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66–295PDF 2011

CHINA’S LATEST CRACKDOWN ON DISSENT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

AND HUMAN RIGHTS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 13, 2011

Serial No. 112–59

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

VACANT 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

FREDERICA WILSON, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

YLEEM D.S. POBLETE, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

KAREN BASS, California 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. Wei Jingsheng, chair, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition .................... 8

Mr. Harry Wu, executive director, Laogai Research Foundation ........................ 11

Ms. Jing Zhang, director of operations, All Girls Allowed ................................... 18

Mr. Steven Mosher, president, Population Research Institute ............................ 31

Mr. Phelim Kine, Asia researcher, Human Rights Watch ................................... 46

Ms. Andrea Worden, Adjunct Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law .......................................................................................... 52

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Mr. Wei Jingsheng: Prepared statement ............................................................... 10

Mr. Harry Wu: Prepared statement ....................................................................... 14

Ms. Jing Zhang: Prepared statement ..................................................................... 23

Mr. Steven Mosher: Prepared statement ............................................................... 36

Mr. Phelim Kine: Prepared statement ................................................................... 49

Ms. Andrea Worden: Prepared statement ............................................................. 56

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 80

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 81

Mr. Phelim Kine: Summary of Human Rights Watch report: Promises 

Unfulfilled ............................................................................................................. 82

The Honorable Christopher H. Smith: Material submitted for the record ......... 89

(1)

CHINA’S LATEST CRACKDOWN ON DISSENT 

FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2011

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,

AND HUMAN RIGHTS

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 o’clock a.m., in 

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

Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. Good morning, and welcome to our witnesses and to 

everyone who is joining us to examine the Chinese Government’s 

intensifying assault on human rights. 

In recent months, the human rights situation in China has gone 

from abysmally bad to worse. In fact, we have not seen this level 

of blatant violations of human rights since the crackdown on 

Tiananmen Square protestors in June 1989. 

Since February of this year, the Chinese Government has significantly increased its oppression of human rights advocates, including activist lawyers, bloggers, clergy and members of independent 

religious groups. It has resorted not only to social pressure, intimidation, and physical harassment, but also to threats against family 

members, beatings, and even forced disappearances. 

Lawyers, in particular, have been targeted. In William Shakespeare’s play, ‘‘Henry VI,’’ Dick the Butcher and anarchist Jack 

Cade plan the success of their diabolical plot by stating that, ‘‘The 

first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’’ Frankly, it is no different in China today. 

Government harassment of lawyers and law firms that work on 

human rights cases or other politically sensitive matters is on the 

rise. In recent years, lawyers who took cases in opposition to the 

government’s interests have faced disbarment, house arrest, kidnapping, beatings, and prison. 

A very recent example is Li Fangping, the lawyer for Chen 

Guangcheng who has been engaged in a public crusade to expose 

the horrors of forced abortion in China. Mr. Li was abducted by unidentified individuals on April 29th, 2011, outside the offices of a 

health rights non-governmental organization for which Mr. Li was 

serving as a legal advisor. His whereabouts today are unknown. 

Ironically, his arrest occurred the day after the United States and 

Chinese Governments concluded a human rights dialogue. 

Religious freedom is also under increased attack. Although China 

has been designated a ‘‘Country of Particular Concern’’ since 2000 

(meaning it is one of the worst violators of religious freedom in the 

2

world), statistics from 2009 and 2010 indicate that the number of 

arrests of Christians increased almost 43 percent. 

Because the Chinese Government demands that religious organizations serve the aims of the state, religious organizations must receive government approval to operate. Failure to do so means the 

groups lack legal protection and the membership is vulnerable to 

human rights abuses at the hands of government officials. 

However, many religious observers adhere to the tenet that they 

must ‘‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but unto God what is 

God’s,’’ and as a direct result, they are severely persecuted. 

Recent cases include the denial of the Shouwang Church in Beijing from occupying either the space they rented or the space they 

purchased; the disappearance of three Catholic priests who refused 

to register with authorities for official recognition; and the 

lockdown of the Kirti Monastery in Sichuan Province and the disappearance of approximately 300 monks from there. 

We will also be examining recent developments with respect to 

the Chinese regime’s ongoing imposition of the barbaric one-child 

policy. Few outside of China understand what a massive and cruel 

system of social control the one-child policy entails. 

According to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on 

China, the system is marked by pervasive propaganda, mandatory 

monitoring of women’s reproductive cycles, mandatory contraception, mandatory birth permits. Imagine, you need permission from 

the government in order to have a child. And coercive fines for failure to comply, in addition to forced sterilization and abortion. 

The price for failing to conform to this barbaric system is staggering. A Chinese woman who becomes pregnant without a permit 

will be put under mind-bending pressure to abort. She knows that 

‘‘out of plan’’ illegal children are denied education, healthcare, and 

marriage, and that fines for bearing a child without a birth permit 

can be up to 10 times the average annual income of both parents, 

and those families that can’t or won’t pay are jailed or their homes 

are smashed in or their young child is killed. 

If the brave woman still refuses to submit, she may be held in 

a punishment cell, or if she flees, her relatives may be held and, 

very often, beaten. Group punishments will be used to socially ostracize her. Her colleagues and neighbors will be denied birth permits. If the woman is, by some miracle, still able to resist this pressure, she may be physically dragged to the operating table and 

forced to undergo the killing of her child. Her trauma is incomprehensible. 

It is a trauma she shares, in some degree, with virtually every 

woman in China, whose experience of intimacy and motherhood is 

colored by the atmosphere of fear created by the government, by 

government threats and determination to intrude itself in a deadly 

fashion in the most private aspects of her life. 

The World Health Organization reports over 500 female suicides 

occur each and every day in China. China is the only country in 

the world where female suicide rates are higher than the male, and 

according to the Beijing Psychological Crisis Study and Prevention 

Center, in China the suicide rate for females is three times higher 

than that of males. The result of this policy is a nightmarish brave 

new world with no precedent in human history, where women are 

3

psychologically wounded and girls fall victim to sex-selective abortion. 

In some provinces, there are some 140 boys that are born for 

every 100 girls, and most children grow up without brothers or sisters because, again, brothers and sisters are illegal. They also grow 

up without aunts or uncles or cousins. Gendercide is a serious 

crime and it is absolutely prevalent in the People’s Republic of 

China today. 

The one-child policy is spawning other grave human rights violations as well. Just this week there were media reports that government officials in one province were kidnapping children who were 

allegedly born in violation of the one-child-per-couple policy and effectively selling them for a profit to be adopted overseas. We all 

know that sex trafficking is exponentially increasing in the People’s 

Republic of China as a direct result of a dearth of females. 

It is estimated that something on the order of 40 million men 

will not be able to find wives by 2020 because they have been systematically eliminated pursuant to the one-child-per-couple policy. 

That is absolutely outrageous and a serious crime against humanity and is among the most serious crimes of gender ever. 

I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague Mr. Payne, 

the ranking member, for any opening comments he might have. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like 

to commend you for calling this timely hearing. With the recent 

conclusion of the strategic and economic dialogue, as well as the 

human rights dialogue, the administration is working to ensure 

that human rights remain an important aspect of U.S./China discussions. 

I look forward to hearing from our panelists who work with dedication to advance human rights in an increasingly repressive 

China. I commend you all for your courage and continued work on 

this issue and I look forward to your testimony. 

China’s repression of religious minorities is not new. Last July 

Falun Gong practitioners from around the world joined together in 

Washington, DC, to hold a nighttime candlelight vigil remembrance 

of the opposition of the Falun Gong that started in China in 1999. 

For 12 years now the millions of Falun Gong practitioners in 

China, and at one point here even in the United States, have been 

subjected to acts of violence and assault, property theft and destruction, illegal wiretapping, harassment, intimidation and persecution against practitioners of Falun Gong in the United States. 

In China thousands of practitioners of the peaceful religion have 

been killed. Hundreds of thousands have been detained and more 

than 100,000 have been sentenced to forced labor camps, typically 

without trial. Now the Chinese Government is using similar tactics 

against its burgeoning civil society. 

Over the past several months Chinese security forces reportedly 

detained, arrested, and held incommunicado between 50 to 100 

people and placed another 200 under heavy surveillance. The government’s coercive extrajudicial tactics against its critics including 

physical harassment, beatings, forced disappearances, and threats 

against family members. 

This crackdown is unprecedented and its scale under the current 

leadership appears sadly to be a part of a broad strategy to reguVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:03 Oct 19, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\051311\66295 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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late an increasingly dynamic society. Without a doubt the Chinese 

watch nervously as masses of disenfranchised citizens successfully 

challenge the dictatorships in Northern Africa and the Middle 

East. 

The call of Chinese activists for their own Jasmine Revolution of 

peaceful protest marches have been met with firm repression. To 

date the Chinese Government holds an estimated 25,000 prisoners 

of conscience in detention. Yet, despite this repression we are also 

seeing an increasing active civil society as human rights defenders, 

activists, lawyers, bloggers, churches and minorities strive to make 

their voices heard. 

In 2010 we saw a 20 percent increase of major social unrest as 

Chinese civil society activists voice their deep grievances against 

local government corruption. The courage of lawyers who, despite 

retaliation, continue to defend human rights defenders of fathers 

who, despite threats to their own safety, work to advance consumer 

protection after corruption and food safety endangered their children. 

And of religious minorities who despite severe restrictions on 

non-registered places of worship, continue to practice their faith 

and claim their cultural rights, their courageous cause for hope. I 

look forward to hearing to what extent the Chinese public is becoming involved in these changes and how it has been affected by 

the political repression and political involvement. 

During the past decade, due to strong congressional leadership, 

the U.S. administrated a growing number of foreign assistance programs, the majority of which was devoted to human rights, democracy, rule of law, as well as related activities such as supporting 

the Tibetan community and protecting the environment. I’m heartened to see that U.S. programs seem to be helping to build a small 

but determined core of civil society individuals and reformist government officials who in the long-term may enable China to transition to democracy. 

China is a growing power and a partner in individual trade and 

global development. Yet, it is important to recognize that the Chinese cannot enforce stability at the expense of human rights. Too 

many of the challenges the Chinese people face, from HIV/AIDS 

epidemic to a looming food crisis, will require citizen activism and 

involvement to find sustainable solutions. It is my strong belief 

that the United States cannot be indifferent to Chinese human 

rights violations. I firmly believe that a nation that pursues growth 

by silencing its citizens is building a foundation in sand which cannot resist the tides of civilian unrest. 

I look forward to your testimony on the state of the current 

crackdown, and your estimations on how this Congress can target 

its involvement and aid to civil society to enable viable long-term 

reform in China. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ranking Member, for your statement. 

Now I yield to the vice chairman of the subcommittee, Jeff 

Fortenberry. 

Mr. FORTENBERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this 

important and timely hearing, particularly given this week’s U.S./

China strategic economic dialogue here in Washington. 

5

I am heartened, Mr. Chairman, that the United States and Secretary Clinton have taken a more deliberate tone with China on 

human rights this week than during the recent state dinner for 

President Hu Jintao. 

Part of the change in tone and tenor, I believe, is due to the wave 

of freedom we have seen sweep North Africa and the Middle East 

known as the Arab Spring. As Secretary Clinton said, they are trying to stop history which is a fool’s errand. 

As the Chinese Government attempts to play down the Secretary’s remarks, I think it is important that this body give thorough and clear attention to the many extreme human rights abuses 

by the Chinese Government against its citizens wishing to exercise 

some modicum of freedom. 

Do I want a good relationship with China? Yes, absolutely. China 

is a valuable world partner. But for China to achieve the legitimacy 

that it seeks, it needs to make significant gains on a number of 

fronts and join the community of responsible nations. 

Since I began serving in Congress, Members of Congress from 

both sides of the political aisle have boldly challenged Beijing on 

its ruthless treatment of democracy activists and their families, 

Internet freedom advocates, religious minorities, women and families victimized by a callous one-child policy and even coerced abortion. 

We have tried managing our complex relationship with China in 

a manner that honors the transcendent principles that define our 

national purpose and identity, a nation founded on freedom of religion, a nation that embraces freedom of speech and justice, and 

free and fair commerce as worthy foundations of prosperity for future generations. 

As this hearing is underway many individuals continue to suffer 

horrific tortures in China for voicing their desire for personal liberty. Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo languishes in prison as his wife 

and family members remain under house arrest. 

Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer who exposed to the world 

China’s cruel and draconian forced abortion policy, has continued 

to be victimized by the Chinese Government. His lawyer abducted 

and his whereabouts unknown. Countless others suffer in silence. 

People who have disappeared into the vast network of gulags that 

no human being should ever have to see or experience. 

Why do we care so deeply about China’s legacy of violence and 

oppression? Aside from our deeply-held philosophical principles of 

liberty and universal rights, Americans, of course, buy a vast 

amount of Chinese made goods and China holds a great deal of 

American debt, nearly $2 trillion by some estimates. And we have 

a bilateral trade deficit approaching $300 billion that poses weighty 

concerns. 

We must also challenge China to abandon its embrace of unbridled mercantilism which manifests itself in massive subsidies and 

other trade distorting practices that contribute to this staggering 

imbalance. China must know that global trade is inseparable from 

global responsibility. 

In terms of global stability, managing our military relationship 

to maintain regional stability becomes all the more critical now 

that China has achieved an initial operational capability in landVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:03 Oct 19, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\051311\66295 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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based anti-ship ballistic missiles threatening our Pacific fleet. In 

the nuclear realm China’s policies also cause concern. China is 

modernizing its nuclear arsenal. 

We have a responsibility to work together to shake this complex 

relationship with China, to seek meaningful progress on the tough 

issues, and to acknowledge the many positive elements of China’s 

ancient culture and civilization. However, we must do so without 

shrinking from challenging the outright effrontery to our principles 

and whitewashing grave threats to our integrity such as the egregious human rights violations that will come to light in this hearing. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Fortenberry, thank you very much for your statement. 

I would like to now introduce our extraordinary panel of experts, 

three of whom have spent considerable time, in two cases almost 

two decades, in the infamous Laogai system and speak with profound authority concerning what they experienced, what they 

know. Their friends are still languishing and suffering the brutalities of the dictatorship, as well as academics and human rights advocates who speak out daily and do so courageously on behalf of all 

of the human rights issues in China. 

I’ll begin first with Mr. Wei Jingsheng who served two jail sentences totalling more than 18 years in China for his pro-democracy 

work. He was forced into exile in 1989 but continued to advocate 

for human rights and democracy in China. 

In 1998 Mr. Wei founded and became the chairman of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition, an umbrella organization for 

many overseas Chinese democracy groups. He is also president of 

the Wei Jingsheng Foundation and the Asian Democracy Alliance. 

He has written numerous articles and regularly speaks about 

human rights and democracy in China including broadcasts in 

China via Radio Free Asia. 

I will note parenthetically that Wei was actually let out of prison 

by the Chinese dictatorship in the early 1990s in the vain hopes 

of procuring the Olympics in 2000. I met with him in Beijing at the 

time and had dinner with him. He was subsequently arrested when 

they didn’t get Olympics 2000. They got them years later. He was 

of such high value as a political prisoner that one man’s release 

was thought by the hardliners to be sufficient to obtain the Olympics. 

We will then hear from Harry Wu who survived 19 years in Chinese labor camps. He came to the U.S. in 1980 and became an activist for human rights in China. In the 1990s he showed incredible 

bravery by returning to China on a human rights mission. He was 

discovered, arrested, and sentenced to 15 more years in the Laogai. 

He was released following an international campaign on his behalf. 

Mr. Wu is the president of the Laogai Research Foundation, the 

author of countless reports and numerous books on human rights, 

a frequent witness before this and the full committee. He recently 

founded the Laogai Museum right here in Washington. I do hope 

people will visit it because it is a very chilling reminder not just 

of what has been past, but what is the present, and, hopefully, not 

the future for China. 

7

We will then hear from Ms. Jing Zhang who built a career as a 

newspaper editor for 20 years in Hong Kong and in the United 

States. She suffered 5 years in a Chinese prison for her belief in 

freedom and democracy. She founded Women’s Rights in China in 

2007 to popularize the noble cause of women’s rights and advocate 

for the weak and underprivileged in China. 

As the director of operations of the organization All Girls Allowed, Ms. Zhang directs the projects aimed at the prevention of 

female infanticide, the education of abandoned female orphans, the 

reuniting of trafficked children with their families and the advocacy on behalf of forced abortion victims. 

We will then hear from Mr. Steven Mosher who is the president 

of the Population Research Institute and the author of numerous 

books on China including Hegemon: China’s Plan to Dominate Asia 

and the World and China Misperceived: American Illusions and 

Chinese Reality. I’ve read three of his books including A Mother’s 

Ordeal and it brought great insight, I think, to me and anyone else 

who took the time to read it. 

He served as the director of the Asian Study Center at the Claremont Institute from 1986 to 1995. He was a commissioner on the 

U.S. Commission on Broadcasting to the People’s Republic of China 

from 1991 to 1992. 

He was educated at the University of Washington and Stanford 

University and in 1979 became the first American social scientist 

permitted to do field research in China since the Communist Revolution. He was the man, at least for the U.S., and frankly, most of 

the free world, who broke the story of the one-child-per-couple policy. 

Frontline, 60 Minutes, the Beijing bureau chiefs for the Washington Post and others all, back in the early ’80s, relied on his historic and breakthrough research about what women were experiencing as a direct result of the horrific one-child-per-couple policy 

and has worked on this human rights issue and others ever since. 

We will then hear from Mr. Phelim Kine who is an Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. A former news wire bureau chief 

in Jakarta, he worked as a journalist for more than a decade in 

China, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Taiwan prior to joining Human 

Rights Watch in April 2007. Mr. Kine’s opinion pieces on China’s 

human rights challenges have appeared in numerous major media. 

He has spoken publicly on China’s human rights challenges at 

venues ranging from the European Parliament to a hearing of the 

U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission. Mr. Kine 

is a graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. We greatly appreciate his taking the time to share his insight and counsel. 

We will then hear from Professor Andrea Worden who teaches 

Chinese law at American University, Washington College of Law. 

She consults on rule of law programs and civil society initiatives 

with a particular focus on China. 

Professor Worden’s current research interests center on criminal 

justice and transitional justice in China, as well as China’s interactions with the United Nations human rights system. She serves 

on the Board of Directors of the Yale China Association. Prior to 

becoming a consultant, Professor Worden served as general counsel 

8

and senior advisor on criminal justice with the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. 

We are joined by Congressman Frank Wolf. I would like to yield 

to my very distinguished colleague. I will note parenthetically Mr. 

Wolf is the author of the International Religious Freedom Act. 

China, as I said in my opening, since 2000 has been designated a 

CPC, country of particular concern, because of its egregious violations of religious rights. 

Mr. Wolf. 

Mr. WOLF. Thank you. I cannot stay but I just wanted to come 

just to listen to a portion. Thank you to you and Mr. Payne for having these hearings. 

I appreciate, Chris, your effort on China over these years. Also, 

you have a very distinguished panel and I will read everything. I 

will take it as I leave. I appreciate what they have done. 

With that I yield back. Thanks, Chris. 

Mr. SMITH. I would like to now yield to Wei Jingsheng. 

STATEMENT OF MR. WEI JINGSHENG, CHAIR, OVERSEAS 

CHINESE DEMOCRACY COALITION 

Mr. WEI. I want to express my gratitude to you for giving me the 

opportunity to speak here. 

In recent years, especially in the last half-year, China’s human 

rights have been deteriorating rapidly. The Chinese Communist regime strengthened its suppression against the dissidents, human 

rights lawyers, and all kinds of religious and faith groups. It also 

strengthened its blockade and control of the Internet, broadcasting, 

and print media. 

The regime’s attitude toward general mass organizations has 

gone from some degree of tolerance into intolerance. It also increased its arbitrary handling of legal cases involving both the general public and its own officials. Among all, the most important 

changes are reflected in the following two points. 

The first is the Communist regime’s increased arbitrariness in 

dealing with law. There is an obvious strengthening of the tendency to dominate judicial cases by various levels of the Communist 

organizations and officials. Take the Li Zhuang case in Chongqing 

as an example. Almost all the legal proceedings have been destroyed. Only according to the intention of the local Communist 

leaders, a wrongful case was created against a rights-defending 

lawyer. 

The authority has not only undermined the judicial process, but 

also used means of deceptive and illegal exchange to force the related parties to plead guilty. Further, it made illegal court decisions when evidence was absent. Yet, this decision has received collective recognition and encouragement by the highest level of the 

Chinese Communist leaders. 

This model will soon be popularized throughout the whole country. It will not only greatly encourage illegal sentencing, but also 

reduce the possibility of judicial intervention for the defendant to 

gain access and help from lawyers and thus create the biggest convenience for the Communist officials to interfere with judicial system. 

9

Thus, likely China could revert to the lawless state during the 

Cultural Revolution period when the Communist regime smashed 

the existence of the judicial mechanism. 

The second is that the laws for illegal detention have been expanded from officials and dissidents to include the general public 

include religious and faith groups. The forced ‘‘disappearance’’ of 

the famous artist Ai Weiwei recently is a typical example. What is 

noteworthy is that, just as in the case of Li Zhuang in Chongqing, 

this case of Ai Weiwei is also supported by the highest-level Communist leaders. Thus, it soon will become a model for the whole 

country. 

The characteristic of this case is that the authority publicly carried out its action of forced ‘‘disappearance.’’ After it violated China’s own Criminal Procedure Law and detained the person, the authority did not notify the family, yet released the related information publicly in the media by its official spokesman. 

This is equivalent to flouting laws in the open, and announces 

the fact that the will of the Communist Party is above the law. 

This is significantly different from the individual illegal activities 

during the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin eras. It also represents 

the transformation of the whole justice system toward the extreme 

dictatorship of the Nazi and Mao Zedong. Two reasons producing 

these changes are noteworthy. 

The first is that the Chinese Communist Party has lost its confidence in its own ruling capacity. Due to the increased opposition 

from the people, as well as the intensified internal struggle within 

the Party, there are very few people who believe that the system 

of the Communist Party can continue. Besides returning to the 

lawless state of the extreme dictatorship, the Communist Party 

does not have a method for controlling the social crisis. 

The second is that the international community, particularly the 

U.S. Government, is showing its weakness to the Chinese Government due to economic interests. 

This weakness has led, for a while now, to a rising defiance 

against the USA by the Chinese officials and the society at large. 

When the international society is concerned about human rights, it 

is considered as politicians staging a show for their own voters, in 

a way to deceive the people of their countries. Whoever pays attention to this international pressure would be ridiculed by the others. 

So now it has even developed to the degree of directly ridiculing 

the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, 

Human Rights and Labor. This ridicule enabled the related Chinese officials gain some benefits of public opinion. 

The action of Hu Jintao humiliating the United States at the 

White House also won him exceptional praise within the Communist Party. This kind of attitude has been and will be applied 

to the Western businessmen and tourists in general. The U.S. Congress and the administration should not ignore such kind of developments. 

I thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wei follows:]

10


66295f-1.eps
11

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Wei, thank you so much for your testimony. 

Mr. Wu. 

STATEMENT OF MR. HARRY WU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

LAOGAI RESEARCH FOUNDATION 

Mr. WU. Chairman and Vice Chairman and Congressmen. Let 

me say something about Chinese activities today in the human 

rights situation. 


66295f-2.eps
12

The Chinese Communist Party rose to power in 1949, and for 

about 62 years it has unrelentingly clung onto power by systematically repressing, disappearing and killing its people. The Party that 

originally proclaimed itself the savior of the common people has become one of the most repressive regimes in history. 

By depriving its people of basic rights and freedoms and keeping 

its people in the dark and in a constant state of fear, the CCP has 

managed to maintain its sovereignty. Let me give you some examples. The Central Committee passed a resolution called 179 that 

said in government documents, or Communist Party documents, or 

in their policy they have to stop using Mao Zedong thought so this 

is separate from the central decisions because many people today 

are raising up trying to criticize the Mao Zedong thought. 

Secondly, China is actually a country which has a special ruling. 

The Party set up so-called two certainty. It means in a certain time 

in a certain place the Chinese Communist Party members if they 

violate the law they have to make a confession. 

Many governors of the province and many ministers, including in 

the Ministry of Transportation, were under arrest. There is no 

legal arrest but so-called discipline department officers. They have 

to make a confession before they go to the court. How many people 

were there? Two-point-two million. Two-point-two million Communist members were under so-called double certainty. 

The third event I want to point out for you. In January 2011 in 

the Communist center, Tiananmen Square, the Chinese set up a 

Confucius statue. I was very surprised because Tiananmen Square 

is a political center and only the Communist Party, central party, 

can make a decision. They have Mao portrait, Marx portrait, Lenin 

portrait, and Stalin portrait. 

Very confusedly they have a Confucius statue. So far we know 

Mao, when alive, seriously criticized Confucius, was against Confucius, opposed Confucius. Today in the political center in Tiananmen 

Square everybody is confused. Shall we follow Mao or follow Confucius? In this month, May, around 100 days later, Chinese quietly 

in the middle of the night removed the Confucius statue. It disappeared. So these events are telling you the Communist Party 

today is very confused and does not know how to handle the future. 

Recently, Chinese Government has been increasingly vigilant in 

its efforts to suppress freedom of speech; not only do they control 

the media, but they block countless foreign Web sites and blogs 

through the use of a highly-intricate surveillance system called 

‘‘Golden Shield.’’

In recent months, China has also been arresting and giving 

lengthy sentences to political dissidents. Ai Weiwei’s father, was a 

famous poet, is highly recognized by the Chinese Communist Party 

but unfortunately he disagreed with the government and was arrested. 

We do not know how many people have been arrested. So far we 

have more than 40 people disappeared. It’s not only Liu Xiaobo, but 

also another dissent named Liu Xianbin. Liu Xianbin was arrested 

by the government twice. The first time he was sentenced to 21⁄2

years. The second time 13 years. When he was released he was rearrested last month and sentenced to another 10 years. 

13

The Chinese Constitution claims to grant its people freedom of 

speech and freedom of assembly, however, without a fair and just 

legal system to uphold these ideals, these so-called rights are just 

empty words. Yet these ideals are not absent from Chinese society; 

they are important enough for Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xianbin to speak 

out on behalf of the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

They continually write and express their pro-democracy ideas, 

even at great risk to their own safety and the safety of their families. Admittedly, lack of free speech and the right to assembly has 

ensured that China’s single-party dictatorship remains ‘‘stable.’’ 

However, the longer the CCP refuses to properly and responsibly 

deal with the country’s changing political, economic, and social conditions, the more likely another Tiananmen Square incident becomes. 

The longer the CCP tries to keep a tight lid on the diversity of 

opinion and expression within society, the more violent the backlash will be. The reign of the CCP cannot and will not last forever. 

There will be a day when China will finally be a free country. 

Recently the Chinese and America had a dialogue, the so-called 

the Strategic Economic Dialogue between the U.S. and China. Despite a promise of the U.S. officials to bring up human rights issues 

in the dialogue, the issue of human rights was barely touched upon 

and the U.S. and China merely agreed to continue in constructive 

dialogue of human rights. How come the U.S. claimed to be a leader of human rights and freedom in the world if it is continuing to 

turn a blind eye to the human rights situation in China? 

Also, I would suggest President Obama and the Congress have 

to care about the American companies with their business inside 

China. At least they should not have relations with to Chinese 

military and security systems. I strongly urge President Obama 

and the U.S. Congress to be bold and take a firm stand against 

China’s human rights abuses. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wu follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Wu, thank you very, very much. 

We now ask Ms. Zhang to present her statement. 

STATEMENT OF MS. JING ZHANG, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, 

ALL GIRLS ALLOWED 

Ms. ZHANG [via translator]. All Girls Allowed is a non-profit 

Christian organization registered in the U.S. and founded by Chai 

Ling, two-time Nobel peace prize nominee and former leader of the 

1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement. 

AGA’s mission is to restore life, value and dignity to girls and 

mothers, and to reveal the injustice of China’s one-child policy. As 

you may know, and as Congressman Smith referenced, there are 

many human rights abuses that are occurring as a result of the 

policy. With the love of Christ and the power of God, AGA is taking 

on this massive issue, with faith that this will come to an end. 

Today I have the privilege of translating for Jing Zhang, director 

of operations at All Girls Allowed. 


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In February 2011, inspired by the wave of democratic movements 

in the Arab World, the Chinese-language Internet community gave 

birth to messages of the Jasmine Revolution. The Chinese Government reacted in panic with a severe crackdown, in blatant violation 

of the Chinese Constitution and the U.N. Charter. 

It dismissed international condemnation and arrested hundreds 

of dissidents, civil rights attorneys, and artists including Jiang 

Tianyong and Ai Weiwei. Even members of the public in the streets 

who happened to be carrying jasmine flowers were arrested. 

Through AGA’s communication with house church networks, we 

know of increased persecution of the Shouwang Church in Beijing, 

whose members have been systematically threatened, arrested, and 

questioned. In the Guizhou province, since March 18th, more than 

a dozen dissidents have been arrested without reason and detained 

for over a month. 

One of them, Ms. Wu Yuqin, had cancer; her 80-year-old mother 

was also arrested for defending her daughter. Two other women, 

Wang Lihong and Liang Haiyi, were arrested and charged for expressing opinions related to the Jasmine Revolution. The Chinese 

Government has also put non-governmental organizations and 

their workers under surveillance. The work of All Girls Allowed 

suffered drastically because of threats and harassment from agents 

of the Ministry of State Security. 

Today, China’s cruel control of its own people continues to deepen. This year’s Chinese domestic security budget reached 624.4 billion Chinese yuan, exceeding the military budget of 601.1 billion 

yuan. This huge spending on domestic security control and the 

founding on March 4th of a new National Internet Information Office lead us to believe that the Chinese Government has little intention of allowing greater freedom to its people. 

The first of AGA’s programs, the Baby Shower program, aids 

rural Chinese mothers and baby girls. Every month, AGA workers 

distribute stipends to mothers of baby girls; these stipends of about 

$20 are used to buy baby formula, food and clothing for their 

daughters. The purpose of the stipend is to save the baby girls from 

sex-selective abortion, infanticide or abandonment. The stipend 

also increases the perceived value of girls and gives dignity to 

mothers who might otherwise hang their heads in shame for having a baby girl. 

Over 550 girls and families have benefitted from this program. 

Surveys of sponsored families have shown a drastic change in culture: Despite getting an illegal ultrasound to verify the gender of 

their current child, the vast majority of families who participated 

in the Baby Shower program expressed that they would not abort 

or abandon their next child, even if it were a girl a remarkable success and breakdown of thousands of years of oppression against 

girls and women. 

Unfortunately, since March, AGA workers have been harassed by 

local police and security agents. Some workers have been detained 

and interrogated multiple times and forced to divulge every detail 

of the program. Officials of local towns and villages have disseminated rumors that workers were trouble makers who would be arrested by the police, which troubled and inconvenienced mothers 

who received aid through the program. 

20

In one instance, police not only conducted forced interrogations, 

but also sent two agents to record the aid distribution by video. (In 

order to protect the personal safety of our workers, we will not 

identify the specific location.) These agents followed the AGA workers on their visits to families in remote villages, recording the conversations between our workers and the beneficiary families. 

While AGA workers and local families were talking at the doorstep, they stood nearby. When our workers entered local houses, 

the police would enter and sit down as well. One may well imagine 

the anxiety and oppression felt by the AGA workers and rural families. Some families requested to stop receiving aid in order to escape police attention, fearing that the attention would have longlasting ill effects on the entire family. 

Many volunteers also decided to stop contributing their time to 

this charitable program. They had volunteered with AGA to serve 

the local community, but found themselves treated as suspected felons under open police surveillance. Neighbors of AGA workers also 

became suspicious and began opposing their work. 

In another instance, a farmer whose family receives our aid was 

forcibly pushed into a police vehicle for interrogation. His cell 

phone was confiscated and he was threatened by the police. They 

asked him whether the aid carried any conditions, what the volunteers said to him, and whether there was any encouragement to 

join Falun Gong. After hours of interrogation, he was released. 

As a result of police harassment, some field workers and aid-receiving families have requested an early termination of the Baby 

Shower program. Consequently, hundreds of baby girls and their 

families have lost the monthly assistance, which carried no conditions except that the family must have a newborn daughter. To a 

family whose monthly income was only between 300 to 500 Chinese 

yuan ($46–$77), this represents a grave loss. 

A field worker told me,

‘‘It’s hopeless. If we continue the program, we might end up in 

prison. If the government wants to arrest someone, there’s no 

shortage of made-up charges. In China, it’s not easy to do good 

even if you want to. The government wants to watch everything. They don’t want to overlook any detail, even your 

thoughts. They have all the money and all the manpower. 

That’s what it means to have a strong and glorious country.’’

The openings of the People’s Congress and the Political Consultation Congress in March coincided with the Jasmine Revolution, 

when the government’s surveillance and oppression became even 

more rampant. Police arrested all ‘‘questionable personalities’’ 

found in sensitive locations in Tiananmen Square and kept them 

in detention centers such as Jingjiuzhuang in Beijing. 

Ms. Nie Lina, a woman from Henan province, contacted AGA because of her difficulties. She is currently 5-months pregnant. Her 

family’s house was forcibly demolished, but she could get no redress from the local government. She had no option but to petition 

the central government in Beijing, and was beaten many times as 

a result. 

She was then put into administrative detention in Beijing’s 

Jingjiuzhuang center. 

21

On March 28, 2011, Ms. Nie was transferred from Jingjiuzhuang 

to her local detention center for 10 days, during which time she 

suffered beatings to her head and body at the hands of government 

agents. 

On April 19th, Ms. Nie was again arrested and kept in a detention center in Xiangcheng, Hunan. Seven to eight male government 

agents undressed her in the court yard of the detention center in 

front of 60 onlookers, leaving only her bra on her upper body. 

Afterwards, she was dragged to ultrasound exams and threatened 

with forced abortion. She was extremely frightened and greatly humiliated. After she reached out to AGA our team mobilized hundreds of others to pray for her safety. 

God answered these prayers, as she was spared a forced abortion 

in the end because none of the authorities dared sign their name 

to authorize it. During her 3 day detention, she was given no food 

or water by the authorities. Because she was not fed, she suffered 

severe stomach pain; only a woman working in the kitchen had 

compassion, sneaking her some bread. 

The government agents warned her, ‘‘We’ll kill you if you go to 

Beijing to petition again. The police in Beijing told us to arrest 

you.’’ I asked if she had visited sensitive locations with connection 

to the Jasmine Movement. She answered that she had no idea 

about any ‘‘jasmine.’’ Her only purpose was to uphold her rights by 

petitioning in Beijing. 

In another case, a victim of the Family Planning Policy was detained in Jingjiuzhuang in March 2011. (She has agreed to publicize these details on condition of anonymity.) Several years ago, 

a farmer’s wife from Nanping, Fujian, was forced to undergo tubal 

ligation surgery, a forced sterilization. 

The doctor mistakenly severed the ureter tract of one kidney, 

leading to infections in her kidney system. Even when Beijing hospitals proved that the ureter tract had been medically severed, the 

local government and hospital refused to compensate her, leaving 

her no option but to petition the central government. 

Local law enforcement agents threatened that if she petitioned 

the government again, her death would occur under ‘‘murky’’ circumstances. She only recently discovered that the nervous atmosphere was the result of something called ‘‘jasmine.’’

Another of AGA’s programs is our Orphan Scholarship program. 

As a result of the one-child policy and the traditional bias against 

girls, many newborn girls are abandoned by parents quickly after 

birth. AGA stepped in to provide not only shelter and care but also 

scholarships for the girls, who are now attending elementary, secondary or undergraduate schools. 

Among these orphans are Shi Minjie, who was found nearly frozen in a basket 18 years ago, but who is now able to attend college 

with the help of AGA’s scholarship; and ‘‘Little Thing’’ who was 

found last year and received lifesaving medical treatment through 

AGA’s assistance. 

Since the beginning of 2011, the nuns suddenly became 

unenthusiastic about AGA’s assistance, nearly terminating all aid 

in February and March. After a special investigation, we discovered 

that the nun in charge of processing the funding, a member of the 

Tongcheng Buddhist Association, had received pressure through 

22

‘‘talks’’ with local authorities. She was no longer willing to have 

any connection with economic aid from abroad, even charitable foreign Christian donations. 

In conclusion, All Girls Allowed testifies that the recent crackdown has included not only political dissidents, civil rights advocates and Internet opinion, but also the Chinese Government has 

been restricting the purely humanitarian activities of organizations 

such as All Girls Allowed and continues to persecute our workers. 

Because AGA works mainly to benefit girls and mothers, such restrictions have led to the direct suffering of the most vulnerable 

communities. 

We urge American leaders to stand in solidarity with girls and 

mothers in China by continuing to support humanitarian organizations such as AGA, and also to act in the following ways: (1) Appoint a special investigator to determine the extent of human 

rights violations as a result of the one-child policy; (2) apply diplomatic pressure to the Chinese Government and issue a Congressional Resolution condemning the one-child policy; (3) partner with 

the Chinese Government to develop an alternative solution to population growth that is humane and effective. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Zhang follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you very, very much. 

I would like to now yield to Steven Mosher. 

STATEMENT OF MR. STEVEN MOSHER, PRESIDENT, 

POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

Mr. MOSHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, and 

thank you very much for holding this important hearing today. 

I don’t want to summarize recent events in China because there 

are people here who can more adequately do that than I. I do want 


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to put it in the larger perspective, however, because it seems to me 

that the aborted Jasmine Revolution is only the latest chapter in 

Beijing’s long and increasingly sophisticated campaign to quell all 

manner of dissent and to control all important aspects of civil society. 

It’s not surprising the Chinese dissidents sought to follow in the 

footsteps of democratic activists in Tunisia and Egypt. But the Chinese Government was way ahead of them. It preempted their actions at every stage. On Saturday, for example, February 19th, the 

organizers of peaceful demonstrations in China announced a very 

specific plan for demonstrations the following day, February 20th. 

Even 10 days before that Chinese President Hu Jintao as the 

commander of chief of the PLA and the chairman of the Chinese 

Communist Party had already issued a directive to the military to 

be prepared for contingencies. This is well in advance of any call 

for peaceful demonstrations. 

The directive issued on February 10th specifically instructed 

party cells within the military to study a document called Regulation Governing the Works of the Party Committees in the Military 

whose purpose was to strengthen the Party’s control of the military. 

The explanatory note that came along with this regulation said 

that each one of the 33 articles centers on ensuring the absolute 

control of the Party over the military. You can understand why a 

one-party dictatorship would be concerned that in the event of 

peaceful demonstrations military would be absolutely obedient to 

its dictates. 

In fact, the document goes on to remind the military that all of 

its members owe their allegiance first and foremost to the Party, 

then to the socialism, then to the state, and finally, and only lastly, 

to the people. If the Party finds itself in a confrontation with the 

people, this prioritization intimates, the military is to support the 

Party at all cost. We know what that meant in Tiananmen some 

20-odd years ago. 

And then on February 19th, the same day that the dissidents 

issued a detailed plan for peaceful demonstrations in 13 major cities Hu Jintao, held a meeting of top officials to combat the perceived threat of unrest. According to the officials Xinhua News 

Agency, the meeting not only included all nine members of the 

CCP’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee, but also provincial 

heads, ministry chiefs and senior military officials. 

Such a high-level meeting could not possibly have been convened 

overnight. Obviously this was in planning for a long time suggesting again suggesting again the preemptive nature of the Chinese Government’s response to the upheavals in the Arab world 

and to their possible spread to China. 

In his surprisingly blunt address, Hu Jintao stressed that the 

Chinese Communist Party must strengthen its ‘‘management of society’’ in order to stay in power. 

The ‘‘management of society’’ is a phrase that I haven’t heard before. Chairman Mao Zedong, one of the founders of the Chinese 

community party, always talked about serving the people. Now Hu 

Jintao is talking about managing the people. This formulation 

marks a major departure from standard Communist rhetoric. 

33

The purpose of this societal management, according to Hu, is to 

‘‘maximize harmonious factors and minimize non-harmonious 

ones.’’ In other words, those who adhere to the Party line are to 

be encouraged, while those who depart from it are to be crushed. 

I suppose there are many ‘‘non-harmonious’’ factors languishing in 

jail as we speak today being minimized, sometimes unto death. 

The following day, the very day, in fact, slated for the demonstrations, the Politburo member in charge of national public security 

weighed in. Zhou Yongkang called on the Party not just to serve 

the people, but to manage the people as well, and announced specific ways in which this new ‘‘management’’ scrutiny would be carried out. 

He announced a national database containing information on everyone in the country, including specific groups of people which is 

code for people are religious, minorities, political dissidents, other 

people who question the Party’s actions in anyway. 

Second, with strong leadership from the Party, cyberspace was to 

be brought under even stricter government control with strict enforcement of anti-sedition laws. Third, foreign non-governmental 

organizations in China will be subjected to a ‘‘dual system of supervision.’’ I think this speaks to All Girls Allowed’s problems in 

China where they are now being supervised out of business in effect. 

This can only mean that all of these organizations, even foreign 

organizations that are simply there to do charitable work and have 

no interest in politics whatsoever, will be subjected to heightened 

scrutiny by several different Chinese Government agencies and 

perhaps closed down. 

Fourth, an early warning system will be put in place to alert the 

authorities to social grievances, so as to allow them to defuse problems before they deteriorate into outright social unrest. Now, I 

would point out here that none of this is really new. It’s an elaboration. It’s a deepening of what has gone before. 

I mean, the Ministry of State Security already has compiled extensive files on Chinese who have in the past questioned this or 

that government policy. The Chinese Government’s monitoring and 

control of the Internet has been growing for years. Foreign organizations have always been viewed with suspicion, and Chinese citizens have always been monitored by Party-run social monitoring 

networks. 

The amount of resources, the amount of money going into these 

actions is increasing at an enormous rate. Big Brother in China is 

getting ever bigger, not as we hoped 20 years ago ever smaller as 

civil society grew. 

Even by the time of the Olympic Games in 2008, we saw a fivetiered social monitoring network. It included camera surveillance 

in public areas. It included Internet surveillance, regular police patrols on the streets, monitoring by peers in the workplace, and 

monitoring by neighborhood committees. Of course, this wasn’t created in 2008 for the Olympics. Some of these things had existed 

from the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the neighborhood committees, for example, reporting on your fellow workers in 

the workforce. 

34

This is not an over-reaction on the part of the regime to the socalled Jasmine Revolution. This is a misinterpretation of what happened. The government wasn’t reacting to events at all. It was anticipating them. All of its actions were taken in advance of any 

major public demonstrations and are more properly characterized 

as a kind of preemptive suppression. 

Now, we in the Population Research Institute have carried out 

investigations in China over the years as you know, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to talk about a couple of things that have come to light in 

our recent visits to China. 

Well in advance of any unrest in the Arab world, the Chinese 

Government was tightening controls on civil society, especially in 

the last year or 2. Two examples. The intensifying persecution of 

Christians is one. As some of you may know, the Chinese Government has now reasserted control over the Catholic Church in China 

and has installed an illicit bishop as the head of the church organization run by the Chinese Government in China. 

It has also actually put a man, Ma Yinglin, who has been excommunicated by the Vatican as the head of the Catholic Bishop Conference in China. Now an official non-Catholic is in charge of the 

Catholic Bishops in China. I don’t think you can get more heavyhanded than that. That violates the unspoken concordant that we 

saw between the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China over 

the last several years in a way that probably means there is no 

going back. 

We also looked into the one-child policy on our recent visits to 

China and we’ve already heard some heart-wrenching stories today 

about particular instances of that. Our investigation was focused 

on what are called model birth county programs which are run by 

the U.N. Population Fund. 

We have visited over the last many months six different counties 

which were identified by the United Nations Population Fund as 

model birth control counties where the UNFPA told us that targets 

and quotas had been lifted, that women were free to voluntarily select the timing and spacing of their pregnancies, and that abortion 

is not promoted as a method of family planning. 

We found in those counties all the abuses that you mentioned in 

your opening remarks and that have been brought up here on a 

couple of occasions already. Let me just speak to a couple of points 

that haven’t come up yet. We visited Fengning Manchu Autonomous County, Hebei province. That’s a county right near the border 

with what we used to call Manchuria. It’s a U.N. Population Fund 

Model Birth Control County. Many of its residents are of Manchu 

decent, hence its designation as a Manchu Autonomous County. 

From the beginning of the one-child policy the Chinese Government has maintained that the policy does not apply to minorities 

like the Manchus, like the Uyghurs, like the Tibetans. In fact, the 

UNFPA, of course, has repeated those claims on many occasions. 

We interviewed a number of Manchus who assured us that the 

one-child policy was being just as rigorously enforced on them, this 

minority, in this U.N. Population Fund Model Birth Control County. It was being enforced in the same way with targets and quotas 

and coercive sterilizations and, if need be, coercive abortions that 

it was being enforced everywhere else. The Chinese Government’s 

35

claim that all minorities are exempt from the one-child policy, 

which the UNFPA has at various times repeated, seemed simply 

not to be true, at least in this county. 

The other thing I would like to talk about in conclusion is child 

abduction, child trafficking, and the one-child policy. We visited a 

county in Guangxi Province, Lipu County, which is not very far 

from the border with Hunan Province to the north. This is another 

U.N. Population Fund Model Birth Control County. We were told 

by local officials, ‘‘At the present time, if you don’t pay the fine, 

they come and abduct the baby you just gave birth to and give it 

to someone else.’’

We have all just read in the last couple of weeks that this practice of child abduction has been reported in the Caixin Century 

magazine where authorities in the Southern Province of Hunan, 

just north of where we conducted our investigation, are looking into 

a report that population control officials seized 16 babies born in 

violation of strict family planning rules, sent them to state-run orphanages which then in turn sold them abroad for adoption. They 

quoted an individual saying, ‘‘Before 1997 they usually punished us 

by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child policy but 

after 2000 they began to confiscate our children.’’

This is the same kind of thing that we found, Mr. Chairman, 

that they are not tearing down homes so much as collecting huge 

fines from parents. If they can’t pay the fine, then the babies are 

taken away, abducted. The orphanage pays the population control 

officials a couple thousand renminbi for each child. 

Then, of course, they in turn collect $3,000 to $5,000 for each 

child adopted overseas, money that is paid by the adoptive parents. 

It’s worth noting that these two reports, our report and the report 

from China, came from the same general area of China and occurred at neighboring provinces. 

Local officials, of course, have denied that they abduct children. 

They deny that they traffick in babies but it is well known that 

China’s ‘‘job responsibility system’’ requires them to rigorously enforce the one-child policy and that their success or failure in this 

area determines future promotions or demotions. 

Abducting and selling an illegal child or baby would not only enable an official to eliminate a potential black mark on his record, 

it will allow him to make a profit at the same time. In this way 

the one-child policy through its system of perverse and inhumane 

rewards and punishments rewards officials for violating the fundamental rights of parents to decide for themselves the number and 

spacing of their children. 

Child trafficking has occurred in other countries that offer children for adoption in Cambodia, Nepal, Vietnam where the abuses 

are so rampant that the U.S. has put a moratorium on adoptions. 

I have always encouraged adoptions from China arguing that every 

baby adopted from China is a life saved but, Mr. Chairman, it may 

be time to consider a similar moratorium on adoptions from China. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mosher follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Mosher. 

Mr. Kine. 

STATEMENT OF MR. PHELIM KINE, ASIA RESEARCHER, 

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 

Mr. KINE. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith, Vice Chairman Fortenberry, and other distinguished members of the committee and subcommittee. Human Rights Watch first wishes to 

thank the Committee on Foreign Affairs for convening this timely 

hearing. It is a privilege to participate along with such distinguished panelists. 

I just want to talk very quickly about the questions before us; 

what’s going on, why it’s happening, and what the U.S. should be 

doing about this. What we have documented since mid-February 

along with other international and domestic human rights organizations is the Chinese security forces arresting, detaining, and disappearing dozens of human rights defenders, lawyers, civil society 

activists, artists, and bloggers. 

I think the thing that is really notable in this case, obviously the 

very moving testimony of Mr. Wu and Mr. Wei Jingsheng is that 

the Chinese Government is no stranger to using repression against 

its people, but what we’ve been seeing in recent weeks is a real 

ratcheting up in terms of the unlawfulness and the sheer 

thuggishness of the Chinese Government and the security forces’ 

methods against its people. 

The use of enforced disappearances are particularly frightening. 

Individuals such as the artist Ai Weiwei, lawyers like Liu Shihui, 

Li Tiantian, these are individuals who have been disappeared without any recourse, due process of law, no protection, incommunicado 

at high risk of torture in custody. 

These individuals are suffering these excesses for doing no more 

than asking the Chinese Government to abide by its own laws and 

to grant them the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. 

Perversely, these things are happening in a background in which 

the Chinese Government and senior leaders are evermore ready to 

use quite lofty rhetoric on human rights in sharp contrast to the 

grimmer reality on the ground. It’s worth noting that in December 

2010, Liu Xiaobo became the world’s first and only imprisoned 

Nobel Peace Prize laureate. 

The Chinese Government marked the conclusion of its very first 

2-year national human rights action plan, a very aspirational docuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 14:03 Oct 19, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\051311\66295 HFA PsN: SHIRL

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ment that was supposed to address these types of issues. With your 

permission I would like to enter into the record a Human Rights 

Watch Report, ‘‘Promises Unfulfilled,’’ an assessment of China’s 

very first national human rights action plan. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. KINE. Thank you very much, sir. 

So that’s the situation on the ground. Now, why is this happening? Well, obviously the immediate cause is the events in the 

Middle East and in North Africa have sent a chill through the regime. They recognize that there is a potential threat to their legitimacy. 

Now, what is the longer term? What is the wider view on this? 

Well, the fact is that the Chinese Government is doing this because 

they know they can get away with it. The Chinese Government in 

recent years has run a cost benefit ratio on repression. They have 

concluded that it pays. 

Why do I say that? Well, echoing comments by my fellow panelist, Mr. Mosher, we and other organizations have chronicled a 

steady tightening and repression against human rights defenders, 

civil society organizations, NGOs, journalists, control of the Internet since the year before the 2008 Olympics. 

Now, over this 5-year period while repression was steadily increasing, the engagement on human rights by China’s key bilateral 

partners, the United States, the European Union, the UK, other 

countries, the engagement on human rights has been increasingly 

marginalized. 

It’s been pushed to the edges through this annual bilateral 

human rights dialogues where human rights are taken out of the 

box once a year for a couple days, dusted off, and put back. In 

these things very often human rights are discussed without really 

talking about human beings. They are toothless and, to a large extent, they have rendered no effective recourse or impact on human 

rights in China. 

Now, so what is the lesson that we should take from this? Well, 

the fact is that the Chinese Government listens carefully to the 

messages from the U.S. Government. They know that the U.S. Government cares a lot about what the U.S. Government classifies as 

key bilateral issues and human rights have not been on that table. 

That is both short-sighted and unfortunate both for the victims of 

human rights abuses in China, but also for the United States. 

Why do I say that? The fact is that in this increasingly globalized 

world the victims of the Chinese Government’s human rights 

abuses are no longer just Chinese citizens. It increasingly spills 

over its borders. I think the best example of that is the fact that 

in 2002/2003 when China’s pernicious controls over media censorship and freedom of expression prevented news of SARS being 

transmitted. As a result, SARS spread to more than a dozen countries and killed more than 700 people worldwide. 

What we’re saying is actually there are key elements of the U.S./

China bilateral relationship which have a human rights core. I’ll 

just briefly lay out three of them. Food safety. In recent years we’ve 

had a catalogue of these really distressing issues such as poison 

dog food, toxic toys, poison melamine milk. These are issues which 

48

enter the export stream and end up on the shelves of U.S. supermarkets. Why? 

These are issues that if China had a functioning free media, if 

whistleblowers were not victimized, these issues would be treated, 

identified, and resolved at the local level but they’re not. Instead 

we learn about them when it’s on the front page of the New York 

Times because something has arrived on U.S. shores. This is a very 

important issue of visceral importance to U.S. consumers which 

has a human rights core in China. 

Another issue is a very important issue of investment and trade 

relations with China. Well, I think it’s extremely worth noting that 

a long-term sustainable trade and investment relationship with 

China requires three things; a level, fair playing field, predictability, and transparency. This is the essence of rule of law. In 

China rule of law is under attack. 

Today the victims in China of rule of law are people like Ai 

Weiwei, Li Shihui, Li Tiantian and the other disappeared and arrested lawyers and civil society organizers. Tomorrow it could be 

U.S. corporations trying to do business in China. These issues 

eventually are going to leak up to the sanctity of contracts. It’s only 

a matter of time. The other issue I want to mention is environment. China obviously has in many cases epic environmental problems that are increasingly spilling over its borders. 

We can’t have any type of meaningful environmental dialogue or 

agreement with China until whistleblowers at the grassroots who 

are trying to expose the local state-owned factory pouring benzene 

into the river or the lake, until they know that they will be protected from vindictive reprisals from state security officials. These 

are three issues which are of intense importance to the U.S. Government and U.S. citizens which have a human rights component. 

I want to conclude by saying that we were encouraged early this 

week that Vice President Joseph Biden stated that the U.S. Government and the Chinese Government have a vigorous disagreement on human rights and the fact that he stated that it is impossible for the U.S. and China to have a long-term sustainable relationship based on a false foundation. 

What we need moving forward is there needs to be truth and 

candor and there needs to be a greater emphasis on human rights 

not because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s our obligation 

to be defending universal rights and freedoms, but because it has 

impact on our lives here in the United States. 

You know, I think it’s really important to send the message both 

to our Government and to the Chinese Government that it 

shouldn’t matter how many U.S. Treasury bonds the Chinese Government purchases. Those purchases should not buy U.S. silence on 

key human rights abuses underway in China. 

Thank you very much for your time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kine follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Kine. 

Professor Worden. 

STATEMENT OF MS. ANDREA WORDEN, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR 

OF LAW, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF 

LAW 

Ms. WORDEN. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Payne, distinguished members of the subcommittee, it is an honor to appear before you today. Thank you so much for convening this hearing on 

such an important topic. 

There is much to say about China’s current human rights situation but given time constraints I will focus briefly on three interrelated aspects of the crackdown that began in mid-February. 

First, as some of my colleagues have mentioned, the prevalence 

of enforced disappearances is particularly disturbing. Second, the 

likelihood of torture. Third, the silencing of human rights lawyers. 

First, I would like to begin with a little background and context. 

China is a very complex and complicated country. The Chinese 


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Government and the Communist Party are not monolithic. There 

are people inside the system at all levels working to strengthen 

and promote rule of law and good governance. 

When threats to ‘‘social stability’’ appear, however, there is a singular focus on maintaining stability and one-party rule. These are 

the party and the government’s most important priorities; everything else is secondary. To the Chinese leadership, ‘‘maintaining 

social stability’’ means, among other things, squashing dissent, 

keeping an ever-expanding list of so-called sensitive cases and 

issues from making their way into courts or onto the Internet, and 

detaining people, called petitioners, who seek to exercise their right 

to present grievances to governmental authorities. 

With no meaningful avenue for redress of grievances, it is not 

surprising that there are so many protests in China each year. 

127,000 mass protests involving more than 12 million people were 

reported in 2008. It appears that the Chinese Government is fearful that the millions and millions of people with grievances across 

China will organize. The most likely leaders of such a movement 

would come from the weiquan or ‘‘rights defense’’ movement. 

Perhaps a viable opposition might even emerge. The Chinese 

leadership is undoubtedly very concerned about what is happening 

in the Middle East and North Africa as evidenced by the preemptive strike against even the idea of a Jasmine Revolution in China. 

Fearful that the weiquan movement could become the platform for 

a Chinese Jasmine Revolution, the leadership is now set on eviscerating it. 

Even though the putative protests scheduled for February 20 and 

subsequent Sundays really turned out to be nonevents in China, 

the Chinese leadership decided to, as Mr. Mosher said, do sort of 

a preemptive strike against activists, lawyers, bloggers, netizens, 

and ‘‘mavericks,’’ as the Chinese state media has dubbed the artist 

and activist Ai Weiwei. In other words, anyone whom they believe 

could organize, lead, inspire, or assist such an effort in China needed to be struck out against. 

Now I will say a few words about the issue of enforced disappearances. The United Nations has noted that enforced disappearances 

are frequently used ‘‘as a strategy to spread terror within the society.’’ I appears that the Chinese Government has now adopted this 

strategy. 

As of May 10th, according to the NGO Chinese Human Rights 

Defenders, since mid-February 2011 at least 23 activists, lawyers, 

netizens, and others have been disappeared. The prominent human 

rights lawyers Teng Biao and Jiang Tianyong were disappeared for 

over 2 months. The current whereabouts of 16 of those disappeared 

since mid-February, including Ai Weiwei, remain unknown. Gao 

Zhisheng, who has been disappeared and tortured several times 

since September 2007, remains missing. 

With the possible exception of the disappearances of Uyghurs following the unrest in Xinjiang in July 2009—as Human Rights 

Watch has documented—the recent wave of disappearances is, as 

far as we know, unprecedented. Enforced disappearances violate 

international human rights law as well as China’s domestic law. 

The United Nations Declaration on the Protection of all Persons 

from Enforced Disappearance prohibits enforced disappearances, 

54

defining the term as the deprivation of a person’s liberty by a state 

actor or someone acting directly or indirectly on behalf of the government or with its consent, followed by the government’s refusal 

to acknowledge such deprivation of liberty or disclose the fate or 

location of the disappeared person—which places the person outside the protection of the law. 

China’s Constitution, its criminal procedural law, and criminal 

law all have provisions that prohibit state actors from arbitrarily 

depriving citizens of their personal liberty. The U.N. Working 

Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances issued a statement on April 8th expressing ‘‘serious concern’’ over the recent 

wave of enforced disappearances in China. The working group 

noted that, ‘‘Even short-term secret detentions can qualify as enforced disappearances. . . . There can never be an excuse to disappear people, especially when those persons are peacefully expressing their dissent with the government of their country.’’

Next I will say a few words about torture. Torture is a widespread and persistent problem in China. Although the Chinese 

Government has undertaken a variety of legislative and regulatory 

measures over the years in an effort to curb the problem, torture 

continues, both in lawful detention facilities and in secret detention 

centers such as ‘‘black jails,’’ which are predominately used to detain petitioners. 

Not surprisingly, torture frequently accompanies enforced disappearance. The disappeared are held incommunicado. They have 

no access to counsel or family and they live in constant fear for 

their lives. They are deprived of all of their rights and are completely outside the protection of the law. 

The prominent professor and human rights lawyer Teng Biao 

was disappeared from February 19th to April 29th. He has not 

communicated with the outside world since his release. We have no 

idea what happened to him during his disappearance or of the current status of his mental and physical health. It is more likely than 

not, however, that he was mistreated and warned not to communicate anything about what happened to him. 

A month-and-a-half before he disappeared for 70 days, Teng Biao 

published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he described beatings and threats he received during a brief encounter 

with China’s domestic security police last December after attempting to visit the home of another human rights lawyer, Fan Yafeng. 

An officer threatened that they would treat him as they treat 

Falun Gong practitioners—that is with torture. And then one police 

officer said to another, ‘‘Why waste words on this sort of person? 

Let’s beat him to death and dig a hole to bury him in and be done 

with it.’’ The police officer then addressed Teng Biao. ‘‘Think your 

family can find you if you’re disappeared? Tell me, what difference 

would it make if you vanished from Beijing?’’

Few of those who have been released after being detained or disappeared during the current crackdown have spoken publicly about 

being tortured or mistreated while in custody of the police or other 

government agents, for fear of reprisals. There are unconfirmed reports of beatings and other cruel and humiliating treatment. One 

confirmed report involves Jin Guanghong, a lawyer based on Beijing, who disappeared for approximately 10 days in April. He was 

55

held in a psychiatric hospital for part of this time, where he was 

tied to a bed, subjected to beatings, and forcibly medicated. 

Next to wrap up I will address the silencing of human rights lawyers, again related to the first two points of enforced disappearance 

and torture. Another alarming feature of the Jasmine crackdown is 

the targeting of China’s brave and beleaguered human rights lawyers. 

The harassment and persecution of human rights lawyers by 

Chinese authorities is by no means new. What is new, however, as 

some of the other panelists have already mentioned, is the scope 

and prevalence of the use of extra-legal and criminal methods to 

suppress them. 

In addition to the examples of disappearances and torture of 

human rights lawyers mentioned above, and by my fellow panelists, at least one prominent human rights lawyer has been criminally detained during the Jasmine crackdown. On April 7th, Ni 

Yulan, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer and housing rights activist, who has been detained and tortured multiple times over the 

past decade, was taken into police custody along with her husband 

for ‘‘creating a disturbance.’’

To conclude, I am an optimist by nature and wish I could end 

my remarks on a positive note but the reality is that the human 

rights situation has gone from bad to worse since the run-up to the 

2008 Beijing Olympics, when many hoped that the repressive 

measures taken before the Olympics would ease after the conclusion of the Games. But then came Charter ’08 in December 2008 

and then 2009 was the year of many sensitive anniversaries. Then 

in 2010 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo. 

Crackdowns and repression have become the new normal with 

2011 the worst in many, many years. There is no reason to think 

that things will improve. The leadership transition next year will 

again provide a justification to keep a tight lid on any and all ‘‘nonharmonious’’ activity. But there are some things the administration 

and Congress can do. 

Also, Ranking Member Payne, I very much appreciated your 

comment on their courage is cause for hope. I do agree with that 

as well. I have recommendations in my written statement but one 

recommendation that I wanted to particularly flag at this moment 

is the U.S. China Legal Experts Dialogue, which will be held in 

Washington in June, just next month. 

I urge the U.S. delegation to raise specific cases of lawyers who 

have been disappeared, detained, or subjected to unlawful home 

confinement during the Jasmine crackdown and before. Still missing lawyers include Gao Zhisheng, Li Tiantian, and Liu Shihui. 

Chen Guangcheng and Zheng Enchong are still unlawfully confined 

to their homes. 

I would hope that the U.S. delegation would inquire after Teng 

Biao, Jiang Tianyong, Li Fangping, and other human rights lawyers who were recently disappeared and released but who are now 

silent. Dialogue participants should also address a fundamental 

issue that is recognized by prominent legal academics and others 

in China as well as some of my fellow panelists—that rule of law 

in China is regressing. 

Thank you very much. 

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[The prepared statement of Ms. Worden follows:]


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Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Professor. 

Thank you all for your very incisive testimony and recommendations. Frankly, I would announce that this is the first of a series 

of hearings on China. We will be focusing on a number of very specific abuses from labor rights which are crushed with impunity, to 

the one-child-per-couple policy which we’ve had hearings on in the 

past. 

Obviously when an entire generation of women and young girls 

are being brutally destroyed, it warrants a separate hearing. We 

will be focusing on the rule of law and lawyers, especially those 

who have disappeared and are most likely, like Gao, being tortured 

horrifically. And a number of other issues that I think, Mr. Kine, 

you made a very good point about, the transparency, the predictability. 

I have been arguing, frankly, with the business community for 

years that if they can crush human rights with nary a word of real 

dissent from the West, especially and including the United States, 

it’s only a matter of time when contract law will be violated if it 

serves the interest of the dictatorship. I thought your point was 

very well made and certainly on the environment issues and health 

issues as well. 

Wei Jingsheng, you pointed out that at the visit of Hu Jintao last 

January that the United States was humiliated. You said today 

how it was seen as a weakness in terms of how, unfortunately, the 

administration engaged Hu Jintao. 

Mr. Kine, you talked about how the annual human rights dialogue is toothless. You used other words to describe how human 

rights needs to be on the table everywhere, not just in a hermetically sealed type of conversation. 

Mr. Mosher, I think your point about Hu Jintao no longer talking 

about serving the people but managing them is right. Frankly, I 

think he’s managing the world, and that includes Washington, DC. 

It includes both sides of the aisle. It includes the White House and 

Foggy Bottom. 

When you said, Mr. Kine, about China buying silence, Wei and 

Harry have always talked about how people in prison are beaten 

more when we acquiesce and kowtow. To think that we’re buying 

silence to sell our debt is unconscionable. It’s not even a good reading of the real situation at hand. 

The Chinese Government would have no place to go with their 

finished goods if the U.S. market were to crumble and no longer 

be available to them. We are symbiotically joined at the hip, if you 

will, in terms of our economic relationship. We, I think, have a 

much greater, I would say almost completely wide open, area to 

speak about human rights without the almost cowardly view that 

if we do so, they might retaliate. Well, let them retaliate. They will 

lose far more than the United States will. 

When Mrs. Clinton went to Beijing for her first trip, she said, 

‘‘I’m not going to allow human rights to interfere.’’ Her words were 

carried by all the news media, with the climate change and with 

peddling U.S. debt. She set back human rights efforts of the U.S. 

Government significantly. I have raised that with her personally, 

so I don’t need to say it here; I have done it at hearings where she 

has testified. 

64

I raise that because I’m concerned about the on again/off again. 

You know, the Vice President says something that people take 

away as, ‘‘Now we’re getting serious.’’ An article appears in a periodical with Mrs. Clinton talking stronger. I would remind everyone, 

including my very distinguished colleagues on the subcommittee, 

that immediately prior to Hu Jintao’s visit here Secretary Clinton 

made some very good statements that we were all saying, ‘‘Yes, we 

are going to be serious about human rights when Hu Jintao 

marches into Washington in January.’’

Regrettably, a week later, and the Washington Post actually did 

a very laudatory editorial noting that change, and then by January 

19th, the following week after those statements, the Post made a 

very very—I would without objection ask that this editorial be 

made part of the record—the headline was, ‘‘President Obama 

makes Hu Jintao look good on rights.’’

It notes, very sadly and tragically, that the President’s remarks 

were surprising because his administration had indicated before 

Hu Jintao’s visit that he intended to make human rights a more 

central part of China policy. 

In the press conference the President of the United States said, 

‘‘China has a different political system than we do. China has a different state of development than we do. We have different cultures 

and a very different history.’’ Frankly, I thought that was outrageous. Yes, they have a different political system. It’s called dictatorship. 

The Chinese people, and they showed it in the most robust fashion imaginable with people being killed and incarcerated at 

Tiananmen Square and all the dissidents who languish today being 

tortured, they are saying with their blood, with their sacrifice that 

they want a different political system that respects fundamental 

human rights. To say they have a different culture is very disturbing. 

The Chinese, just like the people in the Middle East, just like 

people everywhere, yearn to be free. It’s not a matter of some day 

30 years from now maybe they’ll get it. They deserve it right now. 

I was very disappointed. The President, according to the editorial, 

made no mention of Mr. Gao who has not been heard from since—

we raised this issue. We’ve got his picture here—since his abduction and torture. Or Liu Xiaobo, who has succeeded Mr. Obama as 

the Nobel Peace Prize winner. 

I would just say it’s 5 months almost to the day, December 10th, 

that Liu Xiaobo got the Nobel Peace Prize. Anyone who might want 

to speak further on the lack of President Obama raising his voice? 

You do it. We do it. But where else is the call for this brave Nobel 

Peace Prize winner who was awarded in absentia in Oslo? We need 

to be ratcheting up as they are ratcheting up their repression. We 

ratchet up our voices and also connect this to other policies. You 

might want to speak to that and anything else that I just mentioned. 

Finally, let me just say about the—I’ll go on to the second question if any of you would like to speak to it. 

Mr. Wu. 

Mr. WU. I will talk a little bit about Liu Xiaobo’s case. In the 

Chinese verdict the Chinese documented the name of our Web site 

65

because Chinese Government identified three articles from Liu 

Xiaobo that were published on the Chinese Web site and charged 

him, sentencing him to jail for 11 years. 

They intend to tell people that our Web site and Liu Xiaobo were 

involved in so-called intention to subvert, this is the claim. Unfortunately, today we try to contact Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia. Liu Xia 

entirely disappeared. Even today nobody can contact Liu Xia whatsoever, by phone, by email, by personal contact, whatever. What is 

this? Home detention? Home arrest? Nothing. Chinese Government 

used security to lock up Liu Xia. 

At the same time many people have the same situation. This is 

no talking about the law or whatever. They just do it. The government just does that. About Liu Xia we do not know. This is not 

talking about Chinese Constitution, talking about Chinese law or 

whatever. There is no law in the country. Whatever the government just did it. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Wei. 

Mr. WEI. You had talked about what can we improve on human 

rights issue in China. I do have one suggestion. I remember back 

10 years ago when PNTR, permanent normal trade relations, was 

passed in the U.S. Congress. There is an amendment as well as explanation for CECC, the Congressional-Executive Commission on 

China. 

According to the Representative Levin who made the amendment, he was saying, ‘‘Look, the CECC is not only observing the 

situation in China, it could also make a recommendation to stop 

this PNTR when the situation gets worse.’’ Now it’s not just the 

issue of human rights in China that is deteriorating but also there 

is a huge trade deficit in between China and the USA. Now I really 

think CECC should play a function. 

There is a tendency with the Chinese Communist Government 

nowadays it doesn’t really care about what the United States or 

U.S. Congress cares about. I think when this CECC comes to play 

and gives some pressure to them, I think the Chinese Government 

will have to respond. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, Mr. Kine. 

Mr. KINE. Mr. Chairman, I just want to address your comments 

with regards to what the U.S. can do. I think what we’re looking 

at is this is an extremely pragmatic government. I think it’s worth 

noting this is the world’s first 61-year-old evolutionary Communist 

Party and it is a government that has been able to pull and push 

an obdurate state bureaucracy into the World Trade Organization. 

It’s linked into the global system. 

When we speak to the Chinese Government on its points of interest, it gets it. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, to a large extent 

human rights have been marginalized. When and if we can start 

to talk to the Chinese Government and raise issues such as Liu 

Xiaobo’s completely unjust conviction, the disappearance of these 

individuals, the arbitrary detention of Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo’s wife, 

and say these have ramifications for our understanding of rule of 

law and the sustainability of our economic and financial and trade 

relationship. 

That’s when heads come up and people get it. These are tools to 

a large extent which have been left in the tool box and they really 

66

need to be taken out. I think that it’s important to remember that 

if we don’t do this, the price of silence is the status quo will continue and that’s really to no benefit for either side. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Let me just raise the issue, Mr. Mosher. 

You talked about your investigations and whatever you’ve published if you could make that available to the committee or the subcommittee I would appreciate it. 

In denying U.S. funds to UNFPA in 2008 Deputy Secretary of 

State John Negroponte wrote, and I quote,

‘‘Chinese birth limitation programs retain harshly coercive elements in law and practice including coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization. . . . It is illegal in almost all provinces 

for a single woman to bear a child.’’

He also noted that the Chinese law is ‘‘the foundation of its coercive policies and practices and the UNFPA comports with and adheres to Chinese law.’’

So the Chinese law is paramount. Groups that operate there 

then comport to it but then they create a false impression, in my 

opinion, by suggesting that something more reform minded is happening in those areas. You have found, if I’m not mistaken, in the 

six counties that you investigated that is the case as well. 

Why, in your opinion, is the UNFPA not on the side of standing 

with the girls that are being aborted simply because they are girls? 

They are missing as many as 100 million girls in China. Nobody 

knows the exact number but the gendercide is—the implications for 

trafficking, not only the loss of all of those young women who are 

now dead and their mothers wounded, but the trafficking problem. 

Now apparently, and I read Reuters and AFP articles, as well, 

about family planning, people are allegedly selling children, even 

children who were born pursuant to the one-child-per-couple policy—so there are stolen children as well—and putting them onto a 

kind of black market. If you could speak to that, I would appreciate 

it. 

Ms. Zhang, you might want to speak to it as well, or anyone else. 

Mr. MOSHER. I think, Mr. Chairman, that we have to remember 

that this was an organization, the United Nations Population 

Fund, that was set up to do precisely the kinds of programs that 

the Chinese Government embarked upon back in 1979. That was 

the year I first went to China. That was the year the U.N. Population Fund went to China with its first $50 million of aid and support for China’s one-child policy. 

It took me about a few months to realize how coercive the policy 

was. I was an eyewitness to forced abortions and forced sterilizations in China. Surely, by the end of my year in China the U.N. 

Population Fund, which had been there an equal length of time, 

should have realized the policy was being carried out in a coercive 

fashion that was in fundamental violation of the UNFPA’s own 

principle that couples have the right to determine for themselves 

the number and spacing of their children. 

Yet, as you well know, we have never been able to convince the 

U.N. Population Fund to withdraw from China. They continue to 

get ever more deeply involved in China’s one-child policy. This 

model birth control program which they announced, I believe, to 

67

you back in 1998, was supposed to free at least 32, now 72 counties, from the more onerous restrictions of the one-child policy. 

In those counties we were supposed to see an end to targets and 

quotas. Women were supposed to be free to determine the timing 

of their child bearing. We have repeatedly gone to China, we being 

the Population Research Institute, and found that isn’t the case. In 

these counties so touted as models by the U.N. Population Fund as 

being models free of coercion, you find the same kinds and levels 

of coercion there that you find anywhere else. 

So what use has the U.N. Population Fund been in ameliorating 

the bad aspects of China’s one-child policy? It’s been over 30 years 

since the UNFPA went into China. The abuses continue. Arguably 

they are as bad now as they ever were. 

I mean, you can go into these model family planning counties 

and see openly posted on bulletin boards statements like, ‘‘Under 

the direction of the birth control bureaucracy and the technical personnel assigned thereto, married women of child-bearing age who 

have already had one child shall be given an IUD. Those couple 

who have already had a second or higher-ordered child shall be 

sterilized.’’

It doesn’t say they should be, it says they shall be. This is an 

order. This is in a model family planning county. Those who illegally give birth to one child will be assessed a fine three to five 

times their annual income. A second illegal child assesses a fine 

five to seven times the annual income. A third child a fine seven 

to nine times their annual income. Put that in the context of the 

United States a fine 3 to 5 years a family’s average income in the 

U.S. would be a fine of $150,000 to $200,000. It’s an equivalent economic blow in China. 

Again, these fines are imposed. These punitive fines are imposed 

in model family planning counties run by the U.N. Population 

Fund. I believe it should immediately withdraw from China in 

shame. Having failed to do that, we should withdraw our funding 

from this organization. 

Mr. SMITH. Just let me ask Ms. Zhang if you would respond to 

this. About 11⁄2 years ago we convened a hearing in the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. We heard from a woman named 

Wujian who is a student, an unmarried woman, a student in the 

United States, and she told her story. Without objection I would 

like to put her testimony into this record. It is entitled, ‘‘My ‘Little 

Foot,’ My Lifelong Pain.’’

She was forcibly aborted. She couldn’t finish her testimony. She 

stood right over there behind a cloak, if you will, because the Chinese Government had a few thugs sitting in the back taking notes 

trying to discern her identity. She talked about how she was in a 

room full of moms who had just gone through forced abortions. 

They were crying and then it was her turn. 

You can read it if you would like but it is absolutely chilling. She 

makes a point that, as the Chinese say, ‘‘If you have broken your 

tooth, you swallow it by yourself.’’ She pointed out in her testimony, and I quote, ‘‘I have never shared this experience with anyone before because the scars in my heart are 1 million times more 

painful than the scars in my body.’’

68

She talked about how other Chinese women had this repressed 

trauma that is so profound and so devastating. Yet, they don’t 

come forward necessarily because they just internalize it. I believe 

WHO is right when they say so many women are committing suicide. The number is about 500 per day. 

We don’t know how accurate that is but that is an estimate 

they’ve made. I mean, the women of China are traumatized but it 

is below the surface. I’m wondering what impact that’s having on 

the women that your people on the ground are seeing with regard 

to the emotional health, the psychological health of the women in 

China. 

Ms. ZHANG. For Ms. Wujian her pain has not stopped. All the 

Communist officials in her hometown keep on making trouble for 

her. Even now she is still in pain and her case is not yet finished. 

Ms. Wujian has come to the United States and she got asylum so 

she is not physically harmed anymore, yet in her hometown there 

are many people just like her who are are still suffering. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. If I could just ask, Mr. Kine, has Human 

Rights Watch picked up information about the Reuters and the 

AFP articles about the sale of ‘‘illegal children’’? 

Mr. KINE. Chairman, we have noted those articles with great 

concern. This is an ongoing point of interest for our organization. 

We will continue to monitor and look for research opportunities. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Let me ask with regard to the designations of Tier III, Tier I, 

Tier II under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The report 

will be coming in just a couple of weeks. The information seems to 

be overwhelming that China ought to be a Tier III country because 

of its huge trafficking problems and it manifests in so many ways. 

Women from North Korea who get across the border are sold into 

modern day slavery once they get across. 

The magnet that the one-child-per-couple policy has caused with 

missing women, missing girls, is also exacerbating the problem. 

Bride selling. We’ve heard reports of areas in Hunan where there 

is huge coercive bride selling. 

I’m just wondering what your recommendations, if any, might be 

to U.S. Department of State about whether or not China should be 

now designated a Tier III country because of its egregious abuse 

of modern day slavery, or embrace of it I should say. Would you 

like to comment? 

Yes, Mr. Kine. 

Mr. KINE. Chairman, I’d start with a more general comment. I 

would say that I think one thing that the U.S. Government could 

be doing is urging the Chinese Government to allow more openness. The trouble in terms of documenting these issues in China 

today, as I’m sure Mr. Mosher can attest to, is it’s extremely difficult. We’re in a time of very, very tight surveillance, control, retribution against people who are documenting and compiling information which the government considers ‘‘sensitive,’’ dangerously 

ambiguous criterion. 

I think it’s notable that the senior Chinese official on Charlie 

Rose the other night said that Americans had a very simple idea 

about China due to the fact that the U.S. media didn’t cover it in 

depth or was biased. The fact is that the U.S. media in China are 

69

extremely controlled. They are under attack. In recent weeks we’ve 

had journalists be beaten and threatened with having their visas 

revoked. I think the first step is allowing the transparency in terms 

of what’s going on. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me also ask, if I could, your assessment as to how 

well or poorly the Human Rights Council has been, how robust has 

the United States been in raising China’s human rights abuses 

within the Human Rights Council? 

Professor Worden. 

Ms. WORDEN. In fact, one of my recommendations is that we 

strengthen U.S. involvement in the U.N. Human Rights Council 

and that we use the Council and other multilateral fora as additional mechanisms by which to press the Chinese Government to 

adhere to its international obligations and commitments with respect to human rights. 

I do want to point out that the U.S. was instrumental in establishing a new mechanism, a new special procedure on freedom of 

association and assembly. The U.S. was very much involved in that 

effort and this obviously will have a great impact to help with the 

Chinese situation so I applaud the U.S. Government for that. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, Mr. Wei. 

Mr. WEI. About the Human Rights Council, we have been meeting with them for many years so we do have some basic observations. The Chinese members are working in that council and they 

often are directed by the Chinese Government. 

Not only that, even the staff from other countries they often receive a threat or corruption in this regard. To an organization like 

this they are so corrupted and their basic rule is that they are 

afraid of hooligans but they don’t care about gentlemen. The problem with the United States is it’s too gentleman toward it. 

Of course, you know, I’m not saying gentlemen cannot deal with 

hooligans but still I think the fact the United States Government 

is the big financial support to this organization, to the United Nations, then I think in regard to the Human Rights Council we could 

present a demand in the way you give the money out. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Ranking Member Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I certainly appreciate the discussion here and I would certainly like to once again commend you 

very courageous folks, Mr. Wei, Mr. Wu, and Ms. Zhang for what 

you’ve done in standing up for your rights. I think it’s people like 

you that are the unsung heroes to see change. 

I think, Mr. Wei, you brought up a very interesting point when 

you did raise the question about the PNTR. Many of my friends on 

the other side of the aisle push for permanent trade and normal 

trade relations, rather than the so-called most favorite nation status which was, in fact, the law. The difference between the most 

favored nation status was that it had to come up every several 

years for renewal. 

I think that with a push to change that most favorite nation status to permanent normal trade relations which comes up no more, 

at least before we had a stick to hold over their head. When we 

look at the status of China today and how they have failed to 

change as they have become stronger economically, I think we have 

70

to go back in history and find out who pushed to get them to the 

position where we are. 

I see the articles that are written by Mr. Kine in the papers that 

they seem to end up in, the Forbes and the Financial Times, Far 

Eastern Economic Review, the Wall Street Journal, American 

Chamber of Commerce. I have a question about what the conversation is with them. I’ll ask you later after I make a statement. I listened very carefully about the criticism of Mr. Obama and I do 

think it wasn’t a strong enough statement. 

However, I certainly think that the statements made by the Vice 

President, and I think Secretary Clinton, will also have some 

stronger statements coming up. We look back and look at the last 

8 years of the Bush administration if you want to see the trade and 

balance deficit go through the roof. There is plenty of blame to go 

around if we want to start name calling. 

I think we have a very serious problem but the problem that we 

have has been strictly pushed by the financial and the economic interest of our country. That’s where we have such a trade deficit 

and we have allowed ourselves to be co-opted by the business community to where we find ourselves in the position that we’re in and 

that didn’t happen in the last 21⁄2 years. Let me make that clear. 

The fact that we have this unbelievable trade deficit and, secondly, the purchasing of our debt, I too feel that it ought to stop. 

I was opposed to it in the first place. That’s why I was opposed to 

PNTR. My record is clear. You can look it up. I don’t know the 

records of others who speak against the tyranny of China and what 

the record is. I hope it’s the same as mine. 

The fact that the Human Rights Council, I think, has to be 

strengthened. The Human Rights Council for the second term of it, 

it’s been in for two kind of quadrenniums, first started with the 

U.S. nonparticipation and there were a number of recommendations made to change the manner in which the Human Rights 

Council functioned before you could get elected simply by your 

block of countries. 

Now you have to get a world-wide consensus, therefore, eliminating some that could get the approval just by being in their own 

bat. My point was with the Human Rights Council is that we 

should have been participating in it from its inception because if 

you’re sitting in an organization where you have no say, then who 

is there to counteract the terrible things that have been said during the first term of the Human Rights Council and the fact that 

just several weeks ago the Human Rights Council actually had a 

resolution against Syria where they are asking Syria to come up 

with justifications. 

For the first time a Middle East country that has been doing terrible things like many of them have been doing for decades have 

been challenged by the Human Rights Council. I’m sure that’s because the United States is there and had been able to raise the 

voice and actually got a unanimous vote on the condemnation of 

Syria in the manner in which they are treating their people. I 

think that is a giant step in the right direction and I hope it’s the 

beginning of more equity and balance in the Human Rights Council 

as we move forward. 

71

Also the question of torture that we hear happening so much in 

China. It’s a horrible thing but then I get questioned about enhanced interrogation, ‘‘What does that mean? Water boarding, 

what is that?’’ Other countries say, ‘‘You do some things and we do 

things,’’ therefore, try to make a moral equivalent which there is 

none. 

I think we ought to be very careful of the policies that we have 

as a nation and defend as we go in and certainly criticize, as we 

ought to, other countries that do horrible things to their people. I 

think that we have a tremendous amount of work to do. We need 

to really put the economic pressure on China. 

It makes no sense that if it were not for the United States, China 

would still be in the development stage and not the economic power 

that they are today. We need to look in the mirror to find out who 

helped create this situation of a nation that has strong legs and is 

moving forward. I have total concerns about the human rights violations. We ought to be firmer as we deal with them. 

I do have a question, Mr. Mosher. You suggested that you think 

it’s best that the U.N. Population Fund withdraw from China. Are 

there any positive things that in your opinion have happened? I 

haven’t followed the work of that agency in China or other parts 

of the world but are there any positive things and if, indeed, they 

withdraw would that make things better in that area or do you just 

think that perhaps because they are unable to function, the way 

they ought to, they should simply withdraw? 

Mr. MOSHER. Given that it’s 2011 and given that the U.N. Population Fund has been in China, as I mentioned, since 1979, I think 

we’ve given the organization a reasonable length of time to try and 

affect positive change in China. 

I have read the UNFPA reports regarding China. They claim 

that in some respects they have moderated the Chinese program, 

but if you look at China’s economic advances, if you look at the increasing urbanization and industrialization and the length and the 

years of education that people spend in school, those are sufficient 

to account for the decrease in the birth rate to the increased use 

of contraceptives to all of the other things that the UNFPA would 

lay claim to. 

Of course, that raises the larger point of the population control 

program in China in the first place which, of course, is a Western 

borrowing because the overpopulation crises, as some call it, myth 

as others would call it, originated in the West and was imported 

into China in 1979 when the Chinese Government became convinced that they would not be able to modernize unless they drastically reduced the birth rate of their population. 

I think 30 years down the road we can see the fact that China 

has eliminated 400 million of the most productive enterprising, energetic people the world has ever known from their population is 

probably not a good thing. It’s not a good thing for social stability 

in China. The Chinese Government claims to be very concerned 

about it’s not a good thing because of the imbalance in the sex ratio 

and the tens of millions of young men who are buying brides because they cannot woo them. There simply aren’t enough women to 

go around. 

72

The social consequence of the one-child policy, no less than the 

economic consequences of the one-child policy, are proving devastating. China will have a nationwide labor shortage within the 

next 2 years as a result of this policy and the shortage of young 

people going into the workforce. 

The role that the U.N. Population Fund has played in encouraging that policy in buying computers for the State Family Planning Commission so they can set targets for population growth 

shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of 

human beings both in China and around the world. I do not think 

that the organization has played a positive role in China. I think 

it has encouraged the one-child policy in fundamental ways. 

It has certainly acted as a cheerleader for the policy internationally and given important political cover to the Chinese Government. When the Chinese people complain about being restricted to 

one child, the Chinese Government can say, ‘‘Well, it’s not just our 

policy. It’s a policy that is supported by this prestigious international organization at the U.N., the U.N. Population Fund.’’

That, in turn, has stymied the legitimate call for the Chinese 

people to reassert control over there own fundamental right to decide how many children they should have, or not have as the case 

may be. 

Mr. PAYNE. Also on the question—thank you very much—on your 

statement that you feel that adoptions should be ended. Could you 

explain that a little bit more? You feel it would be better for a family to take a child who might have a better situation and you think 

it should end. 

Mr. MOSHER. Mr. Ranking Member, I have always encouraged 

adoptions from China of girls primarily, but also of handicapped little girls and boys because the death rates in Chinese orphanages 

are very high. Even the children that survive, of course, are stunted in some way developmentally because of the lack of human contact and love and compassion. Giving them a new life here is something that I have always encouraged. 

But the thought that these children are not simply abandoned 

but have been taken by force from their parents and sold to a 

state-run orphanage which in turn, in effect, sells them to adoptive 

couples is intolerable. I think it would be intolerable for American 

couples who are considering adoption as well. How heavy would it 

lay on your heart the thought that the child you got and opened 

your home and your heart to was actually abducted from her parents instead of being abandoned. I think until we get to the bottom 

of this——

Mr. PAYNE. Do you think that the average adoptee is aware of 

the fact that they feel that child has been abducted and so forth? 

I mean, in your opinion. 

Mr. MOSHER. I think the reports are just beginning to come out 

but the reports are of a piece with the kinds of abuses we’ve seen 

caused by the one-child policy in other areas, the buy and selling 

of women across national borders, the rising bride prices in China. 

You would think as women became scarce that their value would 

go up, that their status in society would rise as they became more 

scarce. Instead, women in China are being treated more and more 

like a commodity. That’s not just women. It’s little girls. It’s baby 

73

girls. There is now in China the resurgence of a traditional practice 

called bringing in a little daughter-in-law. 

Because of the shortage of little girls in China, because of the future shortage of brides that will translate into, you have couples 

now looking for a bride for their son when their son is 3 and 4 

years old. 

They will bring in a 2- or 3-year-old little girl and they will raise 

her as their little daughter-in-law. When she reaches marriageable 

age she will be married to their son. You know, it is a violation of 

the right of that girl to determine for herself her life’s path. Her 

path is determined when she can hardly walk her dog. 

Mr. PAYNE. There is no question that China is going to have a 

very, very serious problem, as has been already indicated, in the 

future not only because they are going to have this big disproportion of men who will become restless, and will become ornery. 

There will be increased idle time for recreation. There are going to 

be less things to do. They are not going to be able to have a spouse 

and be married so you find the negatives come in. 

You find gambling increasing. You find drinking increasing. You 

find brawls on weekends where there is nothing else to do. There 

is going to be a very, very serious problem in China in the future. 

I hope the authorities understand that their policy is just—I mean, 

it’s going to be serious. It’s going to be a situation, in my opinion, 

that they are going to be unable to control. I couldn’t agree with 

you more on the fact that this policy needs to end. 

Ms. Worden, there are, as we know, a number of problems in 

China. I wonder if you could prioritize what you think would be the 

areas we should move more aggressively on or if you had a way to 

prioritize civil rights or political and minority rights, you know, political prisoners release, criminal law reform, Internet freedom, religious freedom, Tibet autonomy, rights of minorities. Don’t forget 

the Uyghurs. I wanted to make sure I got them in. Where would 

you suggest if we tried to hone in on a couple of issues? 

Ms. WORDEN. That’s an excellent but very challenging question, 

indeed. I think that particularly in light of the current crackdown 

the issues that I discussed in my testimony—the disappearances, 

torture, also arbitrary, detention, all of these, of course, are fundamental human rights. These are really the very core. 

Freedom of expression, of course, is another. It’s really hard, I 

think, to prioritize. I’m very encouraged to hear about the set of 

hearings of which, I guess, this is the inaugural one. I’m certainly 

more than happy to brainstorm about certain issues. 

As you know, I formerly was with the Congressional-Executive 

Commission on China. I think the work they do is excellent. I think 

if you consult their Web site and the annual report, there will also 

be some ideas, but they don’t prioritize. If I may, I did want to 

mention a few things. You had mentioned Tibet and I know today 

the hearing is not targeted toward that issue but I did want to, if 

I may, just raise two thoughts, two recommendations. 

As I imagine you know, the State Department has been trying 

for quite a while to get a consulate in Lhasa. I would just encourage you all to support that as a priority. The post is extremely important to improve reporting on the situation in Tibetan areas and 

to provide services to Americans. 

74

The closest consulate is in Chengdu which is hundreds of miles 

away. As you know, both Tibet and Xinjiang have been essentially 

cordoned off so I think we should really try to enhance our efforts 

to have a presence in that part of China, as well as pushing the 

Chinese Government to insist on unrestricted diplomatic and journalist access to both Tibet and Xinjiang. 

Mr. PAYNE. As a matter of fact, the Dalai Llama is going to be 

in my town all weekend. We have the Newark Peace Summit in 

New Jersey. I’ll have the privilege to speak there tomorrow if I get 

out of here today. We are very pleased with that. 

I just wonder, Mr. Kine, have you had any conversation with the 

business people since it seems like, although you are with Human 

Rights Watch, many of your articles appear in the financial publications. What do they say about—I mean, do they feel any guilt 

like criticism to them, for example, the fact the U.N. isn’t doing all 

they can in China and, therefore, we should really make that clear 

and highlight that? What about our businessmen, our Fortune 500 

and all that stuff? Growing up that sounded so good and right. 

That’s where you want to be. I mean, what do they say? 

Mr. KINE. Thank you very much, Mr. Ranking Member. That’s 

a great question. I would answer it this way. I think probably the 

sustaining myth of corporate America’s engagement with China 

over the last 30 years, the idea is that as China is more engaged 

with the world economy through investment and contacts with the 

U.S. firms, then it will logically over time result in a kinder, 

gentler Chinese regime that respects universal rights and freedoms. 

That view has obviously taken a beating, literally and figuratively, in the last few months. You see more and more expressions of disquiet amongst foreign investors in China about the direction of Chinese policy and concern about this erosion in rule of 

law. There are perceptions that the Chinese Government is not living up to its World Trade Organization commitments, for example. 

I would also add that one of the problems is that in terms of foreign firms and U.S. firms engagement with China is to a large extent depending on the sector there has been at least an implicit 

recognition or assumption that they need to do business in a way 

in China that they can’t do at home. There needs to be a certain 

amount of ethical or moral sacrifices in order to do business. It 

must be done the Chinese way. 

What’s interesting is that we saw last year that Google took that 

on and said, ‘‘We will no longer buy into that. We will no longer 

do business the Chinese way. We will no longer self-censor our 

searches’’ which was an excellent example. It’s interesting that 

Google still does business in China. It has a healthy footprint in 

China. 

What’s disconcerting is that Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing search 

engines in China still do self-censorship. They have not learned 

this lesson. I think another very ominous development is within 

the last 2 or 3 weeks we’ve had a lobbyist for Facebook say on 

record that it’s concerned that in certain countries it won’t be able 

to—it’s not willing or won’t be able to provide the type of free content and expression that it does in other countries, particularly the 

United States. 

75

In certain circumstances perhaps Facebook has allowed its content to be too free which is indicating at a time when Facebook is 

perhaps in conversations with a Chinese partner for finally accessing the Chinese market is sending a signal about how it wants to 

do business. 

I just want to make two final comments about this. I think a specific interest and concern of the U.S. business community in China 

is something called the law on guarding state secrets. The state secrecy law is probably one of the most dangerously ambiguous laws 

on any country’s books. 

There is currently a U.S. citizen, Mr. Xue Feng, who is serving 

an 11-year prison term for buying on the open market, transparently, legally a database about China’s petroleum industry and 

then finding out retroactively that according to the law that it was 

‘‘secret.’’

He was reportedly the subject of torture while in custody and is 

now serving an 11-year prison sentence for buying and accessing 

material that in any free country would be easily and readily available. 

The second thing I want to say is a good example. In 2009 the 

Chinese Government tried to roll out something called the Green 

Dam Software Initiative in which they were going to require all 

manufacturers of computers to China, foreign and domestic, to install something called the Green Dam Software Filter. 

Now, experts recognize that this Green Dam Software Filter 

could also be used to filter out content which went beyond concerns 

such as pornography and illegal content. What happened is we saw 

something unprecedented in China. We saw Commerce, USTR, 

trade associations, and individual companies get up and say, ‘‘We 

can’t do this. We’re not willing to do this.’’ Guess what? Within a 

month the Chinese Government blinked and said, ‘‘We won’t do 

this.’’

So what’s the example? If foreign investors including the U.S. 

business community with support of the U.S. Government, with 

support of international trade associations, if the pressure against 

initiatives which are against universal rights and freedoms, if that 

pressure is sustained and if it is broad-based and it’s coherent, it 

can have impact. Thank you. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you all very much. I appreciate your testimony. 

Mr. WU. I’ll just say a little bit about Cisco. 

Mr. PAYNE. Yes. 

Mr. WU. Well, China had a national project so-called Golden 

Shield security systems from 2000 and 2005 to set up an Internet 

system, the whole Internet system, including from the patrol car to 

the station and the local station to the supervision station. 

Cisco signed many contracts with the Public Security Department to support the national project so-called Golden Shield. Today 

it’s almost done. The whole project, the government said, cost more 

than $6 billion. We don’t know exactly how many contracts there 

are between Chinese security department and Cisco. In a number 

of articles the Chinese Government said, ‘‘We very much appreciate 

Cisco’s cooperation.’’

76

Particularly today, Chinese issued a charge against Nobel Peace 

Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. He was sentenced to 11 years there. The 

verdict named our Web site, and this Web site, Observe China—

to which Liu Xiaobo sent more than 200, maybe 300 articles to our 

Web site, and Chinese picked three articles as a charge, Liu 

Xiaobo’s so-called intent to subvert the government. Well, I think 

it is very clear that the Chinese Government really has the ability 

to do so because they have Cisco’s support. 

Unfortunately, last December when I was in Oslo participating 

in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, 

Cisco’s CEO John Chambers was there—because Cisco is a major 

sponsor for the Nobel Peace Prize, which issued an award to China’s Liu Xiaobo. 

Two faces. Okay? They support the Nobel Peace Prize and sign 

a contract with Chinese security. I don’t know what’s going on but 

I do remember last year IBM apologized to German Jewish because 

60 years ago IBM sold calculators to Germany’s Hitler regime and 

60 years later IBM apologized. 

I do believe sooner or later Cisco will apologize to all the Chinese 

citizens because they sell the router and the equipment. They told 

the Chinese very clearly, ‘‘We can save your police power.’’ Well, 

this is an American entrepreneur. They really have to do something different. Thank you. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I couldn’t agree with you 

more. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Let me just conclude unless 

anyone else has any further statements. You’ve been an outstanding panel. As I indicated, this is the first of a series of hearings. We will have another Internet hearing, for example. You 

might recall, because many of you were here, we had Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google all testify. 

It’s been an ongoing conversation with them on what they can do 

to disassociate themselves from the censorship and putting personally identifiable information outside the reach of the secret police 

in China or any Internet restricting country. 

Your point, Mr. Wu, is so well taken with regards to the enabling 

of dictatorship. I opened up that first hearing with a book that I 

had just read called ‘‘IBM and the Holocaust’’ and it talked about 

how they enabled the Gestapo to find Jews throughout Europe in 

order to send them to Auschwitz and other terrible camps. 

Let me also just make a point for the record. I wish Mr. Payne 

was still here but it ought to be noted that MFN was restored in 

1980 under Jimmy Carter, retained during the Reagan and Bush 

administrations. President Clinton wisely linked most favored nation status with human rights but sadly, and regrettably, it was an 

empty promise because within 1 year he had completely shredded 

his own executive order. 

In my opinion, and I believe this passionately, that was the year 

we lost—it was May 1994, May 26th to be exact. I actually did a 

press conference that is still on the archives of CSPAN, as is David 

Bonior’s press conference and former Speaker Pelosi. We all said 

basically the same thing, that this is a major setback for all human 

rights across the board and that the dictatorship has taken the 

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measure of the U.S. and found us wanting and that profits 

trumped human rights. 

I would also point out for the record that PNTR, which I also vigorously oppose, permanent normal trading relations went into effect and was signed by President Clinton in October 2000. Republicans and Democrats both voted for that legislation. Congressman 

Levin was referenced earlier by Mr. Wei Jingsheng. 

But hopefully, the experiment ‘‘if we just trade more, they will 

matriculate from a dictatorship to a human rights respecting country’’ has been shattered because that is a myth and myths sometimes die slow, long, painful deaths. My hope is that more people 

will realize that it’s time to look at engagement that has linkages 

to a penalty phase to hold countries to account. 

Would anyone like to add anything further before we adjourn? If 

not, I thank you again and this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:02 p.m. the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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