[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 93 (Tuesday, June 4, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H4298-H4302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES OF CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. YOHO. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak before 
the House and all the people who are here listening. Today's talk is 
going to be a Special Order on the human rights abuses of China.
  Being the 30-year anniversary of Tiananmen Square, where hundreds, if 
not thousands, of people were murdered at the hands of the Chinese 
Communist Party, I think it is due that we give respect to the people.
  What I have here is a poster of people in China in 1989 who came to 
Tiananmen Square. These were the

[[Page H4299]]

people who were peaceful. They were wanting a democracy. They were 
wanting the things that we yearn for that are innate in all people.
  And we are blessed in this Nation to be born in a country where the 
founding principles said that our rights come from our creator, not 
from government, and government is instituted by ``we the people.''
  We give our consent to be governed, the very first nation on the 
planet to ever do that. And so that word had spread around the world, 
obviously.
  China, being somewhat of a hermit nation from the Opium Wars of the 
1840s into the early 1900s, wasn't introduced to the modern world. But 
with the advent of publications and with other things, they became 
aware of what freedom was. And freedom, as we know it in this country, 
is something that we fought for.
  The freedom and liberty that we have today is something that is 
innate in all humans on the planet, regardless of what government form 
they have. The ability to be free thinking, to want freedom, to want 
liberty, is something that comes with us when we are born, when we are 
created in the womb.
  It is no different than, I guess, an oak tree. If an acorn is put in 
the ground, it doesn't know it is an oak tree, but it goes straight up 
into the sky. The roots grow down. That is an innate quality that has 
been designed genetically in that.
  Humans are the same way, so they have a desire to be free thinking 
and free determining. The thing that is fortunate for us is that we 
have a government that got formed.
  And so the people in Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989, wanted this very 
same freedom, but, unfortunately, the Government of China thought 
differently.
  June 4 marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, 
when the Chinese Government forcibly suppressed the peaceful pro-
democracy protest--and I want to repeat that, a peaceful pro-democracy 
protest--and declared martial law, killing hundreds, maybe thousands, 
of innocent Chinese citizens. Troops with assault rifles and tanks 
fired upon the protests, creating utter and despicable chaos.
  Thirty years later, the Chinese Communist Party continues to censor 
all information relating to this attempt, attempting to completely 
erase it from history. So, for the new generations of Chinese, they 
don't know if this happened or not because they can't look outside of 
China.
  The Chinese Communist Party has such control over the people of China 
that it is forbidden to look at pictures. They are taken off of the 
internet. They are not in the history books. They are not in the school 
books that talk about Tiananmen Square, that talk about the pro-
democracy movement that people yearn and desire for.
  The human rights abuses under the Chinese Communist Party have 
continued. But if we look back at China--and I want to direct this 
conversation, not to the Chinese people, because they are like people 
everywhere else in the world.
  I chaired the Asia-Pacific Subcommittee in the last Congress. I am 
the ranking member this Congress. I have had the opportunity to travel 
around the world, and when I talk to people around the world, we will 
ask them the same question: Do people in your country have the desire 
to be free and self-determining?
  Every one of them says that, and they say: I want a better future for 
our children than I had.
  And, again, that is why I feel this is an innate thing that we are 
born with, and I know that.
  So, as we travel around, we see this as not true in China. And so the 
Chinese people are great; it is the Chinese Communist Party under the 
control of Xi Jinping.
  China has an amazing history that spans thousands of years. Its 
culture has stayed, for the most part, intact since the 19th century.
  There have been multiple rulers and emperors recorded in the history 
books. In fact, at one point, China and most of Eurasia were under the 
control of Ghengis Khan and the Mongolian Empire. This empire was 
larger than the Roman Empire.
  Khan allowed the people in his empire to be free and prosper through 
their work and developed a market economy based on production and 
trade. He provided protection from invasion, and they provided goods, 
services, and loyalty to the Khan empire.
  This is the way history has been repeated over and over again. Since 
then, that is when China became the Silk Road. They were a major 
economic powerhouse around the world. They are great traders in spice 
and garments and linens and silks around the world.
  But China went from a major economic power in the 18th century to a 
nation addicted to opium. During the 19th century, China's ruling class 
allowed their country to be taken over by the European colonial and 
Japanese imperial powers.
  During this time, over 90 percent of the male population became 
addicted to opium. The culture, heritage, and social fabric of China 
decayed, and China truly did enter into a peasant state, isolated from 
the world, for the most part, during the next 70 years. They were a 
lost country. This has become known as the century of shame.
  The PLA, the People's Liberation Army, emerged in 1927. In fact, they 
will have a 100-year anniversary in 2027.

  Mao Zedong was a favored member of the PLA, and he later became the 
Chairman of the Communist Party of China. He promised communism would 
be the savior of China.
  Mao was an ardent student of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the 
father of communism, where an individual's role in society was to serve 
the party for the greater good of the whole. His policies were one 
where the Communist Party was the supreme law of the land.
  Mao, being a firm believer in this philosophy, implemented top-down 
policies in all sectors of China's economy and culture, destroying the 
greatness that China once had. His farming policies led to a famine and 
starvation. Seventy to eighty million people died under Mao's policy 
due to a combination of starvation and a purge of those who dared to 
show political dissent towards the communist ruling party.
  Mao set a 100-year plan for China to regain its lost stature. Maoism 
became a belief and a philosophy for many. It was even idolized in some 
think tanks, with prominent individuals claiming this was a better way 
to govern a country, a country where the individual needs are secondary 
to the needs of the Communist Party, where individuals can't challenge 
the government, the party, or its ideology.
  And, again, I am so thankful that we are born in our country, as 
messy as democracy is. As Ben Franklin forewarned us back when they 
came out of the Constitutional Convention in Pennsylvania, when asked 
by a lady, ``What form of government did you give us, sir?'' he said, 
``A republic, ma'am, if you can keep it.''
  We know democracies like we have in a constitutional republic are 
messy, but, by God, they are worth it because they empower the people.

                              {time}  1930

  It seems bizarre to me that some would idolize Maoism, knowing that 
history records that 70-plus million people have been killed through 
the failed policies of communism, again, from the starvation, but also 
from the brutal torture and the murder of those who challenge the 
Communist Party and its ideology. That is what I would like to focus on 
tonight, the human rights abuses of the Chinese Party and the PLA.
  Since its founding almost 100 years ago, it has a record of human 
rights abuses that has led to the death of tens of millions of people, 
if not over 100 million people.
  It does this through the elimination of anyone that challenges the 
doctrine of the Communist Party. I think that can be seen right here. 
This shows a peaceful prodemocracy protest that occurred June 4, 1989, 
in Tiananmen Square in China. This is how it started.
  This shows the statue of democracy that these people wanted because 
they saw what free people could do in a free society that had a 
government that they could address their grievances to, to change 
government to fulfill the needs of society, not government changing 
people to fulfill the needs of government.
  This is how it started, and I think we have all seen this. Any of us 
of a little age or long in the tooth, this is what we remember, as the 
videos showed on

[[Page H4300]]

our television sets, the horror of people brave enough to stand in the 
way of the tanks.
  The Chinese Communist Party and its ruler, Deng Xiaoping, ordered the 
tanks to disperse the protesters. So they literally killed people. 
There are videos of people being run over by tanks, people are running 
away. Tanks are chasing them down and running them over from the back. 
And they killed them over and over again.
  This is something that China had done then, and they are doing it 
today. We made a big blunder in our foreign affairs policies back in 
the 1970s under President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger by inviting 
China into the modern world. It wasn't the wrong thing to invite them 
into the modern world, but with no safeguards or direction, their goal 
was that they felt that if China became successful and developed a 
strong economic base, they, too, would become free thinking and would 
incorporate into the modern world.
  But, unfortunately, as history has recorded, China became more 
totalitarian, more authoritarian, and the Communist Party grew in 
strength. China, over the last 30 years, we have seen go from a 
backward state to a very prosperous state, to where 12 percent of the 
billionaires are now residents of China or of Chinese origin. They 
should be commended for that type of success, but not at the cost of 
what the Chinese Communist Party has done to their citizens.
  Under the Chinese Communist Party since the founding of the CCP in 
1921, the Communist Party repeatedly disregarded the human rights of 
the Chinese people. Abuses include the practice of incommunicado 
detention, torture of persons in custody, censorship of the internet 
today, and restrictions on the freedoms of religion, association, and 
assembly.
  Xi Jinping, the ruler for life in China now, has further implemented 
a clampdown on political dissent, civil society, human rights 
activists, and lawyers.
  The Great Leap Forward, which was an economic and social campaign led 
by the CCP under Mao Zedong from 1949 to 1976, when he died, through 
the idea of collectivism--again, right out of Karl Marx and Friedrich 
Engels' handbook on communism--the CCP took control of citizens' 
workplaces, took control of their lands and resources, and used 
coercion, violence, and murder to control their famished citizens.
  This failed initiative led to the deaths of over 75 million people, 
making it the largest episode of mass murder ever on the planet. Not 
only were 2 million to 3 million people starved to death, people were 
needlessly tortured and killed, and I suspect that number is small.
  The Cultural Revolution also launched by Mao from 1966 to 1976 called 
on the Chinese youth to purge impure elements of Chinese society. That 
means anybody that dare challenge the Communist Party's ideology would 
be purged and they had their own citizens do that to their own 
citizens.
  This escalated when students formed paramilitary groups called the 
Red Guard and attacked and harassed other Chinese citizens. Violence 
erupted between factions of the Red Guard, creating wide chaos. The CCP 
views separatist sentiments as a threat to internal order, and 
ultimately the party's control.
  Tibet, Taiwan, the Uighur population in Xinjiang and Hong Kong are 
all threatened because the CCP and Xi Jinping are insecure and paranoid 
in their country and in their leaders, because they fear free-thinking 
people. The CCP in China is the highest entity in that country. It is 
higher than any other entity in the universe, including God.
  The Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, it has been reported up to 1 
million people--I read a report today that said it could be 3 million 
Uighurs, which are the Muslim sect of the Chinese population--have been 
interned. We don't know because it is a closed society.
  I have met with the Chinese foreign ministers. They told me this is 
not something that is going on, that the Uighurs have the ability to 
come and go at random. Although I talked to a Uighur today that was in 
Tiananmen Square 30 years ago, and he said that is not the case.
  You don't book a reservation to go into the internment camp or the 
reeducate camp. You are ordered, or forced, or kidnapped and put into 
that camp. You walk around with headphones on your head for 24 hours a 
day, 7 days a week, and they are playing the national anthem. They are 
playing the thoughts of Xi Jinping which are now the standard that all 
students must listen to in China, and so they are reeducating these 
people forcefully. This is something they do not have the free will to 
leave.
  In addition, we found a horrific element that came out, there are 
concentration camps--they are not concentration camps, although they 
probably are--but what we are seeing is there are crematoriums, not 
just crematoriums for when people do pass away, but they are armed 
crematoriums. There was an advertisement that people must be physically 
fit and able to fend off people.

  My question is, if you have got a peaceful situation where you are 
reeducating people at their free will, why do you need armed 
crematoriums?
  Mr. Speaker, I think what we are seeing in China is a repeat of what 
we saw in Nazi Germany. This is something I remember Dwight Eisenhower 
said, as he went over there to Auschwitz and to the other camps: 
``Never again.''
  It saddens me that I have been in Congress for 7 years and I watched 
the genocide in Africa, in the different countries, in Darfur, and 
Somalia. We said, never again. Yet it happens. In Syria, over 500,000 
people have been murdered and slaughtered in that civil war under the 
hideous rule of Bashar al-Assad, and we say, never again. Yet we allow 
it to happen.
  Mr. Speaker, it is happening right now. And China is our number one 
and two trading partner in the world, as it is with many of the 
countries around the world. I think that we should rethink our foreign 
policy of who we trade with.
  There was a hearing today and we had several people who were members 
of the peaceful protest in Tiananmen Square. One of the protesters, 
Dong Shengkun, was arrested as a political dissident and he was given a 
death sentence that got commuted to a life sentence that he got off 
after 17 years.
  His comment was in a periodical yesterday and he said that he would 
prefer to have his son think he is just a regular criminal, at least in 
the current political climate in China, than be potentially put in 
danger by learning of his father's political past.
  His child should be proud of him because that father's political past 
was fighting for the very things our Founding Fathers fought for: 
freedom and liberty. He stated: ``It is for his safety,'' his son, ``I 
worry that I might influence his thoughts if I started chatting to him 
about those things.''
  Other former political prisoners have expressed concerns about 
talking to their children about the massacre for fear of putting them 
at risk. Fellow Tiananmen survivor, Fang Zheng, said that he doesn't 
blame Dong and the other activists who wanted to shield their children 
from politics. Fang, who lost both of his legs in the massacre, blames 
the ruling Communist Party. That is the fear and horror that the regime 
has brought to everybody.
  Three decades after the Chinese Government declared martial law--and 
I find this interesting, because this relates to the abuses that we are 
seeing and why China can do this--three decades after the Chinese 
Government declared martial law and unleashed the military on unarmed 
students and worker protesters, the bloodshed has been largely erased 
from the nation's collective memory.
  Think about that. The Chinese Communist Party has so much power that 
they control what is in the textbooks, and we have seen this 
revisionist history over and over again in different countries around 
the world.
  They tried to do it here in the United States with, I believe it was 
the Harvard University Press, to get them to rewrite history books so 
it wasn't a negative slant against China.
  I know they have done this in Australia and other countries around 
the world, and they have done this through force, coercion, and 
intimidation to get other countries to bow down to the ideology and the 
teachings of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
  So after three decades, they have erased the nation's collective 
memory.

[[Page H4301]]

The question today was asked: What percentage of the Chinese people 
even know of Tiananmen Square? The answer was shocking because these 
people who were there in our hearing today were the actual freedom 
fighters for democracy in China at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
  Their answer was: Probably not 20 percent of the people in China are 
even aware of what happened in Tiananmen Square. The Communist Party-
led effort has created a generation who are mostly unaware of the 
Tiananmen massacre. Dong said, school textbooks don't mention it, and 
students won't find photos or stories of June 4 on China's heavily 
censored internet.
  The story can go on, but I hope it doesn't for the sake of humanity. 
If we look at the Uighurs, the Muslim population in the western 
province of the Xinjiang region, like I said, up to 1 million, maybe 3 
million have been interned. There is no way to know. We asked the 
foreign minister when he was in my office, and he assured us this 
wasn't happening. These were voluntary camps. And I said: If you feel 
that certain, Mr. Foreign Minister, invite the Western free press in 
there, and let them report on that.
  He said: No, we are not going to do that. So in the reeducation labor 
camps, there is near totalitarian levels of surveillance and security 
measures. Xinjiang is now a police state where cultural genocide is 
occurring.
  And, again, I go back to Dwight Eisenhower: ``Never again.''

                              {time}  1945

  CCP views Islam as a threat to the atheist state.
  Again, keep in mind that the Chinese Communist Party has stated that 
the role of the Chinese citizen is to serve the Chinese Communist Party 
and that the Chinese Communist Party is the ultimate power in the 
universe; there is nothing higher.
  If we look at Tibet, Tibet has been a sovereign nation over the 
millennia. It is where the Dalai Lama comes from and has come from 
throughout history.
  In 1959, there was an armed conflict between the Tibetan people and 
the PLA. Retaliation for such an uprising involved the killing of 
87,000 Tibetans.
  During occupation of Tibet there were tortures, killings, 
bombardments of monasteries, and the extermination of a whole nomad 
camp. What they have done is they have gone through and erased the 
monasteries and erased much of the people. They moved in the ethnic 
Chinese Hun population to the point where they have diluted the Tibetan 
population, and all they have to do is wait out time because the youth 
won't know that.
  In Tibetan culture, the Dalai Lama is not chosen by the people. He is 
chosen through their process, and it is through the birth of the 
Panchen child. The Panchen child is the next Dalai Lama in their 
culture.
  When the Panchen child was discovered, China kidnapped him, and they 
said: This is not the Panchen child. We have the real Panchen child.
  So they brought him forth.
  I found this to be very hideous and just offensive. Being a Christian 
nation as we are, that would be as if King Herod went to the manger and 
took Jesus Christ, saying that that is not the Lord and Savior and that 
you have got it wrong.
  Then they kidnapped him and they put somebody they want in there. 
That is how warped the Chinese Communist Party's thinking is.
  In 2008, violent protests and riots erupted through Tibet as they 
desired more independence from China. CCP views this as a threat to 
their control. That is why I said that the Chinese Communist Party and 
Xi Jinping are insecure.
  We can talk about Tibet; we can talk about the Uighurs; we can talk 
about Hong Kong; and we have to talk about Taiwan, because human rights 
abuses are going on through all of these countries through coercion, 
intimidation, and threats.
  Hong Kong was a nation that the British powers captured in the 1800s 
during the Opium Wars, during the period of colonization. When that 
happened, Hong Kong became a province of Great Britain.
  What happened in 1997 is there was an agreement between Great Britain 
and China that they would give the Hong Kong territory back to China, 
but there was an agreement that, for 50 years, there would be 
autonomous rule in Hong Kong and that Hong Kong could continue as it 
was.
  Well, we are 22 years into that, and already we have seen the 
usurpation of power and the influence of China coming in. In fact, 
China, right now, is trying hard to get extradition laws so that they 
can take executives from any company. If they feel they have treated 
the Chinese Communist Party wrong, they can extradite them to China, 
and my bet is we will never hear from these people again, Mr. Speaker.
  We have seen this happen with booksellers, and we have seen this 
happen with successful businesspeople who have started insurance 
companies in China, who came to America. All of a sudden, they have 
mysteriously disappeared, and they have never shown up.
  So Xi Jinping stated that, as far as he is concerned, the agreement 
between Great Britain and China for the 50-year autonomous rule is no 
longer valid and that it needs to be done away with.
  My question is: When we talk about Taiwan--and I think it was a 
blunder of our foreign policy when President Nixon and Henry Kissinger 
said that they would agree to a one-country, two-party system, which 
stripped Taiwan of its autonomy--if Xi Jinping sees no need to follow 
course with the 50-year agreement with Hong Kong, does that give us 
cause to forget the agreement that we had with President Nixon and with 
the Chinese rulers back in the seventies? I say, yes, and I think it is 
time that we honor and respect Taiwan for the country it is.
  Today, in China, we have mass surveillance of its citizens. So what 
we see are human rights evaporating more so today than ever before.
  China has become a powerhouse economically. They are starting to 
become a powerhouse militarily. They have learned to leverage certain 
things that hold other nations, including the United States, in debt to 
them.
  If we just look at one example of that, that would be the rare earth 
metals. Our F-35 fighter jets, 10 percent of the weight of those are 
rare earth metals; 90 percent comes directly from China, and the other 
10 percent comes from countries that get it from China.
  China is on a march to take over the world. Mr. Speaker, you can 
listen to Xi Jinping in the 17th Communist Party Congress in 2017. He 
said that the year of China has arrived. No longer will they be made to 
swallow their interests around the world. It is time for China to take 
the world's center stage.
  Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that says, if you want to see 
one's past, look at their present situation; if you want to see one's 
future, look at their present activities, look at their present 
investments, look at their present actions.
  I think the actions speak loud and clear, because the human rights 
abuses that started in the 1920s when 70-plus million people lost their 
lives, this is something that has happened over and over again.
  If we look back then and we look at modern-day China, it is estimated 
and predicted that China is about to complete the installation of 2.7 
billion CCTV cameras around their country. What they are using this for 
is facial recognition tied up with artificial intelligence. They have 
over 25 million people today whom they monitor 24/7, around the clock, 
365 days a year, and they are giving people what we call good citizen 
scores.
  If your good citizen score isn't high enough, Mr. Speaker, then you 
don't travel on airplanes and you don't travel on buses. You don't 
travel anywhere. You have no freedoms because you have become a threat 
to the Chinese Communist Party. That is today.

  Xi Jinping and his Communist Party has offered this to the Russian 
dictator, Putin, who wants this technology. He has offered this to the 
ayatollahs of Iran. He has offered this to any despotic government and 
country that wants to control their citizens, that is afraid of freedom 
of expression and freedom of thought.
  He has also offered this to Maduro in Venezuela. This is something 
that they are going to use to control people to suppress freedom, 
liberty, and free thought.
  Again, I talk about how blessed we are in this country because we 
have a country that empowers the individual.

[[Page H4302]]

I know as history looks back at this--and there may be some rocky roads 
ahead, but I know the side that empowers their people and that believes 
in a Creator will come out on top of this because what I know is you 
can't suppress the innate qualities and genetics of a plant, of a breed 
of cattle, or of any animal, and you can't suppress human freedom, 
thoughts, and the innate quality to be free.
  So I feel confident that over time the Chinese suppression, the 
Chinese Communist Party will collapse, and this picture where you see 
the people getting ready to be run over by the tank will be replaced by 
this picture and this statue being rebuilt, the statue of the Goddess 
of Democracy and Freedom in Tiananmen Square. The future will show this 
as what China is doing in the future of people protesting peacefully 
for the freedoms that they have.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to end with, on this day, being the 30th 
anniversary of a horrendous chapter of suppression and murder in human 
history, that if it is not for us speaking about this, it won't be 
talked about around the world. China will do everything they can to 
erase this kind of history from the history books, and it would be a 
shame for this to go away.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________