way of advocates who 
want to participate, and its efforts to manipulate the process in order 
to undercut criticism--a reality that, sadly, is not unique to China. 
Of course we must do all we can to counter these tactics.
    That said, the UPR process is a valuable tool for human rights 
advocacy because it is multilateral and because it holds China to 
account for obligations it has explicitly agreed to. I hope the 
discussion today will provide us with ideas for making the best use of 
it--in particular, for strengthening multilateral efforts to end the 
grave, ongoing rights violations occurring in the country.
    Mr. Chairman, I ask that the document prepared by the U.N. Human 
Rights Council UPR Working Group, titled ``China--Compilation of 
information prepared by the Office of the United Nations High 
Commissioner for Human Rights'' be submitted for the record. The 
document summarizes dozens of recommendations from treaty reviews and 
U.N. independent human rights experts that are directly relevant to 
this Commission's work.
      
        
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                                 Witness Biographies

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

    Dr. Inboden is a senior fellow with the Robert S. 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 
NGO's 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 at 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 obtained an MA at Stanford University in 
East Asian Studies and a BS at the School of Foreign Service at 
Georgetown University.

    Benedict Rogers, Co-founder and Chief Executive, Hong Kong 
Watch

    At Hong Kong Watch, Mr. Rogers monitors and reports on the 
PRC's violations of human rights, basic freedoms, and the rule 
of law in Hong Kong, and is an advocate for actions to assist 
Hong Kongers. Mr. Rogers has deep expertise in religious 
freedom issues in China and Hong Kong. In November 2023, he 
spearheaded Hong Kong Watch's report entitled `` `Sell Out My 
Soul': The Impending Threats to Freedom of Religion or Belief 
in Hong Kong.'' Mr. Rogers previously worked as East Asia Team 
Leader at the international human rights organization Christian 
Solidarity Worldwide. He is the author of five books, including 
Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads and Than Shwe: Unmasking 
Burma's Tyrant. He is a regular contributor to international 
media, including The Wall Street Journal, The International 
Herald Tribune and The Huffington Post, and has appeared as a 
commentator on BBC, CNN, Sky, and al Jazeera. Ben has an MA in 
China Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies 
(SOAS), and a BA in Modern History and Politics from Royal 
Holloway College, University of London.

    Sophie Luo, wife of imprisoned human rights lawyer Ding 
Jiaxi

    Ms. Luo is a highly trained engineer, based in the United 
States since 2013, who has emerged as a powerful voice in the 
Chinese human rights community following the December 2019 
detention of her husband, the human rights lawyer and China 
Citizens Movement organizer Ding Jiaxi. During her first 
testimony at a CECC hearing, in February 2022, which was timed 
to coincide with the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, she 
explained Ding Jiaxi's trajectory as a proponent of human 
rights in China, his detention and that of his co-defendant Xu 
Zhiyong, and other related cases of political detention. She 
subsequently gave testimony in April 2023 for the House Foreign 
Affairs Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and 
International Organizations, only a week after Chinese 
authorities sentenced Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi to 14 and 12 
years in prison, respectively. Ms. Luo's ability to articulate 
with both passion and precision the maltreatment experienced by 
Chinese political prisoners and their family members is an 
important resource to Members of Congress, journalists, and 
international human rights advocates.

    Dr. Emile Dirks, Research Associate at the Citizen Lab at 
the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University 
of Toronto

    Dr. Dirks's research explores the policing of so-called 
``target populations,'' deemed by the PRC Ministry of Public 
Security as threats to social stability, and who include users 
of drugs, religious practitioners, petitioners, and people with 
criminal records. He is currently looking at the use of digital 
censorship and surveillance in contemporary China and Chinese 
state transnational repression and foreign interference. His 
previous research on police-led mass biometric surveillance in 
China has been covered by the New York Times, the Economist, 
and The Intercept, among other publications. He gave testimony 
for the CECC in September 2022 on the issue of PRC authorities' 
use of digital authoritarianism to target and control religious 
groups. Dr. Dirks completed his PhD in Political Science from 
the University of Toronto in 2022.

    Rushan Abbas, Founder & Executive Director, Campaign for 
Uyghurs

    Rushan Abbas, a Uyghur American activist, has dedicated her 
life to championing the rights of the Uyghur people. Beginning 
her advocacy during her time at Xinjiang University, she led 
pro-democracy protests in 1985 and 1988. After relocating to 
the United States in 1989, her commitment to the cause only 
grew stronger. Co-founding the Uyghur Overseas Student and 
Scholars Association in 1993, she played a pivotal role in 
establishing the Uyghur American Association in 1998 and was 
elected as its Vice President for two terms. In response to 
Beijing's escalating genocidal actions against Uyghurs in 2017, 
Abbas co-founded the Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU). This 
organization advocates for Uyghur human rights and democratic 
freedoms, rallying the international community against the 
atrocities in East Turkistan. She pioneered the ``One Voice One 
Step'' movement, orchestrating a global protest on March 15, 
2018, across 14 countries and 18 cities against China's mass 
Uyghur detentions.
    Following her first speech, in September 2018, her sister 
was abducted as retaliation for Rushan's activism. In 2020, CFU 
released the report ``Genocide in East Turkistan,'' 
meticulously detailing how China's actions align with the 
Genocide Convention. Notably, CFU received a Nobel Peace Prize 
nomination in February 2022 for its relentless advocacy. Rushan 
Abbas engages with global lawmakers, briefing them on East 
Turkistan's human rights crisis. Testifying before the U.S. 
Senate and Congress multiple times, she sheds light on the 
Chinese regime's genocide and crimes against humanity. Rushan 
currently serves as a lived experienced expert on the 
Interparliamentary Taskforce on Human Trafficking and as the 
Advisory Board Chair of the Axel Springer Freedom Foundation.
      
            
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