[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5357-5358]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          REMEMBERING HARRY WU

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, on Tuesday, the world lost a courageous 
activist for international workers' rights, Harry Wu. Harry Wu spent 19 
years in one of China's ``laogai'' prison labor camps. That word is 
pretty much unknown in English--L-A-O-G-A-I. It is a word that the 
Chinese made famous, at least in their part of the world, as the 
terribly brutal labor camps where they sent political prisoners.
  Mr. Wu was imprisoned in 1960 at age 23 because he spoke out against 
Communist China's ally in 1960, the Soviet Union, after its invasion of 
Hungary. Over those 19 years, from 1960 to 1979, Mr. Wu was brutalized. 
He was sent to work on farms, mines, and prison camps. He was beaten 
and forced into concrete cases. As he has written and told us, he 
survived on food he foraged in rats' nests.
  After his release, following Mao's death, Harry Wu dedicated the rest 
of his life to exposing the horrors that his homeland leaders inflicted 
on their own citizens. He risked his life to return to China under 
cover and gathered secret footage of the abuses in China's laogai, 
China's prison camps. He wouldn't let the world ignore Chinese 
atrocities. He wouldn't let us forget that opening our doors to China--
demanded by U.S. corporations with few strings attached--came at a 
steep price. Through the footage he collected, he helped show the world 
that products like cheap wrenches and artificial flowers sold in the 
United States were made with forced labor. Think about what this was 
about. U.S. companies would shut down their production in Mansfield, my 
hometown, or maybe in Baton Rouge or Cleveland, and move their 
production to China and sell those products back to the United States. 
The U.S. companies that moved to China never addressed the moral issue 
of what that move did to our communities. They never addressed the 
moral issue of, in some cases, using Chinese forced labor to make their 
products. These companies could also sell their products a little bit 
cheaper in the United States, and as a result, these companies could 
reap much bigger profits. The moral question of U.S. trade relations 
with China has rarely been touched in this body. It is just 
inconvenient for us to think about. Well, Mr. Wu never let it be 
inconvenient.
  As we approach the 15th anniversary of China's entry into the World 
Trade Organization this year and review China's nonmarket economy 
status, we should not forget the lessons of Harry Wu. Over the past 
decade, we have seen that prosperity in China does not lead to more 
political freedom.
  I knew Harry Wu. He testified before the Congressional-Executive 
Commission on China when I was chairman. He had testified several 
times.
  As recently as 2012, Mr. Wu warned Congress:

       The Laogai--

  The forced labor camp--

     system [is] deeply rooted into [China's] economic structure. 
     . . . China's working class is different from that of the 
     modern democratic countries. It includes not only ``workers'' 
     in the ordinary sense, but also ``workers'' of the prison 
     enterprises.

  These would be slaves. He warned that ``prisoners in Laogai, more 
like state slaves than enterprise workers, provide the state with an 
endless source of cheap or payless labor force.''
  This system is an egregious human rights abuse against hundreds of 
thousands of Chinese people. It hurts American workers who are then 
forced to compete.
  This system they have set up is one of the reasons that people are 
really upset about what is happening in this country. Companies in my 
State of Ohio shut down production in Lima, Zanesville, and 
Chillicothe, then moved overseas to China in order to get a tax break, 
hired Chinese workers--some of them were slave laborers for some of the 
component manufacturing; some of them were just low-paid labor--to make 
these products in a totalitarian system and sell them back in the 
United States. American companies never talk about the moral dimension 
of that.
  I wrote a book a dozen or so years ago called the ``Myths of Free 
Trade.'' I interviewed Harry Wu about this book. He told me: 
``Capitalism must never be equated with democracy.'' Because our 
country believes in capitalism and democracy, we think they always go 
together. Well, they don't. According to Harry Wu:

       Capitalism must never be equated with democracy. . . . 
     Don't believe it about China. My homeland is mired in 
     thousands of years of rule by one bully at a time, whether 
     you call him emperor or chairman. Don't be fooled by 
     electronics or air conditioning.

  Before his death, I think Mr. Wu would have said: Yes, the United 
States has been fooled. Maybe we choose to be fooled; maybe we choose 
to not know how the products that we hold in our hands are made--by an 
oppressive government using forced labor workers.
  We have been on a continuous march toward more trade with China and 
demanded far little in return. We have turned a blind eye to China's 
labor practices for too long. When you hear Presidential candidates and 
others complaining about China, it is always about putting American 
workers out of work, which it should be, but the other part of that 
moral question is about how we are using slave laborers in China to 
undercut American workers. How could an American worker or company 
possibly compete with slave labor in China? Obviously we can't, but we 
leave that moral question because U.S. corporations don't want to 
acknowledge and want to turn a blind eye toward slave labor. It reminds 
me of

[[Page 5358]]

something from a few years ago when an American drug company was making 
a blood thinner--much of the production of that blood thinner came from 
China--with contaminated ingredients, and a number of people in Toledo, 
OH, died. The drug company didn't know where these products came from. 
They knew they came from China, but they didn't know where their supply 
ingredients came from. Think about that. They should be liable for 
that--at least you would think they should--but they just didn't think 
about the moral question there.
  A year and a half ago I gave a speech to the Council on Foreign 
Relations, warning that before we sign any bilateral investment treaty 
with China, we need to demand that China comply with existing 
international obligations in domestic law. We have given China chance 
after chance, pushing for increased engagement, even though we know 
that China will play by its own rules. In the past year and a half, 
nothing has changed. We need to make clear the international 
obligations we expect China to meet on cyber security, human rights, 
forced labor, slaves making products that American children use, 
international trade, workers' rights, and other issues. We need to 
demand that China meet these standards now.
  Increased engagement by the United States may have led to more 
agreements on paper, and that is fine, but in reality the only thing it 
has achieved is our ongoing tolerance of Chinese transgressions. It may 
be tolerance, it may be ignoring, it may be shrugging our shoulders, it 
may be burying our heads in the sand, but I don't think we want to 
think much about slave labor in China. I don't think when we buy these 
products at Walmart--specializing in Chinese products--that we want to 
think much about where these products were made. We often know they 
were made in China, but we don't really want to think about how those 
workers produced these products.
  Harry Wu's passing is a reminder that this needs to end. His legacy 
includes the Laogai Museum here in Washington. I encourage my 
colleagues to visit the museum and pay their respects to Harry Wu. The 
best way they can pay their respects to Harry Wu is by changing our 
policies. The thousands upon thousands of other nameless prisoners who 
suffered in these Chinese prison camps should be honored equally. We 
can't forget this tragic legacy, and we can't forget the human rights 
abuses that continue to this day as they continue to make these same 
products in these same working conditions with these same slave 
laborers. It is shameful. It should not continue.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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