[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: THE 2015 ANNUAL
REPORT OF THE CONGRESSIONAL EXECUTIVE
COMMISSION ON CHINA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JANUARY 12, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-147
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific
MATT SALMON, Arizona Chairman
DANA ROHRABACHER, California BRAD SHERMAN, California
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio AMI BERA, California
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, chairman, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China.................................. 4
The Honorable Timothy J. Walz, ranking House Member,
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.................... 10
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith: Prepared statement........... 7
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 20
Hearing minutes.................................................. 21
The Honorable Matt Salmon, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Arizona, and chairman, Subcommittee on Asia and the
Pacific: Statement of the Honorable Marco Rubio, a Senator in
Congress from the State of Florida............................. 22
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 26
HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: THE 2015 ANNUAL
REPORT OF THE CONGRESSIONAL-
EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
----------
TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:45 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Matt Salmon
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Salmon. The subcommittee will come to order.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the United States
in September 2015, cybersecurity, environmental concerns, and
maritime disputes dominated discussions, leaving human rights
advocates disappointed that the administration did not use this
opportunity to make more headway on human rights issues.
As we venture to address the wide range of challenges we
face in our relationship with China, we must not lose sight of
the importance of human rights and the rule of law in this
bilateral relationship.
The U.S. Government has paid particularly close attention
to human rights in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square
massacre and, for many years, monitored human rights
developments through an annual review of China's most-favored-
nation trading status. I believe that was also called Jackson-
Vanik.
In 2000, legislation to grant permanent normal trade
relations with China, which I voted in favor of, included
provisions to ensure continuing monitoring of the human rights
and the rule of law in China through the establishment of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
The Commission has shouldered this daunting task ever
since, and I commend the commissioners and staff on their hard
work and recently released 2015 annual report. The report
covers the gamut of human rights issues and provides several
policy recommendations.
The Commission's annual reports have drawn attention to the
rise of religious persecution in China, suppression of free
speech, and less respect for due process in politically
sensitive cases.
I would like to take this time to draw attention to some of
the troubling human rights developments in the PRC.
Consider freedom of religion. Chinese policy toward
religious freedom varies by religion and group, and its
constitution officially protects normal religious activities
that do not disrupt public order, impair the health of
citizens, or interfere with the educational system of the
state.
However, the PRC imposes harsh and arbitrary penalties on
unregistered religious organizations, including Christian
churches, imposes several restrictions on religious practice by
Tibetan Buddhists and Uyghur Muslims, and persecutes Falun Gong
practitioners. Tibetans and Uyghurs are often targeted under
the guise of crackdowns of alleged extremist and terrorist
activities.
I would like to hear from the panel on the status of
religious freedom in China.
In Hong Kong, we have seen the blossoming and the
suppression of an emerging democracy over the past few years.
The pro-democracy demonstrations and the famous Umbrella
Movement have shown the world people's excitement for democracy
and basic human liberties.
We have also seen reports of Hong Kong booksellers selling
or publishing books critical of President Xi and other Chinese
officials mysteriously disappearing and perhaps being abducted,
taken to mainland China from Hong Kong and Thailand. If true,
such behavior is reprehensible--and I would concur with the
statement you made: It is beyond reprehensible; it is evil. And
I hope for the swift and safe return of these individuals as
well as their three colleagues reportedly being held in
mainland China for unknown reasons.
I look forward to hearing the updates on the situation in
Hong Kong.
China's infamous one-child policy was instituted in 1980 to
control population levels and has involved decades of inhumane
forced abortions and sterilizations, fines, and other
sanctions. This draconian policy has resulted in lopsided
gender ratios in China's younger generations and an emerging
demographic crisis for the entire country.
We saw the announcement late last year of the government's
plan to move to a two-child policy and would like to hear
updates about that from the panel.
Human rights organizations rank China near the bottom for
Internet freedom and freedom of expression. Not only does China
block Web sites, including major newspaper and social
networking sites, it has imprisoned dozens of journalists and
other citizens for posting information deemed critical of the
PRC and the Communist Party.
I have only highlighted a few of the many human rights
issues that persist in China today. The Commission embodies
congressional concerns about human rights in China, and I
really look forward to hearing from the panel on what more we
can do. We certainly welcome policy recommendations and hope to
have a constructive conversation to encourage improvements in
the rule of law and human rights conditions in China.
Members present will be permitted to submit written
statements to be included in the official hearing record.
Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 5
calendar days to allow statements, questions, and extraneous
materials for the record, subject to the length limitation in
the rules.
And we are privileged--did the ranking member have a
statement he wanted to make?
Mr. Sherman. Why not.
Mr. Salmon. Happy to entertain that.
Mr. Sherman. I do, indeed. Mr. Chairman, thank you for
holding this timely hearing.
And I want to thank Mr. Smith and Mr. Walz for their work
with the Commission. Since Congress created the Commission in
the year 2000, the Commission has done some very thorough and
important work in documenting and analyzing human rights issues
in China. I want to endorse the Commission's findings as stated
in the executive summary.
It is increasingly clear that China's domestic human rights
problems are of critical interest to U.S. foreign policy. There
is a direct link between concrete improvements in human rights
and the rule of law and the security and prosperity of both the
United States and China.
The Chinese Government has raised hundreds of millions of
people out of crushing poverty, but they can't go forward
beyond where they are now, economically or socially, unless
they follow the rule of law and provide for human rights.
Without stronger rule of law in China and without healthy
respect for the will of the people and their individual rights,
it is impossible for China to be a credible partner on issues
that matter to the American people.
Trade is one of those. Tied to the rule of law and human
rights are China's unfair trading practices. From subsidies to
state-owned enterprises, both hidden and overt, to currency
manipulation, the Chinese Communist Party has shown itself
ready to pursue its own perceived short-term interest at the
expense of written agreements with the United States and at the
expense of transparent accounting to their own people.
Beyond the issue of American prosperity, the Commission's
work is shining a light on the human cost of the excesses that
accompany the single-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
It is deeply disturbing to see the Commission's evaluation that
human rights and the rule of law continue to deteriorate in
China.
The list is long: The inhumane enforcement of the one-China
policy, as to which we have seen some amelioration; the
trafficking of persons, men, women, and children, for forced
labor and sexual exploitation; harassment of religious groups,
most notably the Falun Gong that we have just discussed;
rigging the rules for voting in Hong Kong. Many on this
committee and subcommittee have--I was there with Steve--stood
shoulder-to-shoulder with democracy advocates in Hong Kong, and
there have been a host of other codels that have done the same
thing.
Pervasive restrictions on the expression in print and
online; the suppression of ethnic minorities, from Tibet to the
Uyghurs; detention of labor leaders, denying them the right to
organize, which, of course, not only denies their rights but
adversely affects American workers that would like to compete
in the world on a fair basis.
This is a sobering set of problems, and I would advise
those who believe the Communist regime is evolving into a
modern, developed, and humane system to read the Commission
report.
And, with that, I yield back.
Mr. Salmon. I thank the gentleman.
We are privileged today, this afternoon, to hear from two
of our colleagues: Mr. Chris Smith of New Jersey, chairman of
the Congressional-Executive Commission on China; and Mr. Tim
Walz, ranking House Member of the Commission. And we are
grateful to both of these witnesses for joining us today and
presenting the Commission's findings.
So I will start with you, Mr. Smith.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, CHAIRMAN,
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Salmon and Ranking
Member Sherman and the subcommittee, for holding this important
hearing and inviting my good friend and colleague, Tim Walz, to
be here to make a presentation and to answer any questions.
The 2015 report is a comprehensive, heavily documented
review and analysis of human rights and the rule of law, or,
more aptly spoken, the lack of rule of law, in the People's
Republic of China. It is an impressive undertaking and is the
work of an equally impressive and dedicated staff.
The Commission's 2015 report comes to the troubling
conclusion that the Chinese Government's efforts to ``silence
dissent, suppress human rights advocacy, and control civil
society'' are broader in scope than in any other period
documented since the Commission started issuing reports in
2002. That is distressingly bad news not only for the great
people of China, who long to be free, but also for China's
neighbors and, by extension, the rest of the world.
President Xi Jinping and the current cohort of China's
leaders tolerate even less dissent than previous
administrations. In the past year, China's leaders expanded the
use of legal statutes and a pervasive security apparatus to
maintain the Communist Party's leading role and power over the
country.
Torture and arbitrary detention remain grave problems,
employed with impunity by the security forces to silence
dissent and discourage religious groups and ethnic minorities
from seeking greater freedoms. Indeed, in early December,
December 2 and 3, the U.N. torture reports, the fifth in a
series, act as a scathing indictment of the systematic use of
torture by leaders in China. We will be holding a hearing in
our Commission on January 26 to probe even deeper into this
horrific use of torture on people in China.
In our Political Prisoner Database, which we believe is the
best in the world, the Commission has carefully compiled the
information of over 8,000 cases, including over 1,300 currently
detained prisoners of conscience. This is the database. It is
accurate. It is used increasingly by people all over the world.
We saw a 36-percent increase in access to the prisoner base
from 2014 to 2015.
Among the list are Nobel Peace Prize winners like Liu
Xiaobo, journalists, human rights lawyers like Gao Zhisheng,
labor activists, advocates for democracy, as well as those who
are fighting for minority rights, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong
practitioners, as well as Christian and Buddhist religious
leaders, whose peaceful religious activities are somehow viewed
as threatening to China's social order or national security.
The 2015 report also documents the highly coercive
population control policies in effect since 1979 into the year
1980 and shows that this is nothing less than state-sponsored
violence against women and girls. The report includes details
on the methods used to enforce birth restrictions, including
forced abortion and involuntary sterilization, heavy fines,
draconian fines, the withholding of social benefits, the loss
of jobs, arbitrary detention of couples that have a child
without government permission. You need a birth-allowed coupon
from the government in order to have a baby in the People's
Republic of China.
Despite the platitudes given to China for the recently
announced two-child-per-couple policy, the pernicious structure
of coercion remains completely in effect. Chinese families are
not free to determine the size of their own families and not
when they might have that child. It remains illegal for single
women to have a child. There is still pressure to forcibly
abort a child, again, if the pregnancy is not approved by the
state.
In addition, the two-child policy does little to stem the
massive problem of human trafficking in China. We have seen
huge increases in forced marriages, documented in the report,
and sexual slavery in China. Trafficking from Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Burma have increased in recent years, in part
because there are an estimated 30 million, some say as many 40
million, young men who are unable to find wives or start
families because of the skewed sex ratio. The girls, the women,
simply don't exist.
In fact, Mr. Chabot's bill on Girls Count is an important
contribution, and we make mention of this in the report, that
if we really had a systematic effort to enforce that globally,
we would see, I think, even greater clarity on the missing
daughters of China.
So thank you, Chairman Chabot, for that bill and that law.
There is so much detail and information included in this
year's annual report we don't have time to summarize it all. I
am seeing the clock is winding down. But China has issued a
series of new national security laws just last year that give
even more unprecedented powers to domestic security forces that
seek to limit the exchange of people and ideas. The NGO law is
a draconian effort to end NGOs as we understand them.
Despite President Xi's public commitment to implement the
rule of law, that is often a cover for lawlessness, as the
pervasive use of torture, as I mentioned, and detention,
especially when it is done in a way that people don't even know
where the detainee is--so there is no access to a lawyer--is
increasing, not decreasing.
Chinese authorities continue to rein in on the media, the
Internet, and social media, especially if they are in any way
criticizing the government.
China continues to rank with Iran, Vietnam, and Saudi
Arabia in terms of the misery it inflicts on religious
believers. And the government sometimes seeks to co-opt those
religious--you asked the question, and during Q&A we can expand
upon it--but the crackdown on the Falun Gong, 17 years in the
making, the crackdown on even those churches that are
officially recognized, like the Three Self and the Patriotic
Church, the Catholic Church--they have found themselves in the
cross-hairs over the last year by the Chinese dictatorship.
The report shows little progress with regards to WTO
obligations, and we expand upon that in detail. And the actions
of the Chinese and Hong Kong Governments during the past year
raise serious concerns about the future of Hong Kong's
autonomy, press freedoms, and the rule of law.
The idea that somehow more trade would bring about a
matriculation to democracy has crashed and burned. This report
again underscores that. Well-meaning as it was, we now know
beyond any reasonable doubt they have taken that hard currency
and it has increased their ability, as a dictatorship, not only
to repress their own people but to project power all over the
world.
I thank the chair.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
----------
Mr. Salmon. Thank you.
Mr. Walz?
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE TIMOTHY J. WALZ, RANKING HOUSE
MEMBER, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Mr. Walz. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
and members of this committee. Thank you for making this a
priority.
And I want to thank my chairman, Mr. Smith. This Congress
has no more passionate, committed human rights champion than
Chris Smith, and he proves it year after year, and I am
grateful for that.
And as Mr. Smith said, you see sitting behind us one of the
most dedicated staff you will ever find in compiling the
database and putting out this, what I consider to be,
critically important document in leading how--again, the most
important relationships in the world, between the United States
and the People's Republic of China, and making sure that we are
focusing on the human rights aspect of it. So I am grateful for
that.
My involvement in China goes back about three decades. I
started out with being one of the first group of young high
school teachers to teach in Chinese high schools back in the
1980s; continued on with cultural exchanges and visiting
fellowships at different institutions in China.
I have been to China dozens of times, and as I always say,
I am about one trip away from knowing nothing about China, it
feels like. It is complex; it is difficult. But I can tell you
this: I have been on those dozens of trips to Hong Kong, and I
have never quite felt the sense of concern that I have felt
over the last couple months. I was in Hong Kong; in Lhasa, in
Tibet; and in Beijing. And it is a challenge.
And I think many of us recognize--and I am glad that the
chairman mentioned it--the decoupling of most-favored-nation
status to human rights was something, and I, too, supported
that. And I think the idea was, with a free-market economy, we
would see a more opening of the Chinese grip on social life and
on human rights. That simply has not occurred.
And so I think there needs to be the focus on what the
Commission says. I would say I think the report is correct; it
is getting worse, not better. It extends from, as you heard,
the things Mr. Smith said.
And I can tell you, the NGO law is incredibly draconian.
What is really interesting to me is every person I talk to in
China--and this has been in the last few weeks. We were in Hong
Kong meeting with a group of the American Chamber of Commerce,
and it was the bankers who were deeply concerned about this. It
is not Bankers Without Borders type of folks, that they
understand that the critical aspect of international
cooperation and all of the things that you build to build civil
society and across nations are going to be jeopardized if this
NGO law goes into effect. And, again, it is meant, as I heard
one of my colleagues up here say, it is about them controlling
it, controlling that piece of information. It is dangerous.
I will have to tell you, Hong Kong and the basic rule of
law that was drawn out is under assault. I never thought I
would see it. Anson Chan, who many of you are very familiar
with, I viewed as she was the person that helped transition
this and was reassuring us that everything was going to be fine
in this transition. She is now coming back and saying, ``I was
wrong. It is not going to be fine.'' It is being undermined.
We met with the bishops of the Catholic Church there. They
are being undermined. The Chinese are appointing those, the
bishops, instead of that. The lawyers being arrested--and,
again, China continues to articulate they want to have rule of
law. There is a difference between rule of law and rule by law,
or rule by lawlessness, however you are using it. If you are
using the law to oppress those very people, if the lawyers who
are there--and keep in mind, these are people who were arrested
trying to defend women, who were defending women's rights
issues in China. They were arrested. Their lawyers were
arrested. It has had a chilling effect across the society.
And if you get some time and there are some questions, the
situation in Tibet--and I want to be very clear. When I was
there--and I mentioned to someone, I said, ``Oh, the last time
I was in Tibet I think was late 1989,'' and the Chinese
Government official said, ``No, it was February 1990.'' I said,
thank you for reminding me because I had forgotten when that
was. They knew.
And I did say, when it took me 6 days by bus to get there
in 1990, now we flew in next to a railroad. There is no denying
China's economic growth and China's ability to raise standards
of living. They should rightfully be proud of that. China has
moved many people out of poverty and moved them into a more
stable and more prosperous existence. But we cannot decouple
economic growth from human rights growth, and, as a Nation, we
need to hold those ideas up.
And in all fairness, sitting in the deepest heart of the
Forbidden City, having a spirited debated with the Premier of
China over Tibet and talking about the Dalai Lama, his comeback
to me was, he said, Congressman, I think you also taught in
Pine Ridge, did you not? And I said, yes, I did. He said, how
did that work out for you? And I said, no one here is defending
what happened to the Native Americans. We are pointing out that
nations need to understand how you move forward, how you learn
from these.
I thought, to tell you the truth, their willingness to at
least engage this and not pretend--I mean, making that
comparison, to me, was telling, that they were getting there.
And it wasn't about lecturing, and I don't think that is
what the Commission and Mr. Smith is about, but it is about
speaking truth to power. It is about speaking for those that
don't have the voice. It is about understanding that those
basic human rights, whether it be trafficking, whether it be
draconian family planning programs, NGOs, or many of the other
issues, if we don't say it, no one will.
And I would close with this and ask you--I asked activists,
when we met with families under, you know, cloud of dark
because their lawyer husband had been arrested, or we met with
dissidents in Hong Kong or in Tibet, I asked each one of them,
does it help or hurt when we speak about this? And they said,
``Please don't ever stop speaking about it. Please tell our
story. Please tell what is going on. It is critically
important.''
So, Chairman and Ranking Member, members of this committee,
I thank you for doing just that. And I am certainly open for
questions.
[Mr. Walz did not submit a prepared statement.]
Mr. Salmon. I thank the two gentlemen for the very
effective and well-done report. I thank you also for your
commitment to human rights--all across the globe, but we are
focusing on China today.
Mr. Walz, I had an opportunity back in the nineties to go
into Tibet, as well, and spent a couple of days, you know, with
many of those monks, interviewed them. And then I, about 6
months later, went to Dharamsala and spent about 3 days with
the Dalai Lama to talk about the issues of Tibet.
I was a missionary when I was a young man for my church in
Taiwan, and I learned a lot about the culture. I learned the
language while I was there. I have been over to China probably
close to 50 times.
And when I debated the issue of permanent normal trade
relations back when President Clinton was President, it was a
very robust debate. And I was on one side of the fence, and I
remember the other side of the fence was a couple of people I
have a lot of love and admiration for. One of them was sitting
right before me, Chris Smith, and another one was a guy that is
not here anymore, Frank Wolf, and, on your side, Nancy Pelosi,
who made some very credible arguments about, you know, how the
decoupling of trade and human rights through this activity
could be very, very harmful.
And I remember saying at the time that I truly did believe
that moving on the continuum of a person's basic needs, that
once they opened the box on a free market that it was hard to
suppress the other things that I believed would come naturally
with that. And so I prognosticated that, by passage of PNTR,
that in the not-so-distant future we would see a robust
movement, improvement if you will, of human rights issues.
And I am still trying to scrape that egg off my face to
this day, because it never happened. I think with the first
couple of Presidents there was some movement, some movement,
but I believe that under this current regime they have taken
some big steps backward. And all the dreams and the things that
I hoped would happen with the free trade, they just didn't
materialize, and I am very, very disappointed.
Mr. Walz. Mr. Chairman, if I could say--and I hear exactly
what you are going through, because I do this too. The thing I
would say, though, is it has inspired those dreams amongst the
people, that it did do that. And the opening of the market and
what is available and the middle class and what their children
could achieve to or whatever, it has done that.
The problem is that I think we thought there would be more
of a movement amongst or more of the desire. But I think it
also comes through when people--some of my colleagues who were
along on this latest trip were amazed that the students at
Peking University didn't really know what happened on June 4,
1989. I said, ``That is not so surprising. What is more
troubling to me is that students here might not know what
happened.''
And so I hear your struggle with this, but----
Mr. Salmon. Well----
Mr. Walz [continuing]. I also think it made a difference
among----
Mr. Salmon [continuing]. You know, I see people that are
just, you know, regular citizens that come up with phenomenal
ideas, and then they make money, and they get out of the
poverty that they have been living in. And that kind of
mobility has been a good thing. But not nearly enough good
things have happened in the realm of human rights improvements
that we all desire.
I was at the handover ceremony for Hong Kong, and I
remember at the time meeting with Anson Chan and meeting with
Martin Lee and, you know, getting different messages about what
this ``one-China, two systems'' was going to mean. And I
believed in my heart that China would respect that sovereignty,
if you will, if that is the best term for it, that delineation
of two governments within a government, letting Hong Kong
operate in an autonomous way. But yet it has never materialized
in the selection of their chief executive--never materialized.
And that is why we saw the Umbrella Movement. That is why
we saw the student protests and the uprising. I had an
opportunity myself last year to go and meet with a lot of those
students and freedom fighters, and they are hoping that their
trusted friends here in the United States will not leave them
by the wayside. They are hoping with all their hearts that we
will continue to call attention to the need to allow them to be
able to choose their own path and their own leaders.
And so I didn't mean to, you know, kind of go into some
kind of a soliloquy here, but the fact is what you are doing is
so incredibly important, and I appreciate it. And I believe
that, as we go forward, we need to have a strong bilateral
relationship with China, but that doesn't mean that we are not
honest and that we don't stand up for the values that have made
us a great Nation and to be that shining city on a hill that we
have always been.
Mr. Smith, I am sorry for all those comments. I wanted to
ask a question or two, but I have used my time. I don't mean to
filibuster either, so I am going to turn it over to Mr.
Sherman.
Mr. Sherman. China is undergoing a real economic stress.
Its Chinese party derived its support, arguably its legitimacy,
not from any ideological reason. You know, if you believe in
the divine right of kings, well, then a king has legitimacy. If
you believe in democracy, winning an election gives you
legitimacy. If you believe in Marxist Leninism, then if you are
the vanguard of the proletariat, you have legitimacy. They are
not the vanguard of the proletariat. So they achieve their
legitimacy chiefly by saying, hey, we deliver better economic
growth. They are not doing that now.
Do you see them relaxing their control in order to gain the
economic benefits of the rule of law or retrenching their
dictatorship as a reaction to, well, hey, we may be less
popular because the economy is not doing as well, so we are
going to have to smash more heads in?
Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. I think it is more the latter, I would say to my
good friend from California.
Let me just, you know, to Chairman Salmon, we had the exact
same goal, all of us, and it was to promote democracy, freedom,
and human rights for the great people of China. Unfortunately,
they were not players. They gamed the system. They continue to
do so.
And I think, to the question just asked, we are looking at
a dictatorship that is flush with power. It is making money
hand over fist all over Africa. It is trying to export its bad
governance model all over the world. That is why people like
Bashir in Sudan and others, you know, prize the Chinese
relationship, because they ask no questions about human rights
and democracy and freedom. We do. The West does, as well.
So I think they feel there has never been a real penalty
phase for their gross human rights abuse.
On the population control program, for example, I have been
raising that issue doggedly since 1983, when I first learned
about it; offered the first bill in Congress to criticize it,
call it crimes against humanity.
And, recently, the former director of the Brookings Center
for Public Policy, Wang Feng, said that history will judge the
one-child policy as worse than the cultural revolution--worse.
It has so horribly impacted upon women especially. They have
6,000 suicides per day--not week, month--per day. And that is
from their own CDC numbers, largely attributable to this
draconian policy which just invades women and kills their
babies and hurts them.
On all these other issues----
Mr. Sherman. I do want to sneak in one more question.
Mr. Smith. Sure. But all the other issues, the whole basket
of human rights issues, they have not been held to account.
And, unfortunately, they have been rewarded, unfortunately,
with more economic benefits, more access. There are 90
bilateral----
Mr. Sherman. Mr. Smith, I would like to sneak in another
question.
We have had a dedication to the free flow of information.
In the era when we confronted Soviet Communism, we had Voice of
America, and they would jam it. So the technological battle to
push in the free flow of information was something we engaged
in. We used our skill to get around the jamming.
Well, today it is not about shortwave radio; it is about
the Internet. We see the great firewall of China, the jamming
of the 21st century. But what I don't see is all of the
intellectual capacity of Silicon Valley being used to smash
that wall.
Mr. Walz--and I realize I, at least, am not a technological
expert, and this may be something you would want to pursue with
the Commission. But could the United States offer a contract or
prize to those in Silicon Valley who can crack the great
firewall of China, defeat these efforts, and let everyone in
China who is online be online to the World Wide Web?
Mr. Walz. Yes, I think so. But the problem we have had--and
we have had this hearing--American companies have helped be
part of that firewall. And that is the problem.
And I would say this is a very sticky subject for all of
us, and I think many of you have hit on it. Your question was,
are they entrenching? Yes, I do believe they are entrenching.
China changes when it is in China's interest or when there is a
penalty for it.
All of a sudden now, you saw--we got a real big
breakthrough on cybersecurity when President Xi was here. That
is the untold story. We got a good deal on cybersecurity. Well,
was that because of great negotiations here? I am sure some of
you would say, ``No. We haven't seen that.'' I will tell you
what happened, was China now has intellectual property that
other countries are stealing, so now they are concerned about
it, so they are involved with this. That is in our best
interest, to bring them into this.
The issue in the South China Sea is simply unacceptable, in
the Spratly Islands and some of the issues they are doing
there, but China is not about to disrupt global international
trade. It is what they do. But they do want to flex some of
their muscles.
So the answer is, yes, that we can get them, yes, when
companies are there. But I would leave you with this, and maybe
the next question will come up, is, how much pain are we
willing to take to make them pay for it economically? Because
Mr. Smith is right; they have been rewarded for this. And if it
is all about commerce alone, without an accountability piece on
the human rights, they will continue to do it.
When the issue of intellectual property started to hurt,
they changed. When the issue of human rights or some of the
issues that you have heard mentioned here hurt, I believe that
is when they will change their behavior. But, right now, I have
to tell you, I am more pessimistic than I have been in many
years because they are still continuing to benefit from it.
Mr. Sherman. I look forward to working with the members in
the room on legislation to prohibit U.S. companies from helping
this great wall of China. And I look forward, if we can get
some appropriations, to actually funding an effort to defeat
it.
And I yield back.
Mr. Smith. If I could, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Sherman. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. Smith. Just briefly, a couple of points.
In 2006, I chaired a hearing right here, and we had the top
people from Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and Yahoo sworn in. I
swore them in. And, at that point, they were completely
manipulating the search engines of the Internet, especially
Google and Yahoo, and Cisco was helping with an enormous
project that was literally helping the public security
apparatus, the police, the secret police, to surveil and find
out when anybody went online and logged in.
They have gone from bad to worse on Internet restrictions.
Our report deals with that extensively. I have introduced a
bill called the Global Online Freedom Act, which would prohibit
the export of those items to China, where they have the
capability to help their police.
We did that with apartheid. There were certain things that
the police could not get in South Africa from the United
States, put on the no-export list, because it aided and abetted
that kind of repression, you know, apartheid by South Africa
and in this case in China.
I would ask you to take a look at the section. It is very
real. I think Google and others have learned a hard lesson as
the indigenous facsimiles of Google, like Baidu and the others,
have literally pushed them out almost completely, not
completely, taken over, pirated their software. Intellectual
property rights are not respected by the Government of China,
so they just steal it, make it their own. And, you know, shame
on us for not seeing that coming, but it is not too late
because, obviously, the Internet and all of those things are
continuing to evolve. All the more reason why that legislation
needs to move.
And I thank my friend.
Mr. Salmon. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, thank you very much.
And thank both of you for being with us to focus our
attention on what is going on in China.
I remember Tiananmen Square. I think that that was a
historic turning point for the worse. 1989, Herbert Walker Bush
was President of the United States. And we had just had Ronald
Reagan, he had just replaced Ronald Reagan. And under Ronald
Reagan, we set in motion--I was happy to be part of his team--
we set in motion the--how do you say--the dynamics that would
bring down the Berlin Wall, would have the Soviet troops
withdrawing from Central Europe, and, yes, the democratization,
as rocky as it has been, in what was the Soviet Union and now
is a somewhat democratic Russia, although lots of flaws.
And then, in 1989, when George Bush was President and
Tiananmen Square happened, I believe that had Herbert Walker
Bush called the Chinese leadership and told them that if they
used their military to suppress Tiananmen Square all the deals
that we had made are off, all the economic deals--that is what
Ronald Reagan would have done, and that is how Ronald Reagan
would have created a freer world. But Herbert Walker Bush
created a world in which we have a monster state that threatens
the peace and stability and represses over 1\1/2\ billion of
their own people.
And we then embarked, under the leadership of Herbert
Walker Bush and then, of course, every President since then, of
a policy designed to increase the economic power of a country
that was ruled by a totalitarian government. And as the
witnesses have stated, it was done with the excuse that making
them more prosperous would make them more democratic, make war
less likely, et cetera.
And I take it that both of the witnesses--and you may
comment on it--now say that theory was totally false and
basically is what has led us to the evil situation that we have
today. Is that correct?
Mr. Smith?
Mr. Walz?
Mr. Smith. Yes, I believe that.
Mr. Walz. Well, I think so, but I think it is hard, too. I
think Mr. Rohrabacher summed it up. I do think there are
frustrations with that. I think it is hard to say what
containment would have done, and not doing anything. But I do
think, as a Nation, that we can't decouple our economic
interests from our human rights and our values. So, on that, I
agree with you on that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. And with this policy, we actually
made ourselves vulnerable if we tried to enforce our own
standards.
Mr. Walz. That is true.
Mr. Rohrabacher. It would then be very detrimental to our
economy and our people in order just to maintain the standards
that we supposedly believe in.
Mr. Smith. Chairman Rohrabacher, if I could just respond
quickly.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes. Go ahead.
Mr. Smith. You know, Herbert Walker Bush obviously was once
our Ambassador to China and really thought that he knew the
Chinese leadership or how they might respond. When he sent
Brent Scowcroft there after Tiananmen Square, that was a major,
major mistake, in my opinion.
Bill Clinton properly said that he was coddling
dictatorship. He made a famous speech along those lines.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I remember.
Mr. Smith. But then he, Bill Clinton, came into town. We
had the votes in a bipartisan way to take MFN away unless there
was significant improvement in human rights. You know, Nancy
Pelosi on the Democrat side, I and many others on the
Republican side, we had the votes, in my opinion. And the
President did an Executive order that said, unless all of these
criteria are met--and it was an excellent Executive order--MFN
is a goner. We were conditioning our trade with human rights.
In May 1994, on a Friday afternoon after just about
everybody left this place, President Clinton ripped in half his
Executive order and decoupled human rights from trade. That is
when the Chinese Government took their measure of us and said,
``They just care about profits.''
Mr. Rohrabacher. So instead of making them more democratic,
our association and interaction economically with the Chinese
have actually made us less democratic. What you just described,
waiting until everybody is out of town in order to make a
fundamental change, is not consistent with what a free society
does.
Let me note that on most of the petitions and most of the
letters and most of the demands and the bills that you are
talking about, I think you will find my name right underneath
yours. And I always, always, always respected your leadership
on this.
One last note. It has been stated quite often, when you
talk to the people about the current situation in China, that
they say, well, now there are Christians in China. There are
more Christians in China than there are in the United States,
but they are in their churches.
And here is what we have to remember. There were other
periods in China that the Chinese people are very familiar
with, and that is that they are told, if their church
registers, they don't have anything to fear. Okay. But we know
very well--and there are many churches that people have
registered.
But we know that, shortly after taking over China, the
Communists had, Mao Zedong initiated what they call, ``Let a
hundred flowers bloom.'' And what happened was--this was to
open up. It was like the new--it happened under Lenin, too, if
you remember, the new economic order. There always seems to be
an opening in which then the totalitarians come in, and they
know exactly who to go to.
And so the people who are religious followers, as the Falun
Gong now are fully aware, are targeted. And whether or not they
are going to wait until after the flowers have bloomed or
whether something else will cause the trigger to be pulled,
they know they are in jeopardy.
We still have a totalitarian government, as your
testimony--as the chairman has stated. We have a totalitarian
power in charge of a huge hunk of the planet. We have been
subsidizing and increasing the power of that government. It is
time that we stop doing that, find a policy that will create
more freedom and less likely to have conflict, and a government
that is more consistent with the type of things we believe in
as our gifts given by God, rights of every person.
And, with that said, thank you very much.
Mr. Salmon. I would like to thank both the gentlemen for
their testimonies today, but, moreover, I would really like to
thank you for all the wonderful work that you have done with
the Commission and just encourage you to continue doing all the
great work that you are doing. Billions and billions of people
are counting on a positive outcome and the light that we can
shine on these issues, because wickedness hates the light. And
so I hope we keep doing that.
So thank you very, very much.
And, without any objection, this meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:29 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Record
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Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Matt Salmon, a
Representative in Congress from the State of Arizona, and chairman,
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific
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