[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 192 (Tuesday, December 3, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S6797]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 China

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, the New York Times has recently obtained a 
secret trove of documents from the highest ranks of the Chinese 
Communist Party. Those documents reveal some chilling, terrifying 
details about Beijing's campaign to stamp out all dissent and religious 
diversity in Xinjiang Province in the north, where the party has 
concentrated more than 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other minorities 
in reeducation camps.
  These documents bring to mind George Orwell's famous novel ``1984,'' 
not as the cautionary tale as he meant it, but as an instruction manual 
for the totalitarian government in Beijing. This reign of terror began 
in 2014, after a string of terror attacks in Xinjiang Province. But 
instead of bringing those terrorists to justice, the Chinese Communist 
Party used the attacks as an opportunity to eradicate all dissent--all 
wrong-think, if you will--from a province with 25 million residents. It 
would be as if you tried to turn the State of Texas into a 
concentration camp.
  These secret documents reveal a stunning order from General Secretary 
Xi Jinping. He said, ``We must be as harsh as them and show them 
absolutely no mercy.'' So to beat these terrorists, Beijing chose to 
adopt the tactics of terror. Every Uighur and dissenter in the province 
is suffering as a result.
  Secretary Xi tapped one of the most notorious enforcers to execute 
this mission, a man named Chen, who climbed the ranks of the Communist 
Party first by crushing dissent and religious diversity in the 
southwestern Chinese province of Tibet. The techniques that they 
perfected in Tibet, the Chinese Communist party took to Xinjiang. They 
have turned the province into a garrison state with ruthless and 
pitiless competence. Chen's order to the police? ``Round up everyone 
who should be rounded up.''
  Uighurs, young and old, were loaded on into buses and taken to 
concentration camps with thick concrete walls and razor-sharp barbed 
wire. The police informed anxious relatives that these were schools and 
that their loved ones were being ``reeducated.'' And, no, they were not 
free to leave the school, nor would there be any recess or field trips.
  A secret manual obtained by Western journalists reveals that these 
facilities operate more like maximum security prisons than like 
schools. The manual's very first section deals with preventing escapes 
through the use of guard posts, patrols, internal separation, video 
surveillance, and double locks on dormitory and hallway doors. The 
manual even advocates the use of ``secret forces'' to infiltrate the 
detainee population to prevent them from joining forces or planning an 
escape.
  Beijing now holds--let me say it again--more than 1 million people in 
these reeducation camps, supposedly for reasons of national security, 
but the truth is a lot more chilling. The Chinese Communists, like all 
totalitarians, are paranoid about their own survival--and rightly so--
as a conspiracy of greedy, power-mad princelings with no democratic 
legitimacy whatsoever.
  Like all totalitarian rulers, the Chinese Communist Party is also a 
very jealous master. Every attachment, every conviction, every 
loyalty--whether to one's family, one's culture, even one's creator--
must be sacrificed on the altar of the Party. According to the Chinese 
Communist Party, everything must bow before it, and every tongue must 
profess the slogans of Xi and Mao. That means the Uighurs and also 
Hongkongers, Tibetans, Taiwanese, and others.
  The paranoid Communist Party will not limit itself to one province or 
one people, nor will it ultimately limit itself to its own land. It 
will extend its tyrannical reach to every corner that it views as its 
own, creeping ever outward until it demands the deference of all the 
world, until it ``deals with'' the rebellious billions who have not yet 
learned to love the Chinese Big Brother.
  The Chinese Communist Party is running concentration camps today, but 
make no mistake, its appetite for expansion is far greater, its methods 
of control applicable to anyone anywhere. The Free World must confront 
this threat in plain view and act now to avert such a dark and chilling 
future.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Illinois.