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HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: IMPROVING OR

DETERIORATING CONDITIONS?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN 

RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 19, 2006

Serial No. 109–169

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman 

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, 

Vice Chairman 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

PETER T. KING, New York 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado 

RON PAUL, Texas 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia 

MARK GREEN, Wisconsin 

JERRY WELLER, Illinois 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

THADDEUS G. MCCOTTER, Michigan 

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

TOM LANTOS, California 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

BARBARA LEE, California 

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

DIANE E. WATSON, California 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., Staff Director/General Counsel 

ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL

OPERATIONS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MARK GREEN, Wisconsin 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, 

Vice Chairman 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

BARBARA LEE, California 

DIANE E. WATSON, California 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

MARY M. NOONAN, Subcommittee Staff Director 

GREG SIMPKINS, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member 

NOELLE LUSANE, Democratic Professional Staff Member 

SHERI A. RICKERT, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member and Counsel 

LINDSEY M. PLUMLEY, Staff Associate 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. Ethan Gutmann, Author, ‘‘Losing the New China: a Story of American 

Commerce, Desire and Betrayal’’ ........................................................................ 9

Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, Human Rights Advocate, former political prisoner ............ 15

Mr. Joseph Kung, Director, Cardinal Kung Foundation ...................................... 21

Ms. Thea Lee, Director of Public Policy, AFL–CIO .............................................. 45

Steven Mosher, Ph.D., President, Population Research Institute ....................... 51

Mr. Harry Wu, Executive Director, Laogai Research Foundation ....................... 70

Mr. Lu Decheng, 1989 Tiananmen Square protester ........................................... 81

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of New Jersey, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global 

Human Rights and International Operations: Prepared statement ................ 5

Mr. Ethan Gutmann: Prepared statement ............................................................ 13

Ms. Rebiya Kadeer: Prepared statement ............................................................... 19

Mr. Joseph Kung: Prepared statement .................................................................. 24

Ms. Thea Lee: Prepared statement ........................................................................ 47

Steven Mosher, Ph.D.: Prepared statement .......................................................... 54

Mr. Harry Wu: Prepared statement ....................................................................... 76

Mr. Lu Decheng: Prepared statement .................................................................... 82

APPENDIX 

Reporters Without Borders: Staff briefing on ‘‘The Human Rights Situation 

in China: An Update’’ .......................................................................................... 94

(1)

HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: IMPROVING OR 

DETERIORATING CONDITIONS? 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS

AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m. in room 

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith 

(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The Subcommittee hearing will come to order. And 

I want to wish everybody a very good morning. 

Today’s hearing of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global 

Human Rights and International Operations will examine the Chinese human rights record, especially such areas as China’s censorship of the Internet, implementation of the right of Chinese citizens 

to worship freely, the protection of minority rights, compliance with 

international labor standards, China’s barbaric practice of organ 

harvesting, and the destructive effects on Chinese society—especially on women—of its government’s coercive one-child-per-couple 

policy. 

Over the years, I have held more than 25 hearings on human 

rights abuses in China. While China’s economy has improved somewhat, the human rights situation remains abysmal. So-called economic reform has utterly failed to result in the protection of freedom of speech, expression, or assembly. 

This week’s visit of President Hu Jintao of China to the United 

States provides the United States Congress, and the people, an opportunity to bring to the attention of United States policymakers, 

and the world community, the terrible human rights situation that 

exists in China today. 

It will also help provide the vital context for any relationship 

that we would have with China. 

And it will, I hope, convey our unshakeable resolve and commitment to press Beijing for serious, measurable, and durable reform. 

The people of China deserve no less. It is our moral duty to stand 

with the oppressed, not the oppressor. 

The State Department human rights reports and the consistent 

reporting from very reputable NGOs indicate that Chinese Government’s repression of its citizens continues unabated. In fact, the 

current Chinese regime is one of the very worst violators of human 

rights in the entire world and continues to commit egregious 

crimes against its own citizens every single day. 

2

At a rough count, the most recent State Department human 

rights report for China ran about 45,000 words. Before it even get 

down to the details, the report lists 22 major human rights problems. Few, if any, nations can begin to match this unseemly record 

from the systematic denial of political freedom, to the use of torture, to interference in the most private matters of family and conscience. 

I note, parenthetically, that China continues to be regarded by 

the U.S. State Department as a country of particular concern, a 

CPC country, joining only a handful of countries around the world 

that persecutes people of faith. In China, those who want to practice Falun Gong, a spiritual exercise, are so roughly treated that 

China has been designated as a CPC country, and that is a very 

dubious distinction indeed. 

The State Department report, and I will only list a couple of 

these and put the report in the record, talks about the denial of the 

right to change the government, a right that every democracy enjoys. If we don’t like what the Republicans or Democrats are doing, 

elections can hold the key for reform or change in any given election. And so it is with democracies all over the word. You can’t 

change the Government of China. 

Physical abuse resulting in deaths in custody, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, again, these are State Department 

concerns expressed in their report along with politically-controlled 

judiciary, the house arrests, nonapproved surveillance, and detention of the dissidents. 

The use of coercive birth limitation policies, in some cases, result 

in forced abortions and sterilizations. Increased restrictions of freedom of press. And it goes on and on and on. 

The restrictions on labor rights, including the freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, worker health 

and safety, and forced labor, including prison labor. Beijing as we 

know, ladies and gentlemen, has increasingly viewed the information available on the Internet as a potential threat to the party’s 

ability to control the population and monopolize political power. 

It has turned China into one of the most Internet restrictive 

countries in the world. It is important to note that the freedoms 

that we enjoy in America, allow individuals to publish information 

and news on the Web unfiltered. 

Those freedoms do not exist in China. Individuals who attempt 

to speak freely are imprisoned and even tortured. At the very least, 

United States corporations should not be aiding and abetting that 

process. 

Yet, at a February hearing I chaired on the Internet in China, 

we learned in greater and disturbing detail how some of the biggest 

corporations in America have partnered with the much-hated Chinese secret police to find, apprehend, convict, and jail pro-democracy advocates. 

Yahoo! told us at the hearing how profoundly they regret sending 

Shi Tao to prison for 10 years. But they couldn’t tell us, and didn’t 

seem to want to know, how many others were condemned to jail 

and torture because of Yahoo!’s complicity with the secret police. 

When I asked under what terms and conditions, court order, police 

demand, fishing trips, Yahoo! surrendered emails and address files, 

3

Yahoo! told us they couldn’t reveal that information to us because 

it would break Chinese law. 

Google, for its part, created an exclusively Chinese search engine 

that only Joseph Goebbels would love. Type in any number of vile 

words like human rights, Tiananmen Square or Falun Gong, and 

you will get rerouted to government propaganda, much of it heavily 

anti-American and anti-George Bush and filled with hate, especially for the Falun Gong. 

How did Google respond to our deep concern about their enabling 

a dictatorship to expand its hate message? According to the New 

York Times report in late March, they hired big-time Washington 

lobbying firms like Podesta-Mattoon and DCI group to put a good 

face on it all and presumably to kill my pending legislation, the 

Global Online Freedom Act of 2006. 

Amazingly, Cisco showed no sellers remorse whatsoever when its 

technology, especially Policenet—a tool for good in the hands of 

honest cops and legitimate law enforcement, but a tool of repression in the hands of Chinese police—has now effectively linked and 

exponentially expanded the capabilities of the Chinese police and 

the Chinese military as well. 

Microsoft also centers and shuts down blogs that Big Brother objects to. You can be sure that no serious discussion on human 

rights was on the agenda when President Hu visited with Bill 

Gates at Microsoft. 

China’s continued repression of religion is among the most despotic in the world. In February, the BBC reported that China has 

warned Hong Kong’s newly appointed cardinal, Joseph Zen, a wellknown critic of China’s suppression of religious freedoms, to remain 

quiet on political issues. Citizens practicing a faith other than officially sanctioned religions are often subjected to torture and imprisonment and death, at which time prisoner organs are frequently harvested to meet demand. 

Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs are all being 

persecuted for their faith. Today, numerous underground Roman 

Catholic priests and bishops and protestant pastors languish in the 

infamous Chinese concentration camps, known as the Laogai, for 

simply proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In the early 1990s, I met with Bishop Su of Baoding, a gentle 

and kind man that celebrated mass for our small delegation. And 

Joseph Kung remembers and knows this case extremely well. I was 

deeply inspired by his faith, he had recently been let out of jail, 

and also by his compassion for those who had jailed and mistreated 

him. 

He had no animosity for them, I found that amazing, only compassion and forgiveness. What kind of regime incarcerates a truly 

noble man like this, I thought. Soon after our visit, he was rearrested on false charges, released, rearrested and jailed again. He 

has now spent at least 27 years of his life for loving God and loving 

his neighbor. 

What kind of barbaric regime hurts a man like this? 

And then there is a special hate Beijing pours out on the Falun 

Gong. Nearly 7 years ago, the Chinese Government began its brutal campaign to completely eradicate Falun Gong through whatever 

means necessary. Many party members and army officials had 

4

begun to practice Falun Gong. Like all dictators in totalitarian terrorist systems, the PRC fears and hates what it cannot control. So 

it decided to destroy and intimidate those who practice Falun 

Gong. 

We see before us a Stalinist nightmare revived for the 21st century. Hundreds, perhaps thousands dead as a result of torture, tens 

of thousands jailed without trial, held in labor camps, prisons and 

mental hospitals where they are forced to endure torture and 

brainwashing sessions. 

Just over a year ago, Beijing finally released the reknowned 

human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer from prison, where she had 

been held for years on trumped up charges for defending the rights 

of her fellow Uighur Muslims in China. We had hoped this signaled 

some sort of genuine improvement in Beijing’s treatment of human 

rights. But now we know better. 

Since Rebiya, who is now living in America and will speak shortly to us, has continued to campaign for recognition of the legitimate 

rights of her fellow Uighurs, her relatives and business associates 

still in China are being subjected to renewed harassment by authorities. 

Again, she is here to testify and we are grateful for her attendance. 

Let me make just brief mention of another issue, and that is coercive family planning policy. China has slaughtered more innocent 

children than any war in human history. Coercive family planning 

has wounded Chinese women by the millions. And one of the psychological consequences is that some 500 Chinese women commit 

suicide every day. Every day. China’s one child per couple decreed 

in 1979 has killed hundreds of millions of babies, by imposing draconian fines up to 10 times annual salaries on their parents to 

force them to abort. 

Who can fight that kind of economic coercion? 

In China today, brothers and sisters are illegal, sex selection 

abortions, a direct consequence of allowing only one baby per couple, has led to gendercide, approximately 1 hundred million girls 

are missing in China. 

One Chinese demographer has admitted that by the year 2020, 

40 million Chinese men won’t be able to find wives because Beijing’s weapon of mass destruction—population control—has destroyed the girls. 

Gendercide. 

Ongoing and pervasive in the PRC. 

Then there is the lack of recourse for millions of Chinese laborers, trapped in poor working conditions. Those who protest unjust 

wage and labor practices outside of the government controlled labor 

union are arrested and imprisoned. Chinese citizens are often persecuted just for going to court to secure rights, which, even under 

current Chinese law, as restrictive as it is, guarantees them. 

And the lawyers, who seek to help them, are threatened, harassed, beaten, disbarred and jailed, for simply doing their duty. 

They join countless prisoners of conscience in China’s modern 

day concentration camps. They are found everywhere in China, the 

Laogai that Harry Wu has spoken so eloquently about and has 

spent some 16 years of his life in and will be testifying about shortVerDate Mar 21 2002 10:03 Jul 13, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGI\041906\27067.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
5

ly. There are now more than 1,100 of those terrible Laogai littered 

throughout China. 

Finally, we will hear testimony about China’s barbaric policy of 

harvesting human organs for sale and transplant. China admits it 

does this. According to the Chinese ministry of health, since 1993 

there have been over 65,000 transplant procedures performed in 

China. China’s deputy health minister recently stated that 95 percent of the organs for organ transplants performed in China are 

from executed Chinese prisoners. 

Of course, it claims that it only harvests the organs of executed 

prisoners and only if they or their families consent. But what value 

can such a statement have in a country where the death penalty 

is virtually an assembly-line process where, according to the State 

Department’s human rights report for 2005, foreign experts estimate between 5,000 and 12,000 people are executed every year. 

Chinese courts hand down the death sentence for an ever expanding range of crimes, including nonviolent and political crimes. 

Appeals are conducted hastily, if at all. 

In an effort to boost profits, it is reported that some provincial 

or local officials in China have begun to allow mobile medical vans 

at execution sites to facilitate the ease and efficiency at which prisoners organs may be harvested. 

We have all heard the recent horrific stories that China is now 

targeting the thousands of innocent Falun Gong prisoners it holds 

for organ harvesting and perhaps not even waiting until they are 

dead. The State Department and U.N. Special Rapporteur for torture, Manfred Nowak, has been investigating. They must get to the 

truth of these blood curdling stories and do everything to stop this 

shameful practice. 

Finally, let me say to my friends and colleagues that human 

rights are everyone’s rights. Governments are instituted to secure, 

protect, and safeguard those rights. Human rights aren’t privileges 

and they are indivisible. Human rights are worth fighting for, even 

when they are costly and even when it is inconvenient, especially 

when it is inconvenient to trade. I want to thank our witnesses for 

being here today to talk about these vitally important issues, especially on the eve of President Hu’s visit to the White House tomorrow. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS

The Subcommittee will come to order, and good morning to everyone. Today’s 

hearing of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations will examine China’s human rights record, especially such areas as China’s 

censorship of the internet, implementation of the right of Chinese citizens to worship freely, protection of minority rights, compliance with international labor standards, China’s barbaric practice of organ harvesting, and the destructive effects on 

Chinese society—especially on women—of its government’s coercive one-child policy. 

Over the years, I have held more than 25 hearings on human rights abuses in 

China. While China’s economy has improved somewhat, the human rights situation 

remains abysmal. So-called economic reform has utterly failed to result in the protection of freedom of speech, expression, or assembly. 

This week’s visit of President Hu Jintao of China to the United States provides 

the U.S. Congress and people an opportunity to bring to the attention of U.S. policy 

makers and the world community the terrible human rights situation as it exists 

6

in China today. It will also help provide the vital context for any relationship we 

should have with China. And it will, I hope convey our unshakeable resolve and 

commitment to press Beijing for serious, measurable and durable reform. The people 

of China deserve no less. It is our moral duty to stand with the oppressed, not with 

the oppressor. 

State Department human rights reports and the consistent reporting from very 

reputable NGOs indicate that Chinese government repression of its citizens continues. In fact, the current Chinese regime is one of the very worst violators of 

human rights in the world, and continues to commit every single day egregious 

crimes against its own citizens. At a rough count, the most recent State Department 

Human Rights Report for China ran to about 45,000 words. Before it even gets 

down to details, the report lists 22 major rights problems. Few if any nations can 

even begin to match this unseemly record, from the systematic denial of political 

freedom and use of torture to interference in the most private matters of family and 

conscience.

1. denial of the right to change the government

2. physical abuse resulting in deaths in custody

3. torture and coerced confessions of prisoners

4. harassment, detention, and imprisonment of those perceived as threatening 

to party and government authority

5. arbitrary arrest and detention, including nonjudicial administrative detention, reeducation-through-labor, psychiatric detention, and extended or incommunicado pretrial detention

6. a politically controlled judiciary and a lack of due process in certain cases, 

especially those involving dissidents

7. detention of political prisoners, including those convicted of disclosing state 

secrets and subversion, those convicted under the now-abolished crime of 

counterrevolution, and those jailed in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen 

demonstrations

8. house arrest and other nonjudicially approved surveillance and detention of 

dissidents

9. monitoring of citizens’ mail, telephone and electronic communications

10. use of a coercive birth limitation policy, in some cases resulting in forced 

abortion and sterilization

11. increased restrictions on freedom of speech and the press; closure of newspapers and journals; banning of politically sensitive books, periodicals, and 

films; and jamming of some broadcast signals

12. restrictions on the freedom of assembly, including detention and abuse of 

demonstrators and petitioners

13. restrictions on religious freedom, control of religious groups, and harassment 

and detention of unregistered religious groups

14. restrictions on the freedom of travel, especially for politically sensitive and 

underground religious figures

15. forcible repatriation of North Koreans and inadequate protection of many 

refugees

16. severe government corruption

17. increased scrutiny, harassment and restrictions on independent domestic 

and foreign nongovernmental organization (NGO) operations

18. trafficking in women and children

19. societal discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities

20. cultural and religious repression of minorities in Tibetan areas and Muslim 

areas of Xinjiang

21. restriction of labor rights, including freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, and worker health and safety

22. forced labor, including prison labor)

Beijing has increasingly viewed the information available on the internet as a potential threat to the Party’s ability to control the population and monopolize political 

power. It has turned China into one of the most internet restrictive countries in the 

world. It is important to note that the freedoms that we enjoy in America allow individuals to publish information and news on the Web unfiltered. Those freedoms do 

not exist in China. Individuals who attempt to speak freely are imprisoned and even 

7

tortured. At the very least, U.S. corporations should not be aiding in that process. 

Yet at a February hearing I chaired on the Internet in China, we learned in greater—and disturbing—detail, how some of the biggest corporations in America have 

partnered with the much-hated Chinese secret police to find, apprehend, convict and 

jail religious believers and pro-democracy advocates. 

Yahoo told us at the hearing how profoundly they regret sending Shi Tao to prison for 10 years but then couldn’t tell us—and didn’t seem to want to—how many 

others were condemned to jail and torture because of Yahoo’s complicity with the 

secret police. When I asked under what conditions—court order, police demand, a 

fishing trip—Yahoo surrenders emails and address files, Yahoo told us that they 

couldn’t reveal this information to us because it would break Chinese law. 

Google, for its part, created an exclusively Chinese search engine that only a Joseph Goebbels could love. Type in any number of vile words like human rights, or 

Tian An Men Square massacre, or Falun Gong, and you will get rerouted to government propaganda—much of it heavily anti-American and anti-President Bush, and 

filled with hate, especially for the Falun Gong. How did Google respond to our deep 

concern about their enabling a dictatorship to expand its hate message? They hired 

big-time Washington lobbying firms like Podesta-Mattoon and the DCI group to put 

a good face on it all—and presumably kill my pending legislation, the Global Online 

Freedom Act of 2006, 

Amazingly, Cisco showed no seller’s remorse whatsoever that its technology—especially ‘‘Policenet’’—a tool for good in the hands of honest cops and legitimate law 

enforcement, but a tool of repression in the hands of Chinese police has now effectively linked and exponentially expanded the capabilities of the Chinese police. 

Microsoft also censors and shuts down blogs that ‘‘Big Brother objects to. You can 

be sure that no serious discussion on human rights was on the agenda at President 

Hu visit with Bill Gates at Microsoft. 

China’s continued repression of religion is among the most despotic in the world. 

In February, the BBC reported that China had warned Hong Kong’s newly-appointed Cardinal, Joseph Zen, a well-known critic of China’s suppression of religious 

freedoms, to remain quiet on political issues. Citizens practicing a faith other than 

officially sanctioned religions are often subject to torture, imprisonment, and death, 

at which time prisoner organs are frequently harvested to meet demand. Christians, 

Tibetan Buddhists, and Muslim Uighurs are all being persecuted for their faith. 

Today, numerous underground Roman Catholic priests and bishops and Protestant 

pastors languish in the infamous concentration camps of China for simply proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In the early 90’s I meet with Bishop SU (Zhimin) of Baoding Province—a gentle 

and kind man who celebrated Mass for our small delegation. I was deeply inspired 

by his faith (he had recently been let out of jail) and by his compassion for those 

who jailed and mistreated him. He had no animosity for them—only compassion and 

forgiveness. What kind of regime incarcerates a truly noble man like this? Soon 

after our visit, he was re-arrested on false charges, released, and re-arrested and 

jailed again. He has spent at least 27 years of his life—for loving God. What kind 

of barbaric regime hurts a man like this? 

And then there is the special hate Beijing pours out on the Falun Gong. Nearly 

seven years ago the Chinese government began its brutal campaign to completely 

eradicate Falun Gong through whatever means necessary. Many Party Members 

and Army officials had begun to practice Falun Gong. Like all dictators and totalitarian terror systems, the PRC fears and hates what it cannot control. So it decided 

to destroy and intimidate those who practice Falun Gong. We see before us a Stalinist nightmare revived for the 21st century—hundreds, perhaps thousands, dead 

as a result of torture; tens of thousands jailed without trial, held in labor camps, 

prisons, and mental hospitals, where they are forced to endure torture brainwashing 

sessions. 

Just over a year ago Beijing finally released the renowned human rights activist, 

Rebiya Kadeer, from prison, where she had been held for years on trumped up 

charges for defending the rights of her fellow Uighur Muslims in China. We had 

hoped this signaled some sort of genuine improvement in Beijing’s treatment of 

human rights, but now we know better: since Rebiya, who is now living in America, 

has continued to campaign for the recognition of the legitimate rights of her fellow 

Uighurs, her relatives and business associates still in China are being subjected to 

renewed harassment by the authorities. Rebiyah is with us here today to testify 

about China’s continuing campaign against her peoples. 

Coercive family-planning policy in China has slaughtered more innocent children 

than any war in human history. Coercive family planning has wounded Chinese 

women by the millions and one of the psychological consequences is that 500 women 

commit suicide every day. Every day! China’s one-child per couple policy, decreed 

8

in 1979, has killed hundreds of million babies by imposing Draconian fines—up to 

ten times annual salaries—on their parents to force them to abort. Brothers and sisters are illegal. Sex selection abortions—a direct consequence of allowing only one 

baby per couple, has led to gendercide—approximately 100 million girls are missing—in China. One Chinese demographer has admitted that by 2020, forty million 

Chinese men won’t be able to find wives because Beijing’s weapon of mass destruction—population control—destroyed the girls. 

There is no recourse for millions of Chinese laborers trapped in poor working conditions. Those who protest unjust wage and labor practices outside of the government-controlled labor union are arrested and imprisoned. Chinese citizens are often 

persecuted just for going to court to secure rights which even current Chinese law, 

as restrictive as at is, guarantees them. And the lawyers who seek to help them 

are threatened, harassed, beaten, disbarred and jailed for doing their simple duty. 

They join countless prisoners opf conscience in China’s modern day concentration 

camps. These are found everywhere in China—more than 1,100 by one count. 

Finally, we shall hear testimony about China’s barbaric policy of harvesting 

human organs for sale and transplant. China admits it does this. According to China’s Ministry of Health, since 1993, there have been over 65,000 transplant procedures performed in China. China’s Deputy Health Minister recently stated that 95 

percent of the organs for organ transplants performed in China are from executed 

Chinese prisoners. Of course it claims it only harvests the organs of executed prisoners, and only if they or their families consent. But what value can such a statement have in a country where the death penalty is virtually an assembly line process? Where according to the Department of State’s Human Rights Report for 2005, 

foreign experts estimate between five and twelve thousand people are executed 

every year? Chinese courts hand down the death sentence for an ever-expanding 

range of crimes, including nonviolent and political crimes. Appeals are conducted 

hastily, if at all. In an effort to boost profits, it is reported that some provincial or 

local officials in China have begun to allow mobile medical vans at execution sites 

to facilitate the ease and efficiency with which prisoners’ organs may be harvested. 

We have all heard the recent horrific stories that China is now targeting the thousands of innocent Falun Gong prisoners it holds for organ harvesting, and perhaps 

not even waiting until they are dead. The State Department and the UN Special 

Rapporteur for Torture, Manfred Nowak, have been investigating. They must get to 

the truth of these blood-curdling stories, and do everything to stop this shameful 

practice. 

Human rights are everyone’s rights. Governments are instituted to secure, protect, and safeguard those rights. Human rights aren’t privileges. Human rights are 

worth fighting for, even when they are costly, and even when it is inconvenient. I 

thank our witnesses for being willing to talk about these vitally important issues 

today.

Mr. SMITH. I would like to now introduce our first panel, and 

thank them for being here. And panel 1 will begin with Mr. Ethan 

Gutmann, who is the author of Losing the New China: a Story of 

American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal. He has also written for 

the Weekly Standard and other publications, a former counselor at 

APCO China, and a former visiting fellow at the Project for the 

New American Century. Mr. Gutmann won the spirit of Tiananmen 

and Chance Journalism Awards in 2005 for exposing American corporate participation in censorship and surveillance of the Chinese 

Internet. 

We will then hear from Mrs. Rebiya Kadeer, who is the most 

prominent Uighur human rights advocate and a leader who spent 

nearly 6 years in a Chinese prison for standing up to the authoritarian Chinese Government, Mrs. Kadeer is the mother of 11 children and former laundress turned millionaire. Earlier this year, 

she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Mrs. Kadeer was released for medical parole by the Chinese Government on March 17, 

2005, after pressure from the United States Government, the Congress, and relentless protestations of international human rights 

organizations. And in October 2005, Mrs. Kadeer established the 

9

International Uighur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation in 

Washington, DC. 

We will then hear from Mr. Joseph Kung, director of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, one of a much smaller group of Chinese 

refugees to emigrate to the United States under special quota back 

in 1955. A frequent guest on TV and radio programs, Joseph Kung 

has spoken before many Catholic organizations and before this 

Committee in the past. 

As a matter of fact, I had the privilege of traveling with him to 

China on a human rights trip in the 1990s, and it was fascinating 

how he was able to engage, especially the Catholic patriotic church 

on what they leave out and how they comply and are complicit with 

the dictatorship. It was very fascinating and I appreciated his insights. He was the recipient of the Freedom Award from the Cardinal Brezinski Foundation in 1995 and the Freedom House’s Center For Religious Freedom in 2001. 

Mr. Gutmann, if you would begin please. 

STATEMENT OF MR. ETHAN GUTMANN, AUTHOR, ‘‘LOSING THE 

NEW CHINA: A STORY OF AMERICAN COMMERCE, DESIRE 

AND BETRAYAL 

Mr. GUTMANN. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to make 

a contribution to the Committee’s profoundly important work. 

Approximately 2 months ago, your Committee heard representatives of Google, Microsoft, Cisco and Yahoo! defend their companies’ 

role in constructing China’s Internet. Simultaneously, the Committee floated an extremely important draft, the Global Online 

Freedom Act of 2006, which appeared to place this Committee and 

the aforementioned companies on a collision course. 

Some commentators, particularly those searching for a middle 

way, characterized the Online Freedom Act as an overreaction. I 

don’t agree. I believe it is better characterized as a tragedy. 

I would guess that few people in this room actually desire intrusive government intervention and oversight of U.S. companies. I 

certainly don’t. 

I am a former consultant to American cooperations operating in 

China and a former Vice Chair of the Government Relations Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. 

I am also a former believer in the concept that we would change 

China, not that China would change us. 

But I now believe that the Internet Freedom Act may not be 

comprehensive enough, particularly in explicitly sanctioning Internet surveillance technologies. And I believe that the tragedy did 

not start with this Committee, but in the very early stages of 

American involvement in the Chinese Internet. It is the history of 

a collision course, not so much between Washington and American 

Internet companies, but between American corporate decisions and 

American values. And we can study that history for insights and 

potential solutions from the current dilemma. 

Two months ago, company representatives told the history of the 

stunning expansion of the Chinese Internet using impressive statistics, 110 million users, over 13 million bloggers. And I don’t dispute these. But lost in all these figures is the simple point that 

Chinese Internet freedom has actually been contracting since 1998 

10

when I arrived in China. Censorship was already present on the 

Chinese Web, the dissident e-mails, spam or samizdat, depending 

on your perspective, flashed continuously on Chinese users screens, 

censorship didn’t matter if you used proxy servers—that is linking 

up to another computer that would act as an intermediary, hiding 

the Web footprints, evading the filter, circumventing the government controls. The most common search words in China at that 

time were not ‘‘Britney’’ and ‘‘Hooters’’ but ‘‘free’’ and ‘‘proxy.’’

And about 40 percent of the Chinese users employed proxies and 

a week after arriving, so did I. 

A year later, working in my Beijing office, I received an e-mail 

from a United States friend with the words ‘‘China,’’ ‘‘unrest,’’ 

‘‘labor,’’ and ‘‘Xinjiang’’ in strange half-tone brackets, as if the 

words had been picked out by a filter. Now, I had really never seen 

anything like this, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that 

the capability to search inside my Hotmail account actually came 

from an American company operating in China. 

During construction of the first Chinese public accessed Web in 

1996, Chinese authorities suddenly became interested in blocking 

forbidden Web sites and keyword searching—that is ‘‘looking into 

the packets.’’ Why? Well, because they are Marxists, and as my 

former colleague, Peter Lovelock, explained, that means you must 

embrace the means of communication, then control it. 

Fill it with Chinese voices. Block the outside and block relationships between Chinese voices. 

Blocking the outside was relatively easy. Three companies were 

competing for Chinese Net contracts in 1997: Bay Networks, Sun 

Microsystems, and Cisco Systems. Cisco prevailed by selling the 

authorities a firewall box at a significant discount, which would 

allow the Chinese authorities to block the forbidden Web. 

Now, Cisco’s general counsel denies selling any special configuration. Chinese engineers who actually worked on the firewall project 

are equally adamant that it was a custom made device. Either way, 

as early as 1998, any industry-wide restraints on the transfer of 

censorship technologies were already being weighed against Cisco’s 

captured 80 percent of the Chinese router market, which is an unprecedented Chinese success story. Yet, Cisco’s success may be 

more closely linked to a Cisco manager’s statement that ‘‘we have 

the ability to look more deeply into the packets end.’’ And I will return to that point. 

By 2000, Yahoo! began censoring its search engine and patrolling 

chat rooms to preserve its position as the top portal in China. According to Yahoo!’s former China manager, ‘‘It was a precautionary 

measure. The State Information Bureau was in charge of watching 

and making sure that we complied. The game is to make sure that 

they don’t complain.’’

Let’s apply that statement to more recent events. When Microsoft 

began suppressing such words as democracy and human rights in 

Chinese blogger headings, and when Google rolled out a castrated 

Chinese version of its search engine, company representatives 

made the argument that they were merely respecting local laws. 

Yet the laws are vague and contradictory at best, for example, 

the words ‘‘democracy’’ and ‘‘human rights’’ are enshrined in the 

Chinese constitution, so I think Yahoo!’s manager put it right the 

11

first time, make sure that they don’t complain. These were preemptive self-censoring policies when Yahoo! first employed them. They 

still are today. Thus, any assertion that the Chinese censorship 

issue is purely a government-to-government issue is premature 

until these companies dare to explicitly and systematically test the 

limits of Chinese laws. And until they perform that test, they 

should not be viewed as simply following Chinese law, but as working for Chinese Communist party objectives. 

Chinese Internet history can be divided into two periods, before 

the crackdown and after the crackdown. From October 2000 until 

May 2001 the Chinese authorities unveiled new laws; installation 

of internal monitoring software in cyber cafes across the Web; 

Internet service providers were ordered to hold all Chinese user 

data for 60 days; proxy servers were hunted, blocked and killed; 

and a national police digital network, the Gold Shield, was constructed. 

Now this crackdown period signaled that censorship objectives 

were actually secondary to surveillance, yet blocking relationships 

among Chinese forces and monitoring alternate sources of political 

power was far more technically demanding. For Western Internet 

companies, the crackdown should have signaled an end to cyber 

utopia and illusions. Instead, it signaled a new boom market for 

companies such as Nortel, Cisco and Sun Microsystems. 

By 2003, Cisco’s Policenet was deployed as the Internet backbone 

of the Chinese State security system. Two months ago, Harry Wu 

exhibited slides to this Committee, Cisco brochures from the 

Shanghai Gold Shield trade show in December 2002. And they 

demonstrate the depth of Cisco’s involvement with Chinese state 

security. These brochures are irrefutable evidence, so I will only 

add 3 points. 

Zhou Li, a systems engineer from Cisco’s Shanghai branch, explained to me that the Cisco brochures did not give the full story. 

A policeman or PSB agent using Cisco equipment could now stop 

any citizen on the street and by simply scanning an ID card, remotely access his danwei: That is, his work unit files, political behavior, family history, fingerprints, and other images. The agent 

could also access his or her surfing history for the last 60 days and 

read his e-mail—all in real-time. 

Newly-translated documents explicitly show that Cisco was training the Chinese police in surveillance techniques as early at 2001, 

and detailed information on more than 96 percent of the Chinese 

population is now recorded on police databases according to recent 

Chinese state media. 

Now there was justifiable outrage when journalist Shi Tao received a 10-year sentence after Yahoo! surrendered his private email to Chinese security, and there is more about another case 

today. But we really don’t know how many Falun Gong practioners, 

Christians, and small-time labor activists arrests that don’t get 

publicized, can be attributed to Cisco’s Policenet. And an integrated 

system like this does not appear in the court records. And if recent 

reports are given credence, a hospital basement near Shenyang 

was being filed with thousands of Falun Gong practitioners for 

organ harvesting while Cisco was training the Chinese police. 

12

It is my view that the situation with Cisco has already attained 

IBM Holocaust status and it will only get worse, whether carried 

out by the enhancements to the Online Freedom Act or by the 

Commerce Department simply enforcing existing laws forbidding 

the sale of crime control or detection instruments to the Chinese 

police, Cisco should leave China. 

I have no illusions they will leave without a fight. By Cisco’s own 

admission, it has contracts with Chinese state security at a minimum to service equipment. Perhaps these contracts include training or upgrades as well. Yet the Israeli defense industry had an existing contract with the Peoples Liberation Army to perform major 

upgrades to the Harpy assault drone. Under United States pressure, Israel fought, but ultimately cancelled the contract. 

Do we have the same political will when it comes to one of our 

own? Regarding Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google, as I said, I consider 

the Global Online Freedom Act to be a tragedy. We did not have 

to reach this point. Back in the winter of 2000, Microsoft fought the 

Chinese state and won. The issue was Chinese Government access 

to foreign source codes and control of foreign encryption. Microsoft 

built a coalition of the American Chamber of Commerce, the U.S.-

China Business Council, the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and 

European entities. The United States and Japanese Embassies tacitly approved but avoided direct participation. 

Most critically, Microsoft let it be known that if the Chinese Government did not back down it would pull out of China forever. 

Faced with this resolve, the Chinese Government quickly chose to 

reinterpret their laws, i.e., they surrendered. Now Microsoft doesn’t 

brag about all this for obvious reasons. But I still carry that document of surrender, because it shows that business has power. 

I will close by speaking about an implausible scenario. American 

Internet companies could form a new industry coalition, collectively 

ready to walk away. The Chinese authorities could agree at a minimum that words that are straight out of the Chinese constitution 

will never be censored by American companies. 

And if the Chinese police want confidential customer information 

from an American company, they must provide compelling evidence 

that the individual in question is a child pornographer. 

This is implausible, particularly from the American side but far 

more plausible if the only other option is the Online Freedom Act, 

routers based outside of China, regular audits, litigation in China 

and at home. So companies are currently asking, what is the probability of the Online Freedom Act becoming law and how can we 

stop it? 

Yet the question that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! should be focusing on is this, will the Chinese Communist Party still be in 

power 10 years from now? How about 20 years? And who is my primary customer base? The Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese 

people? Ultimately, it is in American company’s self interest to do 

the implausible, to form a coalition, to use their latent power to 

avoid further tragedy. And I want to thank the Committee for helping to bring them closer to that decision. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gutmann follows:]

13

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. ETHAN GUTMANN, AUTHOR, ‘‘LOSING THE NEW CHINA: 

A STORY OF AMERICAN COMMERCE, DESIRE AND BETRAYAL’’

Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to make a contribution to the Committee’s profoundly important work. 

Approximately two months ago, your Committee heard representatives of Google, 

Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems defend their companies’ role in constructing 

China’s Internet. Simultaneously the Committee floated an extremely important 

draft—the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006—which appeared to place this committee and the aforementioned companies on a collision course. Some commentators, 

particularly those searching for a middle way, characterized the Online Freedom Act 

as an ‘‘overreaction.’’ I don’t agree. I believe that it is better characterized as a tragedy. 

I would guess that few people in this room actually desire intrusive government 

intervention and oversight of U.S. companies. I certainly don’t. I’m a former consultant to American corporations operating in China and a former vice-chair of the Government Relations Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce Beijing. I’m 

also a former believer in the concept that we would change China, not that China 

would change us. 

But I now believe that the Internet Freedom Act may not be comprehensive 

enough, particularly in explicitly sanctioning Internet surveillance technologies. And 

I believe that the tragedy did not start with this committee but in the very early 

stages of American involvement in the Chinese Internet. It’s the history of a collision course, not so much between Washington and American Internet companies, 

but between American corporate decisions and American values. We can study that 

history for insights into the current dilemma and potential solutions. 

Two months ago, company representatives told the history of the stunning expansion of the Chinese Internet using impressive statistics—110 million users, over 13 

million bloggers—and I don’t dispute them. But lost in all these figures is the simple 

point that Chinese Internet freedom has actually been contracting since 1998, when 

I arrived in China. 

Censorship was already present on the Chinese web, but dissident e-mails—spam 

or samizdat, depending on your perspective—flashed continuously on Chinese users’ 

screens. Censorship didn’t matter if you used proxy servers—that is, linking up to 

another computer that would act as an intermediary, hiding the Web footprints, 

evading the filters, and circumventing the government controls. The most common 

Chinese search words were not ‘‘Britney’’ and ‘‘hooters,’’ but ‘‘free’’ and ‘‘proxy.’’ 

About 40% of Chinese users employed proxies. A week after arriving, so did I. 

A year later, working in my Beijing office, I received an e-mail from a US friend 

with the words ‘‘China,’’ ‘‘unrest,’’ ‘‘labor,’’ and ‘‘Xinjiang’’ in strange half-tone brackets, as if the words had been picked out by a filter. I’d never really seen anything 

like it. What I didn’t realize at the time is that the capability to search inside my 

Hotmail, primitive by the current standards, came from an American company operating in China. 

During construction of the first Chinese public access web in ’96, Chinese authorities suddenly became interested in blocking forbidden websites and in keyword 

searching—‘‘looking into the packets.’’

Why? Because they are Marxists. And as my former colleague Peter Lovelock explained, that means that you must above all embrace the means of communication. 

Then, control it. Fill it with Chinese voices. Block the outside. And block relationships between Chinese forces. 

Blocking the outside was relatively easy. Three companies were competing for the 

Chinanet contracts in 1997: Bay Networks, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco Systems. 

Cisco prevailed by selling the authorities a ‘‘firewall box’’ at a significant discount, 

which would allow the Chinese authorities to block the forbidden web. 

Cisco’s General Counsel denies selling any special configuration. Chinese engineers who actually worked on the firewall project are equally adamant that it was 

custom-made. Either way, as early as 1998, any industry-wide restraints on the 

transfer of censorship technologies were already being weighed against Cisco’s capture of 80% of the China router market, an unprecedented success story. Yet Cisco’s 

success may be more closely linked to a Cisco manager’s statement that ‘‘We have 

the capability to look deeply into the packets.’’ And I’ll return to that point. 

By 2000, Yahoo began censoring its search engine and patrolling chatrooms to 

preserve its position as the top portal in China. According to Yahoo’s former China 

manager: ‘‘It was a precautionary measure. The State Information Bureau was in 

charge of watching and making sure that we complied. The game is to make sure 

that they don’t complain.’’

14

Let’s apply that statement to more recent events. When Microsoft began suppressing words such as ‘‘democracy’’ and ‘‘human rights’’ in Chinese blogger headings, and when Google rolled out a castrated Chinese version of its search engine, 

company representatives made the argument that they were merely respecting local 

laws. Yet the laws are vague and contradictory at best; for example, the words ‘‘democracy’’ and ‘‘human rights’’ are enshrined in the Chinese constitution. 

Yahoo’s manager put it right the first time: ‘‘make sure that they don’t complain.’’ 

These were preemptive, self-censoring policies when Yahoo first employed them. 

They still are today. Thus any assertion that Chinese censorship is purely a government-to-government issue is premature until these companies dare to—explicitly 

and systematically—test the limits of Chinese laws. And until they perform that 

test, they should not be viewed as simply following Chinese law, but as working for 

Chinese Communist Party objectives. 

Chinese Internet history can be divided into two periods: ‘‘before the crackdown,’’ 

and ‘‘after the crackdown.’’ From October 2000 until May 2001, the Chinese authorities unveiled new laws:

• Installation of internal monitoring software in cybercafe ́s and across the web.

• Internet Service Providers ordered to hold all Chinese user data for 60 days.

• Proxy servers hunted and blocked.

• Construction of a national police digital network—the ‘‘Gold Shield.’’

The crackdown period signaled that censorship objectives were actually secondary 

to surveillance. Yet blocking relationships among Chinese forces—and monitoring 

alternate sources of political power—was far more technically demanding. For Western Internet companies the crackdown should have signaled an end to cyber-utopian 

illusions. Instead it signaled a new boom market for companies such as Nortel, 

Cisco and Sun Microsystems. 

By 2003, Cisco’s ‘‘Policenet’’ was deployed as the Internet backbone of the Chinese 

State Security system. Two months ago, Harry Wu exhibited slides to this committee, Cisco brochures from the Shanghai ‘‘Gold Shield’’ trade show in December 

2002, that demonstrate the depth of Cisco’s involvement with Chinese State Security. These brochures are irrefutable evidence, so I will only add three points:

• Zhou Li, a systems engineer from Cisco’s Shanghai Branch, explained to me 

that the Cisco brochures did not give the full story. A policeman or PSB agent 

using Cisco equipment could now stop any citizen on the street and simply 

by scanning an ID card remotely access his danwei (work unit files): political 

behavior, family history, fingerprints, and other images. The agent could also 

access his surfing history for the last 60 days, and read his e-mail. All in realtime.

• Newly translated documents explicitly show Cisco was training the Chinese 

police in surveillance techniques as early as 2001.

• Detailed information on more than 96 percent of the Chinese population is 

now recorded on police databases, according to recent Chinese state media.

There was justifiable outrage when journalist Shi Tao received a ten-year sentence, after Yahoo surrendered his private email to Chinese security. But we really 

don’t know how many Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and small-time labor 

activists—the humdrum arrests that don’t get publicized—can be attributed to Cisco’s Policenet. An integrated system doesn’t appear in the court records. And if recent reports are given credence, a hospital basement near Shenyang was being filled 

with thousands of Falun Gong practitioners for organ harvesting while Cisco was 

training the Chinese police. 

It is my view that the situation with Cisco has already attained IBM-Holocaust 

status, and it will only get worse. Whether carried out by enhancements to the Online Freedom Act, or by the Commerce Department simply enforcing existing laws 

forbidding the sale of ‘‘crime control or detection instruments’’ to the Chinese police, 

Cisco should leave China. 

I have no illusions that they will leave without a fight. By Cisco’s own admission, 

it has contracts with Chinese State Security, at a minimum, to service equipment. 

Perhaps these contracts include training or upgrades as well. Yet the Israeli defense 

industry had an existing contract with the PLA to perform major upgrades to the 

Harpy Assault Drone. Under U.S. pressure, Israel fought, but ultimately cancelled 

the contract. Do we have the same political will when it comes to one of our own? 

Regarding Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, as I said, I consider the Online Freedom 

Act to be a tragedy. We did not have to reach this point. 

Back in the winter of 2000, Microsoft fought the Chinese state and won. The issue 

was Chinese government access to foreign source codes and control of foreign 

15

encryption. Microsoft built a coalition of the American Chamber of Commerce, the 

US-China Business Council, the Japanese Chamber, and European entities. The US 

and Japanese embassies tacitly approved but avoided direct participation. 

Most critically, Microsoft let it be known that if the Chinese government did not 

back down it would pull out of China—forever. Faced with this resolve, the Chinese 

government quickly chose to reinterpret their laws, i.e., they surrendered. Microsoft 

doesn’t brag about it for obvious reasons, but I still carry that document of surrender because it shows that business has power. 

So I will close by speaking about an implausible scenario: American Internet companies could form a new industry coalition, collectively ready to walk away. The 

Chinese authorities could agree, at a minimum, that words straight out of the Chinese constitution will never be censored by American companies. And if the Chinese 

police want confidential customer information from an American company, they 

must provide compelling evidence that the individual in question is a child pornographer. 

Implausible, particularly from the American side, but far more plausible if the 

only other option is the Online Freedom Act: routers based outside of China, regular 

audits, litigation in China and at home. So companies are currently asking: what 

is the probability of the Online Freedom Act becoming law? 

Yet the question that Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo should be focusing on is this: 

Will the Chinese Communist Party still be in power ten years from now? How about 

twenty years? And who is my primary customer base, the Chinese Communist Party 

or the Chinese people? Ultimately it is in American companies’ self-interest to do 

the implausible, to form a coalition, to use their latent power, to avoid further tragedy. And I want to thank the Committee for helping to bring them closer to that 

point of decision. 

Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Gutmann, for your very incisive commentary. 

Mrs. Kadeer. 

STATEMENT OF MS. REBIYA KADEER, HUMAN RIGHTS 

ADVOCATE, FORMER POLITICAL PRISONER 

Ms. KADEER [through an interpreter]. My name is Rebiya 

Kadeer, and I represent the group of people that has been suppressed by Communist China. 

First of all, I would like to express my profound appreciation for 

this opportunity to share the daily grievances of my people with 

your excellency and the Members of the Congress. 

In the interests of time, I am going to ask my interpreter to read 

the statement that I prepared and I would like this to be part of 

the record, if possible. Thank you. 

Honorable Christopher Smith, ladies and gentlemen, I have testified and delivered statements to various congressional bodies in the 

13 months since my release from 6 years in Chinese prison and I 

am truly moved by the American Government’s continuing concerns for the suffering of the Uighur people. 

I am a Uighur woman from Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, 

which we call east Turkistan. I became a direct victim of political 

and economic persecution by the Chinese Government. I spent 6 

years of my life in Chinese prison being subject to cruel punishment, tortures, starvation and physical and mental humiliation. 

While going through hardship during the 6 years I spent in prison, 

I witnessed the tragic fate of thousands of political prisoners, including Uighur women similar to my condition or even worse. 

I saw many people, including woman dying in front of my eyes 

in the neighboring South because of beatings and starvation. I was 

in agony, not because of what I was going through, but because of 

16

my inability to help, or even to cry, for those innocent people dying 

around me. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now able to speak and let the voice 

of my people be heard in front of the U.S. Congress. This has been 

made possible because of the efforts of the U.S. Government and 

various human rights organizations. 

It is a great opportunity for me and the 15 million Uighur people. However there are still many people who are going through 

conditions similar to, or even worse, than one that I went through 

during my prison life. Those innocent people are still suffering in 

Chinese prisons, are patiently waiting to be rescued and for their 

voices to be heard in the world. 

As someone who grew up and lived under Chinese rule, the fact 

that I can still sit here and tell American leaders what is happening to my people is a cause of deep amazement to me. 

All the people of east Turkistan want to gain their liberty and 

to live like a people of other free nations. 

They want to be the members of the democratic world. But these 

aspirations are being ruthlessly suppressed by the Chinese Government. And this condition is worsening. 

So to fulfill their hopes, the Uighur people need the help of free 

and democratic nations lead by the United States. 

If I may, I would like to briefly describe my own family situation 

before I speak about the overall human rights situation in east 

Turkistan. 

My family continues to be harassed by the Chinese police, and, 

in particular, my son. 

I believe the Chinese authorities are punishing me by punishing 

him, trying to stop me from participating in activities such as this 

hearing here today. Most worryingly, they have advised my son to 

get a lawyer. 

This means the Chinese authorities are going to formally charge 

my son with a crime, probably based on false allegations of financial irregularities surrounding my business. This is extremely bad 

news because Chinese courts have conviction rates over 99 percent. 

The less than 1 percent chance that his case will be dismissed is 

not helped by the fact that I, Rebiya Kadeer, am his mother. 

These are the tactics used by the Chinese Government. I have 

long, long lists of examples of my son, friends, and other members 

of my family being harassed by the Chinese authorities in the 

months since my release—punished them for what I say here in 

America. 

The tactics I use are to make most of living in a free democracy, 

coming here to speak to you today, and simply telling the truth 

about what is happening to my family and my people. 

Honorable Members, all of my previous statements and testimonies outlining the Chinese Government’s efforts to undermine 

and denigrate the Uighur ancient culture; marginalize to Uighurs 

in their homeland; and brutally suppress all forms of opposition 

protest are available on the record. And so rather than repeat what 

I have said or was stated before, if I may today, I would like to 

take this opportunity to present updated information—supporting 

previous statements on the state of Uighurs’ human rights. 

17

Much of this information was presented yesterday at the briefing 

sponsored by human rights caucuses, and so my apologies to anyone who was attending yesterday’s hearing. I am sorry to say, and 

I am sure that—I am sure you will be sorry to hear that human 

rights situation that Uighurs are facing has not improved since my 

last statements were made. 

In many respects, the situation continues to deteriorate. 

The first issue I wish to bring to your attention is the Chinese 

Government’s family planning policies. 

In mid February, this year, a senior official, the Mayor of 

Urumchi—the capital of east Turkistan—declared that east 

Turkistan rural areas would be the focus of future family planning 

work. Generally speaking, east Turkistan rural population is almost exclusively Uighur, while the urban population is predominant Chinese. This tightening of the family planning regulations 

will, therefore, fall overwhelmingly on the Uighur people. 

The official justification for this is reducing the number of birth 

in rural area by whatever means will reduce poverty and will also 

reduce the need for more resources to be spent on education, health 

and the like. 

I testified at length to the Congressional Executive Commission 

on China on the topic of family planning regulations in my country. 

And as my statement remains on the record, I will spare you from 

hearing the horrific accounts of forced late term abortions, forced 

sterilizations, and the extreme physical psychological traumas inflicted on women resulting from these procedures. 

Early last week, the Chinese Government announced that east 

Turkistan’s population had exceeded 20 million people, having 

grown 9 percent over the 5 years, which is one of the highest rates 

in the whole of the People’s Republic of China. However, this rapid 

growth in population is not because of the high number of birth, 

but because of the high number of ethnic Chinese encouraged to 

move to east Turkistan from China. 

So the Uighurs are to be the focus of tightened family planning 

policies; but at the same time, the overall population is quickly rising because of the Government-sponsored migration policies. 

If you are Uighur, you see your unborn children being killed so 

the government can shake up poverty and then impoverished Chinese migrants are encouraged to move to your home to make a better life for themselves. If you are Uighur and you hear that east 

Turkistan population is rising, you know that is more 

marginalization for the Uighurs, that is less social and economic 

opportunity for the Uighurs. 

Don’t forget that we cannot protest against this kind of injustice. 

If Uighurs protested against Chinese Government policies, especially one as sensitive as family planning regulations, they will be 

inviting serious trouble. I want to make it clear that Uighurs have 

nothing against the Chinese settlers personally. They are only trying to make a living. And they are often happy to leave difficult 

lives behind in their home regions to try to make a new life for 

themselves in east Turkistan. They are not told of the effects on 

the Uighurs by their moving to east Turkistan. And few Uighurs 

would dare to explain and so they cannot be blamed for Uighurs’ 

problems. 

18

A growing concern related to the number of people moving into 

east Turkistan, but not an obvious human rights concern, is whether the environment will be able to sustain these growing numbers 

of people. Water is becoming increasingly scarce and rapid 

desertification is resulting from Chinese industrial agricultural and 

urbanization, which exhausts the land and water—making east 

Turkistan uninhabitable. 

Another serious issue, which has become prominent since I last 

testified in December, is that Uighurs are being sent back to China 

from neighboring countries—even people who have been granted 

refugee status by UNHCR—only to then be tortured and even execution. 

In one case, we have learned that a man named Ismail Semed 

who was sent back to China from Pakistan in 2003, was sentenced 

to death in October of last year. 

He was in Pakistan having fled east Turkistan and was deported 

to face accusations of planning terrorists attacks against Chinese 

targets there. 

The only evidence against him is the testimony of other Uighurs, 

who were probably tortured into giving those testimonies. Two of 

those people whose testimony were used to sentence Mr. Semed to 

death were themselves executed in 1999. Ismail Semed may have 

already been executed, if his appeal has been heard. We don’t know 

of this for certain, but we will certainly pass on further information 

when we know it. 

Another case is of Mr. Huseyin Celil, a Uighur who has been 

held incommunicado in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, since March 2006 

and who is facing deportation to China. Mr. Celil will almost certainly be executed if he is sent back to China, having been sentenced to death in absentia on charges relating to establishing a 

Uighur political party in east Turkistan. 

Mr. Celil is now a Canadian citizen and we understand that the 

Canadian Government is working hard to secure his release in 

Tashkent and safe return to Canada. 

Both of those cases, Mr. Semed and Mr. Celil, illustrate the enormous power China has over neighboring countries in the region. 

Despite having inadequate evidence against these men, and many 

others in the past, neighboring states hand these men over to the 

Chinese Government knowing that they are likely to be tortured 

and even executed. 

Other countries known to have sent Uighur refugees back to Chinese authorities where they face torture and execution include 

Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan. 

Since 9/11, the Chinese Government has framed all the Uighur 

opposition to the Chinese policies and practice as terrorist threats; 

that is, the Chinese Government has taken the United States-led 

war on terrorism to further its national and political agendas. 

Honorable Members, I believe that China’s undue influence over 

its neighbors is ensuring the extradition of political opponents in 

an area where the United States could do a great deal to help. I 

believe that if the United States Congress could pass the Uighur 

Policy Act, or something which would allow for an appointment of 

a special coordinator for Uighur issues, there could be a significant 

19

improvement in the human rights situation faced by the Uighur 

people. 

I wish to conclude by saying once again, thank you for this important opportunity to place these concerns and suggestions before 

the Government of the United States of America. 

It is for me a great opportunity, especially on the day before the 

Chinese President arrives to Washington, DC. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Kadeer follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MS. REBIYA KADEER, HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATE, FORMER

POLITICAL PRISONER

Honorable Chairmen HENRY J. HYDE and Christopher H. Smith, ladies and gentlemen, 

I would like to express my deepest gratitude for this opportunity to testify here 

today. I have testified and delivered statements to various Congressional bodies in 

the 13 months since my release from 6 years in a Chinese prison, and I am truly 

moved by the American government’s continuing concern for the suffering of the 

Uyghur people. 

As someone who grew up and lived under Chinese rule, the fact I can sit here 

today and tell America’s leaders what is happening to my people, is the cause of 

deep amazement for me. And be assured also, it is the cause of deep pride for anyone—anywhere in the world—who loves democracy and human rights. 

And needless to say—I’m sure you saw the reports the day after I last spoke 

here—the Chinese government hates me coming here! 

If I may, I would like to briefly describe my own family’s situation in East 

Turkistan before moving on to give an outline of the overall human rights situation 

there. 

As most of you may be aware, my family continues to be harassed by the Chinese 

police—in particular my son. I am convinced that the Chinese authorities are punishing me by punishing him, trying to stop me from participating in activities such 

as this hearing here today. 

Most worryingly of all, they have advised him to get a lawyer. This means, the 

Chinese authorities are going to formally charge my son with a crime—probably 

based on false allegations of financial irregularities surrounding my businesses in 

East Turkistan. 

This is extremely bad news: Chinese courts have a conviction rate of over 99%! 

The less-than-1% chance his case will be dismissed is not helped the fact that I, 

Rebiya Kadeer, am his mother. 

These are the tactics used by the Chinese government. I have a long, long list 

of examples of my son, my friends and other members of my family being harassed 

by the Chinese authorities in the short 13 months since my release, punishing them 

for what I say here in America. 

The tactics I use, are to make the most of living in a free democracy—coming here 

to speak to you today, for example—and simply telling the truth about what is happening to my family and my people. And I have faith in the power of democracy 

and truth. 

And so on to the general human rights situation in East Turkistan. 

I do not want to take up your valuable time, honorable members, by repeating 

testimony and statements that I and others have already given to you and to other 

Congressional bodies on the human rights situation in East Turkistan. You have all 

proven that you have a mastery of the human rights situation in all of the PRC, 

as well as in East Turkistan. 

All of my previous statements and testimonies outlining the Chinese government’s 

efforts to first undermine and denigrate the Uyghur’s ancient culture, to 

marginalize the Uyghurs in the own land, and to brutally suppress all forms of opposition or protest, are all available on the record. 

I am sorry to say—and I’m sure you will be sorry to hear—that the human rights 

situation facing Uyghurs has not improved in any way since those statements were 

made, and in many respects, the situation continues to deteriorate. 

And so rather than repeat what has been stated before, if I may, today I would 

like to take this opportunity to present updated information, supporting previous 

statements on the state of Uyghurs’ human rights. 

However, much of this information was presented in similar form yesterday to the 

Caucus, and so inevitably, there is going to be some repetition after all—my apologies to anyone who attended the hearing yesterday. 

20

The first issue I wish to bring to your attention is the Chinese government’s family planning policies. A senior official—the Mayor of Urumchi—declared in mid-February this year that East Turkistan’s rural areas would be the ‘‘focus’’ of future 

‘‘family planning work’’. 

Generally speaking, East Turkistan’s rural population is almost exclusively 

Uyghur, while the urban population is predominantly Chinese. This tightening of 

the family planning regulations will therefore fall overwhelmingly on the Uyghur 

people. 

The official justification for this is that reducing the number of births in rural 

areas—by whatever means—will reduce poverty, and will also reduce the need for 

more resources to be spent on education, health and the like. 

I testified to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China solely on the topic 

of family planning regulations in East Turkistan, and my statement remains on the 

record so thankfully, I can today spare you from hearing the horrific accounts of 

forced, late-term abortions; of forced sterilizations; and the extreme physical and 

psychological traumas inflicted on women as a result of these procedures. 

The sheer injustice of making Uyghurs the ‘‘focus’’ of family planning work in 

East Turkistan is highlighted by the next concern I want to bring to your attention. 

And that is, the rapid growth in East Turkistan’s population, which is not, I hasten to add, because of the high number of births, but because of the high number 

of people encouraged to move to East Turkistan from China. 

Early last week, the Chinese government announced that East Turkistan’s population had exceeded 20 million people, having grown 9% over the past five years—

which is one of the highest rates in the whole of the PRC. 

I’ll quickly return to my first point: the Uyghurs are to be the ‘‘focus’’ of tightening 

family planning policies; but at the same time, the overall population is rising fast 

because the government is encouraging so many Chinese migrants to settle in East 

Turkistan. 

Some people might say that this is an over-simplification. But if you are a 

Uyghur, this is very simple. Uyghurs see their unborn children being butchered so 

they can ‘‘shake off poverty’’, and then watch as impoverished Chinese migrants are 

encouraged to move to East Turkistan to make better lives for themselves. 

Don’t forget either, we cannot protest against this kind of injustice. If Uyghurs 

protest against Chinese government policies, especially ones as sensitive as family 

planning regulations, they would be in serious trouble, as I’m sure you can imagine. 

And the question of ever-greater numbers of people moving to East Turkistan is 

a crucial one for the Uyghur people. When a Uyghur hears that East Turkistan’s 

population is rising, they know: ‘‘that’s more marginalization for the Uyghurs; that’s 

less opportunity—social and economic—for the Uyghurs; that’s less time for the 

Uyghur people to survive in East Turkistan.’’

I should say at this point, Uyghurs have nothing against the Chinese settlers personally: they are only trying to make a living, and they’re often happy to leave difficult lives behind in China and try to make a new life for themselves in East 

Turkistan. 

They are not told of the effects on Uyghurs of their moving to East Turkistan—

and few Uyghurs would dare to explain—and so they cannot be—and are not—

blamed for Uyghurs’ problems. 

A growing concern related to the number of people moving into East Turkistan—

but not necessarily an obvious human rights concern—is whether the environment 

will be able to sustain these growing numbers of people. Water is becoming increasingly scarce, and rapid desertification—a result of Chinese industry, agriculture and 

urbanization exhausting the land and water—is making parts of East Turkistan uninhabitable. 

And then finally, another serious issue, which has again become prominent since 

I last testified before you in December, is the question of Uyghurs being sent back 

to the PRC from second countries—even people who have been granted refugee status by UNHCR—where they then face torture and even execution. 

Two ongoing cases have thrown this problem into sharp focus. 

In one case, we heard that a man, Ismail Semed, who was sent back to the PRC 

from Pakistan in 2003, was sentenced to death in October last year. 

He was in Pakistan having fled East Turkistan, and was deported to face accusations of planning terrorist attacks against Chinese targets in East Turkistan. 

The only evidence against him is the testimony of other people, Uyghurs, who in 

all probability were tortured into giving those testimonies—two of the people whose 

testimonies were used to sentence Mr Semed to death, were themselves executed 

in 1999. 

21

Ismail Semed may already have been executed, if has appeal has been heard. We 

don’t know for certain yet, but we will certainly pass on further information when 

it becomes available. 

The other case is that of Huseyin Celil, a Uyghur who has been held in incommunicado detention in Tashkent, Uzbekistan since March 26, and who could be sent 

back to the PRC at any moment. Mr Celil will almost certainly be executed if he 

is sent back, having been sentenced to death in absentia on charges relating to establishing a Uyghur political party in East Turkistan. 

Mr Celil is now a Canadian citizen, and we understand that the Canadian government is working hard to secure his release in Tashkent, and his return to Canada. 

Both of these cases—Mr Semed and Mr Celil—illustrate the enormous power 

China has over neighboring countries in the region. Despite having obviously inadequate evidence against these men—and many others in the past—these neighboring states hand these men over to the Chinese government, apparently unconcerned that they are likely to be tortured and even executed. 

Even being a naturalized Canadian citizen in the case of Mr Celil is no guarantee 

of protection from the Uzbeki authorities when the Chinese government attempts 

to interfere. 

Other countries known to have sent Uyghur refugees back to the Chinese authorities where they face torture and even execution, including Uzbekistan and Pakistan, 

are Nepal, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. 

And it is not just neighboring countries who are intimidated into following Beijing’s wishes to the letter with regard to Uyghurs: I myself was recently refused a 

visa to attend the World Movement for Democracy in Istanbul, Turkey, organized 

by the National Endowment for Democracy. 

There was a clear message from the Turkish government that they feared if they 

issued me with a visa, there would be some form of retaliation from the Chinese 

government. 

I hope the irony is not lost: I was refused a visa, to a democratic country, to attend a conference about democracy, on the basis of arbitrary threats by China. 

Honorable members of the Caucus, if I may be so bold, I sincerely believe that 

the question of China’s undue influence over its neighbors in ensuring the extradition of political opponents, is an area where the United States of America could 

do a great deal to help—a great deal to persuade China’s neighbors to offer better 

protection to Uyghur refugees within their borders. 

Since 9/11, the Chinese government has cynically manipulated any Uyghur opposition to Chinese policies and practice, to present it as a ‘‘terrorist threat’’; that is, 

the Chinese government is taking the US-led ‘‘war on terror’’ to further its own national and political agendas. 

I and the Uyghur people all over the world are convinced that if the US Congress 

could pass a Uyghur Policy Act—or some such—which would allow for the appointment of a Special Coordinator for Uyghur Issues, there would be an immediate and 

significant improvement in the human rights situation faced by the Uyghur people. 

I have already taken up a great deal of your valuable time, so let me conclude 

by saying once again thank you for this important opportunity to place these concerns and suggestions before the government of the United States of America—a 

great opportunity indeed on the day before the Chinese President arrives in Washington, DC. 

Thank you so much.

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Kadeer, thank you so very much for your bravery, and we wanted you here precisely because of the visit with 

President Hu so that you could bear witness to the truth that you 

and your associate have spoken so eloquently. 

Mr. Kung. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JOSEPH KUNG, DIRECTOR, CARDINAL 

KUNG FOUNDATION 

Mr. KUNG. Honorable Mr. Congressman and distinguished 

Congresslady. The Chinese Government has repeatedly declared to 

the world that there is religious freedom in China. They also declared that this freedom is guaranteed by its constitution. However, 

all of the approximately 45 underground bishops in China are either arrested and now in jail, or under house arrest, or under strict 

22

surveillance, or in hiding, or on the run, or simply have disappeared. 

One Bishop, Bishop Gao Kexiam, Bishop of Yantai in Shandong, 

was arrested in October 1999. We did not know where he was until 

he died in jail in January 2005. His cause of death was unknown 

and is still unknown. 

We know for sure that eight bishops are now in jail. They are 

all in their 70s and 80s. Three of them have disappeared. They are 

Bishop Su Zhimin of Baoding, Bishop An Shuxin also of Baoding, 

and Bishop Han Dingxiang of Yong Nian, all from Hebei. Out of 

these three bishops, Bishop An and Bishop Su have disappeared for 

more than 8 years. Bishop Han has just disappeared several 

months ago after being detained approximately 5 years. We do not 

know whether they are dead or alive. One of these eight bishops, 

Bishop Jia, who takes care of more than 100 handicap orphans, 

most of them are girls, has been arrested at least eight times since 

January 2004. The last time he was arrested was November 8, 

2005. 

Among all the bishops arrested, the most important and most famous bishop is Bishop Su Zhimin. He was arrested and jailed on 

October 8, 1997. On or around November 15, 2003, Bishop Su was 

taken to a hospital in Baoding, Hebei for an eye operation and for 

heart disease. He was heavily guarded by approximately 20 Government security personnel. Bishop Su was immediately moved to 

another secret location when the authority realized that Bishop Su 

had been seen. 

Bishop Su has spent approximately 30 years in prison, thus far. 

He was once beaten so savagely in prison that he suffered extensive hearing loss. 

Priests, seminarians, nuns, and lay persons face similar harassment. We know for sure that there are approximately 25 of them 

in jail or in labor camps. This list is by no means complete, because 

of the difficulties in obtaining details. Many cases are simply not 

reported here. My educated guess is that there must be hundreds 

in jail. 

Details of the above arrests and many more are described in my 

prepared statements, which are available on the table. 

The Chinese Government has been trying to force the underground faithful to join and register with the Official Patriotic 

Church since 1957 without much success. Now they are doing it 

with a new vigor. Those who refuse to join and register with the 

official Patriotic Church are now liable to be put in labor camp for 

3 years. So, it is now also a crime punishable by 3 years in labor 

camp when a person is ordained as an underground Roman Catholic priest and conducts evangelization without permission from the 

Chinese Government. 

The persecution of Roman Catholics in China is obviously not ancient history. The persecution continues and gets worse and bolder 

at a time when China is making significant economic progress, 

when China has joined the World Trade Organization, and when 

China will host the Olympic games in 2008. 

In view of the above, on September 1st, 2005, I wrote a letter to 

President Hu Jintao of People’s Republic of China. I appealed to 

President Hu, ‘‘to bring modern China into an era of true religious 

23

freedom.’’ I reasoned with him that ‘‘a country without religious 

freedom is never peaceful and never constructive.’’ And I challenged him to realize ‘‘the importance of changing the world’s perception of China’s human rights policy for the better.’’

I also not only appealed to President Hu that ‘‘all these [religious] prisoners, both living and dead, be officially and posthumously exonerated of so-called crimes, some as long as 5 decades 

ago,’’ but also appealed to him ‘‘to release all current religious prisoners from prison and labor camp. . . .’’ I concluded that ‘‘to do so 

will be a powerful testimony to the Chinese Government’s respect 

for and adherence to human rights and liberty. To do so, will also 

prove that China is honoring the spirit of the Olympic Games that 

[she] will have the honor of hosting in 2008.’’

Unfortunately, President Hu has never replied to our appeals 

and instead, the arrests of religious believers continue. I respectfully request that, hopefully through the influence of this hearing, 

President Hu’s attention be directed to our appeals and that he 

give an order to his government to rectify the situation. He has the 

power and authority to do so. Otherwise, it is my hope that the 

Olympic Committee would take note of these arrests and decide 

whether or not China’s continuous persecutions of innocent religious believers is in conformity with the spirit of the Olympic 

Games. We also hope that the Olympic Committee would use its 

influences to convince China to change its human rights for the 

better. 

Should we support a country by purchasing its goods and services when such a country has no regard for the human rights principles held so dear to our Founding Fathers and held so dear to us? 

Should we support a country that is increasing its military budget 

with very suspicious motives? Very often, the low price tag associated with ‘‘made in China’’ was achieved on the blood and the 

backs of many religious prisoners in the labor camps. We need to 

examine carefully the labels when we make a purchase. The small 

savings you received from buying something made in China actually indirectly strengthen a government that persecutes its own 

citizens. 

This is my summary of views. Because of time constrain, I cannot say everything here. I have another document for my prepared 

statements that I request to be included in the hearing record in 

its entirety. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered. In fact, all of your prepared statements and any documents or other information you 

want to include will be made a part of the record. 

Mr. KUNG. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kung follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Kung. Let me begin, Mr. Kung, with 

you on that last point, and I have questions for our other distinguished witnesses. Your mention of the Olympic games reminds me 

of the fact that to the Chinese Government the Olympics isn’t just 

a sporting event, it is a political event. I remember when they were 

seeking to obtain the Olympics in the mid 1990s, they let Way Jing 

Shan out of prison in order to try to curry favor with the Olympic 

Committee and with critics of its human rights policy. And I met 

with Way in China at the time, had dinner with him. He was subsequently rearrested just a few weeks later. And the Olympics did 

not go their way, so that was another proximate cause for the rearrest. 

But it seems to me that the Olympic Committee and the World 

Committee has missed an opportunity to send another message to 

China in holding the Olympics there. We know for a fact that in 

the past when a venue for games like this, whether it be the Asian 

games, or even the Beijing women’s conferences in the auspices of 

the U.N., there are crackdowns, dissidents are visited. They are 

told not to speak up. Some are arrested. So there are people who 

suffer turmoil simply because the games are coming to that venue 

in Beijing. 

And I actually felt a real disappointment when I heard that the 

great film maker, Steven Spielberg, announced that he is going to 

be part of the ceremonies for the 2008 Olympics. And it immediately flashed in my mind that, you know, these Olympic games 

are to the Chinese dictatorship what the 1936 Olympic games were 

to the Nazis, a chance to put a face on tyranny, to somehow gloss 

over ongoing systematic abuse of human rights. 

I, for one, was disappointed that he would lend his name and his 

extraordinary talents to that effort. But having said that, I think 

your point is very well taken, there is this opportunity to reraise 

that issue about the release of prisoners. It would be unconscionable to act as if everything is just fine, to go to those games without extreme pressure to release the prisoners who are suffering, 

who will have no access to watch the games, that is for sure, and 

probably will see their torture and their pain and agony increased. 

While those who are still on the outside, you know, they will be, 

they will be visited, like I said. So I think your point was very well 

taken there. 

I would like to ask you, if I could in March 2005, the Chinese 

Government introduced further regulations to consolidate controls 

on religious belief and expression throughout the country. 

Has religious persecution, in fact, worsened even since then, 

since these new regulations went into effect? 

Mr. KUNG. You are talking about this law which is a new legislation, sir, instituted in March 2005. As far as I can see, it didn’t improve the religious controls over all kind of different religious believer. If any, they actually restrict more and punish more to the 

religious believer since the application of this March legislation. So 

there is no improvement at all. 

Mr. SMITH. You mentioned the 45 underground bishops who were 

arrested, not known what their whereabouts are, what their status 

is, but they are missing, certainly. What has been the U.S. Department of State’s response been to clergymen, including Catholic clerVerDate Mar 21 2002 10:03 Jul 13, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\041906\27067.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
36

gymen, priests, bishops, pastors, others? Has our Government been 

sufficiently engaged to press for their release? 

Mr. KUNG. Whose response? 

Mr. SMITH. The U.S. Government’s pressure on——

Mr. KUNG. Every time I have the opportunity to testify and every 

time I have the opportunity to correspond with the State Department, I always mentioned this particular point, not only 45 bishops 

that are either in prison or in house arrest or in surveillance or on 

the run and so forth, but also there are many, many priests and 

the faithful that are in jail. We only report a few of them, but there 

must be about hundreds of them in jail. 

The persecution continues and it is getting bolder as I said. And 

there is no improvement at all. What we received at the Cardinal 

Kung Foundation, what we have press released to all over the 

world, it is only a drop in the bucket about the arrests. And I have 

to emphasize that. There are many, many things which we don’t 

know of. And I have received telephone calls almost daily from 

China that somebody was arrested, somebody was harassed, but I 

just don’t have enough evidence in order to write a press release, 

but there are so many arrests that could be written up. It is awful, 

horrible. 

Mr. SMITH. My hope is that, because even the State Department 

report and the religious freedom report, a separate but reinforcing 

report, makes very clear is that the repression continues unabated, 

and, in fact, has worsened in many areas. But I guess the heart 

of my question is, are we responding in a way that the Chinese get 

it, that they realize, that we need a—CPC carries with it an excess 

of 12 different actions that the United States Government can take 

vis-a-vis Beijing to try to press its point. We are doing that with 

Vietnam right now. There are a number of what we call 

deliverables we have laid on the table in a document that has been 

signed by the Vietnamese Government and the United States Government. 

So it would seem to me perhaps you might want to get back to 

us with some further thoughts on that. But there is more that we 

could be doing. We are chronicling the abuse, but are we responding to those abuses in a way that is meaningful. 

Mr. KUNG. I do hope in the meeting tomorrow between President 

Bush and President Hu, this very important subject of human 

rights will be discussed, not just barely, but in depth. 

And I do hope also that through the influence of this hearing, 

that the letter which I wrote to President Hu will be mentioned. 

And I think that is a very important letter, because he is a person 

who does have the authority and the power to do so. If he does 

that, it would be proof for his sincerity and seriousness about the 

human rights. 

Mr. SMITH. As you know, I mentioned in my opening statement, 

having met with Bishop Su it was moving beyond words. I have 

met many political prisoners and religious prisoners, but what 

struck me most about that visit was his lack of any kind of animosity or sense of wanting retaliation against the government. He 

prays for the government. 

And yet they still—as you said, 30 years; I thought it was in excess of 27—mistreat him. So thank you for raising those issues. 

37

Let me ask Ms. Kadeer, if I could. 

You mentioned in your testimony, with great emphasis, the use 

of the Chinese family planning program as a tool of repression of 

keeping the numbers down of Uighurs, through forced abortion, coerced sterilization, while simultaneously inviting a migration into 

your area. 

That is absolutely reminiscent of what has happened and continues to happen in Tibet, where the Dalai Lama has written extensively about the dual policy of killing indigenous Tibetans 

though forced abortion and other ways, and using family planning 

in a way that it was never intended to be used. That is, as a way 

of keeping the numbers down, while doing this forced migration in 

many cases of Han Chinese. 

Could you just elaborate a little bit further on that, and how long 

that has been going on? Did it just start? And, you know—if you 

could, thank you. 

Ms. KADEER. The forced family planning policy that the Chinese 

Government has forced upon the Uighurs started in 1987. From a 

cultural, ethnic and religious point of view, the forced abortion, the 

course of abortion is unacceptable and beyond reason. 

The current sitting chairman or the governor of Xinjiang, the 

Communist region, Mr. Ismail Tilwaldi, declared to the world that 

because of the harsh policy, because of the ongoing family planning 

policy in the 95th national planning period, the Chinese Government prevented 3 million Uighur children to be born. 

Because of the reasons stated, mostly religious and ethnic, it is 

very hard for a Uighur woman to accept that forced family planning policy, and they continue to become pregnant. As a result, 

they end up going through numbers of abortion procedures affecting their health situation. 

Because this population, specifically those women, getting pregnant and being subject to three, four times of abortion, forced abortion, is rather uneducated, they belong to the population of rural 

areas, there is basically no health care system that prevents or 

helps with a mother’s recovery from all of these forced medical procedures. Various female diseases related to the female organs are 

very common around the women aged 35 to 50 as a result of poor 

medical attention prior or after the forced abortion. It is causing 

various and rare diseases. 

The Uighur people, as I have stated earlier on many occasions, 

have contributed to world civilizations greatly in the past centuries. 

As a result of this ongoing persecution, from the Uighur perspective, a gradual ethnic provincial cleansing, if you will, is going to 

result in the Uighurs to be wiped out from the face of the earth 

if this continues in the next 20 years. 

Ironic as it sounds, on one hand the Chinese say, we need to prevent—we need to enforce family planning, we have a population 

problem; and being known the fact that the region itself is known 

to be short—has a resources problem. On one hand they are saying, 

we have to control the population, on the other they are encouraging, by various incentives to bring the Chinese migrants to our 

homeland to create, (A) social tension, (B) economic problems, and 

(C) environmental disaster. This is statistics; it is not my word. 

38

In 1955, the Chinese population only made about 20 percent, 

which is about half of the population today; and our population 

dropped from 40 percent to somewhere around 30. The autonomy 

laws that were never used were implemented, clearly indicating 

that the minority population or the Uighur population should not 

be dropped; or the other way around, the Chinese population 

should not exceed the indigenous population in the area. The Chinese Government obviously violates its own laws on a regular 

basis. 

I have two strong messages that I would like to let the Chinese 

leaders, specifically President Hu, to hear: A, the forced abortion 

must be stopped; two, the death penalty that has been met upon 

the political, or prisoners who are held for political charges, must 

be ceased now. 

And East Turkestan, my homeland, remains to be the only province in China where the political prisoners are still facing the 

death penalty. And I demand the Chinese Government to stop restricting Uighurs’ cultural rights. As you may know, the Uighur 

language has been banned in high school and university level. 

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Kadeer, let me ask one additional question. 

As you probably know, in January 2006, the U.N. Population 

Fund approved $27 million in new funding for China for their family planning or population control program. And many of us have 

argued passionately that this assistance puts the U.N.’s seal of approval on a very coercive population control program which when 

used against the Tibetans and the Uighurs, constitutes genocide. 

The Genocide Convention couldn’t be more clear that when people are targeted in whole or in part because of their ethnicity for 

destruction, that that is what constitutes the crime of genocide. 

And it seems to me that when there is a systematic effort to displace the Uighurs by using migration policies, coupled with depopulating family planning policies that include forced abortion, it 

would seem to rise clearly to that level. 

Let me also add that in Nuremberg, forced abortion was construed to be a crime against humanity when practiced against Polish women by the Nazis. It is no less a crime against humanity 

today when practiced by the Chinese against a vast array of 

women in China, including the Uighurs. 

So it is an area that we need to pursue much more vigorously 

than we have, because that stamp of approval that again has been 

placed upon this program by the UNFPA is unconscionable, in my 

view. 

So I thank you for your statement. And I would like to ask Mr. 

Gutmann a couple of questions. 

I took the time last night to read your book, and found it—and 

I would recommend it to anyone who really wants to get some very 

crucial insights, Losing the New China: a Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal, by Ethan Gutmann. 

But you made several points in this book that I find very disturbing, not just from the police side, which you speak to, but also 

the military side. In Chapter 7, ‘‘Roaring Across the Horizon,’’ you 

lay out a very disturbing time scenario that speaks to the issue of 

how the Chinese military development has grown so effectively, in 

part a response to Desert Storm. 

39

In part, as I think you put it, the pivot, was when the Chinese 

Embassy in Belgrade was bombed. For the hard-liners, that was a 

turning point for them, and all with an eye towards, when do they 

move on Taiwan? How do they take out the AWACs? How do they 

blind our satellites? You lay out a very disturbing scenario. 

But at the core of it, and it was one of our former Presidents, 

Eisenhower, who talked about the military industrial complex, and 

it seems especially perverse, I would think, when United States 

corporations become part of the Chinese military industrial complex, in aiding and abetting what is still a dictatorship, developing 

a blue-water Navy with ICBMs, as you point out, with MERV capability. A very disturning sign you paint there. 

You might want to elaborate on that a little bit, because I think 

that is another side of this that we need to bring forward. 

Mr. GUTMANN. I think it is interesting that we are in Washington today; of course, there is an awareness of China’s rise and 

there is an awareness of the China threat to some extent. But we 

do not have the kind of broad-based strategic attention that you 

had, for example, during the Cold War, obviously nothing like it. 

Yet some of those questions are coming up are brought up by the 

force posture itself that China is building. How do you maintain an 

escalation dominance with armed forces that are basically geared—

they are asymmetric. They are geared to our weaknesses; they are 

not geared to match us system by system, the way the Soviet 

Union was. Even asking is considered so Cold War that it shouldn’t 

be asked. It is as if you are creating, by asking the question, a selffulfilling prophecy. 

So I do not think the problem just goes to business there. But 

I think that it is part of this whole area of the China exception. 

But I would also say that business has become a huge part of 

that problem. One of the feelings that American businessmen had 

when the riots appeared in Beijing was, you know, how do we calm 

these people down? We are kind of in the middle here; we are not 

the government. And we—as businessmen, we went out and we 

made efforts to mollify the Chinese leadership. 

Now, what that meant was, they sort of said, well, look what we 

really need here is, we want you to help us get on a par with America. And that is why you have seen this amazing amount of research and development moving over to China. And it is not just 

because engineers are cheaper. It really comes down to more, this 

has become the new form of bribery. This is how you stay in business in China, you do something to make China stronger. 

And so for Motorola, for example, it is something like 5,000 researchers now. Some of them are CCP, some of them are PLA. 

They are working for China’s 863 project. 

This technology is going straight out to the PLA, you know; and 

unlike bribes where there is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, I 

do not think this is really truly being monitored very carefully. 

The fact is, China could close up shop today, could end its trade 

today and they would be okay in this area. They would have fourth 

generation communications for the first time that I think can rival 

America’s. 

Mr. SMITH. What message would you send to Bill Gates and to 

the others right now with regards to President Hu? 

40

Mr. GUTMANN. I don’t know what to—you know, I am not quite 

sure. Bill Gates has blown hot and cold on China many times. It 

is almost as if Microsoft feels it is its own country. I would actually 

encourage that. I wish they would behave more like they were their 

own country, and they could take or leave China. 

That is what I saw originally in Microsoft in my experience as 

a consultant. Originally, when Microsoft came to China, the kind 

of corporate responsibility programs they were doing were about 

labor. They were about unemployed people in Hebei. I used to look 

through the mug shots of these people, just page after page, thousands of people, who were down on their luck; and Microsoft told 

them, yeah, sure, Microsoft Windows, they were hired so they can 

get better jobs. 

Well, I think that is good corporate responsibility. I think that 

is terrific. I think it is completely different from, for example, having a research and development center with the PSB in Shanghai. 

That is what I would encourage Microsoft—I would say, get out of 

that business and, you know, if you can, form this new coalition. 

And I would encourage one more thing. You know, Microsoft and 

a lot of other companies give contributions to Republicans and they 

give contributions to Democrats. Sometimes they do it even in the 

same race. I do not see why these companies very quietly cannot 

go out and start finding some of these places like Dynaweb—small 

companies, they are out there—to break through the Chinese Internet, you fund them through foundation cutouts, keep the evidence, 

do not say a word about it, because when the CCP falls, you have 

a piece of paper showing you did something on the other side. 

This is an essential insurance policy for these companies. I understand we will not hear about it if they do it, but I encourage 

them to do it. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. You know, we just got news that a third 

Yahoo! cyber-dissident, according to Reporters Without Borders—

who testified at our hearing on February 15th—Jiang Lijun, was 

sentenced to 4 years. Just another indication—that is just another 

one we know about, because there are just probably many, many 

more that have been sent to the laogai. But I would just make that 

point. That was just on the wire. 

Let me just ask, if I could, Ms. Kadeer, about your family back 

in your homeland. We had written a letter—I say ‘‘we,’’ I was 

joined by several Members of Congress, including ranking Democrat Tom Lantos, last May 20th, asking the Premier—we expressed 

our grave concern, that of the U.S. Congress, concerning the arbitrary arrest on May 11th of business associates and your son. 

What is the status of your family? I mean, you are so brave to 

be speaking out. And you know that they have retaliatory powers, 

and they have not been shy about using them. It seems to me that 

President Hu—as well, your appeal to him was made earlier to 

stop forced abortion and other atrocities. 

I would hope that you would also make an appeal on behalf of 

your family, because I think it is unconscionable that they so mistreat the families of brave people like yourself. 

Ms. KADEER. On May 11th, reportedly over 300 Chinese security 

police, came into my office at Urumqi and confiscated all of the 

business records. And my direct assistant and my secretary were 

41

taken away by the police. They put my family and my son on the 

watch list. They put surveillance on my business, including family 

members, to make it impossible for them to go on with their regular human lives. 

I was worried back then that it is likely that three of my children 

will be put in jail. Because of Your Excellency and other Members 

of Congress’ direct involvement, my children’s arrest and some 

other hardships have been prevented. As a result, my business associate has been recently released; so has my son. 

Despite how hard the Chinese Government tries to silence me, 

I live in a free world, and I have a mandate from my people, and 

I have a moral obligation to speak up and let my people’s voices 

to be heard in the Free World, to the people who care about them 

and the future of my country. 

After my assistant was released from prison, they made her call 

me and try to persuade me to stop criticizing the Chinese Government; stop making public statements; stop disclosing all of the 

atrocities or facts that I know about Chinese policies. They are trying very hard to put various types of restrictions on my family, specifically my sons’ business and regular life. But I haven’t heard 

anything about my business assistant, who has a few small children. 

They are doing anything that is possible within their capacity to 

cause my business to collapse. I forgot about the business aspect 

of my life a long time ago. So I care less about what money means 

to my family, such as in the past. But my biggest concern is the 

safety of my remaining family members back home, specifically my 

sons. 

After trying all types of efforts, harassment—even harassment 

here in the United States—they could not stop me. And now they 

are about to charge. I heard that they are going to charge my 

youngest son. 

I am a mother, and like any other mother, I love my sons. My 

sons have been encouraging me despite, what they are going 

through or what they will face, that I should not stop speaking up. 

I would rather sacrifice the happiness and safety of my children 

to speak up on behalf of my hopeless people. 

I am not the only political activist, the only political activist who 

has been experiencing all types of harassment. But other Uighurs, 

other political activists living in the Free World, in a civilized 

world, have been experiencing the same or similar. 

They have tried all types of political accusations and find that it 

is not going to be very effective. So they came up with this new 

method, that my company and my son committed tax fraud. It is 

very likely they can accuse, they can charge us on anything, because they confiscated all of the business records, so that we will 

not have anything to rebut their charges or accusations. 

With your support and the freedom-loving American people, I 

will never stop my struggle to speak out for my people. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Ms. Kadeer. And I can assure 

you that Members on both side of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, and the White House will follow your personal family situation. I mean, not only are you courageous to be here, but they are 

42

courageous to be encouraging you as they have. So we will do everything we can by way of letters, contacts, for what is it worth. 

And I would hope the business community would also begin to 

speak out on behalf of persecuted people in China, including your 

family. So I thank you. 

I do have one final question before going to Panel 2, and that 

would be to Mr. Gutmann with regards to—again, in your book, 

you talked about a couple of things. And in reading one, you talk 

about Jesse Ventura’s trip and his speech about how opportunity 

isn’t just knocking here in China, it is pounding. 

And he was beyond the realm, above the fold, if you will, in 

terms of promoting that this as the best opportunity since sliced 

bread—which I think it has proven to be far less than that. With 

a budget deficit of $200 billion in China’s favor, it certainly raises 

questions about how equitable the trading relationship is. 

But as you point out, this kind of rhetoric was the ongoing tool 

of legitimacy for the Chinese Government. It reminded me of a trip 

I took, when I did ask the American Chamber of Commerce in a 

meeting put together by the commerce folks in our Embassy, have 

they ever met a dissident. 

And I had just had dinner the night before. And I said, meet 

with him. Listen to what he has got to say. 

When I raised religious freedom issues with the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, one of them said, ‘‘My secretary goes 

to mass and, you know, you can too.’’

I said, I am sure that is the Catholic Patriotic Association which 

bewildered him when I mentioned the name. So there is this naivete, that is very, very disturbing. 

And you do the same when it comes to codels, if you would speak 

to that as well, when a congressional delegation visits, if Members 

and staff are not really sufficiently briefed, especially in a Communist country. And dictatorship can be very much a part of the 

public relations spin that the state-run media will put on it. 

But also you made a point that I thought was interesting about 

how the Embassy has a strategy, you know, to work for the goals 

of making sure that they see what the Embassy wants them to see 

and then send them out on a little vacation, and do some sightseeing. 

Those two points, if you might want to speak to that, the American Chamber of Commerce. I think you have got it. 

Mr. GUTMANN. The American Chamber of Commerce has—you 

know, it is an interesting role. They do spend a lot of time on the 

issues that are set. I spent some time on that in the book, one 

chapter called ‘‘Visiting Day,’’ which was just based on experience, 

basically that we bring—codels are sent over, and we—our job is 

to kind of get them to dampen their questions; and we do that 

through a number of methods. 

We kind of—we spend a lot of time showing them how much we 

know and how much more power over the situation we have. We 

in a sense very subtly let them know that they do not know really 

know anything, they haven’t even been to a real Chinese restaurant, let alone talked to a dissident. 

We make sure, and then when we sort of soften them up. We 

lead them to the general rhetoric, which is that business is the way 

43

to bring your objectives in China; they are one, they are inseparable. Over time we have seen tremendous changes and will continue to see more. And that theory has been very, very appealing 

for a long time. 

The reason why it is beginning to come into question is because 

precisely what this hearing is about today, is that human rights 

and democracy have not advanced in anywhere near the same, or 

have not advanced at all. In many cases, we have seen this retraction. 

Now, the tragedy of the American expat or the tragedy of the 

American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing is that it has now become sort of a faith-based idea. It no longer responds to the reality 

on the ground. The reality on the ground is very different. 

And you are absolutely right, the expat becomes more and more 

separated out from the society they are actually living in, okay? We 

live in walled compounds. We have drivers. We just do not have to 

intersect with that society so much. 

Now, there are a lot of great expats out there. I just want to say, 

just out of a personal note—and you know, I run into them from 

time to time, and they are the guys I love. They are the ones who 

go out, and they are like—this is wild, wild east for them. They are 

out there in the countryside. They are making deals. They don’t 

care if it is corrupt or not; they want to move on this stuff. 

That is a different type of personality. It is a fading type. They 

are like the cowboys of the Old West. 

The new types are the ones who have spent a lot of time building 

their connections with the Chinese Communist Party, it has taken 

them years to do it, and they are not going to burn their bridges. 

And that is why we are getting the kind of a disconnect between 

even the Embassy on the ground at Beijing, because I think that 

is a phenomenon that happens there too; that is why we are getting a disconnect between Beijing and the United States. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that very much. 

I want to thank our three very distinguished witnesses for your 

testimony and for your great work that you do on behalf of human 

rights in China and your other work. 

And I would like to talk to you further, Mr. Gutmann, about our 

bill, since you feel it needs strengthening, to get your particular 

recommendations for that. So I thank you for that. 

Mr. Kung and Ms. Kadeer, thank you again. 

Let me now welcome our second panel, beginning with Ms. Thea 

Lee, who is Policy Director at the AFL–CIO, where she oversees research and strategies on domestic and international economic policy. Ms. Lee is coauthor of a Field Guide to the Global Economy. 

She serves on several advisory committees, including the State 

Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, 

and the Export-Impact Bank Advisory Committee. 

We will then hear from Dr. Steven W. Mosher, President of the 

nonprofit Population Research Institute, and widely recognized as 

one the world’s leading authorities on the population question. Mr. 

Mosher came face to face with the nightmare of population control 

when he was the first American social scientist to document life in 

rural China in 1979–1980. 

44

Dr. Mosher, a convert to Catholicism, is the author of the bestselling, A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s 

One-Child Policy. 

I would note that he was the first individual, in my own case as 

I became a newly elected Member of Congress, and as he broke the 

story of coercive population control in China, to make me aware of 

it in the early 1980s. And I, among many others, have benefited 

from his scholarship and the willingness that he has had to stand 

up to enormous pressure not to come forward with the very disturbing human rights abuse that he revealed. 

And so I personally want to thank him for being such a courageous person to speak truth to power when it cost him personally. 

We will then hear from Mr. Harry Wu, Executive Director of the 

Laogai Research Foundation, who was first arrested as a young 

student at the Beijing Geology College for speaking out against the 

Soviet invasion of Hungary and criticizing the Chinese Communist 

Party. 

In 1960, Mr. Wu was sent to the laogai, which is, as we know, 

the Chinese gulag, as a counter-revolutionary rightist. During the 

next 19 years he was imprisoned in 12 different forced labor camps 

around China, where he was forced to manufacture chemicals, 

mine coal, build roads and clear land, as well as plant and harvest 

crops. 

He is author of Laogai—The Chinese Gulag, a theoretical explanation of the laogai system. 

Mr. Wu has received numerous awards for his activities, including the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Award in 1991. 

I would just note parenthetically, with Mr. Wu, we have had 

many hearings in this Committee since I assumed the Chairmanship back in 1994, held it for 6 years, and then regained it again 

just in this Congress; and Mr. Wu has been an extremely valuable 

source of information. 

He insists on information being accurate, and I say again, ‘‘accurate.’’ He does not put forward information unless he can prove it 

beyond some reasonable doubt, so that—you know, in human rights 

work, that is very difficult to do sometimes, but his standard is a 

very high bar. 

I would also note that in our first hearing that we held on the 

laogai in the 1990s, he and five other survivors of the laogai, including Katherine Ho Katrina and Paulede Yahtzin and others 

came here and told us what went on and what goes on in those 

Chinese gulags. It was a riveting, first-ever look in a comprehensive manner as to the punishment meted out to women and men 

in this laogai system. 

We will then hear from Lu Decheng, who was one of the three 

people who defaced the portrait of Mao Zedong during the 1989 democracy movement at Tiananmen Square. Along with Yu Zhijian 

and Yu Dongyue, Mr. Lu, threw a paint-filled egg at the portrait 

of Mao. For that he was charged with counter-revolutionary sabotage, propaganda and incitement, egg-throwing. For his crime he 

was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He served over 9 years, for 

egg-throwing, of that 16-year term, before being paroled early in 

1998. 

45

Mr. Lu then fled to Burma, to Thailand, in November 2004, and 

left Thailand for Canada last week under a resettlement program 

by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. We are grateful to 

our Embassy and to the Canadians for facilitating his visit here 

today, because I know he has recently arrived, and they got all of 

his papers together so that he could be here to testify. 

So I do thank you for making the visit and for those who helped 

make that possible. So if I could, Ms. Lee, if you would proceed. 

STATEMENT OF MS. THEA LEE, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, 

AFL–CIO 

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to sincerely thank you for the opportunity to 

testify today on behalf of the 9 million working men and women 

of the AFL–CIO on this extremely important topic, and thank you 

for taking the initiative to hold this hearing today during the visit 

of President Hu Jintao. 

With your permission, I would like to summarize my written 

statement. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, your full statement will be made 

part of the record. 

Ms. LEE. The United States trade relationship with China is 

enormously imbalanced and problematic, and the AFL–CIO in 

other forums has raised many of the concerns that we have with 

respect to the economic relationship: The Chinese Government’s 

manipulation of its currency, violation of intellectual property 

rights, and illegal export subsidies. 

But the focus of my testimony today will be our number one priority, the priority of the American labor movement, and indeed of 

unions worldwide, which is the Chinese Government’s systematic 

and brutal repression of human rights and workers’ rights. 

In our view, this is a moral issue, one in which our hearts go out 

to Chinese workers. Our solidarity is with those workers who 

struggle under very difficult conditions, with no help from their 

own government, and very little help from their employers. But it 

is also an economic issue for American workers, because this economic relationship is incredibly important to both of our countries. 

We have, as everybody knows, a $202 billion trade deficit with 

China, and the Chinese Government’s repression of workers’ rights 

systematically reduces the wages that Chinese workers get and, 

therefore, reduces the prices of goods produced in China. This is, 

in our view, an unfair trade practice and one that contributes to 

the massive and imbalanced trade deficit that we have with China. 

We urge President Bush and the Congress to put workers’ rights 

at the center of the United States and Chinese Governments’ dialogue both this week, and also in the future. This is such an important issue. Because of our huge trade relationship with China, our 

Government is uniquely positioned to raise this issue in a forceful 

way and to send a message to the Chinese Government that our 

trade relationship cannot continue on the current path unless there 

are concrete improvements with respect to workers’ rights and 

human rights by the Chinese Government. 

In addition, there is one other message we would like to ask 

President Bush to raise this week with the Chinese Government, 

46

and that is asking the Chinese Government to cease the forcible repatriation of North Korean refugees who face terrible persecution 

when they are sent back to their country. 

In terms of the workers’ rights issue, there is also an important 

point: The U.S. Congress has actually given the President an important tool to use in this respect. In 1987, Congress amended the 

Trade Act of 1974 to include repression of workers’ rights as an unfair trade practice under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. 

And I will come back to that issue in a minute, but I think it 

is important in terms of what we can do besides simply jaw-boning 

this issue that we actually have tools at our disposal to raise this 

issue, and we ought to use those tools. 

The Chinese Government’s repression of workers’ rights is a key 

contributor to the unfair advantage that Chinese exports have in 

the United States market and in third country markets. And as we 

know from the State Department’s human rights report, the ILO 

and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, workers 

in China do not enjoy the rights of freedom of association, the right 

to bargain collectively. And these are, of course, the fundamental, 

bedrock worker rights on which all other worker rights depend; 

that if workers cannot join together in unions of their own choosing, and contribute both to their bargaining at the workplace, but 

also to a political voice, that this is a crucial missing component 

of any vibrant democracy. And this is, I think, one of the reasons 

that the Chinese Government finds this issue so threatening, because it is threatening to any authoritarian government to have 

workers actually join together and have an independent voice. That 

is why we have put so much emphasis on this particular issue as 

the key problem in China. 

In addition to that, of course, there are huge problems even with 

enforcement of China’s own labor laws with respect to minimum 

wage, hours of work, child labor, safety and health, and particularly with respect to migrant workers. And many of these problems 

are getting worse, not better. 

That is one of the key focuses of this hearing: Has China joining 

the WTO in 2000 improved its adherence to these internationally 

respected workers’ rights or not? 

Our view is, and I think the evidence shows pretty overwhelmingly, that the worker rights situation is deteriorating, not improving. 

In particular, I would draw your attention to the problem of child 

labor. I am sure Mr. Wu will speak in more detail about the forced 

labor issue, but child labor used to not be a big problem in China, 

because China does have a decent education system. But in recent 

years, as we see labor shortages and increasing pressure, more 

turnover in some of the export zones, we have seen a growth in the 

use of child labor. There are estimates that there are as many as 

10 to 20 million child workers in China today, working under sometimes very oppressive conditions. 

Let me just say quickly that 2 years ago, the AFL–CIO filed a 

Section 301 case against China with the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office, alleging that the Chinese Government’s repression of 

workers’ rights was, in fact, an unfair trade practice. We documented not just the repression of workers’ rights, which is fairly 

47

easy to do—it took more than 100 pages—but we also documented 

the economic impact that China’s repression of workers’ rights has 

on American workers and American businesses, that it is a key 

contributor to the imbalanced trade relationship; and we asked the 

government to take action. 

At the time, the Bush Administration rejected our petition. And 

they did not actually challenge the factual basis for the petition 

that we filed, but they said that they had a better way, that they 

were going to engage in more dialogue and cooperative dialogue 

with the Chinese Government to address some of these concerns. 

Well, our view is that 2 years later that dialogue has yielded virtually nothing and that the kinds of high-level meetings, visits, 

seminars, and cooperative programs have not yielded any important changes in Chinese labor laws or Chinese practices; and the 

challenges facing migrant workers, in particular, are just as difficult as they were 2 years ago. 

So the time has come to act and to take stronger action than has 

been taken in the past, and we call on the Administration and on 

Congress. I think it is really going to be up to Congress to take 

some strong action here and to send a message to the Chinese Government that the market access that they enjoy is at risk if concrete progress on workers’ rights and human rights is not made. 

And so let me leave it there. I look forward to your questions, 

I look forward to the testimony of my fellow panelists, and I thank 

you again for holding this hearing today. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Lee, for your testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Lee follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MS. THEA LEE, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, AFL–CIO 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to 

testify today on behalf of the nine million working men and women of the AFL–

CIO on this very important topic. 

The U.S. trade relationship with China is enormously imbalanced and problematic. The Chinese government has violated its international obligations with respect 

to currency manipulation, export subsidies, and intellectual property rights, among 

other things. However, for the American labor movement (and for unions globally), 

addressing the Chinese government’s massive violations of human rights and workers’ rights is the top priority. This issue is both a moral issue and an economic 

issue, impacting the daily lives of Chinese workers, and the quality and composition 

of American jobs, as well as trade and investment flows for many developing countries. 

We urge President Bush and the Congress to put protecting workers’ rights at the 

center of the U.S. and Chinese governments’ dialogue, both during this week’s visit 

by President Hu Jintao and in the future. 

VIOLATIONS OF WORKERS’ AND HUMAN RIGHTS

The Chinese government’s systematic and sometimes brutal repression of fundamental workers’ rights is a key contributor to the unfair advantage Chinese exports 

enjoy in the U.S. market and in third-country markets. Chinese workers’ most basic 

rights are routinely repressed, and they do not enjoy the political freedom to criticize, let alone change, their government. 

Chinese workers do not enjoy freedom of association or the right to organize and 

bargain collectively. According to the State Department’s 2005 Human Rights Report, ‘‘workers were not free to organize or join unions of their own choosing,’’ and 

‘‘ independent unions are illegal.’’ The single labor organization in China, the AllChina Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), is legally subordinate to the government and the Chinese Communist Party, not to its members. 

The Chinese government also fails to enforce its own laws with respect to minimum wages, maximum hours, child labor, and health and safety rules. Migrant 

workers face particularly harsh and precarious conditions, often facing deportation 

48

1 Reported in Cao Desheng, ‘‘Diseases at Work Haunt Migrant Workers,’’ China Daily (February 17, 2006) 2 U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Country Report 

on Human Rights 2005: China (March 8, 2006). 3 Evan Osborne, ‘‘Some Economics of Chinese Prison Labor,’’ Wright State University and 

Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research (undated); Philip Pan, ‘‘China’s 

Prison Laborers Pay Price for Market Reforms,’’ Washington Post (June 14, 2002).. 4 Congressional-Executive Commission on China Roundtable on Forced Labor (June 22, 2005). 

if they complain to authorities about abuses by employers. Child labor is becoming 

more common, as labor shortages increase turnover in some regions. Forced labor 

remains a significant, if difficult to measure, problem. Wage arrearages are becoming increasingly problematic, with some researchers estimating that the national average of unpaid wages is three months for each worker. 

These abuses allow producers in China, including many multinational and U.S. 

corporations, to operate in an environment free of independent unions, to pay illegally low wages, and to profit from the widespread violation of workers’ basic 

human rights. For example, Chinese mines are the most dangerous in the world, 

with more than 10,000 Chinese miners dying in industrial accidents each year 

(about 80% of the worldwide total). Unlike American mineworkers, Chinese 

mineworkers are denied the right to organize and bargain collectively—a crucial element in the development of effective mine safety regulations in this country. 

Rates of illness and injury have never been higher in China’s manufacturing sector—as officials of China’s own Work Safety Administration conceded as recently as 

February, 2006.1 Aggregate unpaid wages have risen to record levels, setting off 

thousands of illegal demonstrations, labor shortages, and increased child labor—as 

adult workers increasingly refuse to accept such injustice. Workers who merely petition for payment of their wages are increasingly met with violence by security police 

and other local officials. 

There are as many as ten to twenty million child workers in China—from oneeighth to one-quarter the number of factory workers. The problem of child labor has 

increased in recent years. China’s minimum working age standard is widely violated, and the Chinese government does little to enforce the standard. As the U.S. 

State Department stated in its 2005 Human Rights Report on China, ‘‘The government continued to maintain that the country did not have a widespread child labor 

problem.’’ 2 As reported in CSR—Asia Weekly last November local officials rushing 

to compete for manufacturing investments local are reticent to enforce child labor 

regulations. 

The Chinese government implements an extensive system of forced labor camps. 

The precise number of forced prison laborers is unknown, but estimates range from 

1.75 million to 6 million and higher.3 Independent researchers, the CongressionalExecutive Commission on China, and the U.S. House of Representatives confirmed 

that goods produced in China by forced labor continued to be exported to the United 

States in 2005, despite numerous promises to the contrary.4 In its 2005 resolution 

condemning China’s forced labor, the House of Representatives detailed the appalling working conditions in the forced labor camps and found that the ‘‘Chinese Government has continuously encouraged the export of goods produced through the 

Laogai prison system and relies on forced labor as an integral part of its economy.’’

Chinese policies amount to a deliberate and artificial suppression of wages below 

what a freely bargained wage would be, and even below what would be efficient in 

the Chinese context. This exploitation impacts American workers and domestic producers, as well as those in other developing countries, and artificially lowers the 

price of Chinese exports in the U.S. market. 

In China, the result has been ‘‘labor shortages,’’ wildcat strikes, and massive protests. According to Time Magazine (‘‘Inside the Pitchfork Rebellion,’’ by Hannah 

Beech), ‘‘Violent local protests are convulsing the Chinese countryside with ever 

greater frequency—and Beijing has proved unable to quell the unrest. By the central government’s own count, there were 87,000 ‘public order disturbances’ in 2005, 

up from 10,000 in 1994.’’

That is an average of 238 protests every day last year. 

President Bush did not demand any specific improvements in human rights when 

he met with China’s President Hu in the summer of 2003. Instead, the Bush Administration has only engaged in an ambiguous and ineffective ‘‘cooperative dialogue.’’

The Administration’s failure to take concrete actions on human rights and workers’ rights in China allows rampant violations to continue. Workers in China, the 

United States, and around the world pay the price for this inaction, while companies 

producing in China enjoy the profits. 

49

5See, e.g., Minqi Li, ‘‘Aggregate Demand, Productivity, and ‘Disguised Unemployment’ in the 

Chinese Industrial Sector,’’ World Development vol. 32, no. 3 (March 2004) at pp. 409–425. 

Workers’ Rights Section 301

Two years ago, the AFL–CIO filed an unprecedented petition with the United 

States Trade Representative under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The petition asked the Trade Representative to take action to end the Chinese government’s 

repression of the human rights of its factory workers. 

It marked the first time in the history of Section 301 that a petition invoked the 

violation of workers’ rights as an unfair trade practice, although it is common for 

corporations or the government to use Section 301 to challenge commercial unfair 

trade practices, such as illegal subsidies or violations of intellectual property rights. 

Section 301(d)(3)(B)(iii) of the Trade Act provides that acts, policies, or practices 

of a trading partner are unreasonable if they constitute ‘‘a persistent pattern of conduct’’ that—

(I) denies workers the right of association,

(II) denies workers the right to organize and bargain collectively,

(III)permits any form of forced or compulsory labor,

(IV) fails to provide a minimum age for the employment of children, or

(V) fails to provide standards for minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health of workers.

The petition showed that the Chinese government was engaged in a ‘‘persistent 

pattern’’ of denying the fundamental rights of its factory workers. Second, it demonstrated that China’s violation of workers’ rights artificially reduces wages and 

production costs in China and, as a result, displaces hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the United States. 

The petition also showed that workers in China are being forced to work for 

wages 47 to 86 percent below what they should be, often as bonded laborers, with 

few workplace health and safety protections and no right to join or form free trade 

unions. The cost advantage of this worker repression is staggering. If the Chinese 

government enforced workers’ rights and its own minimum wage and workplace 

standards, manufacturing costs there would rise between 12 and 77 percent, or an 

average of 44 percent. 

This unfair cost advantage continues to exacerbate the stunning bilateral trade 

deficit with China. Under the terms of Section 301, we argued that this egregious 

violation of workers’ human rights clearly ‘‘burdens and restricts’’ U.S. commerce. 

In the model of development embodied in section 301(d), the global integration of 

labor markets, capital markets, and markets in goods and services is not intrinsically a bad thing. If workers’ rights are vigorously enforced, then the impoverished 

and underemployed—whether in China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, or the United 

States—may improve their standard of living and generate new domestic demand 

in a virtuous cycle of equitable development, while providing new markets for overseas investors and workers, including those in the United States. 

If, however, the workers’ rights of one-quarter of the world’s workforce are radically suppressed—as they in fact are, in China—then labor conditions for the 

world’s unskilled and semiskilled workers are worsened; domestic and global demand is depressed; excess productive capacity is created; and a path of inequitable, 

unsustainable development is promoted.5

Failure to address the systematic, egregious, and institutionalized repression of 

workers’ rights in China costs hundreds of thousands of good jobs here, creates conditions of desperation and exploitation in China, and fundamentally alters the nature of global labor competition in the rest of the world. 

The AFL–CIO’s petition did not challenge China’s right to compete in the global 

economy on the basis of low wages. It is natural for a developing country with an 

excess supply of poorly educated rural workers to have low wages. We fully understand that even if China fully enforced its workers’ rights, the wage gap between 

Chinese and American workers would not disappear. But it would surely narrow. 

The AFL–CIO challenge was specifically targeted to the incremental cost advantage 

that comes from the brutal and undemocratic repression of workers’ human rights. 

That increment was then and remains today illegitimate advantage under universal 

norms of human rights. And it is illegitimate under U.S. trade law as well. 

The AFL–CIO’s 301 petition sought to ensure that our government would give 

this issue the priority it deserves in its economic dialogue with the Chinese government. 

50

Violation of Workers’ Rights Is Worsening, Not Improving 

The overwhelming evidence that the Chinese government denies the workers’ 

rights covered by the Section 301 petition in 2004 has only become stronger in the 

two years since the case was filed. The petition amassed evidence from the U.S. 

State Department, the International Labor Organization (ILO), labor unions, academics, newspaper accounts, and human rights groups. The AFL–CIO and other organizations continue to track the Chinese government’s violations. Rather than 

showing signs of improvement, all reports indicated conditions are worsening. 

While the Bush Administration conceded there were serious concerns with regard 

to China’s workers’ rights abuses, it nonetheless denied the AFL–CIO’s petition. 

Seven months after the President rejected the AFL–CIO’s first petition, the Chinese 

government abruptly cancelled an international conference on the monitoring of 

workplace conditions. 

In its 2005 Annual Report, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

(CECC) concluded ‘‘the Chinese government has avoided discussions with the international labor community on Chinese workers’ rights.’’ The CECC also found in 

2005 that:

‘‘The Commission finds no improvement overall in human rights conditions in 

China over the past year. . . . The Chinese government does not recognize the 

core labor rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining. The government prohibits independent labor unions and punishes workers who attempt to 

establish them. Wage and pension arrears are among the most important problems that Chinese workers face . . . Chinese workers continue to struggle to 

collect wages and benefits because relevant agencies do not enforce the regulations. Workplace health and safety conditions are poor for millions of Chinese 

workers . . . Forced labor is an integral part of the Chinese administrative detention system, and child labor remains a significant problem in China, despite 

being prohibited by law. . . .’’

Similarly, the State Department’s 2004 Country Report on Human Rights in 

China concludes ‘‘The [Chinese] Government continued to deny internationally recognized worker rights, including freedom of association’’—the identical conclusion 

reached in the State Department’s 2003 Report. 

The just-released 2005 State Department Country Report on Human Rights in 

China is much the same, finding that China denies basic worker rights, including 

freedom of association, workplace health and safety, payment of wages, rights 

against forced labor, and rights against trafficking in children. Peaceful labor 

protestors are subject to police violence, imprisonment, and torture. This report by 

the Administration itself concedes that these fundamental facts have not changed 

since the President’s assertion in 2004 that he would undertake measures to remedy 

China’s noncompliance. According to the State Department, regulations aimed at 

suppressing autonomous labor organizations grew harsher in 2005. 

The results in the U.S. have been devastating: hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, 

countless bankrupt businesses and ruined communities. Unsafe and exploitative 

working conditions remain for uncounted Chinese workers. 

Time to Act 

The administration has clearly abdicated its duty to protect American workers 

and industry. The onus now falls upon Congress to help guide our nation to swift 

action. We simply cannot afford another year of inaction and empty promises. We 

cannot afford another year of watching working conditions in China worsen, as good 

jobs continue to leave the United States. 

The AFL–CIO will continue to support measures to address currency manipulation, such as H.R. 1498, the bipartisan Ryan-Hunter China Currency Act of 2005; 

as well as S.295, the Schumer-Graham bill, which would impose a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods if the Chinese government fails to revalue its currency in a 

timely fashion. And we will support legislation to address other illegal subsidies. 

Most of all we will continue to work in every forum possible to improve workers’ 

rights in China. 

The AFL–CIO remains committed to fighting for America’s working families and 

America’s manufacturing industries. 

Thank you for having me here today and thank you for the important work you 

do.

Mr. SMITH. And Dr. Mosher. 

51

STATEMENT OF STEVEN MOSHER, PH.D., PRESIDENT, 

POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

Mr. MOSHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate very much 

your holding this hearing today and allowing me to make a contribution. 

I should begin, I suppose, by correcting the record. The ‘‘doctor’’ 

should come off of this placard, because we needn’t go into the 

story, but the long arm of the People’s Republic of China, which we 

know can reach into the United States, effectively expunged that. 

I do have a longer testimony that I would like to submit for the 

record, but let me give a brief summary now from that. 

My experience with the one-child policy goes back to the beginning. I was actually in China in 1979 when Deng Xiaoping gave a 

hard-line speech. Ordering senior officials throughout China to do 

whatever it takes to control China’s population, he said, ‘‘Just do 

it. With the support of the Chinese Communist Party, you have 

nothing to fear.’’

Well, those marching orders given by Deng Xiaoping, were repeated by Jiang Zemin, and repeated now by Hu Jintao, Hu has 

endorsed this policy. So the policy very much remains in place. 

The technical policy on family planning followed in 1983—it is 

still enforced today, too—and it requires IUDs for woman of childbearing age with one child, requires sterilization for couples with 

two children. Sterilization is usually performed on the women, and 

it requires abortions for women pregnant without authorization. 

By the mid-1980s, according to Chinese Government statistics, 

birth control surgeries, abortions, sterilizations and IUD insertions 

were averaging more than 30 million a year. Many, if not most, of 

these procedures were performed on women who submitted only 

under duress. 

When this became an issue in the West—and it became an issue, 

in part, because of your interventions—the Chinese Government 

simply stopped publishing statistics. But we assume that the numbers still continue, 7 to 15 million abortions every year, 7 to 15 million sterilizations, again, most of these performed under some form 

of duress. 

The program continues to be carried out today, 25 years later, in 

the face of mounting social costs and in the face of mounting psychological costs. I mean, Ms. Lee just mentioned that we now see 

child labor on the rise in China. Why do we see child labor on the 

rise in China? Because there are labor shortages now in 

Guangdong Province, where the policy, the one-child policy, began 

to be enforced in the early 1982. Besides bringing in workers from 

other provinces under abysmal conditions, they are now bringing 

children into the workforce, taking them out of schools or converting schools actually into factories. So this policy remains in 

place. 

In presenting the program to foreigners, who can be squeamish 

about such things, the government officials are careful to emphasize volunteerism. In speaking to their own cadres, however, they 

talk very much like Deng Xiaoping did back in 1979. The only form 

of coercion ever condemned is the actual use of force and, even so, 

you still see force used in various circumstances. 

52

There was a young mother from Hong Kong late last year who 

traveled to Shanghai to visit relatives. She happened to be pregnant with her third child. Local family planning officials, not realizing she was from Hong Kong, attempted to physically drag her 

to the abortion clinic for a forced abortion. She had her two other 

children with her and, in their eyes, was obviously in violation of 

the one-child policy. 

It was only because her other relatives in Shanghai physically intervened that the family planning officials were not able to carry 

out a forced abortion on this woman visiting from Hong Kong, 

which enjoys supposedly a separate political and economic system. 

So the policy and its coercive aspects still continue. Force is 

frowned upon, but it is never punished. Home wrecking, unlawful 

detention, heavily punitive fines and like measures continue to be, 

as they have been since the late 1970s, the whip hand of the program. 

Women are psychologically and physically pressured to abort unauthorized children, to the point of being dragged, as this Hong 

Kong woman was, to the abortion mill. Networks of paid informants are used to report on unauthorized pregnancies. Entire villages are punished for out-of-plan births. 

Officials conduct nighttime raids on couples suspected of having 

unauthorized children, and they keep detailed records on the sexual activity of every woman in their jurisdiction. There are prison 

cells with bars to detain those who resist forced abortion or sterilization. 

Forced sterilization is not only used as a means of population 

control; it is also, we have evidence, used as punishment for men 

and women who disobey the rules in some way. 

The emphasis today remains on taking ‘‘real action’’; ‘‘effective 

measures’’ to achieve; ‘‘practical results’’—that is to say, babies not 

being allowed to be born. In short, Deng Xiaoping’s no-holds-barred 

approach still dominates the program under Hu Jintao. 

The Chinese Government maintains that abuses are the exception, not the rule, and that they constitute local aberrations from 

national policy. You can go anywhere in China today, and we have 

gone into different places in China, and you can find that these 

‘‘aberrations,’’ so-called by Beijing, are in fact the rule and remain 

the rule today. 

The Chinese program remains highly coercive, not because of 

local deviations from central policies, but as a direct, inevitable and 

intentional consequence of those same policies. 

Now, let me skip here to a second point. There has been a new 

family planning law in place in China. It was passed on the 23rd 

of September 2002. This law was touted by the New China News 

Agency and various official representatives of the Chinese Government as being, not just a codification, but a relaxation, of the onechild policy. We think of laws in those terms, living in a democracy. 

This policy, however, was not an effort to liberalize or relax the 

one-child policy. At home, to the Chinese people, it was explained 

as an effort to tighten the policy. 

And here I want to quote John Aird, my long-term friend and the 

former head of the China branch of the U.S. Census Bureau, who 

did so much good work on this particular issue John, of course, tesVerDate Mar 21 2002 10:03 Jul 13, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 F:\WORK\AGI\041906\27067.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
53

tified on behalf of hundreds or thousands of asylum applicants over 

the years who were fleeing forced abortion, and forced sterilization. 

Sadly, John is no longer with us. But let me quote from him. He 

said after reviewing the law that it was, ‘‘intended to increase the 

government’s control over child bearing in order to reduce the number of births and hold down the rate of population growth.’’ In 

other words, the law was just one more instrument to be used by 

the Chinese Government in its relentless war on women and their 

children and was part of an ongoing antipeople propaganda campaign. 

That is how we should generally view laws passed by the People’s Republic of China. They are just a way of asserting another 

level of control, in addition to party directions, passing rubberstamp legislation through the rubber-stamp Parliament, the People’s Congress. 

The ongoing propaganda campaign, sad to say, has indeed convinced many Chinese that their principal problem is that there are 

too many Chinese. China’s state-controlled media has bombarded 

the Chinese people for a quarter century with antipeople propaganda to the point where many otherwise educated Chinese believe 

the party when it claims that China’s principal problem is too 

many people, rather than, say, the absence of democratic rule, massive official corruption, massive human rights abuses, and so on 

and so forth. 

The Chinese are constantly told the country’s demographic situation is ‘‘grim,’’ that economic progress is in peril, and that even the 

food supply is in grave danger. It says to the people, ‘‘If only you 

would stop having children, we could modernize China and make 

it strong and powerful.’’

This is the case of the victimizer, the Chinese Communist Party, 

blaming the victim for problems that it itself is causing. It should 

be seen as such. The propaganda helps to justify coercion by convincing the Chinese people that procreating couples, couples who 

want to welcome new life into the world, are a threat to the nation. 

We have already talked about the monetary assistance for China 

approved by the U.N. Population Fund. The UNPF blindly refuses 

to see the coercion in China and still claims, 27 years after first 

entering China, that it is a force for good in China, and that it has 

made substantial progress in ending the abuses that we know continue. 

A final point is this. Population control was not imposed on 

China by the West, but that does not absolve the West of responsibility for the one-child policy. Not only did Western-funded organizations like the UNFPA lend China their enthusiastic support for 

the program and still do, but vaporous 1960s ideas about population growth and resource depletion had explosive real-world consequences. 

The 1974 Club of Rome study claimed that we were breeding 

ourselves to extinction. This study was imported into China in the 

late 1970s. A computer projection based on the study was done by 

a systems engineer and shown to Deng Xiaoping. This basically 

showed that China’s resources would be exhausted in a few decades 

and China would basically face civilizational collapse unless a onechild policy were adopted. This is why Deng Xiaoping decided, we 

54

understand now, to adopt a one-child policy. Because there was 

this prestigious foreign theory of overpopulation, which had been 

written about in the Club of Rome report, this became the basis for 

his, the victim that I quoted earlier, ‘‘use whatever means you 

must to control China’s population, just do it.’’

So, as the case of China puts in stark relief, the real danger to 

the people of the developing world is not overpopulation, but alarmist notions of overpopulation. 

In China, the notion that people are somehow social and ecological and economic nuisances is a pernicious one. It has predisposed 

the PRC to treat their own citizens as a form of pollution. Instead 

of trying to lift their poor out of poverty, the PRC instead tries to 

reduce their numbers. Authentic economic development is neglected, human rights abuses abound, and everyone’s freedoms are 

put at risk. 

We talked about the persecution of the minorities in the Uighur 

area in western Turkestan, and also in Tibet, yet the policy began 

in Xinjiang, in western Turkestan, in 1987. It actually started earlier in Tibet. It started in 1980 with forced sterilization campaigns 

among the Tibetans. I mention that because we do not have any 

Tibetan representatives here for the hearing. 

Nor do we have the Falun Gong here, yet there are credible reports of Falun Gong prisoners being executed and their organs 

being harvested for transplants. This is a profit-driven initiative, 

just like the selling of baby girls in China is profit driven. I applaud couples who go to China to adopt babies, but there is no 

doubt that, from the perspective of the Chinese Government, these 

children are being sold. There is a profit to be made. That same 

profitability you can see in organ harvesting as well, a topic I know 

that Mr. Harry Wu will address shortly. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so much for your testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mosher follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEVEN MOSHER, PH.D., PRESIDENT, POPULATION

RESEARCH INSTITUTE

CHINA’S ONE-CHILD POLICY: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

In 1979–80, Steven Mosher became the first Western social scientist allowed to carry 

out fieldwork in rural China. He arrived at the beginning of the one-child policy, and 

documented the attendant horrors. Twenty-six years later, the policy is still firmly 

in place, with the Chinese government determined to continue the policy until 2050. 

Meanwhile, the population-control establishment has busied itself exporting elements 

of this cruel policy to other countries.

Li Aihai, happily married and the mother of a 21⁄2-year-old girl, had a problem. 

She was four months pregnant with her second child. Sihui county family-planning 

officials had come to her home and told her what she already knew: She had gotten 

pregnant too soon. She hadn’t waited until her daughter was four years old, as Chinese law required of rural couples. The officials assured her that, because her first 

child had been a girl, she would eventually be allowed a second child. But they were 

equally insistent that she would have to abort this one. It was January 2000.1

She pleaded that she had not intended to get pregnant. She was still wearing the 

IUD that they had implanted in her after the birth of her first child, as the law 

required. They were unsympathetic. Report to the family-planning clinic tomorrow 

morning, they told her. We’ll be expecting you. 

Aihai had other plans. Leaving her little daughter in the care of her husband, she 

quietly packed her things and went to stay with relatives in a neighboring county. 

She would hide until she brought her baby safely into the world. Childbirth-on-therun, it was called. 

55

When the county family-planning officials discovered that Aihai had disappeared, 

they began arresting her relatives. While her father-in-law managed to escape with 

her daughter, her mother-in-law and brother-in-law were arrested. Her own mother 

and father, brother and sister, and three other relatives were also imprisoned over 

the next few weeks. In all, nine members of her extended family were arrested, hostages to the abortion that was being demanded of her. 

But Aihai, knowing that her family supported her pregnancy, stayed in hiding. 

And her relatives, each refusing to tell the officials where she had gone to ground, 

stayed in jail. 

Three months later the family-planning officials struck again. The date they 

chose, April 5, was an important one on the Chinese traditional calendar. It was 

the festival of Qingming, or ‘‘bright and clear,’’ a day on which rural Chinese men, 

by ancient custom, ‘‘sweep the graves’’ of their ancestors. Starting with the grave 

of their own deceased parents, they visit in turn the graves of grandparents, greatgrandparents, and ancestors even further removed. At each stop they first clean off 

the headstones and weed the plot, then set out a feast for the deceased, complete 

with bowls of rice, cups of rice liquor, and sticks of incense. 

Why did the family-planning officials pick this day? Was it a further insult to the 

Li family, several of whom were languishing in their jail? Or was the day chosen 

for a very practical reason—that with most of the men and boys away in the hills 

feˆting their ancestors, the village would be half-deserted, and the officials could 

carry out their plan without opposition? 

The officials descended on the village with a wrecking crew armed with crowbars 

and jackhammers. These fell upon Aihai’s home like a horde of angry locusts. They 

shattered her living-room and bedroom furniture. They ripped window frames out 

of walls and doors off of hinges. Then the jackhammers began to pound, shattering 

the brick walls, and knocking great holes in the cement roof and floors. By the time 

they had completed their work of destruction, you could stand on the first floor of 

Aihai’s home and look up through two stories and the roof to the blue sky. The 

wrecking crew then moved on to her parents’ house, and then to her in-laws’. At 

day’s end, three homes lay in ruins. The family-planning officials confiscated the 

family’s livestock and poultry, and then disappeared. 

Aihai remained in hiding, out of reach of the officials, for two more months. It 

wasn’t until her child was actually born, she knew, that he would be safe. (Abortions in China are performed up to the very point of parturition, and it is not uncommon for babies to be killed by lethal injection even as they descend in the birth 

canal.) Only after she had given birth—to a beautiful baby boy—did she make plans 

to return home. 

Aihai came back to find her family in prison, her home destroyed, and familyplanning officials furious that she had thwarted their will. Underlying their anger 

was hard calculation: Every ‘‘illegal’’ child born in their county was a black mark 

on their performance, depressing annual bonuses and threatening future promotions. But family-planning officials, like most Chinese officials, have access to 

other sources of income. If you want your relatives released, they now told Aihai, 

you must pay a fine of 17,000 Renminbi (about $2,000). Now this is a huge sum 

by Chinese standards, the equivalent of two or three years’ income. It was many 

days before she was able to beg and borrow enough from family and friends to satisfy the officials’ demands, and win her family’s release. 

No sooner had she paid one fine than she was told she owed another, if she wanted to regularize her son’s status. He was currently a ‘‘black child,’’ family-planning 

officials explained to her. Because he was conceived outside of the family-planning 

law, he did not exist in the eyes of the state. As a nonperson, he would be turned 

away from the government clinic if he fell ill, barred from attending a government 

school of any kind, and not considered for any kind of government employment later 

in life. He would not even be allowed to marry or start a family of his own. The 

government had decreed that ‘‘black children’’ would not be allowed to reproduce; 

one generation of illegals was enough. There was an out, however: If she paid another fine of 17,000 RMB, her son would be issued a national identity number, and 

would be treated like everyone else—almost. She would still be required to pay double fees for his school supplies. 

She was not surprised when, later, she was ordered to report for sterilization. The 

population-control regulations were unyielding in this regard: Two children and 

your tubes are tied. This time she made no effort to resist. Having a second child 

had bankrupted her family; having a third was out of the question. Her newborn 

son would have no younger siblings. 

Even so, Aihai considers herself far more fortunate than Ah Fang, the wife of a 

neighboring villager. Married at 19 to an older man in a time-honored village ceremony in front of dozens of relatives and friends, Ah Fang is considered by everyone 

56

she knows to be his wife. Everyone, that is, but the local Communist authorities, 

whose unbending regulations prohibit women from marrying until they reach age 

23. 

When Ah Fang became pregnant there was no chance that she would be allowed 

to carry her child to term, even though it would have been her first. The one-child 

policy does not apply to couples who are, in the view of the Chinese state, merely 

cohabiting. For them—and for single mothers of all ages—there is a zero-child policy. Ah Fang was ordered to present herself at the local clinic for an abortion. She 

went in as instructed on September 27, 2001. She has been careful not to criticize 

the authorities, but her friends have been less reticent. ‘‘She wanted to keep her 

baby,’’ they complain openly, ‘‘but the law forbade it.’’ 2

A QUARTER CENTURY OF COERCION

Such personal tragedies, far from being rare, could easily be multiplied almost beyond belief. I met many Li Aihais and Ah Fangs (the names are, of course, pseudonyms) while living in a village in Guangdong province from 1979 to 1980, and have 

met many in the years since. But it would be impossible to know them all. For the 

history of China’s 25-year experiment in ‘‘controlling reproduction under a state 

plan’’ is littered with literally tens of millions of such victims of forced abortion and 

forced sterilization.3

At the beginning of 1980, the Guangdong provincial government secretly ordered 

a 1 percent cap on population growth for the year. Local officials complied the only 

way they could—by launching what they called a ‘‘high tide’’ to terminate as many 

pregnancies as possible. The rule governing this high tide was simple: No woman 

was to be allowed to bear a second child within four years of her first, and third 

children were strictly forbidden. Furthermore, all women who had borne three or 

more children by November 1, 1979, were to be sterilized. 

Over the next few weeks I became an eyewitness to every aspect of this draconian 

campaign. I went with young mothers to family-planning ‘‘study sessions’’ where 

they were browbeaten by senior Party officials for getting pregnant. I followed them 

as they were unwillingly taken under escort to the commune clinic. I watched—with 

the permission of local officials who were eager to demonstrate their prowess in 

birth control to a visiting foreigner—as they were aborted and sterilized against 

their will. I will never forget the pain and suffering etched on the faces of these 

women as their unborn children, some only days from birth, were brutally killed 

with poison shots and then dismembered with surgical knives. 

In the 1980s, the demands of China’s family planners escalated.4 The one-child 

policy, first suggested by Deng Xiaoping in a hard-line 1979 speech, was in place 

nationwide by 1981. The ‘‘technical policy on family planning’’ followed two years 

later. Still in force today, the ‘‘technical policy’’ requires IUDs for women of childbearing age with one child, sterilization for couples with two children (usually performed on the woman), and abortions for women pregnant without authorization. By 

the mid-1980s, according to Chinese government statistics, birth-control surgeries—

abortions, sterilizations, and IUD insertions—were averaging more than 30 million 

a year. Many, if not most, of these procedures were performed on women who submitted only under duress. 

The principal modification of the one-child policy occurred in the mid to late 1980s 

when, in response to rising rates of female infanticide, the government relaxed the 

policy in the countryside for couples whose first child was a girl. In some parts of 

China this has devolved into a de facto two-child policy. Some rural officials find 

the selective enforcement of a mixed policy—one child for couples whose first child 

was a boy, two children for couples whose first child was a girl—impossible to manage. Others, including the officials who run Sihui county in Guangdong province, 

where Li Aihai lives, are doing quite well at giving everyone two chances at a son, 

but no chance for two sons. 

The program continues to be carried out, against the popular will, by means of 

a variety of coercive measures. In presenting the program to foreigners, who can be 

squeamish about such things, officials are careful to emphasize ‘‘voluntarism.’’ In 

speaking to their own cadres, however, the only form of coercion ever condemned 

is the actual use of physical force—e.g., tying down pregnant women for abortions. 

But while force is frowned upon, it is never punished. Home-wrecking, unlawful detention, heavily punitive fines, and like measures continue to be, as they have been 

from the late 1970s, the whip hand of the program. Women are psychologically and 

physically pressured to abort unauthorized children, to the point of being dragged 

to the abortion mill. Networks of paid informants are used to report on unauthorized pregnancies; entire villages are punished for out-of-plan births. Officials conduct nighttime raids on couples suspected of having unauthorized children, and they 

57

keep detailed records on the sexual activity of every woman in their jurisdiction. 

There are prison cells—with bars—to detain those who resist forced abortion or sterilization. (Forced sterilization is used not only as a means of population control, but 

sometimes as punishment for men and women who disobey the rules.5

The result of this systematic coercion is that millions of IUD insertions, sterilizations, and abortions continue to be performed each year. The national family-planning journal continues to issue thinly disguised injunctions to get the job done at 

all costs. Officials are exhorted to take ‘‘real action’’ and ‘‘effective measures’’ to 

achieve ‘‘practical results.’’ In short, Deng Xiaoping’s no-holds-barred approach still 

dominates the program. ‘‘Use whatever means you must to reduce the population,’’ 

China’s paramount leader ordered Party officials back in 1979. ‘‘Just do it.’’ 6 They 

have been ‘‘just doing it’’ ever since. 

The Chinese government maintains that abuses are the exception, not the rule, 

and constitute local aberrations from national policy. But when the Guangdong provincial government orders 25,000 abortions to be carried out in Huaiji County, as 

it did in 2001 in response to reports of laxity in the local family-planning program, 

this can hardly be described as a ‘‘local aberration.’’ The Chinese program remains 

highly coercive not because of local deviations from central policies but as a direct, 

inevitable, and intentional consequence of those policies. 

And this is no secret. Articles in the Chinese media openly speak of the need for 

coercion in family planning, and senior officials continue to endorse the policy as 

currently practiced. Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, for instance, said on October 13, 1999, that ‘‘China will continue to enforce its effective family-planning policy 

in the new century in order to create a favorable environment for further development’’ (italics added). And in its White Paper on Population, released on December 

19, 2000, China avows that it will continue the one-child policy for another 50 years. 

The White Paper actually sets a population target of 1.6 billion by the year 2050. 

Chinese officials suggest to the outside world that these targets and quotas will 

be achieved by ‘‘education’’ and ‘‘persuasion,’’ rather than coercion and compulsion. 

As an example of the effectiveness of these tactics, the White Paper reported that 

women were postponing childbirth: While in 1970 they gave birth to their first child 

at 20.8 years of age, by 1998 they were putting off childbearing until they were almost three years older, age 23.6. But this claim is disingenuous: Women are giving 

birth later not because officials have gently whispered in their ears, but because 

they are strictly forbidden to marry until age 23, and hustled off for an abortion 

if they become pregnant out of wedlock. Ah Fang would have given birth at 20, had 

she not been ordered to terminate her pregnancy. As it is, she will be 23 or older 

when she has her first (and perhaps her only) child. 

SUPPORT FROM THE WEST

Powerful images of China’s teeming multitudes, dating back to the time of Marco 

Polo, are etched deeply on Western minds. The wandering Venetian found much to 

admire in Cathay’s ancient civilization, but it was the sheer number of Chinese that 

left him astounded. Skeptical contemporaries gave him the mocking title ‘‘Il 

Milione’’ for the frequency with which he used this superlative to describe the populations of China’s cities and provinces, the numbers of her civil functionaries, and 

the seemingly endless ranks of her men under arms. 

But Marco Polo was, in this respect, a perfectly reliable witness. The world had 

never seen a more populous empire than the 13th-century Yuan Dynasty. It had a 

population of some 110 million occupying a continent-sized territory with a standing 

army of a million. It dwarfed contemporaneous Western states, such as the England 

of Henry III, in every respect. Moreover, it had been in existence, counting dynastic 

interregna, for over 1,500 years. China’s population was already 60 million at the 

time of Christ and reached ever-greater peaks during later dynasties—80 million in 

the 9th-century Tang Dynasty, 110 million at the time of Marco Polo, 200 million 

in the 16th-century Ming, 425 million in the 19th-century Ching. Throughout these 

centuries, China’s large population was rightly seen as an indispensable element of 

its national greatness and imperial power. 

But there is another, darker Western perception of China’s population, dating 

back to the Mongol hordes of the non-Chinese Genghis Khan, which sees them ‘‘as 

a faceless, impenetrable, overwhelming mass, irresistible once loosed.’’ 7 And a mass, 

it might be added, that was thought to be feverishly multiplying. If all of the Chinese people were formed up into a column five abreast, went a cocktail riddle popular in the 1920s, how long would it take the entire column to march past a fixed 

point? ‘‘Forever’’ was taken to be the correct answer: The column would turn out 

to be endless, because the Chinese would simply breed faster than they marched. 

Or so it was wrongly supposed.8 The image of China’s population as a ‘‘yellow peril’’ 

58

was brought vividly to life again in the 1950s, when a sea of Chinese flooded across 

the Yalu River into Korea, and ‘‘human wave’’ attacks were reported by American 

troops. The hyperbolical reporting of China’s ‘‘overpopulation problem’’ over the past 

20 years arises in part from these same dark fears. In the view of the new 

Malthusians, China is a boiling pressure cooker of people, who at any time could 

explode beyond her borders in a human flood of illegal immigration—or conquest. 

Western population-control advocates, therefore, welcomed China’s 1979 policy 

with a mixture of euphoria and relief: euphoria because the world’s most populous 

nation was at last getting serious about its numbers, and relief because China 

would now dam up its seas of people before they could inundate the world. The 

Westerners would roll up their sleeves and pitch in: They would help design and 

implement a program that would turn China, everyone’s brutish infant of overpopulation, into a poster child of family planning. China would become a model for 

other countries. Depressing the birth rate in China—important in itself—would in 

this way help to further depress birth rates worldwide. It would move the controllers at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and elsewhere that much closer to their global goal of, in the words of UNFPA Executive Director Nafis Sadik, 

‘‘achieving the lowest level of population in the very shortest time.’’ 9

No thought was given to China’s abysmal human-rights record, or expressed the 

concern that the Chinese government, in dictating how many children a couple 

might have, was violating parental rights. No one worried that, in enforcing the onechild policy, the government might resort to coercion, as it had done in past political 

campaigns. Everything—economic development, democracy, and even human 

rights—would have to await the taming of her numbers. 

Acting as if they were afraid that the Beijing regime might change its mind, the 

controllers hastily began helping to fund the program. The largest grant came from 

the UNFPA, which would quickly become the major player in China; it ponied up 

a hefty $50 million over the first five years. The International Planned Parenthood 

Federation (IPPF) signaled its approval with a grant of $500,000. The money went 

to its Chinese affiliate—which, IPPF reported with paternal pride, ‘‘organize[s] . . . 

the family-planning group which will formulate the birth plans.’’ 10 The World Bank 

opened up its coffers as well, and by 1996 had loaned more than $22 billion to 

China.11 This international largesse, as economist Jacqueline Kasun has noted, is 

funded in part by unsuspecting taxpayers in industrialized nations.12

Having underwritten the China program, population-control advocates were soon 

acclaiming its achievements, and even expressing approval of many of its methods. 

The United Nations picked 1983, a year of unusually severe coercion inside China, 

to present the first United Nations Population Award to the PRC. The decision was 

criticized in many quarters—the American Nobel Prize-winning economist, Theodore 

W. Schultz, immediately resigned in protest from the Population Award advisory 

commission—but the U.N. was undeterred. As a family-planning ‘‘high tide’’ ripped 

through the Chinese countryside, U.N. officials lauded China ‘‘for the most outstanding contribution to the awareness of population questions.’’ That same year, 

the IPPF welcomed the Chinese Family Planning Association to full membership, 

declaring the goals of the Chinese program entirely consistent with its own.13 Commendations from the World Bank and the Better World Society of Washington, D.C., 

followed.14 One wonders what the approximately 15 million young Chinese women 

who underwent abortions that year, perhaps 90 percent under coercive circumstances, thought of such accolades. 

Talk of exporting the China model had already surfaced. Werner Fornos of the 

Population Institute, a group closely tied to the UNFPA, declared in 1982 that the 

Chinese program was one that ‘‘the world should copy.’’ 15 The World Bank, in its 

Development Report 1984, insisted that ‘‘voluntary’’ incentives ‘‘need be no more objectionable than any other taxes or subsidies,’’ and went on to describe the Chinese 

program in laudatory terms.16

THE TRUTH COMES OUT, BUT . . . 

As the 1980s progressed, the trickle of reports about coercion in China became 

a flood. Michele Vink wrote in the Wall Street Journal of women who were ‘‘handcuffed, tied with ropes or placed in pig’s baskets’’ for their forced trips to the abortion clinics.17 Christopher Wren reported in the New York Times that thousands of 

Chinese women were being ‘‘rounded up and forced to have abortions.’’ He described 

women ‘‘locked in detention cells or hauled before mass rallies and harangued into 

consenting to abortions.’’ He told of ‘‘vigilantes [who] abducted pregnant women on 

the streets and hauled them off, sometimes handcuffed or trussed, to abortion clinics,’’ and of ‘‘aborted babies which were . . . crying when they were born.’’ 18 Michael 

Weiskopf of the Washington Post in 1983 published a lengthy series of articles on 

59

the one-child policy that made vivid the human cost of the program. Elliott Abrams, 

then assistant secretary of state for human rights, ensured that the Chinese practice of forced abortions and sterilizations made its way into the State Department’s 

Country Report on Human Rights Practices. With the press speaking openly about 

the ‘‘butchering, drowning, and leaving to die of female infants and the maltreating 

of women who have given birth to girls,’’ little reasonable doubt could remain that 

China’s population program was synonymous with brutality and coercion.19

For my part, I published a best-selling book on rural China called Broken Earth, appeared on 60 Minutes and other television shows, and lectured around the U.S., 

reporting on the forced abortions and sterilizations that I had witnessed.20 Many 

people shared my outrage; the reaction of others was strangely muted. Some in Congress and the media, I was disappointed to find, were all too ready to excuse these 

acts in the name of fighting overpopulation. As one of the leaders of the National 

Organization of Women put it to me, ‘‘I am personally opposed to forced abortion 

and sterilization but, after all, China does have a population problem.’’ Others, 

sounding for all the world like the Chinese Communist Party officials I had interviewed, openly argued that, because China was a poor country, its people could not 

be allowed to have as many children as they wanted. A number even applauded the 

Chinese model, and wanted to use it as a blueprint for other countries. ‘‘Limiting 

everyone to one child, even in the U.S., is a good idea,’’ one said to me. 

What I had thought an open-and-shut case—who could defend the forced abortion 

of a woman eight months pregnant?—had turned out to be an open question. A wildeyed professor at California State University at San Luis Obispo became angry with 

me for even suggesting the moral considerations. ‘‘Don’t you see that the Chinese 

government must control childbearing under a state plan in order for China to develop!’’ he shouted in front of the 800 faculty and students who had gathered for 

my lecture. Lurking behind his utilitarian obtuseness was the misguided belief that 

the Chinese people in their numbers were the chief obstacle to China’s prosperity. 

But nothing could match the enthusiasm of the professional population-control 

movement. Their earlier actions in supporting the program had turned them into 

collaborators in the abuses that followed. But they really didn’t seem to care: As 

long as China was ‘‘doing something’’ about its ‘‘overpopulation problem,’’ they were 

on board. Many, like the head of the Population Council, Bernard Berelson, had long 

wanted to go ‘‘beyond family planning’’ to massive government intervention to force 

down fertility.21 Sharon Camp, then with the Population Crisis Committee, admitted that ‘‘the Chinese in many areas of China are able to put enormous pressure 

on a woman who is pregnant out of turn—and her family and her group—to terminate that pregnancy.’’ But she went on to say that ‘‘I am not at all convinced that 

there is widespread physical coercion in the Chinese program. And yet visiting 

Sichuan I do have to ask myself if they have any other choice but to implement a 

strong program!’’ (emphasis added).22 The IPPF and its affiliates were more direct, 

continuing to offer fulsome praise of China’s ‘‘successful’’ one-child policy and abstaining from any hint that this success was obtained under duress.23

Parroting Chinese official denials, the controllers dismissed reports of forced abortions as ‘‘local aberrations’’ or, more commonly, refused to acknowledge them at all. 

Nor were they concerned that the one-child policy ran roughshod over human rights. 

They rarely referred to the family-planning ‘‘high tides’’ that periodically gripped the 

country. They avoided mentioning the ‘‘mass mobilizations’’ in which women are 

rounded up against their will to have IUDs inserted, undergo abortions, or be sterilized.24 They turned a blind eye to the severe punishments visited upon women who, 

like Li Aihai, evaded the mandatory ‘‘surgeries,’’ and bore children without government permission. 

How, after all, could they condemn China for actually doing what they themselves 

had long advocated? The Westerners had become fixated on the numbers. In 1994, 

Dr. Richard Cash of the Harvard School of Public Health congratulated China’s 

State Family Planning Commission on having had ‘‘a very strong family-planning 

program for many years,’’ and urged China to continue its ‘‘very good work’’ and not 

allow its ‘‘people to slip back into having larger families.’’ 25 The numbers were the 

thing: As long as births in China were headed in the right direction—down—what 

did it matter how it was done? 

The more criticism of the one-child policy grew, the more its foreign supporters 

rallied to its defense with a strange combination of threats and denial. Some warned 

darkly that other countries, if they could not get their birth rates down by voluntary 

means, would soon have to adopt compulsory family planning. Some singled out 

countries like India as places where the Chinese model should be adopted immediately. The denial strategy was exemplified by UNFPA head Nafis Sadik, who in 

1989 informed a CBS reporter that ‘‘the implementation of the policy [in China] and 

the acceptance of the policy is purely voluntary. There is no such thing as, you know, 

60

a license to have a birth and so on’’ (emphasis added).26 It is uncertain whether 

Sadik actually believed this. Chinese officials are of course at pains to reassure 

every Western visitor that the one-child policy is ‘‘purely voluntary,’’ but every Chinese understands that the state has assumed regulatory power over reproduction. 

The state-run media regularly warn couples that they are not free to have as many 

children as they would like, as when the Jilin provincial newspaper in October 1993 

reported that, according to the provincial birth-control regulations, married couples 

‘‘cannot voluntarily have children unless they obtain a child-bearing license.’’ 27

When China passed its ‘‘New Family Planning Law’’ on 23 September 2002, Chinese population control officials and overseas apologists were at pains to reassure 

foreign critics that it was an effort to liberalize or relax the one-child policy. Nothing 

could have been further from the truth. John Aird, the former head of the China 

branch of the U.S. Census Bureau, testified before the Congressional-Executive 

Commission on China that the law was actually ‘‘intended to increase the government’s control over child-bearing in order to reduce the numbers of births and hold 

down the rate of population growth.’’ 28 The law was just another instrument to be 

used by the Chinese government in its relentless war on women and their children, 

a war that some were eager to carry overseas. 

For example, in 2005 a Hong Kong pregnant mother of two visiting the Hunan 

Province on mainland China was recently pressured to abort her six-month-old unborn baby. According to Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, the mother with her two young 

children was visiting relatives on the mainland when family planning officials came 

to the home and insisted she abort her unborn child. The family planning officials 

went so far as to try to drag the woman to a hospital, but her relatives stopped 

them and contacted Hong Kong government authorities who were able to explain 

the woman’s citizenship and legal right to carry her pregnancy to term by Hong 

Kong law. They explained that, with its own separate political and economic system, 

Hong Kong is currently exempt from Chinese mainland one-child policy. (‘‘HK saves 

mother, baby from forced abortion in China,’’ The Taipei Times, 12 July 2005, http:/

/www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/07/12/2003263164) 

EXPORTING THE CHINA MODEL

In April 1991, Sadik gushed to a Chinese reporter that ‘‘China has every reason 

to feel proud of and pleased with its remarkable achievements made in its familyplanning policy and control of its population growth over the past 10 years. Now 

the country could offer its experiences and special experts to help other countries.’’ 29

She added that ‘‘UNFPA is going to employ some of [China’s family-planning experts] to work in other countries and popularize China’s experiences in populationgrowth control and family planning.’’ 30 This was no idle threat: When the UNFPA 

served as the ‘‘technical secretary’’ of Peru’s infamous sterilization campaign a few 

years later, it brought in Chinese experts to, among other things, train the surgical 

teams in how to tie women’s tubes assembly-line style. 

Most governments are either unwilling or unable to bring all the childbearing in 

their countries under state control. One of the few exceptions is Vietnam, whose political and economic system is almost identical to that of neighboring China. Hanoi, 

with UNFPA assistance, has designed and is carrying out a population-control policy that relies on targets, quotas, and coercive measures virtually identical to China’s to limit every couple to two children. ‘‘Communist Party members who have 

more than two face automatic expulsion and parents are often asked to pay the 

health and education costs of a third child,’’ reports the BBC. ‘‘More serious sanctions include having land confiscated.’’ 31 Serious, indeed: In a peasant society like 

Vietnam a family’s plot of land is often all that stands between it and starvation. 

Another consequence of the policy is that Vietnam, like China, has ‘‘one of the 

world’s highest rates of abortion.’’ 32 Even the Population and Development Review, 

as a rule no critic of family planning, reports that ‘‘women have been forced to use 

IUDs and have been forced to have abortions.’’ 33

This familiar litany of abuses has elicited nothing but praise from the UNFPA, 

which remains unabashedly eager to take credit for the forced reduction in fertility. 

According to one U.N. document, ‘‘Although government policy bears the main responsibility for this achievement, UNFPA’s assistance in preparing for and supporting the policy reform provided necessary capacity and support for implementing 

it.’’ 34 Omar Ertur, UNFPA country representative in Hanoi, praised Vietnam’s National Committee for Population and Family Planning for being ‘‘very successful [in] 

achieving a tremendous reduction in a very short period of time.’’ 35 The UNFPA 

honored Vietnam’s population controllers with its 1999 United Nations Population 

Award.36 The UNFPA has of late taken to running ‘‘model county’’ programs in VietVerDate Mar 21 2002 10:03 Jul 13, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\AGI\041906\27067.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
61

nam, a dodge that serves to insulate the organization from the charge that it is 

complicit in the human-rights abuses that abound in the country as a whole.37

Although the Chinese model has proven difficult to export in its entirety, that 

hasn’t deterred the UNFPA and other organizations from imposing the program 

piecemeal on other countries. Governments have been encouraged by these groups 

to adopt Chinese-style targets and quotas, bribes and punishments, organizational 

structures, and promotional propaganda. Where these techniques have been successfully transplanted, they have given rise to systematic coercion, even in countries 

generally lacking a high degree of control. All that is required for this to happen, 

as population expert John Aird once observed, is ‘‘a politically inert, uneducated, impoverished population and an established pattern of bureaucratic 

authoritarianism.’’ 38 Quite a few countries in the developing world fit this description. 

National Targets. Since the 1970s China has set population targets.39 Following 

China’s lead, the UNFPA and other agencies insist that governments, at a minimum, set 10- or 15-year targets for family size and total population. Targets for 

such things as ‘‘number and percentage of contraceptive acceptors’’ and ‘‘numbers 

and percentage of women sterilized’’ are also pushed. Governments reluctant to set 

targets have been told by the World Bank and USAID that they will not receive 

grants and loans until they do.40 Targets and quotas, it should be noted, were 

banned by the 1994 Cairo population conference on the grounds that they always 

lead to abuses; this prohibition has been largely ignored. 

Bribes and Punishments for Officials. To keep its millions of population-control 

functionaries in line, China developed what it calls the ‘‘job responsibility system.’’ 

Each year, officials at each level of government pledge in writing to their superiors 

that they will meet their assigned birth-control targets and quotas. Those who do 

so receive public commendations and cash awards, and are slotted for advancement. 

Those who fail are publicly reprimanded and fined, and may even be demoted. Repeated failure ends in complete disgrace: loss of Party membership and dismissal 

from one’s post. Meeting targets is thus a career-maker—or breaker. No one should 

be surprised when Chinese officials pressure a pregnant woman into aborting an 

‘‘over-quota’’ child, or lock up a mother of two until she ‘‘agrees’’ to sterilization. China’s leaders designed the ‘‘job responsibility system’’ to ensure precisely this outcome.41

International-aid agencies such as the World Bank and USAID often make continued assistance to developing countries contingent on their attainment of familyplanning targets.42 National authorities, anxious over future funding prospects, then 

bear down on local officials, suggesting that assigned targets are to be attained by 

whatever means necessary. In India, this approach has led officials to compel submission to sterilization by withholding food rations, confiscating salaries, issuing 

strongly worded threats, and even resorting to the out-and-out use of physical 

force.43

The Chinese practice of giving local administrators public commendations and 

awards for their achievements has also led to abuses in places like Bangladesh, the 

Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Even national goals that have been set (with 

foreign encouragement) ‘‘for planning purposes only’’ have encouraged compulsory 

measures when local officials have been judged on how well they met the targets.44

Regional leaders in Indonesia may have imagined that they were only setting ‘‘planning’’ targets for numbers of contraceptive acceptors in their areas, but when local 

officials were then held responsible for maintaining them, massive abuses occurred.45

Bribes and Punishments for Families. Heavy pressure is brought to bear directly 

on Chinese families: Those who go along with the one-child policy are promised that 

their children will have preferential access to inoculations, education, and employment. Those who break the rules are not only denied such benefits, but are threatened with heavy fines. According to regulations adopted in 1991in Beijing municipality, the penalties for having a second child range from 5,000 to 50,000 yuan, and 

for having a third 20,000 to 100,000 yuan.46 Considering that the average rural 

family earns less than 1,000 yuan a year, fines of such magnitude seem spectacularly out of proportion, until one realizes that their true purpose is to deter couples 

from continuing out-of-plan pregnancies—and to make them submit to abortions. As 

incomes have risen, so have the fines been escalating, having been increased again 

as recently as 2002.47

Chinese-style threats and fines have been adopted in Indonesia, where in the 

1980s Balinese Hindus who refused to use birth control were threatened with expulsion from their villages.48 Even incentives can have the force of compulsion if they 

relate to vital necessities, as happened in Peru under dictator Alberto Fujimori 49: 

Poor, hungry women were told that to qualify for free food, or to receive medical 

62

care, they must submit to sterilization. Similar abuses occurred in Bangladesh in 

recent years, where the Chinese model has been explicitly held up for emulation.50

Group Pressure Tactics. The plan, the Chinese government deliberately generates 

‘‘peer pressure’’ against potential rule-breakers by means of group rewards and punishments. Heilongjiang province, for example, bowed to peasant desires for sons 

(and rising rates of female infanticide) by announcing in 1988 that it would partially 

relax the one-child policy in the villages—but only if everyone cooperated. Rural couples whose first child was a boy would still have to stop at one. Couples whose first 

child was a girl would get a second chance at a male heir, but on one condition: 

There could be absolutely no unauthorized births in their village.51 Neighboring 

Liaoning province adopted a variant of the same policy, requiring that a village 

have no unauthorized births and all of its married women on birth control before 

it could qualify for second births. If even one illegal baby was born, all second births 

would be forbidden that year. The policy was said to have ‘‘strengthened group 

awareness’’ among Liaoning’s peasants.52 No doubt it did. The head of China’s State 

Family Planning Council, Ms. Peng Peiyun, praised this pressure tactic as a way 

of ‘‘tightening up’’ family-planning work, and recommended that it be implemented 

throughout the country.53

Similar tactics are used in the cities, where the one-child policy continues to be 

strictly enforced. Workers in a given factory or department are denied bonuses, 

awards, expansion plans, and other benefits if even one of their number has an unauthorized child. Women who get pregnant outside the plan are immediately ostracized by their fellow workers and put under tremendous pressure to abort.54 As a 

result, observed John Aird, in urban China compliance with the one-child rule is almost total.55

These pressure tactics have been put to very effective use elsewhere. In India, for 

example, some villages have been denied access to irrigation water at subsidized 

prices until they came up with the required number of sterilizations.56 A new village 

well was promised to another village if ‘‘100 percent of eligible couples’’ would undergo sterilization; after the last vasectomy was performed, the well was dug.57

Cash payments have been offered to all families in a village if 75 percent of the men 

submit to vasectomy.58

Long-Term Contraception/Sterilization. From the beginning of the one-child policy, Chinese authorities have followed an inflexible rule: Sterilize or implant an IUD 

in a woman after the birth of her first child; sterilize her after the birth of her second. The advantage of this method for China’s family-planning officials is obvious: 

They no longer have to maintain constant surveillance over all women of childbearing age to make sure that they are not starting or concealing an unauthorized 

pregnancy. The government-run clinics will remove an IUD on request only if it is 

causing severe side-effects, and then only if the woman agrees to use another birthcontrol method, preferably a long-term implant like Norplant or an injectable like 

Depo-Provera. For a woman to remove her own IUD is defined as a criminal act. 

Those who wish to do so nonetheless must rely on illegal operations that often involve dangerous methods and unsanitary conditions—back-alley IUD removals, one 

might call them. 

This component of the Chinese program has proven so successful in China that 

it is becoming a standard feature of family-planning programs worldwide. This shift 

from contraceptives, such as birth-control pills and condoms, that are controlled by 

the user, to more permanent measures—IUDs, sterilization, and long-term implants 

and injectables—more easily imposed on the user, has been underway for two decades now. The result has been a marked decrease in the freedom of women and couples in the developing world to decide for themselves the number and spacing of 

their children. 

Women pressured into adopting such measures may change their minds later, but 

there is often little they can do about it, especially if the clinics refuse to reverse 

the sterilization or remove the IUD, or charge exorbitant fees for doing so. In Bangladesh and Haiti women suffering from acute side-effects from Norplant implants 

they had accepted as part of an ‘‘experimental’’ program were reportedly told the 

device could not be removed.59 Too poor to seek alternative medical care, they had 

no choice but to endure their debilitating chemical sterilization until the five-year 

implant had run its course. 

Propaganda. China’s state-controlled media have bombarded the Chinese for a 

quarter-century with anti-population propaganda, to the point where many otherwise educated Chinese believe the Party when it claims that China’s principal problem is too many people (rather than, say, absence of democratic rule, massive official corruption, and so on). Dissenting voices are not tolerated. In January 1994 two 

Chinese newspapers were reportedly punished for printing articles favoring second 

births and ‘‘opposing family planning.’’ 60

63

The Chinese are constantly told that the country’s demographic situation is 

‘‘grim,’’ that economic progress is imperiled, and that even the food supply is in 

grave danger because of excessive population growth.61 The government propaganda 

machine doesn’t just focus on the long term; it insists that even failing to meet cur- rent targets will mean social and economic ruin. This propaganda helps to justify 

coercion, by convincing the Chinese people that procreating couples are a threat to 

the nation. 

But one-sided propaganda does not require a controlled press: In much of the 

world, all it requires is money. Even in democratic countries, including the U.S., 

media discussion of population problems is dominated by the deep pockets of the 

anti-population movement. Literally tens of millions of dollars are spent each year 

to convince the world’s press—and through them the world’s people—of the gravity 

of the ‘‘population crisis.’’ The UNFPA alone devotes approximately $25 million, or 

10 percent of its quarter-billon-dollar budget, to conjuring up specters of catastrophe. 

THE UNFPA AND TODAY’S CHINA

The population controllers’ symbiotic relationship with Chinese-style family planning continues. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UNFPA, told a PRC 

journalist in January 2002 that ‘‘China, having adopted practical measures in accordance with her current situation, has scored remarkable achievements in population control. In recent years, the UNFPA and China have carried out a series of 

favorable and positive cooperation with more than 100 cooperative items of assistance established in the country.’’ 62

The most curious development occurred in 1998, when the UNFPA announced 

that it had been invited by the Chinese government to set up ‘‘model family-planning programs’’ in 32 of China’s counties, or county-level municipalities. Nafis 

Sadik, then-director of UNFPA, let it be known that the Chinese government had 

agreed to suspend the one-child policy during the next four years. In her words, ‘‘In 

the project counties couples will be allowed to have as many children as they want, 

whenever they want, without requiring birth permits or being subject to quotas.’’ 63

In a subsequent letter to the U.S. Congress, Sadik was even more specific. Within 

the UNFPA’s 32 model counties, she said, ‘‘(1) reproductive health programs are 

fully voluntary; (2) women are free to voluntarily select the timing and spacing of 

their pregnancies; (3) targets and quotas have been lifted; (4) abortion is not promoted as a method of family planning; (5) coercion does not exist.’’

Although Sadik’s claim to have set up a ‘‘no-coercion zone’’ in China was later to 

be proved false by investigators from the Population Research Institute or PRI (an 

organization of which I am president), it was by itself a remarkable, if backhanded, 

admission of the real state of affairs in China. For up to that point it had been the 

steadfast position of the Chinese government-maintained also by the UNFPA—that 

the one-child policy neither relied upon birth quotas and targets, nor required parents to obtain a birth permit before having a child. Anyway, why would the Chinese 

government abandon controls that had successfully driven down the birth rate for 

two decades? 

The UNFPA sought to explain: ‘‘The Government of China is keen to move away 

from its administrative approach to family planning to an integrated, client-centered 

reproductive health approach’’ (italics added).64 But the Chinese government did not 

need to be convinced, by the UNFPA or anyone else, of the value of replacing direct 

coercion with the more subtle forms of threats, bribes, and propaganda that population controllers commonly employ to stop Third World families from having children. Senior Chinese family-planning officials have always urged their juniors to 

employ such techniques to meet their quotas, reserving forced abortions and forced 

sterilizations for the truly recalcitrant. 

We at the PRI suspected that UNFPA’s claims to have de-fanged China’s familyplanning program were exaggerated. So, in September 2001, we organized a team 

of investigators, led by paralegal Josephine Guy, to go undercover into an UNFPA 

‘‘model county.’’ After four days in Sihui county, Guangdong province, Ms. Guy reported back that people had flocked to tell her about the abuse that they and their 

families had suffered as a result of still-coercive family-planning policies. As she was 

later to testify before the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of 

Representatives:

We were told of efforts by many women to hide their pregnancies from government officials, in an attempt to escape forced abortion, so they could give 

birth to a child they desired. We were told of women having to hide their children, to escape retribution from officials for not having an abortion. We were 

told of the many so-called ‘‘black’ children in the region who are born out of acVerDate Mar 21 2002 10:03 Jul 13, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\AGI\041906\27067.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
64

cord with local birth regulations. We were told of the punishments inflicted on 

those who wish to freely determine for themselves the timing and spacing of 

pregnancy. 

We were told of the non-voluntary use of IUDs and mandatory examinations 

so that officials can ensure that women have not removed IUDs in violation of 

policy, and the strict punishments which result from non-compliance with this 

coercive and inhumane policy. . . . The interviews we conducted were recorded 

in notebooks, on audio and videotape, and additional photographic evidence was 

obtained. The abuses we documented during this investigation are recent, ongoing, rampant, and unrelenting. And they exist in a county where the United Nations Population Fund claims that women are free to determine the timing and 

spacing of pregnancy. 

At a location not far from [the UNFPA office], a woman testified that she became pregnant despite an earlier attempt by family-planning officials to forcibly 

sterilize her. That attempt failed. She became pregnant, and was forcibly sterilized a second time by family-planning doctors and officials. Had she refused, 

she told us on videotape, family-planning crews would have torn her house 

down.65

Everyone Josephine Guy spoke with had a story to tell—a sister who had been 

sterilized, a friend who had undergone a coerced abortion. There is no voluntarism 

in Sihui, she concluded, despite UNFPA claims to the contrary. 

On her last day in Sihui, Ms. Guy and her team set out to locate the office from 

which the UNFPA directs its ‘‘model family-planning program.’’ To her surprise, she 

was directed to the Sihui county family-planning office, where she found the single 

UNFPA representative sitting in the midst of government family planners. The significance of this arrangement was immediately apparent: The Chinese government 

and the UNFPA were working hand-in-glove to enforce the one-child policy. As one 

family-planning victim told Ms. Guy, ‘‘Family-planning policies involving coercion 

and force are stricter today than ever before.’’ 66

The PRI’s investigation prompted the Bush administration to undertake one of its 

own, sending a three-member assessment team to China in May 2002. The official 

nature of the visit constituted a tremendous handicap for the team: It ensured that 

the Chinese state was able to monitor their comings and goings and to prevent them 

from coming into direct contact with cases of coercion. Nonetheless, the team found 

that UNFPA was supplying computers and medical equipment to family-planning 

agencies engaged in coercive practices.67 On July 21, 2002, Secretary of State Colin 

Powell announced a new policy: ‘‘UNFPA’s support of, and involvement in, China’s 

population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion. Therefore, it is not permissible to continue 

funding UNFPA at this time.’’ 68 The $34 million appropriated by Congress for FY 

2002, he continued, will go instead to Child Survival and Health programs. 

Powell called on the UNFPA to stop ‘‘support[ing] a program of coercive abortion,’’ 

but the agency appears ready to persevere: It reacted to the cutoff of U.S. funding 

by expanding its program in China from 32 to 42 counties. The new, multi-million 

dollar agreement with China will carry through 2007. 

The decision of the Bush Administration to deny funding to the UNFPA has been 

reaffirmed in the years since, even as the population control movement continues 

its efforts in Congress to overturn the President’s decision. In 2005 Rep. Carolyn 

Maloney (D–N.Y.) once again introduced an amendment in the House of Representatives that would have restored the $34 million in UNFPA funding, only to have it 

go down to defeat on a 233 to 192 vote.69 This was a much larger margin than the 

tiny three- to five-vote victories of recent years, suggesting that even a few nominally pro-choice members of the Congress are coming around to the view that Chinese women should have the right to choose to bear children. 

MORE MONEY FOR CHINA APPROVED BY UNFPA

On January 30, 2006, the New York-based Executive Board of the United Nations 

Population Fund (UNFPA) approved, as UNFPA itself put it, ‘‘the sixth UNFPA programme of assistance to China, totaling $27 million over five years. As they did so, 

board members and other United Nations countries praised UNFPA as a ‘force for 

good’ that promotes and protects human rights, implicitly repudiating a claim that 

the Fund abets coercive practices.’’ That last clause refers to the Bush Administration, which has withheld American money from UNFPA because of its assistance 

to the Chinese population control effort. In China, women and their husbands are 

severely penalized for having more than their quota of one or two children. UNFPA 

officials do not directly engage in the forced abortion and sterilization practices of 

65

the Chinese regime, but subsidize them with its financial and technical assistance 

to Chinese population control bureaucrats. 

Ten European countries led by Britain issued a strong statement of support for 

UNFPA. These nations provide most of UNFPA funding. Britain, Norway, Denmark, 

Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany 

signed the joint statement. UNFPA has long claimed that coercive practices have 

lessened in the areas of China where it operates, but a September 2001 PRI investigation found that forcible coercion continues in the same counties in which 

UNFPA works. 

UNFPA STOPS COERCION?

How hard UNFPA tries to end coercion is questionable. UNFPA money flows to 

China without any public strings attached. Even a Dec. 15, 2005 article by UNFPA 

itself raises questions about what coercive practices UNFPA opposes in any case. 

‘‘Lifting birth-spacing rules is an important step towards a fully voluntary approach to pregnancy decisions,’’ said UNFPA Representative Siri Tellier in the article, which praised an end to birth-spacing regulations in Hainan Province and the 

subgroup of penalties that went with them. ‘‘Around 40% of penalties involve cases 

of birth spacing, so eliminating that requirement is significant. However, it goes 

only part way to meeting international human rights standards. We would like 

China to eliminate any economic penalties for out-of-plan births.’’ The article discussed the difficulties poor families faced in paying the astronomical fines levied on 

them for violation of their birth mandates. 

It seems curious that he would say ‘‘economic penalties’’ instead of ‘‘all penalties’’ 

or something to that effect. Third World governments practice various kinds of coercion, from fines to denial of education benefits to ineligibility for government jobs 

to loss of employment altogether, to keep couples from having as many children as 

they would like. China employs all of these methods plus simply rounding women 

up by the thousands and forcibly sterilizing them, which is not an economic penalty 

(for examples, see Time magazine, ‘‘Enemies of the State?,’’ Sep. 19, 2005). 

Hu Daji, Deputy Director of the Hainan Population and Family Planning Bureau, 

told UNFPA that guaranteeing women’s rights was a goal, but it has to be pursued 

alongside another one. ‘‘Our challenge is to not have more births and to protect clients’ rights,’’ he said. The order of his priorities is revealing: Control comes first. 

BAD IDEAS IN THE WEST; LIFE AND DEATH IN CHINA

Population control was not imposed on China by the West, as it was imposed on 

smaller, weaker countries—but that doesn’t absolve the West of all responsibility for 

the one-child policy and its attendant abuses. Not only did Western-funded organizations like the UNFPA lend China their enthusiastic support but, as recent research by Susan Greenhalgh and others makes clear, the intellectual impetus for 

the policy came from the West.70 Vaporous Sixties ideas about population growth 

and resource depletion had explosive real-world consequences, a decade later and 

half a world away. The core ideas underlying the one-child policy, it turns out, came 

from Western ‘‘science,’’ more precisely from the notorious 1974 Club of Rome study 

that claimed we were breeding ourselves to extinction. 

The Limits to Growth computer simulation, carried out by a group of MIT-based 

systems engineers, predicted that the world would come to an end by about 2070 

if population growth continued.71 The authors saw ‘‘no other avenue to survival’’ 

than population control, which was ‘‘the only feasible solution.’’ 72 The book’s conclusions lent themselves to hype, which, it turned out, was precisely what the Club of 

Rome wanted. A public-relations firm was hired, a press conference was organized, 

and the book was released with great fanfare. Scary stories sell, and this one sold 

a frightening 4 million copies, injecting the book indelibly into the world’s consciousness. 

The stage was now set for Song Jian, a systems-control specialist for China’s 

state-owned defense industry, to visit Europe in 1978. He might as well have come 

from another planet. Like other Chinese intellectuals, he had been isolated from the 

outside world for decades, and was desperately eager to catch up on developments. 

During his trip, as he later wrote, he ‘‘happened to learn about the application of 

systems-analysis theory by European scientists to the study of population problems 

with a great success. For instance, in a ‘Blueprint for Survival’ published in 1972, 

British scientists contended that Britain’s population of 56 million had greatly 

exceed[ed] the sustaining capacity of [the] ecosystem of the Kingdom. They argued 

Britain’s population should be gradually reduced to 30 million, namely, a reduction 

by nearly 50 percent . . . I was extremely excited about these documents and determined to try the method of demography.’’ 73 He had been to the future, or so he 

66

thought. In his baggage when he returned to China was a copy of The Limits to 

Growth. 

Although Song Jian had no way of knowing it, what he thought was cutting-edge 

systems analysis was little more than a scientific hoax. The data were incomplete 

and sometimes inaccurate, its methodology was flawed, and it assumed—wrongly—

that scientific and technical advances would cease.74 In the words of legendary demographer Julian Simon, ‘‘The Limits to Growth has been blasted as foolishness or 

fraud by almost every economist who has read it closely or reviewed it in print.’’ 75

The most decisive refutation of the study came from the Club of Rome itself, 

which—two years after its publication—suddenly ‘‘reversed its position’’ and ‘‘came 

out for more growth.’’ 76

But the damage was done. In Song Jian, they had captured their most important 

convert ever: Through him, their little caper had an impact on the lives of over a 

billion people—and continues to do so down today. Borrowing the strident rhetoric 

of the Club of Rome report, Song Jian popularized the notion of a world in crisis: 

‘‘Facing the rapid increase in population, countries everywhere are watching developments with grave concern.’’ 77 And he drew the same conclusion: ‘‘The capacity of 

the land . . . does not permit excessive increases in population. This is quite obvious.’’ 78 He reinforced his rhetoric with eye-catching charts showing China’s population remaining low for 4,000 years, then exploding to a terrifying 1 billion by 

1980.79 No mention was made of recent, dramatic declines in the birth rate.80

Other experts jumped into the debate, arguing that China’s economy was collapsing under the weight of its population. Population growth was said to be responsible for every conceivable economic ill, from rising levels of unemployment and poverty to falling levels of labor productivity and investment. China, it seemed, faced 

a population crisis of enormous proportions which, if left unchecked, would shatter 

any hope of ever joining the ranks of the developed nations. Nothing less was at 

stake than the country’s drive for wealth and global power, warned Vice Premier 

Chen Muhua in the pages of the People’s Daily: ‘‘In order to realize the Four Modernizations, we must control population growth in a planned way.’’ 81

The Chinese leadership was ripe for a radical solution; after all, the nation’s future was at stake. And Song Jian, armed with a computer simulation right out of 

the pages of The Limits to Growth, offered one. 

After returning from Europe, Song set out to replicate the systems-analysis studies he had stumbled across in Europe, this time with China as the subject. He 

formed a research group: himself, two other systems-control specialists, and an economist. Using newly available computer technology, the group first set out to calculate China’s ‘‘optimal’’ population in the year 2080. Making the same kinds of 

highly questionable assumptions as their Club of Rome mentors, using data that 

were even more fragmentary, they calculated that the optimal population in 2080 

would be between 650 and 700 million people. This figure, which was roughly twothirds of China’s 1980 population, they proposed as the goal of any birth-control program.82 China’s ‘‘only choice’’ was to reduce the population down to this level, Song 

maintained, borrowing the Limits language. There was simply ‘‘no other way,’’ ‘‘no 

other choice.’’ 83

In order to determine the level of fertility control necessary to reach this goal, the 

group next projected future population growth under different childbearing schemes: 

3.0, 2.3, 2.0, 1.5, 1.0. The first three they rejected out of hand. If the people were 

allowed to continue to bear children at the 1978 rate—2.3—they calculated that the 

population would grow to 2.12 billion in 2080. Even if the rate were forced down 

to 2.0, there would still be 1.47 billion Chinese alive after a century. These schemes 

‘‘obviously cannot be adopted,’’ they said. The seriousness of the population crisis 

required sterner measures. Limiting women to an average of 1.5 children produced 

the kind of population reduction they were looking for. Under this scenario, the 

number of Chinese would decline to 777 million by 2080, within striking distance 

of their ‘‘optimum population’’ of 650–700 million. Under their final scenario, in 

which every couple would be limited to one child by 1985, the population would 

plummet to only 370 million, well below the optimum.84

The Song group was well-connected, and soon after completing their computer 

simulations they were able to present them to top Communist Party and government leaders. These were reportedly ‘‘very impressed with the science and the numbers.’’ 85 As well they might be: The presentation by the Song group confirmed one 

of their most cherished beliefs, namely, that Western science and technology, appropriately applied to the Chinese context, would be the salvation of their nation. As 

Greenhalgh writes, ‘‘The attitude towards everything foreign was close to idolatry. 

This was to have fateful consequences, as Western ‘science’—at least one odd brand 

of it—became the core of Chinese policy.’’ 86

67

The computer simulation presented by the Song group—perhaps the first that 

senior leaders had ever seen—must have been greeted with not only awe but relief. 

Here was welcome confirmation that ‘‘overpopulation,’’ rather than, say, economic 

mismanagement or political turmoil, was the true source of China’s backwardness. 

And not only had the Song group used Western ‘‘science’’ to identify the problem, 

it had used those same techniques to devise a plan to save China. Scientific and 

technological modernization, named by Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping the most 

important of his Four Modernizations, was paying off. How proud they must have 

been that their own experts, using the latest in Western ‘‘science,’’ had so precisely 

calculated China’s ‘‘optimum population.’’ That Song’s group was even able to offer 

precise advice on fertility levels and future population numbers was an added 

bonus. The leadership had few qualms about regulating the fertility of its subjects—

it had done worse over the previous three decades—but Song’s insistence that Western ‘‘science’’ left them ‘‘no other choice’’ made the decision easy. 

The only question was whether to adopt the 1.5-child-per-family policy preferred 

by the Song group, or to impose an even more restrictive one-child-per-family policy. 

The leadership in the end rejected the 1.5-children option, apparently fearing that 

the peasants would then push for two or more.87 When Song’s study was published 

in the official Party organ, the People’s Daily, on March 7, 1980, it was edited to 

read that the 1.5-child-per-family policy would be ‘‘disadvantageous to our country’s 

four modernizations . . . and to the raising of the people’s standard of living.’’ The 

one-child-per-couple policy, which results in a population much smaller than the 

supposed optimum, was described as ‘‘a comparatively ideal scheme for solving our 

country’s population problem.’’ 88

Publication in the People’s Daily meant that the policy had received the imprimatur of the Communist Party and was therefore beyond further discussion and debate. Six months later, in mid-September 1980, the one-child policy was formally 

ratified by the third session of the Fifth National People’s Congress. From then on 

it was set in stone. On this terrible altar millions of mothers and children have suffered and died, sacrificed for a scientific fraud. 

As the case of China puts in stark relief, the real danger to the people of the developing world is not ‘‘overpopulation’’ at all, but rather alarmist notions of overpopulation. The notion that people are somehow social, ecological, and economic 

nuisances is a pernicious one, predisposing governments to treat their own citizens 

as a form of pestilence. Instead of trying to lift their poor out of poverty, governments instead try to reduce their numbers. Authentic economic development is neglected, human-rights abuses abound, and everyone’s freedoms are put at risk. Population control encourages domestic tyranny of a very personal and deadly sort, as 

the case of China makes painfully clear.

NOTES

1 Josephine Guy, ‘‘Story of a Beautiful Baby Boy,’’ PRI Review 11:4 (Sept.–Oct. 2001), pp. 8–

9. 2Quoted in Josephine Guy, ‘‘Women and Child Abuse in China,’’ PRI Review 11:4 (Sept.–Oct. 

2001), p. 3. 3The quote comes from Vice Premier Chen Muhua, who said in 1979 that ‘‘Socialism should 

make it possible to regulate the reproduction of human beings so that population growth keeps 

in step with the growth of material production.’’ Quoted in my Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese

(New York: Free Press, 1983), p. 246. 4 I have made periodic trips into China to assess family-planning policies, have commissioned 

others to undertake such investigations, and have closely followed both official Chinese pronouncements and reports appearing in the specialized literature and the population press. 5See the testimony of Gao Xiaoduan, who, as a senior population-control official in Fujian 

province, had systematically committed these and other abuses of human rights with the encouragement and support of her superiors. Following her escape from China, Mrs. Gao was invited by Rep. Christopher Smith (R–N.J.) to testify before the Subcommittee on International 

Operations and Human Rights of the International Relations Committee. Gao Xiaoduan, ‘‘Forced 

Abortion and Sterilization in China: The View from the Inside,’’ Subcommittee on International 

Operations and Human Rights, June 10, 1998. Also see my book, A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), for similar 

abuses. 6 John Aird, Slaughter of the Innocents: Coercive Birth Control in China (Washington, D.C.: 

American Enterprise Institute Press, 1990), p. 92. 7 Harold R. Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (New York: 

John Day, 1958), pp. 63–64. Also quoted in my China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1990), pp. 18–19. 8 If the column was advancing at the rate of 2 miles per hour, and each five abreast were 

separated by 4, then 13,200 marchers would pass under the arch in one hour. Given that the 

Chinese population is roughly 100,000 times this number, it would take 100,000 hours, or 

roughly 10 years, for all of the Chinese to march under the arch. An additional year or so would 

be required for the 100,000,000 million or so babies born during this decade to themselves clear 

the arch, for a total of 11 years. 

68

9The remark is quoted in Nicholas Eberstadt, ‘‘UNFPA: A Runaway Agency,’’ PRI Review 12:3 

(May–June 2002), p. 8. 10 International Planned Parenthood Federation, IPPF in Action (London: Typographic Press, 

1982), p. 20. Quoted in Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Population: The Ideology and Economics of World Population Control (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, Revised Edition, 1999), p. 

122. 11 Bryan T. Johnson, ‘‘The World Bank and Economic Growth: 50 Years of Failure’’ (Washington, D.C: The Heritage Foundation, May 16, 1996), based on World Bank figures. Quoted in 

Kasun, War, p. 122. 12Kasun, War, p. 122. 13 ‘‘Guojia jihua shengyu lianhehui Wu Kunhuang he Aluweihaier zhuren shuo: renmin 

xuanze Zhongguo de jihua shengyu shi renmin zijide xuanze’’ (‘‘President Ng Khoon-Fong and 

Director Aluvihare of the International Planned Parenthood Federation say that China’s family 

planning program is the people’s own choice’’), Jiankang bao (Health Gazette), Beijing, Apr. 18, 

1983, p. 1; and ‘‘Family planning measures hopeful,’’ China Daily, Beijing, May 4, 1983, p. 3. 

Cited in John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–August 1994), p. 1. 14Kasun, War, p. 122. 15 ‘‘China Daily wins global media award,’’ China Daily, Beijing, Mar. 16, 1982, p. 3. Cited 

in John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 1. 16The World Bank, World Development Report 1984, p. 160. Quoted in Kasun, War, p. 124. 17Michele Vink, ‘‘Abortion and Birth Control in Canton, China,’’ Wall Street Journal, Nov. 30, 

1981. 18 Christopher Wren, ‘‘Chinese Region Showing Resistance to National Goals for Birth Control,’’ New York Times, May 16, 1982. 19See my ‘‘Why are Baby Girls Being Killed in China?’’ Wall Street Journal, Nov. 30, 1981. 20See, inter alia, my Broken Earth, esp. Chapter 8; Michael Weiskopf, ‘‘Abortion Tears Fabric 

of Chinese Society,’’ Washington Post, January 7, 1985. 21 Burleson, who headed the Population Council from 1960 to 1974, thought the population 

crisis so severe that ‘‘forced-pace measures’’ were necessary. In his article ‘‘Beyond Family Planning,’’ he proposed that massive government intervention was the only answer. See PRI Review

4:5 (Sept.–Oct., 1994), p. 11. 22Sharon Camp, on the Diane Rehm Show, WAMU, Dec. 13, 1991. See also ‘‘Population Crisis 

Committee OK’s Coercion,’’ PRI Review 2(2):10 (Mar.–Apr. 1992). 23The IPPF affiliate is the Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family 

Planning (JOICFP), which publishes JOICFP News, Aug. 2000, Sept. 2000. 24 John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 1. 25See ‘‘A Peoples’ Project in China,’’ JOICFP News, no. 234, Dec. 1994, p. 6, as quoted in the 

PRI Review 4:2 (Mar.–Apr. 1994), p. 7. 26Quoted in Christopher Smith, ‘‘Judging a Civilization,’’ PRI Review 11:4 (Sept.–Oct. 2001), 

p. 8. 27 ‘‘Several regulations of Jilin province for the administration and management of family 

planning,’’ Jilin Ribao, Changchun, Oct. 29, 1993, Joint Publications Research Service, no. 

94010, Feb. 10, 1994, pp. 19–20. Cited in John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–

Aug. 1994), p. 3. 28See Steven W. Mosher, ‘‘John Aird, China Demographer and Critic, R.I.P.,’’ PRI Review

15(5): 3–4. 29 XINHUA-English, Beijing, Apr. 11, 1991, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), 

Daily Report: China, no. 91–071, April 12, 1991, pp. 8–9; see also John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ 

PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 1 30 Although Sadik did not know it at the time, the same month that she endorsed the Chinese 

model, Party leaders had ordered a new crackdown on out-of-plan births. Family-planning officials throughout the country resorted to more direct forms of coercion, and the Chinese birth 

rate plummeted to unprecedentedly low levels. News of the crackdown finally broke in April 

1993, embarrassing the UNFPA and other foreign supporters of China’s ‘‘voluntary’’ program. 

Sadik, eager for the U.S. to resume funding her organization, aired the possibility of withdrawing from China. When the newly installed Clinton administration proved willing to resume 

U.S. funding of the UNFPA in spite of its involvement in China’s coercive program, all talk of 

withdrawal was dropped. See Nicholas D. Kristof, ‘‘A U.N. agency may leave China over coercive 

birth control,’’ New York Times, May 15, 1993, p. 1. 31Owen Bennett-Jones, ‘‘Vietnam’s Two-Child Policy,’’ BBC, 8 November 2000. 32 ‘‘Vietnam Plans Law to Ban Tests on Sex of Fetus,’’ Reuters, 16 November 2001. 33Daniel Goodkind, ‘‘Vietnam’s New Fertility Policy,’’ Population and Development Review

15(1), March 1989. 34 ‘‘Capacity Building for Eradicating Poverty, an Impact Evaluation of U.N. System Activities 

in Vietnam 1985–1997.’’ U.N. Fund for Population Activities. Cited in Douglas A. Sylva, ‘‘The 

UNFPA: Assault on the World’s Peoples,’’ (New York: Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, 2002), p. 51. 35Owen Bennett-Jones, ‘‘Vietnam’s Two-Child Policy,’’ BBC, 8 November 2000. 36Douglas A. Sylva, ‘‘The UNFPA: Assault on the World’s Peoples,’’ (New York: Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, 2002), p. 51. 37See Weekly Briefing on UNFPA’s ‘‘model county’’ program in Vietnam. 38 John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 2. 39 Ibid. 40 Also see Betsy Hartmann, ‘‘Population Control as Foreign Policy,’’ Covert Action 39 (Winter 

1991–92), p. 28. 41For example, according to Article 4 of the Tianjin Municipality Regulations of Planned 

Birth, which were promulgated on April 15, 1994, this major city in North China holds the 

heads of work units ‘‘duty-bound, authorized, and accountable’’ for meeting birth quotas set by 

69

their superiors. Xinnanliuxing Village of Dongpuhwa Township in Wuqing County, Tianjin, 

which has a population of 500, is allowed a quota of 5 children every two years. As humanrights activist Harry Wu comments, ‘‘If [officials] fail to [meet their quotas], they will lose their 

promotions and risk dismissal or punishment. This is the principal reason why Communist cadres at all levels resort to desperate, barbaric practices of forcing abortion and sterilization, and 

killing infants. Such a practice relates directly to the security of their jobs.’’ See Harry Wu, ‘‘China’s population policy,’’ PRI Review 11:4 (Sept.–Oct. 2001), p. 7. 42 Also see Betsy Hartmann, ‘‘Population Control as Foreign Policy,’’ Covert Action 39 (Winter 

1991–92), p. 28. 43 John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 2. 44Donald P. Warwick, Bitter Pills: Population Policies and Their Implementation in Eight Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 203–204; Margot Cohen, 

‘‘Success brings new problems,’’ Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong, April 18, 1991, pp. 

48–49; Wardah Hafidz, Adrina Taslim, and Sita Aripurnami, ‘‘Family planning in Indonesia: the 

case for policy reorientation,’’ Inside Indonesia, Mar. 1992, pp. 19–22; and Judith Banister, 

‘‘Vietnam’s evolving population policies,’’ International Conference on Population, New Delhi, 

September 1989 (Liege: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 1989) pp. 

156–60. 45See Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs (Boston: South End Press, 1995), 

esp. pp. 73–83. 46 Cited in Tao-tai Hsia and Constance A. Johnson, ‘‘Recent legal developments in China’s 

planned births campaign’’ (unpublished memorandum), July 9, 1991, p. 2. Beijing municipality 

includes extensive rural areas and populations. Quoted in John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI 

Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 3. 47Damion McElroy, ‘‘China’s One-Child Policy Fines Rise,’’ London Telegraph, July 27, 2002. 48Donald P. Warwick, ‘‘The Ethics of Population Control,’’ in Godfrey Roberts (ed.), Population 

Policy: Contemporary Issues (New York: Praeger, 1990), p. 26. 49See David Morrison, ‘‘Cutting the Poor: Peruvian Sterilization Program Targets Society’s 

Weakest,’’ PRI Review 7(2): 1, 4–7 50 In December 1991 the president of Bangladesh, welcoming a family-planning delegation 

from China headed by Peng Peiyun, the Minister of China’s State Family Planning Commission, 

praised China’s success in population control and expressed the hope that Bangladesh and 

China could learn from each other’s experiences. XINHUA-English, Beijing, Dec. 9, 1991, FBIS, 

no. 910237, Dec. 10, 1991, p. 20. 51 Harbin Radio, Heilongjiang Provincial Service, Apr. 20, 1988, FBIS, No. 88–82, Apr. 28, 

1988; Meng Fang and Chen Fenglan, ‘‘Heilongjiang sheng kaizhan cang wu jihua wai shengyu 

cun houdong qude chengxiao’’ (Heilongjian Province carries out activities to create villages with 

no unplanned births and obtains results’’), Zhongguo renkou bao (China Population)(ZGRKB), 

Beijing, 7 October 1988, p. 2. Quoted in John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–

Aug. 1994), p. 13, fn 25. 52 Yin Su and Li Zheng, ‘‘Liaoning Kaizhan cangjian ‘Jihua shengyu hege cun’ quanmian 

quanche jihua shengyu xianxing zhengce’’ (‘‘Liaoning carries out activities for establishing ‘qualified family planning villages’ and implements the current family-planning policy fully’’), ZGRKB, 

Sept. 30, 1988, p. 1. Quoted in John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), 

p. 3. 53Peng Peiyun, ‘‘Guanyu 1989-nian de gongzuo’’ (‘‘On the work in 1989’’), ZGRKB, Feb. 24, 

1989, p. 1. Quoted in John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 3. 54See, for example, he description of the policy in a letter from a Chinese factory manager 

to a Chinese employee studying in the U.S. who had an unauthorized pregnancy, quoted in my 

article, ‘‘The long arm of ‘one-child’ China,’’ Washington Post, Apr. 10, 1998, p. B4. See also my 

A Mother’s Ordeal. 55 John Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 (July–Aug. 1994), p. 3. 56Donald P. Warwick, Bitter Pills: Population Policies and Their Implementation in Eight Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 197–98. 57 Robert M. Veatch, ‘‘Governmental Population Incentives: Ethical Issues at Stake,’’ Studies 

in Family Planning 8:4 (Apr. 1977), pp. 100–108, quoted in Kasun, War, p. 111. 58 Ibid. 59 UBINIG, ‘‘’The price of Norplant is TK.2000! You cannot remove it,’’’ Issues in Reproductive 

and Genetic Engineering 4:1 (1991), p. 46. Cited in Aird, ‘‘The China Model,’’ PRI Review 4:4 

(July–Aug. 1994), p. 4. 60 ‘‘Propaganda department tightens control on press,’’ Ming bao, Hong Kong, 15 January 

1994, FBIS, no. 94–011, Jan. 18, 1994, p. 17. 61These arguments are still being advanced despite the continuing fast growth of the Chinese 

economy. China’s grain production is reported to have increased by 50 percent between 1979 

and 1993, while the population grew by less than 22 percent. The grain figures are given in 

XINHUA-English, Beijing, Sept. 16, 1993, FBIS, no. 94–027, p. 37. 62People’s Daily, Mar. 2001, quoted in Christopher Smith, ‘‘Judging a Civilization,’’ PRI Review 11:4 (Sept.–Oct. 2001), p. 8. 63Letter from Nafis Sadik to Bill Richardson dated Jan. 7, 1998, and quoted in ‘‘Aiding a Holocaust: New UNFPA Program Designed to Tidy Up One-Child Horror,’’ PRI Review 7:2 (Mar.–

Apr. 1998), p. 14. The UNFPA’s Founding Charter says that ‘‘couples have the rights to decide 

the number and spacing of their children.’’ Given that China has from the inception of the onechild policy denied that right, the only honorable course of action for the UNFPA is to withdraw 

from China—but that it refuses to do. 64Kirsten Trone, the UNFPA program director for China, quoted in ‘‘Aiding a Holocaust: New 

UNFPA Program Designed to Tidy Up One-Child Horror,’’ PRI Review 7:2 (Mar.–Apr. 1998), p. 

14. 

70

65 Josephine Guy, ‘‘Women and Child Abuse in China,’’ Testimony before the Committee on 

International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Oct. 17, 2001. See also PRI Review

11:4 (Sept.–Oct. 2001), p. 3. 66 Ibid. 67 ‘‘Analysis of Determination that Kemp-Kasten Amendment Precludes Further Funding to 

UNFPA under Pub. Law 107–115,’’ attachment to letter from Secretary Colin Powell to Patrick 

J. Leahy, Chairman, Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. 

Senate, July 21, 2002. 68Letter from Secretary Colin Powell to Sen. Leahy, July 21, 2002. 69 Joseph A. D’Agostino, ‘‘Human Rights Triumphs Over UNFPA Population Controllers: Margin of Victory Grows to Solid 41 in U.S. House,’’ Global Family Life News 4:3(June–July 2005): 

1, 6–7. 70 H. Yuan Tien, ‘‘Demography in China: From Zero to Now,’’ Population Index 47(4):683–710; 

Tien, China’s Strategic Demographic Initiative (New York: Praeger, 1991); Susan Greenhalgh, 

‘‘Science, Modernity, and the Making of China’s One-Child Policy,’’ Population and Development 

Review, Aug. 2003. 71D. H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on 

the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe, 1972). 72Meadows et al., Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rome

(New York: Dutton, 1974), p. 196. ‘‘The Only Feasible Solution’’ is the title of Chapter 9, by 

Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, of this second volume. 73Song Jian, ‘‘Systems Science and China’s Economic Reforms,’’ in Yang Jiachi, ed., Control 

Science and Technology for Development (Oxford: Pergamon, 1986), pp. 1–8. In this section I 

draw upon Susan Greenhalgh’s ‘‘Science, Modernity, and the Making of China’s One-Child Policy,’’ Population and Development Review 29(2): 163–196. 74 As a demonstration of the significance of these errors, the same rules were used to make 

predictions for the period from 1870 to 1970, from the basis of what was known in 1870; the 

computer predicted that the world would come to an end before 1970, in part because of the 

inability to control the massive amounts of horse manure. This can stand as an apt commentary 

on the whole enterprise. See Robert Sassone, Handbook on Population (fifth ed.; Stafford, Va.: 

ALL, 1994), p. 6. 75 Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 286. 

See also H. S. D. Cole, Christopher Freeman, Marie Jahoda, and K. L. R. Pavitt, eds., Models 

of Doom: A Critique of The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe, 1973). 76Time, Apr. 26, 1976, p. 56; New York Times, Apr. 14, 1976. 77Song Jian, ‘‘Population Development—Goals and Plans,’’ in Liu Zhen et al., eds., China’s 

Population: Problems and Prospects (Beijing: New World Press, 1981), pp. 25–31. Note that this 

English-language publication came out several years after Song had begun circulating these 

same ideas inside China. 78Song, 1981, p. 26; also cited in Greenhalgh. 79Song et al., 1985; also cited in Greenhalgh. 80 Chinese figures of the time showed that the years 1971–79 saw the natural increase rate 

fall by half, and the crude birth rate decline by almost as much. H. Yuan Tien, ‘‘Demography 

in China: From Zero to Now,’’ Population Index 47(4): 683 (1981). 81 Chun Muhua, ‘‘In Order to Realize the Four Modernizations, We Must Control Population 

Growth in a Planned Way,’’ People’s Daily, Aug. 11, 1979, p. 2. The ‘‘Four Modernizations’’ represented Deng Xiaoping’s plan to modernize China’s science and technology, military, industry, 

and agriculture by century’s end. 82Song, 1981: 28–30. 83 Ibid.: 31. 84Song Jian, Tain Xueyuan, Li Guangyuan, and Yu Jingyuan, ‘‘Concerning the Issue of Our 

Country’s Objective in Population Development,’’ People’s Daily, Mar. 7, 1980, p. 5. 85Greenhalgh, op. cit. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88Song Jian et al., in People’s Daily, Mar. 7, p. 5.

Mr. SMITH. I will go now to Mr. Wu. 

STATEMENT OF MR. HARRY WU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

LAOGAI RESEARCH FOUNDATION 

Mr. WU. Mr. Chairman, I am very honored to be here. Before I 

get into my topic, execution and organ harvesting, I will take this 

liberty to say something about Mr. Steven Mosher’s testimony. 

I know Mosher many years ago. I really admire and am very 

honored to be associated with him and his tireless fighting against 

this coercive one-child policy in China. In that area there are two 

people—one just passed away, John Aird—and Dr. Steven Mosher. 

They make a tremendous contribution on this issue. 

We do have to know, Mr. Chairman, this is a fundamental 

human rights issue, they killing a baby and wounding the woman 

every day now. There is nothing talking about economic condition 

71

or whatever. This is a basic human rights. Today in China simply 

the woman do not have a right to be free to give birth. 

What are we talking about, human rights in China? You without 

permit cannot give birth and you are only allowed to have one 

child. 

Should we welcome the President in this country, who implement 

that policy? I think this ridiculous that we welcome a President 

here that killing the baby and wounding every individual family 

there. 

I very appreciate something coming up. Last year before the 

Elaine Chao visit to China, Senator Hillary Clinton sent a public 

letter. She want China to stop the coercive policy. And then another one, the news coming out the United Nations, the UNFPA 

have a new program. They try to convince me to stand together 

with them and maybe convince American Congress to re-fund the 

UNFPA, and they tried to tell me that this policy with Israel will 

be pretty good in helping Chinese woman, Chinese family. 

I said, if you really want to help Chinese woman, Chinese family, 

the first thing you have to do, you must do is Kofi Annan, the General Secretary, make a clear announcement, we condemn the Chinese one-child policy because it totally violates human rights. We 

want to see that stopped. The so-called ‘‘planned control’’ that is 

not like something in the Cairo announcement. It is planned by the 

government; is not planned by individual family. There is a very 

fundamental difference. 

The United Nations have to stand in the front to condemn this 

coercive policy. And American should not fund the UNFPA policy. 

Now, let me get into my testimony about harvesting organ and 

execution. Can we show the photo? 

The execution in China is going on and on. The number of the 

execution we never know, but actually the number is higher, higher and higher. And in the last, probably a year ago, the Chinese 

have a new internal policy from the supreme court. They will stop 

the public execution because that will really damage their international image. 

So you can probably—today it is very hard really to find out 

these public executions or sentencing really in China. They 

changed policy because it is not basic human rights, basic on their 

so-called international image. But actually the execution style and 

execution is still going on and on. 

Even today the Chinese still not publicize the number of the execution. And even just recently the supreme court demanded everywhere in every provincial court have to inform the death row prisoner’s family in advance. That means before that they never informed the family. 

There is a couple of pictures right here we can show you. This 

is a notice from the court listing the number of the people, their 

crime, and they will be sentenced. 

But you can see the very interesting, not only this one but later, 

the other pictures, they say there are a couple of people over here, 

18 prisoners that are in prison right here. They were executed, for 

example, September 1, September 8 and October 1. But this notice 

from the court is December sometime. They already kill them and 

72

then make a public announcement. So this is the procedure that 

shows you that is the procedure of the execution in China today. 

Year after year, and according to our investigation and many 

witnesses, including policemen, tell us, in China they do not have 

certain execution site. The reason is not only for security, but also 

try to prevent the people, particularly the prisoner’s family to find 

out the execution site. Later they will remember this is the place 

they killed my love. 

So in China there is no certain execution site. So occasionally 

they pick somewhere besides the highway, in construction site, or 

bank of the river. They kill them and find another place another 

time. 

Because the court, the supreme court recently have ordered stop 

the public execution, so that why they have to have a new policy, 

new measurement. So recently Chinese change it. The Chinese 

build up a kind of permanent execution site. And we identify one 

of this in Chengdu. 

Next picture, please. 

This looks like very normal building. No sign, nothing. This is 

entrance. 

Next one. Next. 

There is a wall with a barbed wire electricity surrounding it. Inside, against one of the walls you see a number of sandbags to prevent the bullets in the area. 

Next one. 

And then there are two room. One is so-called preparation room, 

the other one, the execution room. We identify this is for organ removal. 

Next one. 

But the killing style in this one, I just want you to, I cannot 

show you the next pictures because this policeman, this executioner, use very special bullets to blow away the woman head. I 

cannot, these are very brutal pictures. Even in this picture show 

you how brutal this government is doing. 

Next. 

And everybody heard, recently the Chinese using a so-called injection, and these are two vehicles right here. Starting in 1993 

from the first province, the Yannan Province, second picture, this 

is the inside of the injection cart. And many provinces right now 

are spending money to buy this kind of execution vehicle. It is 

much more convenient for the Chinese to remove the organ from 

the executed prisoners. 

But one of the correspondents interview the Chinese judge, why 

to make more that kind of vehicle for the execution? And some of 

the Chinese officials responded, say, the execution actually is a 

measurement, is a kind of indication that are warning the people. 

But to kill these prisoners in this very peaceful way, this is not 

purpose, so many areas are still using the bullets, shooting out the 

back, shooting out the heart. They intend not to use the injection 

cart. 

Next. 

Executions do go on, but only you can see the court notice. You 

cannot find more about these pictures in public area. 

Next. 

73

It is very interesting that the whole world is talking about abolish the death penalty. And this picture is from Chinese inside archive last year. They are training executioner. They say, well, we 

take 40 people from our military police. We give them special training. In 5 days you see this is the way to do so. 

So when we talk about these economic allotment, the other side 

story is they are upgrading their military system and also put more 

people in the death row prisoners. 

Next one. 

This is training style training program. 

Next. 

Now let’s talk about organs. Before, Congressmen, you remember 

that we hold a hearing over here. At that moment in Chinese mostly the organs removed from death row prisoners were kidney because the medical technology at that time not ready yet, but they 

already trying using liver and heart. According to the Chinese Minister of Health, the information said from 1993 to today they very 

successfully have liver transplant case of like around 3,000 and 

around 300 heart transplant case because their technology is upgrade to this level yet. 

And kidney has become more popular, kidney transplant has become very popular. Many hospitals can do so. That is why today 

China have a new situation is because the poor and rich so different and the people on the Internet or walk on the street and say, 

I want to sell a kidney. 

So Chinese this year, a couple of months ago, they have a new 

policy to regulate for the so-called ‘‘individual buy and sell’’ about 

organ. 

That is nothing with the organs from the death row prisoners. 

Death row prisoners policy already did. They had the document in 

1984. 

The new regulations, so-called, forbidding to buy and sell, to control the organ from individual to other people. They are talking 

about these people because the poor they want to sell the organ. 

And we know that is happening in India and to the people in Thailand many years ago, but right now they are totally forbidden to 

buy or do a so-called donation. Not if you are not a relative, you 

cannot donate your organ to other peoples. 

But it is happening today in China, and Chinese say, we have 

to regulate it because there is a big problem because the hospital 

is owned by the government. They can make a big profit from these 

individual so-called donations. 

This is the one of the hospitals we just finished our investigation. 

The investigation take about 8 months. And we saw there is the 

upper part of the picture is a patient named Su Liping. He was receive a heart from the death row prisoner, and we also interviewed 

the death row prisoner’s family. The family say we never know that 

our, my son was—when they kill him and when they remove the 

organ I have no idea about it. And the doctor because this is first 

case in Huaxi University, so this is big news in China that that 

was a very successful case. 

Very interesting that one of the doctors, he interviewed by the 

correspondent that she say originally he intend to come to the 

United States to learn for training. But, Congressmen, you know 

74

that Congress have a bill forbidding the doctor from China who 

have experience involved in organ transplant. So probably I cannot 

come to the United States. So he was training in Berlin, Berlin 

Heart Center. So he has very good technology to make the heart 

transplant successfully. 

Next picture. 

Here is another case in Heilongjiang Province, Mudanjiang Hospital. On the left side of the pictures are the hospital. The story 

in my testimony, because this is the first case in early 1990s about 

a heart transplant, so this is big news in China. Finally, we have 

one of the doctors involved in this case, he right now in United 

States. He make affidavits. He tell the detail. 

They find the death row prisoners, they match the patients that 

need it. And then the date the death row prisoners are escorted by 

20 policemen, judge and prosecutor. They get into the hospital just 

behind the building. They temporarily remodel the garage to become a temporary surgery room and forced prisoner face down, lay 

on the ground, and step on his back, shoot on the heart in the back. 

And right away put the sack, wrap around the neck to prevent the 

brain and the blood out. And they right away carry the body into 

the garage, open the chest and take the heart. Right away put into 

the second floor for the surgery and for the patients. 

And all these policemen and the judge, they was in the dining 

room, in the conference room, see the internal TV system to see the 

operation then. And then everybody got the—in Chinese we say 

‘‘homebow’’; it means cash money—and then make an announcement say, We are very successful in this heart transplant in our 

hospital. It is everywhere in the newspaper. So the story is going 

on and we never have the detail. 

But very interesting, recently the Chinese House Ministry make 

an announcement, from 1993 to 2005 there is around 60,000 kidney 

transplant and around 3,000 liver transplant and about 300 heart 

transplant. The cornea, the skin is not a business at all. Too easy, 

too simple. We never talk about it. 

And then the Divine Minister of the Health Ministry last year, 

Huang Jiefu, he was in Philippine participate WHO meeting; and 

he admitted only 5 percent come from so-called individual donation; 

95 percent come from death row prisoners. So this is a high number of the death row prisoners that have become such big resources 

for the organ. 

But do not get in the wrong way. You should not use the words 

so-called ‘‘buy and sell,’’ okay? Chinese never buy, never sell, okay? 

This is what even the documents say, this is the use of the death 

row prisoners organ. Use, otherwise there would be waste. 

Today there is a lot of Japanese, Israel, South Korean, Taiwanese, Thailand patients went over there to receive the organ and 

probably already know that come from death row prisoners, okay? 

But I never see the bill. There is a listing. 

So this is 10,000 for the organ. The whole package is 30,000 for 

the kidney or the service fee that include organ. So they never export organ. But you go over there, come back with the kidney in 

your body. It is not like a kidney, putting it in a container, and 

shipping it to you, okay? The carrier is a body. They guarantee 

good quality, fresh. 

75

And this is the only country today in the world doing that. And 

even American Congress have some hearings on this issue, it seems 

they are ignoring that. It seems they do not matter with that, 

okay? 

Let me go to the conclusion here. 

Number one, China number one country using the death penalty 

on a large scale for a long time. Several thousand people will be 

executed every year. 

Number two, the morality of the society in China has degenerated and people usually lack of sense of human rights, sympathy 

and justice. Due to the self-interest, people not only do not condemn such practice. They affirm them. 

Number three, there is no press freedom in China. When some 

people oppose such practice, there is no public forum for these discussion. 

Number four, the medical profession in China lacks of medical 

morality. And the doctors regard individual benefits as number one 

issues. 

Number five, Chinese entire medical system is still backward 

and general health conditions of the Chinese people are relatively 

poor, which causes a large number of the patients to be in need of 

organ transplantation. If the safety of the organ transplant surgeries in China improves, the number of the Chinese people and 

people from abroad undergoing an organ transplant operation 

would not decrease. 

If the Chinese Government does not enact a law to forbid the use 

of organ harvest from the condemned prisoners, the ‘‘trade’’—well, 

the use will not end it. 

The international community should be greatly concerned about 

this development of this issue and should press Beijing government 

to abolish this policy. 

I know that the next witnesses is Lu Decheng. I want to take the 

liberty to say a few words about this gentleman. He is the real hero 

of the Tiananmen Square movement. 

I have brought over here paint color and eggs. They went to the 

Tiananmen Square because they—in their view the poultry is symbolic of the evil system and symbolic of the crime. So how do you 

take it down? Just like the Stalin portrait, statues in Moscow. So 

they are very clear in mind that is something they had to do. 

They went over there. They saw the picture too heavy, too big. 

So finally they very cleverly say, okay, let’s get some eggs and put 

paint up there. And I asked him, I say, how many eggs you throw 

into the portrait? Later you can see the pictures. We counted at 

least 20 of them hit it and some of them missed it. And I asked 

three people who did it. He said me and Yu Dongyue, two people. 

Oh, that means each of you like—throw like 16, 17? And then you 

find out every egg he throw cause 1 year imprisonment. He was 

sentenced to 16 years in prison. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wu follows:]

76

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. HARRY WU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LAOGAI RESEARCH

FOUNDATION

THE THEFT OF ORGANS IN CHINA

SEVERAL CASES OF HEART TRANSPLANTATION AT HUAXI HOSPITAL IN CHENGDU AND

MUDANJIANG CARDIOVASCULAR HOSPITAL IN HEILONGJIANG

The Social and Judicial Background of Organ Transplantation in China 

The practice of organ transplantation in China was introduced in the 1960s or 

1970s, but the tradition of keeping bodies intact after death kept organ donations 

at low numbers in the beginning. Therefore, with the exception of a few cases of 

organ transplantation from living donors, the supply of organs was lacking. However, since 1983, owing to China’s ‘‘Strike Hard’’ campaigns, large numbers of criminals have been quickly executed. In 1984, the Chinese government launched a national policy that allowed those in the medical profession to use the body and organs 

of the executed. The Provisional Regulations of the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Civil Affairs ‘‘On the Use of the Dead Bodies or 

Organs of Condemned Criminals’’ were issued. According to the regulations, in a situation in which no one claims a dead body, or the condemned criminals or their 

families are willing to donate the dead body, the dead body and its organs can be 

used. The provisional regulations have been in effect for over twenty years now, in 

violation of morality and human rights, and this has triggered condemnation from 

the international community. The U.S. Congress has held several Hearings and has 

passed legislation forbidding Chinese doctors who participate in organ transplantation from entering the United States. 

Chinese authorities had long denied the facts about organ harvesting, but this 

changed in early November 2005 when the World Health Organization meeting was 

held in Manila. During the meeting, Huang Jiefu, the vice minister of China’s Ministry of Health, openly admitted that China used the organs of condemned criminals 

on a large scale. Among the organ transplant surgeries done in hospitals, he said, 

5% of organs transplanted consist of individual living-donor organ transplants, and 

the other 95% of organs transplanted come from executed prisoners. Huang said 

that because of this, organ transplantation in China had been in ‘‘the misty zone’’ 

for a long time, without the acknowledgement of the international community. 

In recent years, the disparity between the rich and the poor in China has become 

enormous. The poor, without any other options, are sometimes willing to sell their 

own organs, which has resulted in a flood of organ transactions. The Beijing government responded to this situation. In March 2006, the Xinhua News Agency reported 

that China’s Ministry of Health had enacted the ‘‘Provisional Regulations of the 

Clinical Application and Administration of Human Organ Transplantation Technology’’ and made the regulations effective on July 1, 2006. But these regulations 

have nothing to do with the scene being played out throughout China, in which people are contending for the organs of executed prisoners. And according to the regulations of the government, the police, the procuratorates, the courts, and the hospitals, 

the practice of harvesting executed prisoners’ organs is merely ‘‘the utilization of 

waste.’’

According to China’s Health Ministry, since 1993 China has performed 59,540 kidney transplants, 6,125 liver transplants and 248 heart transplants. The number of 

organ transplants in China has soared over the last years. More than 2,700 liver 

transplant surgeries and approximately 6,000 kidney transplant surgeries were conducted last year. Counting bone marrow, cornea and other organ transplants, there 

were almost ten thousand organ transplants done in China in 2005 alone. 

Patients from Asian countries like Korea, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia 

as well as from Hong Kong and Taiwan are coming in large numbers to China to 

get a healthy organ. In recent years, Tianjin No. One Hospital (see picture 6) becomes the favorite hospital of the Koreans. In order to make the patients feel at 

home, the Hospital hires doctors and nurses who speak Korean to take care of the 

foreign patients. The hospital has to rent the 24th and 25th floor of the Tianda 

Hotel to boarding the patients from abroad while waiting for the suitable organs. 

First Execution, Then the Announcement. The Dates and Lists are changed arbitrarily 

Several thousand people are executed in China every year. Because of China’s 

chaotic judicial system and the opacity of the sentencing and execution of condemned prisoners, the prisoners and their families in most cases do not receive advance notice of executions and are not informed of the execution date. After an exeVerDate Mar 21 2002 10:03 Jul 13, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\AGI\041906\27067.000 HINTREL1 PsN: SHIRL
77

cution, the list of those who have been executed is usually publicized in the bulletin 

of the local intermediate court (picture 3A/B) But according to investigations conducted by the Laogai Research Foundation, these announcements are only pro 

forma, and in reality the lists and the times are changed arbitrarily. Moreover, the 

names of some executed prisoners are never publicized at all. 

For example, according to a poster displayed on December 8, 2005 by the Intermediate Court of Chengdu, 18 condemned prisoners were executed in succession. 

However, the prisoners executed on October 13, and those executed on December 

7 and 8, were listed on the same poster. So it remains unknown which of the prisoners were executed at what time. Such instances reveal not only the lack of efficiency and discipline present in China’s judicial system, but more importantly the 

secret hidden by deceit that the police, the procuratorates, the courts, the hospitals 

and the prisons cooperate with each other to execute the prisoners secretly to steal 

their organs and cremate the cardavar immediately, and to give the ashes to their 

family, because many condemned prisoners refuse to ‘‘donate’’ their organs. Many 

condemned prisoners are peasant workers who have traveled to the city to find a 

job. They break the law, but they don’t have the money to hire an attorney. They 

are sentenced to death and are executed in shady and unknown circumstances, and 

their corpses are regarded as ‘‘the unclaimed.’’

The following are several cases of organ transplantation which prove that the organs of executed prisoners are often being stolen without the knowledge of the prisoner himself, and which show that, even if he signs an agreement to ‘‘donate’’ his 

organs, this is done under forced conditions. 

THE FIRST HEART TRANSPLANTATION AT HUAXI HOSPITAL IN CHENGDU IN 2005

On September 29, 2005, Huaxi Hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan Province (picture 

1A) performed its first heart transplant operation. The hospital told people that the 

heart came from a legitimate source. But according to an investigation conducted 

by the Laogai Research Foundation, many clues showed that the heart provided in 

this case very likely came from a 21-year-old student named Gou Hua. Another 21-

year-old worker named Su Liping (picture 2 A/B), suffered from a serious heart illness. Su, measuring 1.78 meters tall and thin in stature, was a resident of Banqiao 

Town, Fushun County, Sichuan Province. He was hospitalized on September 6. The 

hospital agreed not to charge him for the surgery and exempted him from the expected 120,000 yuan in medical expenses, because this was to be the first time for 

the hospital to perform a heart transplant operation. Dr. Zhang Eryong (picuture 

2 A/B), who was in charge of the surgery, required Su’s father to sign a liability 

agreement saying that if the operation failed, they would not prosecute the hospital, 

and meanwhile they would not ask where the heart came from and would not talk 

about this to the media. 

On September 29, eleven condemned prisoners, sentenced by the Intermediate 

People’s Court of Chengdu City, were simultaneously executed at an execution field 

in the suburbs of Chengdu. The site of the execution field was not clear, but it was 

likely one within 100 kilometers of the city. Among the eleven condemned prisoners 

was Gou Hua. Gou was a resident of Wangjing Rural Area, Pingchang County, 

Sichuan Province, a former student at the Training School of Agricultural Science 

and Technology of Chengdu. On March 21, 2004, Gou Hua has killed two of his 

schoolmates out of self-defence. Under circumstances in which there was no attorney 

and his family was not informed, he was sentenced to death and was executed on 

September 29. Gou measured 1.78 meters tall, had Type A blood, and was thin in 

stature. As LRF’s investigation revealed, before the execution, he had been asked 

by the prison about whether he would be willing to donate his organs, and he refused. Gou Hua was convinced that he did not deserve the death sentence. His family had also believed that he would get a sentence of life imprisonment, because they 

had never received any notice from the court. However, weeks after the execution, 

they learned that he was dead, and as for where and when he had been executed, 

it was still a mystery to them. 

On September 29, Huaxi Hospital sent several doctors and nurses to retrieve the 

heart at the execution field. Dr. Ren Ke (picture 2B) was in charge of the heart removal, which was performed in 20 minutes. A report of the Chengdu Daily on October 13 said, ‘‘The supplied heart arrived smoothly at the hospital around 4 o’clock 

in the afternoon that day (September 29).’’

The transplant operation team, led by the director of the Heart-Vascular Surgical 

Department, Dr. Zhang Eryong, included the attending doctors, Dr. Ren Ke and Dr. 

Guo Yingqiang, the resident physician, Yi Min, and the anesthesiologist, Li Yu. All 

of the nurses in the Heart Surgical Department and the other departments, such 

as the Heart Medical Department and the Experimental Medical Department, as 

78

well as physicians Cao Ke, Ma Jianchang, and Fan Jingxiu, coordinated with each 

other. The entire heart transplant operation lasted six hours and fifteen minutes. 

Huaxi Hospital owns two big, dark blue vans, bearing the license plates of the 

bureau of Sichuan, with the plate numbers Sichuan O–53604 and Sichuan O–53651, 

respectively (picture 1B). These vehicles are used exclusively for organ retrieving at 

the execution ground, and all the residents living near the two execution grounds 

can recognize them. The investigation of the Laogai Research Foundation could not 

determine for certain on which execution ground Gou Hua was executed, his heart 

removed and carried in solvents to Huaxi Hospital on September 29. 

Huaxi Hospital has been categoried as class A hospital in western China with 

modern equipment and excellent medical personnel, it is also among the hospitals 

in China that performs the largest number of organ transplantations. In recent 

years, the hospital has been strict regarding confidentiality and discipline inside the 

hospital. In any given medical department, only the director of the department 

knows where the organs come from. 

Dr. Zhang Eryong, who was in charge of the heart transplantation described, is 

49 years old this year. Since USA becomes more strict for the entry for medical doctors who are involved in organ harvesting with the executed prisoners, Dr. Zhang 

decided to go to Germany, he spent half a year in 2000 at the Heart Center of Berlin, where he studied specificly heart transplantation operations. 

THREE HEART AND HEART–LUNG TRANSPLATATION IN MUDANJIANG CARDIOVASCULAR

HOSPITAL IN 1992/3

The Chinese Health News reported on two cases of heart transplantation that 

took place within six days at Mudanjiang Cardiovascular Hospital on July 15, 1992. 

Case one 

Fifty-five-year-old male patient Zhang Shouli suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). He was delivered to the hospital on May 8. After Dr. Liu 

Xiaocheng (picture 4B), the head of the hospital and the chief of the hospital’s heart 

department, conducted an examination, and an interdisciplinary check-up was performed, Dr. Liu decided to perform the heart transplant on July 5. Twenty-six hours 

after the surgery, the patient could breathe without the support of a respirator. He 

could also consume small amounts of food and water, and he was able to move 

around slightly in his bed. (See below: Heart transplant on July 5, 1992) 

Case two 

Thirty-eight-year-old male patient Lu Ronglu was originally from Inner Mongolia. 

Dr. Liu performed this transplant just six days after the first one. Five hours after 

the surgery, the aspiration tubes were removed, and the patient could breathe without artificial support. Twelve hours after the surgery, the patient was able to consume food. (See below: The heart transplant on July 11, 1992) 

These two cases of heart transplantation, directed by the head of the hospital, Dr. 

Liu, used the hearts of young executed prisoners. The most shocking aspect of these 

instances was that Mudanjiang Cardiovascular Hospital served not only as a hospital, but also as an execution ground. The Laogai Research Foundation has a connection to Dr. Yang, who was directly involved in these two transplants and in other 

cases. We were able to obtain very detailed handwritting descriptions from Dr. Yang 

(picture 5B) about the organ transplant surgeries that have been carried out in 

Mudanjiang Cardiovascular Hospital 

Dr. Yang Jun (picture 5A) was a physician at Mudanjiang Cardiovascular Hospital. He graduated from medical school in August of 1979. Until Dr. Yang left the 

medical profession in August of 1994, he participated many times, directly and indirectly, in the use of the dead bodies or organs of executed prisoners. In June of 

1991, Dr. Yang was designated by the Mudanjiang Health Ministry as chief of the 

Director’s Office of Mudanjiang Cardiovascular Hospital. The following is his testimony regarding the above mentioned two heart transplants: 

1. Heart transplant on July 5, 1992 (Case one) 

In July of 1992 our hospital conducted two heart transplants within 6 days. I was 

in charge of hosting visitors from different levels of the government, legal departments, media and other organizations. I was also responsible for dealing with the 

press, so that I experienced the whole process of the transplantation. 

The patient: Zhang Shouli (after the surgery, people in the hospital called him 

Dabao—Mascot Number One) was a 55-year-old peasant. Late in the afternoon of 

July 5, the pre-surgery preparation started. Around 10 p.m., 10 legal officers of the 

Mudanjiang Intermediate Court, led by their deputy executive chief, Mr. Gao, and 

escorting the condemned prisoner, arrived at the hospital. Two procurators of the 

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City People’s Procuratorate also came. The prisoner, bound with shackles, was a 24-

year-old male. The surgical personnel were divided into two teams, one to ready the 

patient, open his thorax, remove his heart and establish external circulation. The 

other ready to extract the heart from the dead body of the prisoner. At 11:20, the 

patient’s thorax was opened. The people from the court and procuratorate all walked 

together with the prisoner to the morgue located in the northwest part of the hospital. I accompanied them with the vice mayor, who was in charge of the health 

issues of Mudanjiang, Secretary Zhu, and the head of the Mudanjiang Branch of 

Heilongjiang Daily News. 

In order to prevent any unexpected incidents, the anesthesiologist gave the prisoner an intravenous injection of a tranquilizer and muscle relaxer. The needle was 

left in his arm. The prisoner could barely walk, and he was supported by two police 

officers. In the morgue, following the legal procedure, the officer first asked his 

name, age, and place of birth, and then checked the photo in his file and read aloud 

the document of the final verdict. The handcuffs and shackles were then removed 

from the prisoner. About one dozen people encircled him. He lay down with his face 

to the ground, and one bailiff shot him with a pistol on the back of his head, after 

which another covered his bleeding head with a black sack. Four men carried him 

quickly by his limbs and placed him on the provisional surgery table. His heartbeat 

and respiration had already ceased, so the doctors laid a conduit on his trachea and 

conducted an infusion through the needle in his left arm. Once again the heart 

started to beat, and the respiration recovered. The extraction of the heart followed 

almost immediately. After about 10 minutes, the heart was retrieved by the head 

of the hospital, Dr. Liu Xiaozhu, and put into a solution. Dr. Liu then went back 

to the surgery room. He washed his hands, disinfected and changed clothes before 

he started the transplant surgery. Meanwhile, the other surgical attendants begun 

to sew up the thorax of the prisoner, and removed his head covering. The hospital 

personnel left the cadaver on the table and locked the morgue. The judicial officers 

of the court and procuratorate went to a conference room where the hospital had 

prepared a feast for them. The surgery process was shown on a screen. After dinner, 

the guests took a rest in rooms where the hospital had reserved for them. The surgery continued until 7 a.m., and the transplanted heart began to beat on its own. 

Dr. Liu walked out of the surgery room, and all of the government officers and 

guests congratulated him. The journalists conducted interviews with him on the 

spot. Dr. Liu shook hands with the judicial officers and expressed his gratitude. Finally, the hospital’s vehicle transported the body and the judicial officers to the crematorium to cremate the cadaver. 

On the third day, on behalf of the hospital, I treated the judicial personnel to a 

meal at the Swan Restaurant. All of the officers involved came to the restaurant. 

I handed them prepared envelopes labeled with their names. Inside, there were gifts 

of 1,000, 500 and 300 yuan respectively. 

2. The heart transplant on July 11, 1992 (Case two) 

The patient’s name was Lu Ronglu (after the surgery, he was called Mascot Number Two), and he was 38 years old. Mr. Lu, from Inner Mongolia, a worker in a 

school, was suffering from cardiomegaly. This surgery took place only six days after 

the first one, and the procedure was quite similar. The condemned prisoner was related to the first prisoner (they were brothers-in-law). The two men had been involved in a robbery, by raiding a Credit Bank of Agriculture, and they killed the 

guard at the bank, so both were given the death sentence. Officers from the court 

and the procuratorate were present, just as in the previous instance. This surgery 

also started at around midnight and lasted until the morning of the next day. The 

surgery was a success. 

The two heart surgeries successfully followed each other within six days. The patients were in good condition, they stayed in the hospital for long time and they 

were interviewed by the major national media organizations. The first patient (Mascot No. One) lived for approximately two years and eight months. He left the hospital in February 1994 to spend the Chinese New Year with his family. However, 

a sudden rejection took place, and the local hospital lacked the ability to deal with 

this urgent case, so the patient died. The second patient (Mascot No. Two) also died, 

in the second half of 1994. 

Dr.Yang Jun has also experienced a heart-lung combined surgery, the following 

is his description. 

3. Heart-Lung Surgery on December 26, 1993

In December 1993, our hospital chose another male patient, a 54-year-old man 

who suffered from cardiomegaly and arterial narrowing in the lung. We obtained a 

large amount of information about local death row inmates from the Intermediate 

80

Court of Chengdu City. We selected a 28-year-old prisoner who was from Hailin 

County in Mudanjiang City. He was sentenced to death for sexual attack and murder. He didn’t want to submit a second appeal. It was said that this prisoner had 

a gangster background, and therefore the judicial department dealt with his case 

with great diligence. In the beginning of December, I headed to Hailin Prison with 

a team of medical personnel to conduct the first physical check. In the single jail 

cell, we saw that the prisoner was lying naked, with his back to the cement ground, 

his limbs were spread apart, and his wrists and ankles, as well as his neck, were 

fixed to the ground with iron hoops. The warden explained to us that this treatment 

was called ‘‘set up the ground hoops’’, and it was set up as an extra precaution for 

death row inmates, in order to prevent any unexpected incidents from occurring before the execution. This prisoner was locked in this way for more than 20 days. For 

each meal, a designated inmate would feed him and clean up his excrement. 

Our primary check showed a match. I persuaded the prisoner to donate his organ 

and promised that as soon as he agreed the donation, he could be freed from this 

miserable position. He agreed. We then sent 20 security troops to escort him secretly to our hospital. The second physical check proved that the match was perfect. 

Like in the previous cases, after the data was checked, our hospital took over the 

supply work. We wanted to give him nutritious food to build up his strength, so that 

his organs could function at the maximum level. I ordered a daily meal from a nearby restaurant for him, and each meal cost an average of 10 yuan. He was even allowed to drink a small amount of wine. He is still required to wear handcuffs and 

shackles until the execution. Together with the medical team, I made two more visits to the prisoner to check his health conditions. 

At 10 p.m. on December 25, 1993, accompanied by approximately 20 judicial police 

and two procurators, the condemned prisoner arrived at the hospital. Vice Mayor 

Bai, the head of the Health Department of Mudanjiang and several government officers came again to the hospital. More than 10 journalists came to make an on-thespot report. This time the prisoner was waiting in the conference room. He asked 

to take a bath. After consultation, the judicial officers agreed. So four police took 

a shower with him together for 20 minutes. Later, two tables were arranged in the 

conference room, and the judicial officers dined with the prisoner and even drank 

a small amount of wine. At 11 p.m. the surgery began. At 11:20 the execution was 

carried out. It took 15 minutes to retrieve the prisoner’s heart and lungs. The subsequent transplant operation lasted 11 hours. The patient’s heart started to beat, and 

his aspiration was normal. The surgery was proclaimed to be successful. 

The next day, I accompanied the surgeon and the head of the hospital to a city 

press conference. The officers of the Provincial Health Department, specialists from 

the University Hospital of Mudanjiang and other medical experts were also present. 

More than 30 journalists from 10 or more media organizations in Heilongjiang Province came as well. At the press conference, the news was released that the first successful heart-lung transplant surgery had been performed. After 72 hours the patient died of sudden rejection. 

CONCLUSION

The above organ transplant cases were proclaimed by the Chinese media as great 

medical achievements, and the Laogai Research Foundation conducted an investigation into these cases. Because of the temptation of tremendous financial benefits 

and the progress of medical technology, the medical profession in China has gone 

wild in terms of plundering the organs of condemned prisoners in recent years. 

Many small hospitals enter into this trade in spite of a lack of adequate technology 

and equipment, which has resulted in many cases of the deaths of foreign patients. 

That the international community has begun to show concern about the harvesting 

of organs from executed prisoners in China has put the Chinese authorities on alert, 

which has increased the difficulty involved in conducting investigations from the 

outside. 

The practice of organ harvesting, which violates humanity and human rights, will 

not change for a long time, because of the clear policy of the Chinese government 

and the following several factors:

1. China will continue using the death penalty on a large scale for a long time, 

and several thousand people will be executed every year.

2. The morality of society in China has degenerated, and people usually lack 

a sense of human rights, sympathy and justice. Due to self-interest, people 

not only do not condemn such practices, they affirm them.

3. There is no press freedom in China. Even if some people oppose such practices, there is no public forum for this discussion.

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4. The medical profession in China lacks medical morality, and doctors regard 

individual benefits as the number-one issue.

5. China’s entire medical system is still backward, and the general health conditions of the Chinese people are relatively poor, which causes a large number of patients to be in need of organ transplantation. If the safety of organ 

transplant surgeries in China improves, the number of Chinese people and 

people from abroad undergoing organ transplant operations will not decrease.

If the Chinese government does not enact a law to forbid the use of organs harvested from condemned prisoners, this ‘‘trade’’ will not end. The international community should be greatly concerned about the development of this issue, and should 

press Beijing to abolish this policy.

Mr. SMITH. I would like to invite Lu Decheng to please make 

your presentation. 

STATEMENT OF MR. LU DECHENG, 1989 TIANANMEN SQUARE 

PROTESTER 

Mr. LU [through an interpreter]. Thank you. First, please allow 

me to express my sincere thanks to the U.S. Congress to invite me 

to testify here. 

What we have done 17 years ago at Tiananmen Square, Yu 

Dongyue, Yu Zhijian and I, it is just a small act. We just want to 

show our protest that we are against this despotism and the totalitarianism. 

History cannot be repeated. It cannot be changed. 

At Tiananmen Square, at that time, there are masses; they are 

citizens, they are students, they are protesters, and we were among 

them. The students and students guard, they have certain behaviors. Maybe we have different opinions, but all are a part of this 

history. 

It is really a pity that 17 years later, today, very less of eye-witnesses at that time stand up and tell the truth. We see very few 

of them. 

I will never devalue this great movement, 1989. Still today I am 

convinced it is a patriotic democratic movement. 

On May 23, 2 p.m., 1989, three of us, we three boyhood friends, 

came from Hunan. We gathered together under the Tiananmen 

gate. We were prepared at that time. We were not only prepared 

with the eggs and the paints, but we also prepared two banners. 

On the two banners, one was written, ‘‘The 5,000-year history of 

autocracy is over,’’ and on the second one is, ‘‘The personality cult 

has ended forever.’’ So it shows very clearly our political appeal. 

I wish I am not the very last people who stand up and testify 

and tell the truth at that time. I wish more eye-witnesses to stand 

up and clear some details which are still in darkness. And I think 

to know the true history is very important to achieve democratic 

future in China. 

I think it is extremely important that the people in the world 

recognize and see clearly the true character of the Communist Chinese regime, the true characteristic of this totalitarian system, and 

I think this is the beginning step to achieve the democracy in 

China. 

China has replaced the leading role of the Communist countries 

after Soviet Union and Eastern European drop this system. 

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The testimonies from today, we talk about the one-child policy, 

we talk about the suppression on the Falun Gong practitioners, we 

talk about laogai and we talk about organ harvesting, et cetera; I 

think all this problem lead back to the root of these totalitarian 

system. 

Many free countries have the illusion that through the economic 

development in China, the system will change. But that is not the 

right thinking. We learn from the history, we see that the 1936, 

the Olympics were held in Germany; it was a support to the Nazi 

regime. 

We see also that at end of the Second World War, a lot of the 

country just follow the appeasement policy and thought that they 

can deal with the totalitarian system, they can deal with the Communist system, but the history proves that it is wrong. 

More than 1 year ago I fled from China and through Burma 

reached Thailand. The international world, governments from 

many countries—from democratic movements, the Chinese democratic movements and human rights organizations—have tried to 

help me, and finally I can reach this free world; and I can only say 

today that I am honored and very thankful that I can be witness 

here. And I think our strength is that if we know the real, the true 

character of this totalitarian system and we work together, justice 

will prevail and freedom and democracy will prevail. Thank you 

very much. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Decheng, thank you very much for your testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Decheng follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. LU DECHENG, 1989 TIANANMEN SQUARE PROTESTER

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEFACING MAO’S PORTRAIT

I was one of three people who ‘‘defaced’’ the portrait of Mao Zedong during the 

1989 democracy movement at Tiananmen Square. Along with Yu Zhijian and Yu 

Dongyue, I threw paint-filled eggs at the portrait of Mao. The three of us were 

charged with ‘‘counterrevolutionary sabotage, propaganda and incitement’’, and we 

were all sentenced to lengthy prison terms. An employee of a bus company at the 

time, I was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Yu Zhijian, an elementary school teacher, was sentenced to life in prison. Yu Dongyue, a fine arts editor with Liuyang 

News in Hunan, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

I served over nine years of a 16-year jail term before being paroled early in 1998. 

I fled through Burma to Thailand in November 2004. I left Thailand for Canada on 

April 11, 2006 under a resettlement program run by the UN High Commissioner 

for Refugees. 

Yu Zhijian was freed in 2005, but in March 2006, he was arrested again for his 

pro-democracy activities. In March 2006, Yu Dongyue was released on probation 

after serving 16 years in prison, but he was found to be severely mentally ill. His 

family members have said that Yu cannot recognize them, and that he speaks unintelligibly. 

On the night of May 22, 1989, the three of us came up with the idea of making 

a bold gesture. Our target was the huge portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs over 

the entrance to the Forbidden City. On May 23, we loaded empty eggshells with red, 

blue and yellow paint and hurled them at the portrait, the highest symbol of prestige of the Communist Party and its political system. Splatters of paint landed on 

the face and shirt of the founder of the People’s Republic of China. We also hung 

two banners over the main arch of the Tiananmen Gate. One banner proclaimed 

‘‘The 5,000-year history of autocracy is over,’’ and the other said, ‘‘The personality 

cult has ended forever.’’

We were handed over to national security police by the student command on the 

Square, after which we received our harsh punishments from the government. Our 

act of protest symbolized a strong political declaration that China has no way of taking even a single step towards freedom without first getting rid of Mao.

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Mr. SMITH. It was worth noting that three of our six witnesses 

today spent time in Chinese prisons. Mrs. Kadeer, 6 years; Mr. 

Harry Wu, 19 years; and you, some 9 years. That certainly, I think, 

provides us with insight that we might not otherwise have, especially getting your most recent focus of what it was going to be like. 

And I would ask you if you would to tell us a little bit about your 

time spent in detention. Was there torture at any period of time 

during your 9 years? Did you make any products that you thought 

or suspected might be used for export? 

I would note parenthetically that back in the 1990s, almost right 

after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Congressman Frank Wolf 

and I went to Beijing prison No. 1 where some 40 Tiananmen 

Square protesters were being held. They all had their heads 

shaved. They looked very gaunt, as did the other prisoners. And 

while we were there, we picked up jelly shoes, which were very 

much being sold in our markets, and socks that were also being 

sold here. As a result of that, we asked our Customs people, our 

Government, to put an import ban on those products because we 

knew that it was in violation of the Smoot-Hawley Act that these 

prison-made goods were being exported to the United States. 

In that instance, such an import ban was put on that and that 

prison camp closed, only to be opened, no doubt, somewhere else 

and all the prisoners moved to some other location. But it raises 

an issue, and I would ask the others, and especially Ms. Lee, to 

speak to this if you would. 

But I would like to hear of your recent—before I get there, just 

let me explain this. 

During Bush One, during the previous Bush Administration, a 

memorandum of understanding was entered into by the United 

States and the People’s Republic of China on prison-made goods. It 

was often brought forth to congressional hearings and used as evidence that we were trying to engage the Chinese to prevent the exportation by the Chinese and the importation by the United States 

of prison-made goods. 

The problem was that it required the Chinese to investigate any 

complaint that we made, and we had to have very specific information to trigger such an investigation. So we have those who probably are perpetuating these crimes investigating themselves. It was 

a Swiss cheese type of document if ever there was one, but it was 

often brought forward by people within the Administration to say, 

see, we have this MOU. 

When Clinton became the President, they used the same MOU, 

upgraded it a little bit, did not make it any better for sure. I met 

with the Customs people on a trip in Beijing and asked them, how 

are they doing, are you following up on any leads? They were like 

the two Maytag repairmen. They had no work to do. Nothing was 

coming their way because of the convoluted process that they were 

told they had to follow. 

So I would ask Ms. Lee, after we hear from Mr. Lu Decheng, 

again, if you could speak to what your most recent prison experience was; and, Ms. Lee, if you could speak, and anyone else, to the 

MOU and its efficacy, 

Mr. LU. I was first detained in a small room, 3 meters long and 

wide. And the other three normal criminals, they watch me all day 

84

long. The purpose that they just keep their eye on me was that 

they prevent me to commit suicide. 

The food was not enough. We got corn, a kind of, cornbread, and 

it is not enough; so after breakfast, short after, we are hungry and 

longing for our lunch. And after lunch we are longing for the dinner. Sometimes it is just a fight against each other to get more 

food. 

Well, beside of the constant hunger, I was not actually, during 

these 9 years plus 1 year in Thailand, all together 10-years, I was 

never thrown into the solitary confinement; but still I feel very, 

very isolated, and I suffer under constant fear. 

In 1993, they wanted to persuade me to make some political compromise. I refused, so they organized other prison mate to beat me 

up, which left long scar behind my ear. 

My other friends, my other two friends who are Yu Zhijian, who 

got a 20-year sentence and he was very often beaten up by the 

other prison mates and he lost a lot of his teeth. 

I believe you have heard a lot about the one of the others, one 

of the three, Yu Dongyue. He was a very healthy, strong young 

man, very tall and very healthy. He took bath with cold water during the winter. Such a healthy young man was suffering under torture, severe torture. So when he was released after 17 years imprisonment on February 22 this year, he actually had severe mental illness. He cannot recognize his family members. He speak very 

disorganized and actually he has lost his mind. 

In the prison where I was, this was the Number Two prison in 

Hunan, but to the outer world it is called the ‘‘heavy vehicle factory.’’ The surrounding was very bad because there was chemical 

factory in the neighborhood and they contaminate the environment 

severely, and sometimes we cannot just breathe. Sometimes they 

just send those prisoners who are not very obedient to very heavy 

labor, for instance, some of them are sent to Xiangtan coal mining. 

This is not only what happened to me, but it is the general situation in prison. It is out of your imagine. The torture and the spiritual torture is very severe. 

Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Ms. Lee, if you would speak to the issue 

of the MOU; and while you are doing that, add to it—you mentioned the child labor issue, 10 to 20 million, I think it was, the 

dialogue in lieu of the section 301 enforcement has yielded nothing, 

and I thought that was a very telling comment. 

And my question is also, you know, in the answering, do you 

have any estimate of what portion of our trade deficit might be attributable to unfair labor practices? Are any U.S. or international 

corporations involved in unfair labor practices? 

Perhaps this might take some additional research. In addition to 

the impact on the United States, what might be the impact of China’s unfair trading practices on especially its use of child labor, 

gulag labor, the laogai labor system for exports on developing countries? 

We had a hearing last year on AGOA, the African Growth and 

Opportunity Act, and we talked about how the Chinese—and we 

had several witnesses bring some very startling information forward about how China is gathering up the minerals, the oil, rare 

85

minerals at that, the timber, from Africa to China in exchange for 

military hardware and some consumer goods. And I am wondering—and it is a very unbalanced relationship in places—like 

Sudan and Zimbabwe seem to be excelling in this kind of exchange. 

So if you could speak to these issues. 

I do want to thank you for bringing up the North Korean refugee 

issue. We had a hearing on that, as well, and the fact that the People’s Republic of China is violating with impunity their solemn obligations undertaken under the Refugee Convention; and they are 

sending people back—North Koreans in this case—to certain imprisonment and torture rather than providing the UNHCR and 

other interested parties the ability to interview and process those 

individuals. 

So they are violating—even when it comes to another country’s 

human rights abuses, they do not even live up to the Refugee Convention. But if you could speak to those. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Those are a lot 

of very important questions. 

Let me say, one thing to frame it all is this issue of transparency. 

And the difficulty of getting accurate information and data out of 

China is, I think, pervasive, particularly in the forced labor area, 

but in all of these. 

And we have understood also that the Chinese Government has 

now made it a crime to reveal state secrets. And state secrets can 

be something like working conditions in a factory. And so the oppression against people who reveal bad working conditions, as I am 

sure many people here know, also is very extreme; and that complicates our task tremendously. So we get a lot of different estimates. 

In terms of the forced labor issue, we understand this is very 

much a current issue, a current problem, that forced labor is an integral part of the Chinese economy. The estimates that we have 

seen range from 1.75 million to 6 million and higher. And I think 

that is probably a low-ball kind of estimate of how many people are 

involved in this forced labor. And we definitely are getting continuing credible accounts that these goods are coming into the 

United States still as exports, despite these numerous memoranda 

of understanding, but that we aren’t getting the kind of access to 

the camps and to the goods that would allow us to verify that. 

I have just one little anecdote. I had a visit from a Falun Gong 

practitioner who had gone to Beijing—and I think this is a fairly 

common story—to inquire about his wife who had been detained. 

And he ended up in a camp. He was never charged with any crime, 

but he ended up for, I think, several years in some sort of a holding 

area, but it was essentially a prison. And he told stories about 

working late into the night producing goods with corporal punishment, very strict sort of beatings if they fell asleep or anything 

else. And the product he was making, I think you would be interested, were shopping bags marked with the National Gallery of Art 

which is just a few blocks from here. 

Some of the other issues that you raised, I think are extremely 

important. What portion of the trade deficit is due to the unfair 

labor practices and the repression of workers’ rights? Our estimate 

86

is, manufacturing costs are repressed by as much as 44 percent, or 

an average of 44 percent, which is huge. It is an enormous amount. 

Now, that is actually a fairly conservative estimate. It is not even 

taking into account child labor and forced labor. That is simply 

looking at the violation of the workers’ right to form unions and 

what happens to the migrant workers. And, of course, the migrant 

workers are a very important piece of the manufacturing economy. 

So that was the estimate that we made, and it does translate 

into a huge impact on our trade deficit. 

The way we look at the Chinese trade issue is that each one of 

these pieces, the currency manipulation, the worker rights violations, contributes to these enormous trade deficits. And people say, 

well, there is really nothing you can do. They sort of throw up their 

hands and say, well, it is so enormous and the Chinese cost advantage is so huge, you may as well not fix any of it. 

Our view is not that: You need to start and fix all the pieces that 

you can get your hands on for the human rights reasons as well 

as the economic reasons. 

Are any American companies implicated? Absolutely. I think it is 

true probably, on average, that the American companies have better labor practices than the Chinese-owned companies, for example, 

or some of the other foreign-owned companies, but that is not saying very much. And one of the things we found is that there is pervasive misreporting, false reporting, to company monitors that 

have codes of conduct; and that there is software that is sold where 

people keep double, triple, quadruple books so that they are 

misreporting how many hours people work, how many people are 

working there, and what wages are being paid. 

So there is a lot of fraud going on to make many American companies feel more complacent that their company code of conduct is 

being respected when, in fact, it often is not. 

So we have heard some just terrible stories, particularly about 

working hours. I think that is one of these things, the wage arrearages that I mentioned. Maybe I didn’t mention it explicitly, but it 

is in my written testimony that the estimate is that, on average, 

every single Chinese worker is owed 3 months of back wages and 

that there is not really the kind of pressure on employers to even 

pay what they owe, what they have promised to these workers. 

So there is an enormous assymetry of information and of bargaining power that the Chinese Government is simply not only not 

helping to address, but is exacerbating and making it worse. 

Chinese companies, I think, just have to understand that if they 

are operating in China, first of all, they know that they are not 

able to guarantee freedom of association to their workers because 

it is not up to an individual company to allow unions if the Chinese 

Government outlaws independent unions. And second of all, in 

many cases they are not probably getting accurate information 

from those facts. 

The last issue you raised about the impact of China’s repression 

of workers’ rights on other developing countries is enormously important, and this is something we hear from developing country 

unions all the time and from governments of other countries, that 

to the extent that China is not just a repressive country, it is an 

87

enormous and industrially aggressive and successful country with 

big export ambitions. 

So every government in the world and every worker in the world 

to some extent is in competition with China, and if China is allowed to compete in the global economy by violent repression of 

workers’ human rights, then other countries find themselves in 

somewhat of a dilemma. How do struggling democracies in Africa 

or Latin America compete with a government that does not allow 

its workers to form independent unions and to bargain for their 

fair share of the wealth they create? 

So that is an enormous problem. That, in our view, is why we 

need to be able to address workers’ rights at the World Trade Organization multilaterally, and we need the support of developing 

countries. 

I think there are some developing countries that have been resistant to this issue that are finally starting to understand, especially with the end of the textile quota system; that being in direct 

competition with a very repressive dictatorship that treats its 

workers badly is actually bad for everybody, not just for industrialized countries, but also for workers in many developing countries. 

Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. I appreciate it. Let me just add two additional questions or one comment. 

The State Department report for this year points out that, as you 

mentioned, the wage arrearage issue, that people have actually 

been imprisoned for demanding their wages that are in arrearage; 

and they continue to be in prison today. And the part about occupational safety, which is on page 37 of the report, makes it very clear 

that during the year industrial accidents killed 126,760 workers, 

and those are the ones that they are willing to report on. 

There is no OSHA, as far as we can tell, in the People’s Republic 

of China, which puts worker safety certainly, especially when there 

are no collective bargaining rights, in a situation where people can 

be hurt. There are not protections in the manufacturing area necessarily to protect them, and that means deaths. How many people 

have been injured obviously is another issue as well. 

So I thank you for bringing many of these things forward to us. 

Let me ask, if I could, Mr. Mosher: In my opening comments, I 

spoke about the issue of missing girls in China, and what I and 

others really believe is ‘‘gendercide,’’ girls being targeted simply because they are female for sex-selected abortions. And the impact it 

is having in trafficking. We know that there is a magnet now, and 

it will only get worse as time goes on, for sex trafficking. The whole 

idea of brides, of women being brides, selling, increasing rather 

than decreasing, and we have heard from Mrs. Kadeer about the 

whole issue of what I consider to be a genocide where people are 

being focused upon for so-called family planning to reduce their 

number so you will have less Uighurs within this country. 

My question is, what is your take on the missing girls issue? I 

had first read about this demographer, and I am glad you brought 

up Dr. Aird, who was a pathfinder, not unlike yourself, but someone who did it by studying scholarly articles and everything he can 

get his hands on in China, and we do mourn his passing. Dr. Aird, 

in his book, The Slaughter of the Innocents, heavily footnoted, he 

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made it very clear that so much of all of this is coming right from 

the top. It is not an aberrant cadre somewhere down the line. This 

is systematic policy. It is pervasive. And even though the Chinese 

Government will, from time to time, make statements, or even put 

some policy forward to mitigate sex selected abortions, they continue unabated because the root cause is the disallowing second 

and third order births, in other words, brothers and sisters who 

have been rendered illegal by the policy. 

So my question is, do you consider this to be a genocide? What 

is your take on the gendercide issue? I heard a perverse commentary, that maybe they need to start aborting more boys to get 

the numbers right rather than welcoming and affirming the precious life of a baby girl or a baby boy. They are not pollution, as 

I think you alluded to earlier in your statement. And the numbers, 

do we have any number on how many missing girls, one number 

that the State Department in its report 2 years ago, I believe it 

was, was as many as 100,000—100 million, I should say, missing 

girls. But I am not sure if we really have a good handle on how 

large and what the scope of the problem is. 

Mr. MOSHER. Well, as you know, Mr. Chairman, this is an issue 

that I have followed from the beginning of the one-child policy. I 

was in a very wealthy part of China on my first trip. I was in a 

county, Shunda County, which was part of the Pearl River Delta, 

where female infanticide had never been practiced. I interviewed 

elderly midwives who said no, we have enough fish and rice here 

to raise all of our children, girls as well as boys. 

Infanticide had been limited historically in China to famine areas 

and remote areas in the poorer parts of the country. So I was astonished back in the early 1980s to learn of little girls dying in 

mysterious circumstance shortly after birth. They would be 

drowned in buckets of water. They would be smothered upon 

emerging from the womb. And they were being killed for one reason and one reason only in Shunda County and other wealthy parts 

of China, that the economic reform was under way, life was getting 

better in the countryside. This was a result of the one-child policy. 

And when this became news in the West, it took a couple of 

years to percolate out, the Chinese Government made probably its 

major adjustment to the one-child policy. It happened first in the 

north, in Hunan, and then later in 1985 and then in 1986 was 

made a nationwide policy of allowing couples in the countryside 

whose first child was a girl, to then go on to have a second child. 

That is to say not strictly limit everyone in the country to one 

child, but in an effort to stop this massive problem of female infanticide, they were going to allow couples to have a second chance. 

Well, the numbers that we had at that time showed—and you 

can do the calculations using numbers from China’s Bureau of Statistics, that were published up until the mid 1980s, at which point 

they stopped being published, that about 600,000 baby girls were 

missing each year and presumably dead. 

The policy, of course, was degenerated into a de facto two-child 

policy in the countryside. Local officials said in effect, we can’t force 

half the people in the village to have one child and the other half 

allow them to have two. And now sterilization follows after the second child. These are the sterilization campaigns we have heard 

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about where officials go with lists of women who had two children 

into a village and arrest those women and, sometimes using mobile 

sterilization vans, drive into the village and sterilize these women 

on the spot; other times take them to the local clinic. 

Back in the late 1980s, however, something else happened, that 

was the advent of ultrasound technology in China. First in the cities, and now virtually every rural clinic in the country has an 

ultrasound machine, and it is used primarily—it is a great moneymaker. It is a great income-generating device for these rural clinics—because it is used to detect the sex of the unborn child. And 

if the gender is revealed to be female, an abortion follows. If the 

gender is revealed by the ultrasound to be male, the couple celebrate and go on to have their male child. 

So, infanticide and sex selective abortion have been at epidemic 

proportions from the beginning of the one-child policy. There are 

now 100 million more men than women in China. The government 

already admits 20 million young men are currently unable to find 

brides because their would-have-been brides were eliminated by infanticide and sex selected abortion 20 to 25 years ago. 

And the cross-border traffic in women, the buying and selling of 

women in China, grows ever more serious over time as the price 

goes up. One might think that as women become scarce their status would increase. Yet, in China, as women have become scarcer, 

they become more and more of a commodity. Their rights are more 

often violated. Young women from Vietnam, from Laos, from 

Burma are being promised factory jobs in China. Then when they 

cross the border find themselves sold into brothels or into sexual 

slavery or sold to the highest bidder as wives. 

The same thing happened in North Korea, the kidnapping of 

women in one part of China and then they are transported across 

the length and breadth of China, and being sold again to the highest bidder is another offshoot, another consequence of the one-child 

policy. 

And it is getting worse. There is nothing—all of the women who 

are 20 years old today were born 20 years ago. There is no way to 

increase the supply except by going overseas. And this is, as you 

aptly put it, gendercide. It is a form of genocide specifically directed 

at one sex. But I have to say, this plays to the goal, the larger goal 

of the one-child policy, the larger goal of this population program, 

which is slated, according to the Chinese Government, to continue 

until 2050, 44 years in the future. The larger goal is to reduce the 

Chinese population. And the more women you eliminate from the 

population, the faster that reduction will take place because, obviously, only women have children. 

So, the selective elimination of girls is something that I have not 

thought that the Chinese Government protests, have taken their 

protests seriously because I think it plays to their larger goal of reducing the population. 

The tragedy of Chinese orphanages, where you have high mortality rates among young girls who are taken by good hearted people and dropped off at the doors of orphanages then only to languish and die because of the lack of proper care, is another aspect 

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child policy, to reduce population of China and specifically the population of girls. 

Tibet: We had reports back dating from the early 1980s of people 

going to Tibet and coming back and talking about sterilization campaigns in Tibetan villages, campaigns which were consistently denied by the Chinese Government, campaigns which the Chinese 

Government said did not exist. I was amazed, quite frankly, when 

the government admitted that it was going to undertake a family 

planning campaign, a rigorous family planning campaign in western Turkistan because they have steadfastly denied applying the 

one-child policy to minorities, even as they surreptitiously did so. 

But to publicly admit this can mean only one thing. It can mean 

only that they are gearing up for a massive and intrusive campaign 

that makes past abuses, serious as they were, appear trivial by 

comparison. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Wu, if you might want to speak to this, has any 

foreign government or international body raised the organ harvesting issue as a human rights issue? 

Mr. Wu, has any foreign government, has the United States Government, has the United Nations, any human rights body, raised 

the issue of the organ transplant issue that you have raised here 

today, and then you raised one other time? 

I would note for the record and it needs to be noted, that in the 

1990s, through Mr. Wu’s intervention, we were able to bring to a 

hearing like this, a policeman who was part of the actual killing, 

and matter of fact, we protected his identity from the press because 

there was a great fear of retaliation for the information he conveyed to the Subcommittee. But he spoke about exactly, with pictures of ambulances waiting to take the near dead, but not quite 

dead, person, to extract various organs, which, based on your testimony today, has only gotten worse and it is even being admitted 

to by Chinese leadership in the health ministry. 

But my question is, has anyone confronted this in the international community, perhaps beside us, as a human rights abuse? 

Mr. WU. Yes. Particularly, in European country, German, British 

and French, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, recently Italy, the Congressman and member of the Parliament talking about introduce 

a bill to forbid organ business and condemn Chinese organ harvesting. And of course, the media, especially BBC and ABC make 

documentary talking about this issue, and our foundation’s documentary about, discussed killing, also win award from couple of the 

film festival. And I think this issue is quite very interesting. The 

other side means in the Chinese side, the harvesting from political 

prisoners is number is higher and higher, and the Chinese doctors 

supposed don’t care about it. 

And the Chinese people kind of selfishness and thinking about, 

you know, want to have organ to continue their life, they never 

thinking about this is kind of, it is a serious moral issue. And it 

is only happen in this country today. And that is why you see that 

the number of the hospital, and number of the doctor, and, number 

of the organ transplant cases in China is not decreasing. 

Even many years ago, I testified before you, before the Senate, 

and even recently, there is a lot of report in China—in Europe, and 

I guess maybe, I think one of the environment today is everybody 

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is talking about China’s market, make money and because they are 

such a huge cheap labor force and then they create a kind of political new concept that money can change totalitarian. 

So I think we should not stop talking about these human rights 

violations in China. It is a double standard also there. When talking about there is control, you know, in America, abortion, forced 

abortion, is such a sensitive issue, but some Americans scholar 

when they talk about abortion in China, supposed, it is very different, okay, different point of view about it. 

And then I would go back to about the forced products. I read 

a report from the State Department to the Congressman Henry 

Hyde. It is really disappointing, because, American signed a kind 

of agreements with China, MOU, SOU, for example, according to 

MOU and SOU, Chinese authority have to follow the rule, and like 

in 2 months, allow Americans to visit facility. They just ignoring 

it. And after 6 years, 5 years, you want to see that facility, now 

you can go. And American like to see it. Just went over there and 

come back, and say we didn’t see anything, so list this facility off 

our listing. I just kind of, very disappointed, even I want, to but 

we still have a lot of cases and investigation, particular issues, and 

commerce and toys and Christmas lights and I promise that sooner 

or later we will present these evidence to you. 

Mr. SMITH. Would any of our distinguished witnesses like to 

make any concluding comments or statement? Mr. Mosher. 

Mr. MOSHER. I would just say, Mr. Chairman, that I greatly admire Mr. Harry Wu. I recall back in 1988 the issue of prison-made 

goods was brought to the attention of the Congress by Mr. Wu’s 

good work. We went—I had the privilege of accompanying Harry 

to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing chaired by Senator Jesse Helms with a number of Senators 

present, at which he had presented tea and wine, which he documented had been made by prisoners in labor camps in China. 

Of course, this issue today, 18 years later, continues and continues to languish sadly. But he has done a yeoman’s work in this 

whole area. 

Mr. SMITH. I want to thank all three of you for your extraordinary testimony, and above all, for your bearing witness to the 

truth, especially during this week when President Hu is here. 

My hope is that the President will raise these issues, will raise 

them robustly, and not as an addendum to a list of other talking 

points. 

I respect President Bush. I believe in his heart he cares deeply 

more freedom and democracy and human rights. But I think this 

is an opportune time for him to weigh in, I think effectively, on behalf of these fundamental human rights issues. 

And you have laid out I think a very cogent case, a persuasive 

case, that China has fallen far from the mark and actually is deteriorating when it comes to human rights. And again, this is a country that has agreed to so many human rights treaties starting with 

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has acceded to so 

many and loves to talk about its accedence to those treaties, and 

yet it does not live up to its obligations. 

These are matters of internationally recognized law. And our 

hope is that they will change their behavior and do it quickly. 

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But thank you so much. This has been an extraordinary panel. 

You are true heroes. And I would just say with Mr. Mosher, Mr. 

Wu, both of you, early on, brought forward information that nobody 

else was talking about. I think it was very interesting for you to 

point that out, Mr. Mosher, that when Harry Wu brought forth the 

laogai, most people didn’t even know what he was talking about. 

And then he brought pictures and documentation, and you, in like 

manner with the new weapon of mass destruction that is being 

used by the PRC against its own people and against the Uighurs 

and against the Tibetans as a matter of genocide, and that is coercive population control, nobody even wanted to deal with the very 

disturbing reality that you put forward and brought forth. 

And so, we are indebted to you and the Chinese women especially because as bad as it is, if left without any kind of criticism, 

surely it would have been much worse than it is even now. And it 

is very bad. 

So thank you so much for that leadership, and again, thank you, 

Mrs. Lee and thank you, Mr. Decheng. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:50 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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