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URGING CHINA’S PRESIDENT XI JINPING TO STOP 

STATE–SPONSORED HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE 

COMMISSION ON CHINA 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015 

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

( 

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

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

House Senate 

CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

ROBERT PITTENGER, North Carolina 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

TIM WALZ, Minnesota 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

MICHAEL HONDA, California 

TED LIEU, California 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Cochairman 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

STEVE DAINES, Montana 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS 

CHRISTOPHER P. LU, Department of Labor 

SARAH SEWALL, Department of State 

STEFAN M. SELIG, Department of Commerce 

DANIEL R. RUSSEL, Department of State 

TOM MALINOWSKI, Department of State 

PAUL B. PROTIC, Staff Director 

ELYSE B. ANDERSON, Deputy Staff Director 

(II) 

(III) 

CO N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS

Page 

Opening Statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S. Representative from 

New Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China ....... 1 

Cotton, Hon. Tom., a U.S. Senator from Arkansas ............................................... 3 

Pittenger, Hon. Robert, a U.S. Representative from North Carolina .................. 5 

Teng Biao, a well-known Chinese human rights lawyer, a Harvard University 

Law School Visiting Fellow, and Co-founder, the Open Constitution Initiative ......................................................................................................................... 7

Xiao Qiang, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, China Digital Times ......................... 9 

Yang Jianli, President, Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for China ............... 11 

Wei Jingsheng, Chairman, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition ................... 13 

Hoshur, Shohret, Journalist reporting news in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for Radio Free Asia ................................................................ 14 

Gutmann, Ethan, China analyst and author of ‘‘The Slaughter: Mass Killings, 

Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem’’ .... 16 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

Teng Biao ................................................................................................................. 34 

Xiao Qiang ................................................................................................................ 35 

Yang Jianli ............................................................................................................... 37 

Wei Jingsheng .......................................................................................................... 49 

Hoshur, Shohret ....................................................................................................... 51 

Gutmann, Ethan ...................................................................................................... 53 

Smith, Hon. Christopher, a U.S. Representative from New Jersey; Chairman, 

Congressional-Executive Commission on China ................................................ 54 

Rubio, Hon. Marco, a U.S. Senator from Florida; Cochairman, CongressionalExecutive Commission on China ........................................................................ 56 

SUBMISSION FOR THE RECORD

Witness Biographies ................................................................................................ 57 

(1) 

URGING CHINA’S PRESIDENT XI JINPING TO 

STOP STATE–SPONSORED HUMAN RIGHTS 

ABUSES 

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2015 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA, Washington, DC. 

The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., in 

room HVC 210, Capitol Visitor Center, Representative Christopher 

Smith, Chairman, presiding. 

Also present: Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Robert 

Pittenger. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S. 

REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL–EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Chairman SMITH. The Commission will come to order. And I 

want to begin first by welcoming each and every one of you here— 

Senator Tom Cotton, who is a member of the Commission, a former 

Member of the House now serving with great distinction over on 

the Senate side and, of course, Commissioner Pittenger, who is also 

a totally dedicated human rights advocate. And I want to thank 

him for his leadership on all issues related to China, but also religious freedom around the world. 

I will give a very brief opening statement, then yield to my distinguished colleagues for any comments they might have. 

On July 10, police came for lawyer Wang Yu. Her arrest was the 

first in what became a massive crackdown on China’s human rights 

defenders. Wang Yu was one of China’s brightest and bravest lawyers. She chose to represent clients in sensitive cases, such as 

Uyghur professor Ilham Tohti and Falun Gong practitioners. 

Police later swept up her husband and others who worked at 

their Beijing law firm. What originally looked like a targeted attack on one law firm quickly became a coordinated hunt for human 

rights lawyers and legal staff across 19 Chinese provinces. 

Over the next few weeks, over 300 human rights lawyers and 

legal staff were detained. Of that number, around 27 remain incarcerated and 10 face charges of committing national security crimes. 

Li Heping and Zhang Kai, two lawyers well known to this Congress and other parliamentarians around the world, were ‘‘disappeared’’ in this crackdown. They remain missing and are reportedly denied access to family or legal counsel. Zhang Kai was arrested the night before a planned meeting with U.S. Ambassadorat-Large Rabbi David Saperstein. 

2 

These detentions were lawless; they were brutal and shocking. 

Sadly, they are not without precedent in China. President Xi comes 

to the United States next week, at a time when his government is 

staging an extraordinary assault on the rule of law, human rights 

and civil society. 

Under Xi’s leadership, the Chinese Government has pushed 

through new laws and draft legislation that would legitimize political, religious, and ethnic repression, further curtail civil liberties, 

and expand censorship of the Internet. 

China also continues its coercive population control policies. The 

one-child-per-couple policy will mark its 35th anniversary next 

week. That’s 35 years of telling couples that their family—what 

they must look like, 35 years of forced and coercive abortions and 

sterilizations, 35 years of children viewed by the state as excess 

baggage from the day that they were conceived, 35 years where 

brothers and sisters are illegal. 

This policy is unacceptable. It is hated by the people. It is tragic 

and it is absolutely wrong. We urge President Xi to do the right 

thing and end China’s horrific population control policies forever. 

The NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders says President Xi 

has, ‘‘overseen one of the most repressive periods in the post-Mao 

Zedong era.’’ 

The CECC, whose annual report will be officially released in 

three weeks, will conclude that the Chinese Government’s efforts 

to, ‘‘silence dissent, suppress human rights advocacy, and control 

civil society are broader in scope than any other period documented 

since the Commission started issuing its annual reports beginning 

in 2002.’’ 

China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea for the title 

of world’s worst violators of human rights. The hope that President 

Xi would be different, a different type of leader, has been completely destroyed. 

Nonetheless, despite the torture and arrests, despite the harassment and censorship, the black jails and failed promises, the continued growth of trafficking—particularly sex trafficking, rights advocates, civil society activists, and religious believers continue to 

grow in prestige and social influence in China. 

Persecution has not silenced them, at least not at this moment. 

It has not dimmed their hope for a different kind of China Dream 

that embraces human rights, freedom, and democracy. 

U.S. policy must be geared to protect China’s rights defenders 

and religious communities and its women, especially against coercive population control, and nurture China’s civil society, its work, 

and those committed to the rule of law and fundamental freedoms. 

The United States cannot be morally neutral in this regard. We 

cannot be silent in the face of the Chinese Government’s repression. We must show leadership and resolve, because only the 

United States has the power and prestige to stand up to China’s 

intransience. 

U.S.-China relations would be stronger and more stable if people 

like Wang Yu or Li Heping and Zhang Kai were in positions of 

leadership in the Chinese Government. 

Washington is preparing to roll out the red carpet, as we all 

know, next week for President Xi and his delegation. Toasts will 

3 

be made, statements will be exchanged, with a lot of happy faces 

and, again, it is important that the issues of human rights and democracy and the rule of law be raised in a profound and public way 

by the President, and all others with whom President Xi will meet. 

If Obama fails to raise human rights prominently, as he has 

failed to do in the past, it is a diplomatic win for Xi Jinping. If economic and security interests grab all of the headlines, China’s freedom advocates will despair. If there is no price to be paid for China’s increased lawlessness and repression, it is a loss for everyone 

who is committed to freedom and rights. 

We can no longer afford to separate human rights from our other 

interests in China. That has gone on for far too long. Human rights 

cannot be considered a separate track with discussions and negotiations in one room, totally disconnected from U.S. foreign policy. 

It needs to be integrated at all levels. 

Surprisingly, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson 

agrees with this assessment. Mr. Paulson is not known as a passionate defender of human rights, but in his latest book, ’’Dealing 

With China,’’ he says that the United States must not shy away 

from ‘‘shining a light on human rights problems, because nothing 

good happens in the dark.’’ 

He says the United States must push for greater transparency, 

the free flow of information and better adherence to universal 

standards in China, not only because they represent universal values, but because they are critical parts of U.S. economic interests. 

It is increasingly clear that there is a direct link between China’s 

domestic human rights problems and the security and prosperity of 

the United States. The health of our economy and environment, the 

safety of our food and drug supplies, the security of our investments and personal information in cyberspace, and the stability of 

the Pacific region will depend on China’s complying with international law, allowing the free flow of news and information, complying with its WTO obligations and protecting the basic rights of 

its citizens. 

President Obama must shine a bright light on China’s human 

rights abuses. He must raise issues about the South China Sea and 

what is happening with regard to the Chinese military’s expansionist ambitions, and he must use all of our diplomatic tools, including sanctions if necessary, to demonstrate our resolve on these 

important issues. 

I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague, Commissioner, also Senator, Cotton. 

STATEMENT OF HON. TOM COTTON, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 

ARKANSAS 

Senator COTTON. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith. Thank 

you for your years of leadership on this and so many other critical 

human rights issues. 

I want to thank the witnesses today, not only for taking the time 

to testify, but for the work you do to shine a light on the dire 

human rights situation in China. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in the United States 

next week. His handlers have clearly crafted his schedule to project 

a modern and dignified image of Xi’s role, but I see no evidence of 

4 

modernity or dignity. I only see a parade of stark contrasts, shameful juxtapositions and bitter ironies. 

Xi’s first stop will be a technology conference that China has organized in Seattle. Leaders of companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Google are expected to attend. 

In Seattle, these tech titans will share pleasantries with Xi. But 

in China, their companies can’t deliver information to the Chinese 

people because of Beijing’s Great Firewall. And Xi’s government 

uses that leverage to pressure tech companies into arrangements 

to censor content. 

In Seattle, Xi will talk about expanding trade and technology, 

but in China he’s depriving NGOs, journalists, and civil rights activists access to the Internet technology, fearful that they will organize amongst themselves, share information, and undermine the 

authoritarian regime. 

Xi will also visit Boeing’s factory in Everett, WA. In Everett, he’ll 

no doubt praise the efficiency of the factory, operated by American 

workers who enjoy labor rights and workplace protections. But in 

China, labor organizers stand a good chance of being abducted, severely beaten, and left for dead a mile outside a city, as happened 

to Chinese labor advocate Peng Jiayong. 

In Everett, Xi will see that all workers are skilled adults, but in 

China authorities ignore child-labor laws, leaving 13-year-olds like 

Li Youbin to die after working slave-labor shifts in harrowing conditions. 

Xi will then travel to New York City, where he will chair a global 

leaders meeting on gender equality and women’s empowerment at 

the United Nations. 

In New York, Xi will praise international roadmaps toward gender equality, but in China, women are subjected to forced abortions, mandated sterilization, and mass implantation of birth control devices, all to advance Xi’s population control policies. 

In New York, Xi will urge other nations to commit to efforts to 

empower women, but in China Xi’s regime arrests female lawyers 

and women’s rights activists like Wang Yu. 

In New York, Xi will purport to stand in judgment over other nations on women’s rights, but in China prison guards raped and 

abused Li Ruirui. She was being held in an extralegal detention 

center for dissidents, or it is referred to as a ‘‘black jail.’’ 

Unfortunately, her story is not unique. The grand majority of detainees in so-called ‘‘black jails’’ are women, and they are at constant risk of rape and abuse by the regime’s thugs. 

The highlight of Xi’s trip, of course, will be Washington, DC, a 

meeting and state dinner with President Obama. Xi and President 

Obama will hold a press conference where Xi will see a number of 

journalists representing a free press corps. 

But in China, his regime arrests journalists who publish inconvenient information. After a stay in jail, the government parades 

the reporters before cameras to confess their supposed crimes. 

Xi and the President will have a private meeting, perhaps over 

tea. But in China, being invited for tea has a very different meaning. It is code among civil society activists for being summoned by 

state security services to be interrogated, intimidated, and put on 

notice that the government is watching you. 

5 

During the state dinner, Xi will enjoy the sweetest of meats and 

the finest of wines in stately environs of the White House. But in 

China, Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, was imprisoned in 

a dark cell for years and allowed only a slice of bread and a piece 

of cabbage each day. He was also tortured with cigarette butts, 

electrified wires, and toothpicks rammed into his genitals. 

Among Gao’s crimes was his defense of persecuted religious 

groups—Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and practitioners of Falun 

Gong. These believers are constant targets of government surveillance, imprisonment, torture, and forcible medication. 

President Obama is welcoming Xi to the United States in the 

grandest diplomatic fashion. But as they sit next to each other in 

that state dinner, I hope President Obama recognizes what is perhaps the starkest irony of Xi’s trip to the United States. 

If President Obama had lived his life not in the United States 

but in China, as a Christian, a community organizer, a civil rights 

lawyer, and a constitutional law professor, he would not be enjoying a grand fete with Xi Jinping. President Obama most likely 

would be in prison, or much, much worse. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much, Senator Cotton, for that 

very eloquent statement. 

Mr. Pittenger? 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT PITTENGER, A U.S. 

REPRESENTATIVE FROM NORTH CAROLINA 

Representative PITTENGER. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for allowing me to make an opening statement and for participating in 

this important hearing. 

Thank you, as well, to our witnesses for appearing here today. 

China is among one of the world’s greatest powers, but its rise 

has come at a spectacular cost—the rights of its people. 

Now, America has her own faults. America is dealing with crime. 

We deal with violence, with drugs, with racial issues. Notwithstanding that, but as we address our own concerns, we must have 

an honest dialogue with the Chinese leadership. 

There is little question of China’s frequent, systemic violations of 

human rights. Their thinly veiled offenses against freedom of the 

press, expression, religion, and speech, as well as their focused attacks on international entities and human rights advocates, paint 

a picture of a stifling and oftentimes terrifying life for the Chinese 

people. 

We must not turn a blind eye to these horrific acts. Among other 

initiatives in Congress, and as part of this Commission, I am proud 

sponsor of H.R. 343, which expresses strong outrage regarding reports of China’s systemic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting to nonconsenting prisoners of conscience. 

While these efforts are important, President Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to the White House presents a unique opportunity for 

President Obama to become a champion for human rights and freedoms of conscience for the Chinese people. 

It is imperative that President Obama use every available opportunity to discuss these issues with President Xi Jinping. The 

United States must remain committed to the human rights of all 

6 

peoples and hold our counterparts around the world accountable to 

their violations. 

We must promote human rights and fair treatment for all in 

China and across the world. 

I am grateful to those who will offer testimony today, and I yield 

back. 

Mr. Chairman, your respect for this Commission, I do have a 

plane I have got to catch, and I regret that. But I offer my deep 

commitment to each of you in this cause. 

Chairman SMITH. Well, thank you very much, Commissioner 

Pittenger, and I do hope—and I know you will—take the testimony 

to read, because the testimony is devastating. 

Representative PITTENGER. Yes. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. 

I would like to introduce our distinguished witnesses, beginning 

first with Dr. Teng Biao, who is a well-known human rights lawyer, visiting fellow at Harvard University Law School, and cofounder of the Open Constitution Initiatives. Dr. Teng holds a 

Ph.D. from Peking University Law School, and has been a visiting 

scholar at Yale Law School. 

As a human rights lawyer, Dr. Teng is a promoter of the Rights 

Defense Movement and co-initiator of the New Citizens Movement 

in China. In 2003, he was one of the three Doctors of Law who 

complained to the National People’s Congress about the unconstitutional detentions of internal migrants. And of course, Dr. Teng is 

involved in so much more. 

A full bio for all of you will be made a part of the record, without 

objection. 

We will then hear from Xiao Qiang, who is the founder and editor-in-chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual Chinese news 

website. He is an adjunct professor at the School of Information at 

the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California 

at Berkeley. He is also the principal investigator of the CounterPower Lab, an interdisciplinary faculty-student research group focusing on technology and the free flow of information in cyberspace 

based in the School of Information at Berkeley. 

We will then hear from Yang Jianli, who is the president of Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for China. Dr. Yang is a scholar 

and democracy activist internationally recognized for his efforts to 

promote democracy in China. 

He has been involved in the pro-democracy movement in China 

since the 1980s and was forced to flee China in 1989, after the 

Tiananmen Square Massacre. Dr. Yang returned to China to support the labor movement and was imprisoned by Chinese authorities for espionage and illegal entry. 

Following his release in 2007, he founded Initiatives for China, 

a non-governmental organization that promotes China’s peaceful 

transition to democracy. 

We will then hear from Wei Jingsheng, a long-time leader for the 

opposition against the Chinese Government dictatorship. He was 

sentenced to jail twice for a total of more than 18 years due to his 

pro-democracy activities, particularly the Democracy Wall. 

After his exile to the United States in 1997, he founded and has 

been the chairman of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition, 

7 

which is an umbrella organization for many Chinese democracy 

groups, with members in over a dozen countries. 

He is also president of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation and president of the Asia Democracy Alliance. And I would note parenthetically, in the early 1990s, soon after Tiananmen Square, on one of 

my many trips to China, I traveled, visited, had dinner with Wei 

Jingsheng. 

He was let out of prison in order to get the 2000 Olympics. He 

was that high of a political prisoner asset to the Chinese Government. They thought if they let out Wei Jingsheng, they were more 

likely to get the 2000 Olympics. 

They did not get it and they rearrested him, but we had dinner 

and he went back to not only being jailed, but also being very 

harshly treated, including multiple beatings. 

We will then hear from Shohret Hoshur, who is a journalist reporting on news in China’s Xingjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 

for Radio Free Asia, where he has worked since 2007. 

He began his career in 1989 in China’s far west as a TV reporter. 

In 1994, Chinese authorities condemned two of his editorials as 

subversive, forcing him to flee his homeland. 

As stated in the New York Times profile, ‘‘His accounts of violence in his homeland are among the few reliable sources of information about incidents in a part of China that the government has 

sought to hide from the international community.’’ 

We will then hear from Ethan Gutmann, who is an award-winning China analyst and human rights investigator and the author 

of ‘‘The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting and China’s 

Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem’’ and ‘‘Losing the New 

China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal.’’ 

Currently based in London, Mr. Gutmann has been associated 

with several Washington think tanks over the years, including the 

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation and the Brookings Institution. 

I would like to now turn it to Dr. Teng. 

STATEMENT OF TENG BIAO, A WELL–KNOWN CHINESE HUMAN 

RIGHTS LAWYER, A HARVARD UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL 

VISITING FELLOW, AND CO–FOUNDER, THE OPEN CONSTITUTION INITIATIVE 

Mr. TENG. Thank you. 

Since July this year, at least 300 lawyers have been kidnapped, 

arrested, disappeared, or intimidated. Most of them are my friends. 

This ongoing persecution of rights lawyers is only a small part of 

Xi Jinping’s comprehensive crackdown on civil society. 

Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, at least 2,000 human 

rights defenders have been detained or sentenced, including 

Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti and his students. Also detained were 

journalist Gao Yu, lawyer Xu Zhiyong, Pu Zhiqiang, Tang Jingling, 

Li Heping, Sui Muqing, Zhang Kai, Wang Quanzhang, Wang Yu, 

rights defender Guo Feixiong, Liu Ping, Zhang Shengyu, Su 

Changlan, and dissidents Qin Yongmin, Zhang Lin, Jang Lijun, Hu 

Shigen, Yu Shiwen, and some prisoners of conscience that are in 

custody, like Cao Shunli and Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche. 

8 

Obviously, after torture or inhumane treatment in Zhejiang and 

other provinces, government destroyed thousands of church buildings, arrested pastors and Christians, and demolished the crosses. 

Falun Gong practitioners were detained or sent to legal education 

centers, a kind of extra-legal detention. Many of them have been 

tortured to death. Other small religious groups are persecuted after 

the government has listed them as evil cults. 

Many NGOs have been shut down, like Gongmeng—the Open 

Constitution Initiative. Even those NGOs focusing on the environment, women’s rights, LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and 

transgendered], or citizen libraries are not allowed to work. 

The Communist Party made new regulations or policies on education and ideology, more censorship on Internet, textbooks, publishing, and traditional media. 

The Communist Party authorities, with their excessive violence, 

have created hostility, division, and despair in Xinjiang and Tibet. 

In Xinjiang, many protests were labeled as terrorist attacks; 

thus, many Uyghur people were shot dead without any necessity 

or legal basis. In Tibet, the number of self-immolations has been 

147. Seventy-nine self-immolations happened since November 2012, 

since Xi came into office. Some family members of the self-immolators were even detained or sentenced. 

Why is Xi Jinping purging the rights activists? Xi Jinping is 

somebody living in the 1960s. He never accepts the idea of liberal 

democracy or constitutionalism or human rights. 

What he has been doing, and is going to do, is maintain the Communist Party’s monopoly of power. He will not tolerate any challenge to the one-party rule. The Communist Party never stops its 

punishment on activists, but Xi has a much lower threshold of prisons. 

But the deep reason is located in the whole political and social 

situation. China has become the second-largest economy in the 

world. China is flexing its muscles by military parades, AIIB 

[Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank], and a new message on the 

South China Sea by tearing up the promise of Hong Kong’s autonomy. Also by detaining Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, disappearing 

the Panchen Lama, arresting more and more rights activists. 

But the Party’s attempts to project confidence cannot disguise its 

panic. It is beset by economic strife, antagonism between officials 

and the people, widespread corruption, environmental and ecological disasters, unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet, and its own sense of 

ideological crisis. 

Compared with all of these things, the rights lawyers and civil 

society activists are gaining in prestige, influence, and organizational capacity. Since 2003, more and more people joined in the 

Rights Defense Movement. Human rights lawyers defend civil 

rights, challenge the abuse of power, and promote rule of law in 

China. 

People organize more and more NGOs, working on various rights 

of the unprivileged people. Bloggers and writers criticize the comments or disseminate its information on sensitive events. 

Activists initiated New Citizens Movement or Southern Street 

Movement to demand political rights. People gather privately to 

commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre. 

9 

Xi Jinping is coming here soon, while the human rights situation 

is deteriorating in China. ‘‘The day we see the truth and cease to 

speak is the day we begin to die,’’ Martin Luther King, Jr., once 

said. We should not keep silent when so many Chinese people are 

suffering the atrocities of the Communist Party. 

History of the Nazis will repeat itself when people choose to do 

nothing when Xi Jinping is going toward Hitler. Those who welcome Xi Jinping without raising human rights issues are helpers 

of the dictator. 

I recommend that the U.S. Congress pass an act on China’s 

human rights, making sure that U.S. companies and universities 

comment on the government’s organizations, not involving human 

rights violations when dealing with China, making sure that perpetrators are being prevented from entering the United States. 

Thank you very much for your support of human rights and freedom. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you so very much for your testimony, 

and we will wait for questions until after everyone has completed. 

Mr. Xiao? 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Teng appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF XIAO QIANG, FOUNDER AND EDITOR–IN– 

CHIEF, CHINA DIGITAL TIMES 

Mr. XIAO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really am grateful for 

you, congressman, that for so many years you have been upholding 

human rights in this position, and you are a great friend of Chinese people. 

My own work is on China’s state censorship, particularly on the 

Internet censorship, suppression of the media and freedom of expression in general. 

Today I want to point out two examples. One is about domestic 

censorship; one is about the Internet censoring at the border of 

China. 

China has the world’s largest number of Internet users, estimated at 641 million to date. After President Xi Jinping took power 

in 2012, he framed the Internet as a battlefield for ideological control and appointed himself head of a top-level Internet security 

committee. He also established the State Internet Information Office. Later on, it was renamed Cyberspace Administration of China, 

and it continues to intensify restrictions and controls on Internet 

freedom. 

In the past two and a half years, Xi’s administration has not only 

expanded its crackdown on freedom of expression and freedom of 

the press, it has also launched a ferocious assault on civil society. 

My respected colleague, Dr. Teng Biao, just gave a comprehensive 

list of that crackdown. 

These violations of fundamental rights and freedoms also have 

been well documented by international human rights organizations. 

For example, Freedom House’s annual report, ‘‘Freedom on the 

Net,’’ details China’s restriction of Internet freedom by blocking 

and filtering access to international websites, censoring online content and violating users’ rights. I recommend Freedom House’s excellent report to the Commission. 

10 

China Digital Times, my own work, closely follows the interplay 

of the censorship, activism, and emerging public opinion of the Chinese Internet. In particular, we collect and translate many of the 

censorship directives the Party sends to the state media and Internet companies. We also aggregate breaking news deemed sensitive 

by state censors. 

During the last 12 years, the China Digital Times team has published over 2,600 such censorship directives and, using these directives, has pieced together how the Chinese Government restricts 

Internet freedom. Here I am just going to share one example with 

the Commission. 

On September 7, 2015, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central 

Propaganda Department issued a classified document marked as 

Notice Number 320 for the year 2015. In other words, until this 

day this year, they had already issued 320 of such notices. 

This document instructs state media to report positively on the 

economy. Here is one excerpt of this document: 

The focus for the month of September will be strengthening economic propaganda 

and guiding public opinion, as well as overall planning for domestic- and foreignfacing propaganda and Internet propaganda, in order to take the next step in promoting the discourse on China’s bright economic future and the superiority of China’s system, as well as stabilizing expectations and inspiring confidence. 

In fact, both state and independent media have been pressured 

to keep economic reporting upbeat and to downplay the stock market crash last month. A directive from August 25 required Chinese 

websites to delete specific essays about the crash, while in June another directive instructed TV and radio stations to, ‘‘rationally lead 

market expectations to prevent inappropriate reports from causing 

the market to spike or crash.’’ 

The Central Government did not stop at issuing Internet censorship and propaganda instructions. In August, Caijing reporter 

Wang Xiaolu confessed on CCTV to, ‘‘causing panic and disorder,’’ 

with a negative story on the stock market slump. 

In this case, the Chinese Government is persecuting and prosecuting Chinese citizens, to quote H.R. 491, for ‘‘posting or transmitting peaceful political, religious, or ideological opinion or belief 

via the Internet.’’ 

Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I also would like to 

recommend another remarkable report, ‘‘China’s Great Cannon,’’ 

published by Toronto University’s Citizen Lab. The Great Cannon 

is an attacking tool used to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks on websites by intercepting massive amounts of Web traffic 

and redirecting it to targeted websites. 

The first deployment of the Great Cannon was in late March 

2015, targeting two specific users of the San Francisco-based codesharing site GitHub; The New York Times’ Chinese mirror site, 

and another anti-censorship organization, GreatFire.org. 

Based on this weapon’s network position across different Chinese 

Internet service providers and on similarities of its source code to 

the Great Firewall, the researchers at Citizen Lab and the International Computer Science Institute based in Berkeley believe 

there is compelling evidence that the Chinese Government operates 

this Great Cannon. 

11 

In other words, the Chinese Government is not only deliberately 

blocking, filtering, and censoring online information based on the 

expression of political, religious, and ideological opinion in China, 

it is also using technology to disrupt Internet traffic and commercial infrastructures beyond its borders. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Commission for holding this 

important public hearing on human rights in China days before 

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States. 

I urge President Xi Jinping to stop his repressive policies and 

practices. The Chinese people want and deserve more access to information and the Internet, and greater freedom to express their 

views. Chinese people desire and demand greater protection of 

human rights in their political, social, economic, and cultural life. 

I urge President Obama to engage President Xi on Internet freedom, press freedom, and freedom of expression in their meetings, 

not only raising concerns, but also insisting publicly that future political and economic relations be dependent on the Chinese Government demonstrating improvements in upholding human rights. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Mr. Xiao, thank you so very much for your 

leadership on many issues, but that one in particular with regard 

to the Internet. 

Dr. Yang? 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Xiao appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF YANG JIANLI, PRESIDENT, INITIATIVES FOR 

CHINA/CITIZEN POWER FOR CHINA 

Mr. YANG. Mr. Chairman and the members of the Commission. 

Thank you for holding this important hearing. Twenty-six years 

ago, after the Tiananmen Massacre, we came to Washington, DC, 

to plead with the U.S. Government to link China’s most-favoritenation [MFN] status with its human rights record. Without such a 

link, we argued that trading with China would be like a blood 

transfusion to the Communist regime, making it more aggressive 

while harming the interests of American and Chinese people. 

But our warning fell on deaf ears. After a lengthy debate, the 

U.S. Government decided to grant permanent MFN to China, contending that economic growth would automatically bring democracy 

to that country. 

With money and technologies pouring in from the United States 

and other Western countries and their free markets wide open for 

Chinese-made goods, the Chinese Communist regime not only survived the 1989 crisis, it catapulted into the 21st century. The country’s explosive economic growth has brought it from near the bottom of the world in GDP per capita to the second-largest economy 

in the world. But democracy remains yet only a far-fetched dream. 

Worse, today the Xi Jinping regime, as you have already heard 

from two of my colleagues and will hear from other fellow panelists, has launched numerous assaults in the past two decades 

against China’s civil society on a scale and with ferocity making Xi 

Jinping China’s worst leader in 20 years in terms of human rights 

record. 

China uses its economic power, gained with the help of the West, 

to build a formidable, fully modernized military that has reached 

12 

every corner of the Earth. With this unprecedented power, China 

is now forcefully demanding a rewrite of international norms and 

rules. China wants to create a new international order threatening 

regional and world peace, with its dominance in the Asian-Pacific 

region as the centerpiece. 

What went wrong with the American engagement policy? In my 

view, the failure lies primarily in the lack of moral and strategic 

clarity in its design and implementation. The origin of the error 

can trace back to the early 1970s, when then-Secretary of State 

Henry Kissinger, claiming that by integrating Beijing into the 

international community economically and politically, China would 

behave responsibly and abide by international norms and rules. 

This amoral, geopolitical, and short-term pragmatic strategy fails 

to comprehend the evil nature and hegemonic ambition of the Communist regime, as reiterated recently in Xi Jinping’s China Dream 

of a great red empire, to replace the Western civilization with the 

so-called ‘‘China Model.’’ 

Washington policymakers also failed to understand that economic growth may be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient 

one for cultivating democracy. Consequently, this policy has fundamentally undermined America’s national interests and security. 

The alternative is to engage China with a moral and a strategic 

compass. China under the CCP’s rule cannot rise peacefully, and 

its transition to a democratic country that respects human rights, 

the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, is in everyone’s best 

interest, including China’s own. 

China’s totalitarian regime has hijacked 1.3 billion Chinese people, imposing a political system on them by force and coercion and 

running the country like a slave owner of the past. It has obliterated their self-governance and controlled the people’s lives without 

their consent. 

To support this regime is both morally corrupt and strategically 

stupid. Like Frankenstein’s monster, China is now seeking revenge 

against its creator, the West. It will destabilize and endanger the 

world, for the China Model, better called the Chinese disease, like 

the Black Plague, has spread and infected the international community. But most people in the world are not aware of it, and 

many are being fooled to believe it is the future. 

Now, it is time for the United States to begin the era of an engaged China with moral and strategic clarity. To begin, the Congress should pass a China Democracy Act. It would be binding legislation flatly stating congressional judgment that the enhancement of human rights and democratic values in China is decidedly 

in America’s national interest. 

That would preclude the currently widespread but inaccurate 

claim that Congress must abandon on one hand its claim to support a universal value of human rights and on the other hand 

America’s national interest. 

The bill also would require a report from the President to Congress every year on how any government-approved policy or action 

during the prior 12 months has strengthened or weakened human 

rights and the democratic values in China. 

All federal departments of a government should have to report 

on what they are doing to foster democracy in China by advancing 

13 

human rights and the rule of the law there. The Act also would put 

them on notice to take no action, adopt no policy, and implement 

no program that would undercut the democracy movement or 

weaken human rights in China. 

Such a China Democracy Act would give us a better idea of what 

success we have had so far, what costs have been, and how we 

should increase or deploy financial resources to promote democracy 

and human rights. 

If America expressly commits to strengthening those ideals and 

visibly implements that commitment, it will allow the people of 

China and indeed of the rest of the world to see that the words of 

Americans’ promises to support liberty everywhere are fully 

matched by its deeds. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Dr. Yang, thank you so very much. And without objection, your full statement, which is very extensive, will be 

made a part of the record, as well as all of our witnesses’. 

I would like now to welcome Wei Jingsheng. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Yang appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF WEI JINGSHENG, CHAIRMAN, OVERSEAS 

CHINESE DEMOCRACY COALITION 

Mr. WEI [through interpreter]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

After Xi Jinping took over power, much illegal government behavior that existed in the past is even more widely used now and 

is becoming the norm. I am only going to talk about one example; 

that is, the illegal detention in the name of residential surveillance. 

In early 1994, after I met with Representative Chris Smith and 

then-Senator John Kerry and before my meeting with then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the Chinese police illegally detained me for as long as 18 months. 

According to China’s Criminal Procedure Law, subpoenas cannot 

exceed three times in a row. After I was detained for three days, 

I asked them, either come up with a legitimate arrest certificate or 

release me. 

They said the Procuratorate would not give them the arrest warrant, while their superiors ordered them not to release me, so they 

would use residential surveillance, which does not need the approval of the Procuratorate. Further, they did not have to notify 

the family in accordance with the law, with no time limit. 

I said, this is illegal detention. They replied, the highest authorities in the government had approved this conduct, and they were 

just executing it with no responsibilities. As far as I was not detained in the prisons and detention centers, that would be counted 

as residential surveillance. 

Nineteen months later, when they put me on trial, I requested 

them to count 18 months of residential surveillance as part of my 

sentences. However, the court answered explicitly that because 

there was no legal basis for this period, the 18 months cannot be 

credited into my sentence. 

According to the clear statement in China’s Criminal Procedural, 

that would be called illegal detention, yet that illegal detention was 

a detention that was approved by the highest authorities in the 

Chinese Government. 

14 

This kind of illegal detention is now being widely used as jurisprudence in China. It is not only being used against political dissidents, but also widely used against any Chinese citizens which 

the officials are dissatisfied with. 

Any level of the government can take advantage of this form of 

detention to illegally hold citizens they dislike and then implement 

torture for the deposition they want. This residential surveillance 

forms the legal basis for Xi Jinping to maintain the one-party dictatorship, and then carry out his personal dictatorship. 

On the basis of this illegal residential surveillance, the Chinese 

Communist Party launched the so-called ‘‘double designated system.’’ The purpose is to force illegal detention of certain Communist Party members with restricted personal freedom by the 

Central Commission of the Discipline Inspection of the Chinese 

Communist Party. 

What this illegal detention covers includes the top leadership of 

the Chinese Government and the Communist Party, even the Politburo Standing Committee, which only has seven members. That is 

to say, except for Xi Jinping, all people have the possibility to be 

illegally detained, including American citizens in China. This is a 

downright personal dictatorship. 

I suggest that when President Obama meets with Chairman Xi 

Jinping, he should make restoring the rule of law, abiding by the 

law, abolishing all forms of illegal detention and torture one of the 

main themes of their negotiations, rather than perfunctory generalities of human rights. 

When Xi Jinping visits the U.S. Congress, the lawmakers should 

also apply pressure to Xi Jinping on these issues in order to promote human rights in China as well as to protect hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens in China and their rights and their interests. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you so very much, Mr. Wei. 

I would like to now invite Mr. Shohret Hoshur to provide his testimony. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wei appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF SHOHRET HOSHUR, JOURNALIST REPORTING 

NEWS IN CHINA’S XINJIANG UYGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION 

FOR RADIO FREE ASIA 

Mr. HOSHUR. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to speak at 

this hearing on Xi Jinping’s visit. 

I am going to speak about my situation and my family’s. For the 

sake of expediency, my translator will read my statement in 

English. 

Mr. HOSHUR [through interpreter]. I came to the United States 

in 1999, almost five years after leaving my homeland in China’s far 

western Uyghur region in 1994. The journey that took me away 

from my family did not begin by choice. I left to escape the wrath 

of local Chinese authorities who deemed two of my writings for 

local Uyghur-language newspapers as subversive. 

I was a journalist for Qorghas Radio and Television, a local 

media outlet in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region when I 

decided to write two pieces about Beijing’s harsh oppression of 

Uyghurs. 

15 

The choice I made then upon leaving China, as now, was to 

never give up being a reporter covering the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. To give that up would mean that a remote part 

of the world and its people, the Uyghurs, would lose one of their 

only lifelines to reliable news and information about what is happening in their own neighborhoods and communities. 

When I began working for Radio Free Asia in 2007, it was a 

great opportunity to continue work that is badly needed, but it was 

also an opportunity seized by Chinese authorities as they began to 

harass my family. 

As my reports for RFA began to be heard by Uyghurs listening 

on shortwave radio and reading my stories on the Web, authorities 

wasted little time in making it clear to my family—and to me— 

that they would one day pay a price for my journalism. 

For the next several years, as China ramped up its security 

clampdown in Xinjiang, violence intensified and grew more frequent. But China’s state-controlled media rarely reported on these 

deadly incidents. Radio Free Asia disclosed the majority, often 

through my reports. 

The threats against my family—and, by way of my family, me— 

became more frequent and grave during this period. They culminated last year when all three of my brothers were jailed. My 

younger brother, Tudaxun, was detained in April before being tried 

in court and sentences to five years in prison. He was charged with 

endangering state security. 

My two other brothers, Rexim and Shawket, talked with me 

about Tudaxun’s situation on the phone in June. I tried to comfort 

them when they grew understandably emotional. I told them that 

in time the situation might improve. 

The next month, in July, a Chinese daily newspaper, the Global 

Times, ran a story attacking Radio Free Asia for its coverage of violence in Xinjiang. Though I wasn’t named, the article cited my 

June phone call with my brothers, which had been intercepted by 

state surveillance. 

In August 2014, local authorities also detained Rexim and 

Shawket. Their families have not seen them since. They were later 

charged with leaking state secrets—I believe, largely in connection 

with that phone call with me in June. 

They were also charged with endangering state security. When 

it became clear that the authorities were not going to release them, 

I reached out with the help of RFA to the Committee to Protect 

Journalists, which issued a press release about my brothers’ situation in January 2015. 

The case received wide attention in global media and interest 

here from the U.S. Government. Their families and my sister were 

informed of their cases being reopened by authorities—hopeful 

news in China, where a prosecutorial office almost never calls for 

the reopening of a case submitted by police. 

But our hopes soon dimmed when it became obvious, despite this 

development, that my brothers were to remain behind bars. Eventually, after the postponing of several court dates that came after 

inquiries from the U.S. Department of State to Chinese officials in 

the embassy here in Washington and overseas in Beijing, their sepVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
16 

arate trials were finally held this past August at the Urumqi Intermediate Court. 

They now await their verdicts, which the judge told their lawyers 

would be issued by the Chinese Political and Law Council, 

Zhengfawei. These could come in two months, putting them after 

President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington. 

Today I am here to ask for officials in the U.S. Government—my 

government—and the administration to raise this case with President Xi next week. My family only wants to be left alone, free from 

persecution by local authorities. They want to live their lives as 

citizens of a country that respects their wish to be husbands and 

fathers looking after their families. 

I know my case is not unique. Many of my colleagues at Radio 

Free Asia with relatives in China also have faced retribution and 

harassment. But I hope my testimony today helps to ensure that 

the United States will continue stand up for people like me who 

came to this country in hope of having the freedom and rights we 

did not have in our homelands. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very, very much. 

We will now go to Mr. Gutmann. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hoshur appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF ETHAN GUTMANN, CHINA ANALYST AND AUTHOR OF ‘‘THE SLAUGHTER: MASS KILLINGS, ORGAN HARVESTING, AND CHINA’S SECRET SOLUTION TO ITS DISSIDENT PROBLEM’’ 

Mr. GUTMANN. Thank you for inviting me to participate in this 

profoundly important hearing. 

In order to piece together the story of how mass organ harvesting 

of prisoners of conscience evolved in China, I spoke with medical 

professionals, Chinese law enforcement, and over 100 refugees. My 

interviews began in 2006 and my book, ‘‘The Slaughter,’’ was published last year. 

Now, I was not the first to examine this issue in depth. That distinction belongs to David Kilgour and David Matas, the authors of 

the seminal ‘‘Bloody Harvest’’ report of 2006. 

Nor will I be the last. The World Organization To Investigate the 

Persecution of Falun Gong, a group of Chinese investigators scattered throughout the world, have just completed their own study. 

Based on our collective evidence, here is a brief timeline of what 

we know. 

In 1994, the first live organ harvest of death-row prisoners was 

performed on the execution grounds of Xinjiang, in northwest 

China. In 1997, following the Ghulja massacre, the first political 

prisoners, Uyghur activists, were harvested on behalf of high-ranking Chinese Communist Party cadres. 

In 1999, Chinese State Security launched its largest action of 

scale since the Cultural Revolution: the eradication of Falun Gong. 

In 2000, hospitals across China began ramping up their facilities 

to what would become an unprecedented explosion in China’s 

transplant activity. And by the end of that year, well over 1 million 

Falun Gong practitioners were incarcerated in labor camps, detention centers, psychiatric facilities, and ‘‘black jails.’’ 

17 

By 2001, Chinese military hospitals were unambiguously targeting select Falun Gong prisoners for organ harvesting. 

By 2003, the first Tibetans were being targeted as well. By the 

end of 2005, China’s transplant apparatus had increased so dramatically that a tissue-matched organ could be located within two 

weeks for any foreign organ tourist with cash on hand. 

While the execution of death-row prisoners, hardened criminals, 

supplied some of the organs, the majority were extracted from 

Falun Gong practitioners, and this was a fact that was not even 

being kept all that secret from the prison population, visiting foreign surgeons, or potential customers. Kilgour and Matas estimate 

41,500 transplants were sourced from Falun Gong between 2000 to 

2005. I estimate 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were murdered 

for their organs from 2000 to 2008. The World Organization To Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong believes the numbers are 

more likely in the hundreds of thousands. 

In early 2006, the Epoch Times revealed the first allegations of 

the organ harvesting of Falun Gong and was following by the 

Kilgour-Matas report. 

By 2008, many analysts, and I was among them, assumed that 

the Chinese state would stop harvesting prisoners of conscience for 

fear of international condemnation during the Beijing Olympics. 

Yet the physical examination of Falun Gong prisoners for their retail organs actually showed a slight uptick. 

In 2012, Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai’s right-hand man, attempted to defect at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu. Two weeks later, the World 

Organization To Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong revealed that Wang had personally received a prestigious award for 

overseeing thousands of organ extractions and transplants. Fatally 

exposed, Chinese medical authorities declared to the Western press 

that they would cease organ harvesting of death-row prisoners over 

the next five years. Yet no mention was made of prisoners of conscience, and third-party verification was rejected. 

It is during this period from 2012 to the present day, even as the 

Chinese medical authorities spoke publicly of shortages due to relying on voluntary organ donation, that a very strange anomaly occurs. While China’s hospitals have maintained strict Internet silence on their transplant activities since 2006, the hiring of transplant teams at many of the most notorious hospitals for harvesting 

prisoners of conscience is actually on the increase. In a handful of 

hospitals—for example, Beijing 309 Military Hospital—it is practically exponential. 

Witness accounts shed some light on this mystery. One spoke to 

me about 500 Falun Gong prisoners having been examined for 

their organs in a single day—the largest cattle call that I know of. 

A Western doctor was recently assured by a Chinese military hospital surgeon that prisoners are still being slaughtered for their organs. And Falun Gong practitioners across China’s provinces have 

described police forcibly administering blood tests and DNA cheek 

swabs—not in prison, not in a detention center, but in their homes. 

I cannot supply a death count for House Christians, Uyghurs, 

and Tibetans, but if I had to make an estimate on Falun Gong, I 

would double my previous numbers. I am sure the World OrganizaVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
18 

tion to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong would go much 

further. Either way, two points are clear: 

The official number of Chinese transplants per year, 10,000, is 

a fiction; the real number is likely three times that. And the serious public declarations by the Chinese medical establishment of a 

new ethical environment for transplantation is simply a privacy 

shield to murder prisoners of conscience. 

What can we do? We are not the moral arbitrators of this tragedy, but neither is the World Health Organization or the Transplantation Society. The moral authority belongs to families across 

China who have lost loved ones. Until we can hear their voices, we 

need at a minimum to follow our convictions. 

I am not a lawyer, but in my layman’s understanding, medical 

privacy ends when there is a gunshot involved. Why then do we adhere to strict medical privacy when there is an organ sourced in 

China? Why can’t we even make a proper estimate of how many 

Americans received transplants in China? Why do we have to make 

guesses based on a humorous, feel-good account like ‘‘Larry’s Kidney? ’’ 

This is an obscenity. For an American to go to China for an 

organ in 2015 is to participate in an ongoing crime against humanity. So I ask you to remove our privacy shield. And until the Chinese state offers the full and comprehensive accounting that the 

world demands, I ask you to follow the example of two very small 

but brave countries—Israel and, now just recently, Taiwan—and 

ban organ tourism to China. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gutmann appears in the appendix.] 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you very much. 

I would like to now yield to Commissioner Cotton for any questions he might have. 

Senator COTTON. Thank you all for your very powerful testimony. 

I would like to start by exploring the trajectory of state-sponsored 

human rights abuses under Xi Jinping and my office’s conversations with Freedom House. They have indicated that under Xi, China’s oppression has worsened across 13 of 17 categories. 

It sounds as if many, if not all of you, would agree. Some of you 

have said it is as bad as it has been in 20 to 26 years. I would like 

to ask why. Why do you think China’s human rights record has deteriorated so badly under Xi’s regime? 

And we can just start with Dr. Teng and maybe move down the 

panel. 

Mr. TENG. Briefly, two points. First, Xi Jinping is different from 

other Party leaders. He never accepted the Western ideas of human 

rights or democracy. And he is a princeling and he wants to keep 

the one-party rule. 

Second, what Xi and the Communist Party is facing is the comprehensive crisis, the political crisis within the Party, the social crisis, the conflicts between the people and the local governments, and 

the environmental crisis and the growing civil society. 

So he is so nervous about the possible color revolution, and he 

must feel that if he does not issue the severe crackdown on the 

human rights movement or the civil society, he may lose control 

and the Communist Party may lose power. 

19 

Thank you. 

Senator COTTON. Mr. Wei? 

Mr. WEI. I think that the most important reason is because the 

30-year period of reform led by Deng and followed by Jiang Zemin 

and Hu Jintao has reached an end. And China is right now in a 

crisis, both in politics and the economy. 

When Xi came into power, he faced a choice, whether he should 

continue the road and heading to the road of the former Soviet 

Union and Taiwan, evolving China into a democracy, or returning 

back to the era of Mao. It seems like he chose the road to Mao. 

So the two years’ rule by Xi Jinping can best be characterized as 

a Mao-style ruling of China. But obviously there is resistance from 

all directions. But one thing is sure; he is facing another choice. 

The moment for President Obama to put some pressure on Xi 

Jinping could lead to some surprise. 

Senator COTTON. Mr. Yang? 

Mr. YANG. We all know Xi Jinping is a second generation of their 

revolutionary—Communist and revolutionaries. And he came into 

power with a very strong sense, much stronger sense than his 

predecessors, that he must do everything possible to keep the Red 

Empire. 

Because coming into power made the atmosphere in which everybody thought he would be the last one, last emperor. So he tried 

to do everything against the wave. 

And two things can topple the regime. One, corruption, which is 

internal. The other is democratization. So once he came into power, 

he actually did two things inside China. One, anti-corruption, but 

it is selective. Mainly it is for consolidating his power, cleansing his 

competitor, power competitor in the power struggle. 

And as he is doing this, he is really, really worried that people 

will join in. Because people have great hatred against those corrupt 

officials. And of course, he understands opening up freedom of 

speech, of press and let people join in would be the best way to 

curb corruption in the power, but he would not do it, because he 

is very careful not to let the people’s power grow, which can also 

topple the regime. 

So another reason, I think, ever since Xi Jinping became the 

ruler of China, the human rights record has been deteriorating. It 

is the Western democracies; we have to find some wrong policies 

toward China. 

Ever since Obama became president, he stopped the old practice 

which each of his predecessors had done, ever since the Tiananmen 

Massacre. That is release the prisoners in whatever meeting with 

China’s leaders and press China to release these prisoners. I just 

gave you one example. He has stopped this practice. 

Let us give China a very clear signal that he would not care so 

much as others about human rights situation in China. And on her 

first trip to China as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said clearly, publicly, openly that the human rights issue cannot interfere 

with other issues, you know, the United States will have cooperation with China. 

So this message has been the wrong message. The Chinese leaders now understand better than they used to in the 1990s about 

20 

how the game is being played in this country. If you do not match 

your words with your deeds, they know how to play with you. 

So they know you are sincere, so they can do whatever they do. 

I think largely the China human rights record is so bad, largely because of an appeasement policy from Western countries like the 

United States. 

Thank you. 

Senator COTTON. Thank you. 

I’d like to follow up that question with one other question—Mr. 

Wei alluded to this—is the growing economic crisis in China, particularly over the last three months as the Chinese Government 

has made extraordinary efforts to intervene in their marketplaces, 

to apparent failure time and time again. 

Unlike our country, where an economic crisis may turn a person 

or a party out of office, in China, given their self-proclaimed ability 

to manage the economy, this could lead to a political crisis that 

questions the legitimacy of the entire regime. 

I would like to hear your perspectives on what this economic and 

perhaps political crisis could mean for the coming future of the 

human rights condition in China. 

Mr. XIAO. I am interested that you raised this question with the 

concept of legitimacy, because this is indeed a rising concern in the 

Chinese society, both on public opinion and apparently among the 

Chinese leadership, that I quote recent—it was the first time Xi 

Jinping, the right-hand man, Wang Qishan, also Standing Committee member, in the public speech, first time for the Chinese 

Communist leaders mentioned the word legitimacy. 

He self-volunteered to answer the question, the legitimacy of Chinese Communist Party rule in China, and he simply said, because 

in his historical choice of people. 

That, obviously, did not answer the question, because as Internet 

and public opinion emerges, simply say well, even we have chosen 

you, but that was 60 years ago. Have we given any other chances 

to choose again? Other countries choose every four years, maybe, 

and we never had another chance. 

This legitimacy question is relating to the bankruptcy of the ideological control of the Communist Party, and that can be watched 

clearly on the Internet. There is more and more—despite all the 

censorship and the propaganda, there are more and more people 

aware that the fundamental questions of who the government represents, of what a taxpayer’s rights are, and what is rule of law 

and an integral system of freedom of expression. And these even— 

linking to the question of legitimacy of Communist Party rule. 

So when the ideological control is weakened and then there is 

economic downturn, or slowdown, and then that could lead the political crisis. 

But I want to add one more thing, which is how the Party will 

address this question of legitimacy if the economic growth is not 

strong enough to support it. The answer is simple, but it could be 

terrifying, which is extreme nationalism. 

And history has told us—that it is not hard to imagine that in 

order to deflect a crisis of legitimacy particularly and the ruler, 

particular dictators will use the nationalism to indicate the exVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
21 

treme—and even creating crisis and external issues and conflict in 

order to consolidate the internal support and a repression. 

Mr. YANG. Just to follow up Xiao Qiang’s comment—sorry, Mr. 

Wei—I agree with him. So as China—CCP’s rule in China has had 

two sources of illegitimacy. One, fast economic growth, which is 

now in question. The other one is nationalism. 

When China’s economy now has taken a downturn, the regime 

automatically will choose to mobilize more nationalism, the sentiment among the ordinary people. So this is the time they need an 

external enemy most. 

In other words, it is a critical moment for the United States to 

come up with the right foreign policy toward China. It is a critical 

moment. 

Mr. WEI. Mr. Xi is facing a major problem in economy, especially 

after the crash of the stock market which resulted in a lot of people’s dissatisfaction. 

On the other field of his anti-corruption campaign, he is doing 

too much. His personal initiative is creating a lot of backlashes 

from the class of high-ranking officials, thus a political crisis. 

So he is facing a choice. One choice is to still push ahead on the 

hardline strategy which will soon bring him much more problems 

and a collapse is possible. 

The other possibility for him to choose is to yield to the people, 

to the bureaucracy, and to foreign powers so that he can peacefully 

go on. 

It seems to be the right moment for the United States to put on 

some pressure to demand some human rights improvement. Actually, I would guess he might be thinking to do so, but he needs 

some reasonable excuse. 

Obviously, in his trip to the United States he will ask cooperation from the United States in the economic field, then the United 

States could make its own demand on him. That is not a bad thing 

for the United States either. 

So if we put some effort into pushing him to human rights improvement, the result can be beneficial to both sides. 

Senator COTTON. Thank you all for your insightful answers and 

for your compelling testimony, and thank you most importantly for 

the bravery of your advocacy for the rights of all men and women 

and children living in China. 

Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you. 

And before I go to my questions, I want to thank Senator Cotton 

for being here and most importantly for his service. He served in 

both Afghanistan as a combat veteran and Iraq, five years in active 

duty, received the Bronze Star. He graduated from Harvard University Law School, and first served in the House for a brief stint 

and then jumped over to the big house in the U.S. Senate. And we 

are just delighted as a Commission to have his expertise and incisiveness on this Commission. So thank you, Senator. We really appreciate it. 

I would like to go to some questions now, if I could, beginning 

first, Dr. Yang. You mentioned, and I think very appropriately, 

that 26 years ago you strongly admonished Congress, the PresiVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
22 

dent, to link human rights with MFN and trade and to make it 

very clear and unambiguous to Beijing. 

I traveled soon after Tiananmen Square, got into Beijing Prison 

Number One, where concentration camp-looking incarcerated individuals, 40 of them from Tiananmen Square, were being held, and 

was told that they are all eating all that they could possibly want. 

It was one big Potemkin village. And then a couple of years later, 

I met with Wei Jingsheng when he was let out briefly, but then 

was rearrested. 

We did not listen. As you point out, it fell on deaf ears. First with 

Bush One and then, I think infamously, with Bill Clinton. Bill 

Clinton seemed to get it. He linked most-favored-nation status with 

human rights and then gave it a year. We had the votes, we believe, in the House and Senate to strip MFN from the People’s Republic of China, but primarily because of Tiananmen Square and 

the ongoing crackdown. And then the President first linked and 

then delinked. 

And I think, as you pointed out, they look at our words, but they 

especially look at our actions. And when they are inconsistent, 

when they are compromised, when they are hypocritical, claiming 

human rights and then saying, on a Friday afternoon, which is 

when he delinked it, May 26, 1994, everybody in this building, almost like today—at the end of the day on a Friday, people do tend 

to head back to their home districts—he delinked. 

And the news cycle was over. I did a press conference, C–SPAN 

carried it and said, ‘‘We have chosen profits over human rights. It 

is to the detriment of every Chinese man, woman, and child, but 

also to ourselves.’’ 

Every area of human rights will probably—and they have, as I 

said—and I was not the only one; you and others said it—will deteriorate, including the one-child-per-couple policy, religious freedom, 

and all the others. 

And yet today you are suggesting that there might be an opportunity; it is not too late. And I would ask you, if you would, to 

elaborate on that a bit. 

You know, we are looking at Xi Jinping as someone who admires 

the excesses of Mao Zedong and seeks to emulate him in some way. 

That is frightening in the extreme, for the Chinese people who suffer so horribly under his cruel boot. 

Let me also ask a few other questions and then I’ll yield for answers, if I could. 

The big issue of the summit, the reason why this hearing is 

being held today. We are not in session Monday or Tuesday. 

Wednesday the Pope will be coming in, and Xi—we have a great 

man coming in and then a man who has committed atrocities 

against his own people by the name of Xi Jinping. 

I would hope, and I would make the appeal, as did the Washington Post, that at Lafayette Park, those who gather in peaceful 

protest be given that opportunity to express themselves. We, as a 

Commission, join you in asking the White House. 

I hope they don’t hide behind a Secret Service analysis that 

might have a political aspect to it, make it not happen because Xi 

won’t like it. I’ve been at the White House for protests against others who have been there. Why not allow this? Because certainly LaVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
23 

fayette Park is sufficiently far enough away to—there is a large 

buffer zone. 

But that presence, that witness for human rights and democracy 

needs to be there. And I would appeal to the President, and we are 

appealing to the President to intervene and make sure that happens. 

I would point out, and I am worried, Wei Jingsheng, in his statement, talked about, and I thought he phrased it so well, that rather than the perfunctory generalities of human rights, when he 

meets with the President and Xi Jinping, it ought to be all about 

restoring the rule of law, abiding by the law, abolishing all forms 

of illegal detention and torture as main themes of their negotiations. 

Well, we could hope, but I am not holding my breath. And I 

think that is tragic; that the President of the United States, who 

has won the Nobel Peace Prize, does not, in a bold but civil tone, 

promote the agenda of human rights with Xi Jinping. 

And publicly, the fact that Liu Xiaobo remains incarcerated, his 

wife suffering in the way that she is, and thousands and thousands 

of other political and democracy activists and religious prisoners, is 

an atrocity. A Nobel Peace Prize winner at the White House, 

Obama should at least raise the cases of Liu Xiaobo and many others. 

I would remind my colleagues and our witnesses—and this is a 

revelation into priorities—we had a hearing some years ago that 

we called the ‘‘Five Daughters.’’ We had the five daughters—you all 

might remember it. It was a great hearing. Five of the daughters 

of dissidents, including Gao Zhisheng testified. And at the end of 

their testimony, they asked the President, ‘‘we would like to meet 

with you to talk about our dads.’’ 

And one of the girls, young women, said, ‘‘He is the father of two 

girls, two young daughters whom he loves dearly—he will get it. 

He will understand it.’’ 

We tried for months to get a meeting with the President of the 

United States—not with me; I will never get that, and that is the 

way it goes—but for these five daughters. Fifteen minutes, and we 

got word back that he did not have the time. 

If you say you do not have the time for something, you have not 

stated a fact; you have stated a priority. And the priority was not 

to meet with these five extraordinary young women. 

So we make that appeal again to meet with the five daughters, 

to meet with a group of dissidents, the people at this table, all of 

you, eyeball to eyeball with the President to talk about what you 

know and have such profound information concerning the human 

rights situation, whether it be among the Uyghurs, the Falun 

Gong, all the different aspects that you have brought to this table 

today. So that is a missed opportunity. 

Let me just ask Mr. Xiao, we had hearings about a decade ago, 

a little less than a decade ago, on Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and 

Yahoo!—on their complicity in censorship and surveillance. You remember it quite well. You helped us with that back then. 

And I swore all of them in. We asked them questions and they 

said they were just following Chinese law as they were surveilling 

the good people of China as they went on the Internet. 

24 

We know that Google is returning to China, and it has agreed 

to allow censorship. They are right back into enabling a dictatorship. And they also have to keep their user information in China 

which allows, as we saw with Yahoo! when they were there, in Shi 

Tao the ability to round up the dissidents just by going to the databases. 

I thought Yahoo!, which has left, did the right thing in Vietnam 

when they put those servers, those vaults of information, outside 

the reach of the Vietnamese Government, which also does that 

kind of misuse of names and Internet and the like. 

So if you can speak to that issue of what is happening. We know 

Baidu is doing a lot and others that have probably crowded out the 

Googles of this world, but they are going back now, Google, Google 

Play, and that is very disturbing, in my opinion. 

And I am worried about Facebook. When they all start, for the 

sake of making money, conforming to these aggressive, enhanced 

rules of surveillance, I think they are worse now than they were 

7, 8, 9, 10 years ago. I think that is certain. 

That is some opening questions. I do have a few more, and so if 

you could begin with those. 

Mr. YANG. Thank you for your question. I remember the day 

President Clinton reversed the policy dealing with human rights, 

the MFN vis-a`-vis human rights. That was the beginning of what 

I call the year of engagement without moral and strategic clarity. 

And I describe it as compartmentalization of U.S. policy toward 

China, one opposing another, and people automatically naturally 

will choose not to care for human rights because it is difficult. The 

cause—is difficult. 

So the fact is that everybody tries not to touch this issue when 

they have a meeting with Chinese leaders or engage with China. 

That is how the disaster began. 

I think it is never too late to correct this mistake. And, now I 

think it is time to end the year of engagement with China without 

moral and strategic clarity and begin the year of engagement with 

moral and strategic clarity. 

First off, we must have integration of a policy throughout our 

dealings with China. Everything has to come together. 

Engagement with China, whoever does it, whichever government 

organization or department, must take care of human rights. So 

this is the first thing we must call for. 

And I remember Senator Rubio issued a statement on the 26th 

anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. He said clearly that he 

supports integration of U.S. policy toward China; you cannot pit 

human rights against other policy issues. I fully agree with that. 

In my opening remarks, I called for a China Democracy Act 

which is a law that clearly states it is in this country’s interest to 

advance human rights and democracy in China. 

China’s government has tried very hard to distract people like 

us, the China Democracy Movement, with a claim of American policy providing secret assistance to us. I wish that were the case, but 

there is no such thing. 

So why such a thing is important? Because it usually takes four 

things to be present at the same time for a transition to take place 

in an autocratic society. 

25 

One is a robust, generous discontent with the regime, which is 

now lacking in China, according to the report today. You can see 

it very clearly. 

Another is cracks in the top leadership, which is going to happen. 

It is happening, so I do not want to talk about it now. 

The third is a viable democracy movement, an opposition movement, which we try very hard to build up. And if U.S. and other 

strong democracies have such a policy to help us build a viable democracy movement, that is vitally important. 

The fourth thing is international recognition of the moment of 

transition. In 26 years, we have the first three, but not the international recognition. The moment has come, so we lost the opportunity. So I think it is very important. 

The Obama administration has sent too many wrong messages 

to the dictator in China. This time, again, it is very alarming. And 

I am one of the organizers of the 25th rally in Lafayette Park. In 

two meetings with the Park Service, they could not confirm with 

us whether we will be able to use the park to have our rally. 

And I have organized in past years many, many rallies in that 

very place. There was no restriction whatsoever. But this time it 

is different. I do not know how long we have to wait to get a confirmation either way. 

But this is the wrong message again. It is not a small matter. 

It is a terrible message, and that means that the Obama administration can even do the things like restricting the freedom of expression in this country. That is a wrong message. 

So it is unacceptable, actually, if Xi Jinping returns to China 

without having received a clear message from President Obama or 

from Congress or from the people of this country that he will not 

have the full trust of this government, of the people of United 

States, if he continues to mistreat his own people. 

Thank you. 

Mr. XIAO. I will respond to your second question. But actually, 

I also want to say a few things about your first question, because— 

and also Senator Cotton before, in his eloquent opening speech, 

also mentioned those points. I thought it was excellent. 

The point is that President Obama himself, he is a father of 

daughters and he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He is a constitutional lawyer, and he also is a Christian and—et cetera. 

If anyone, it should be him to feel more empathetic and feel the 

gross violations under the Xi Jinping administration, and with all 

these concrete examples right in front of him. 

So I really hope that personal message can be driven to him and 

it can be reflected in his personal meeting at Xi Jinping’s state 

visit. 

The second point is about the technology companies, the U.S. 

technology companies—Google and Yahoo! and Microsoft—Google 

in particular, because it generates lots of attention, that when they 

withdraw from China and now are thinking about returning to the 

Chinese market. 

I do believe it is out of the reason for making money as a company that is a commercial decision because, as I mentioned in my 

testimony, Chinese Internet users have been growing so large for 

26 

commercial companies they are hard to ignore that market potential. 

However, the particular information and communication technologies for companies like Google is not just a commercial technology; it has implications in human rights and freedom of expression. And/or the other way, that it can enable the dictators, the repressive regimes, to violate further the human rights of their own 

people. Therefore, for those technology companies, there is a lot 

more at stake for human rights. 

I was, as Congressman Smith mentioned at the hearing when 

those executives of companies were making decisions—both in 

China and relating to human rights. And I remember the Congressman’s words at that time, asking them powerful questions, 

thinking about the human dignity, the human rights in relation to 

its moneymaking. I remember how uncomfortable those executives 

were in their seats, sitting right next to me. 

Yes, this has been 10 years or so, and history will continue. It 

is the CEO of Google himself last year who wrote an article saying 

the censorship, Internet censorship, eventually will be obsolete. 

And actually, he did not say eventually; he said in 10 years. Because he believed technology will surpass that. 

Coming from the CEO of Google, I believe he said that with some 

kind of confidence and understanding of—the technology turns. 

However, they are returning to China, becoming part of the 

group of American leading-technology companies dealing with the 

Chinese regime, also telling us that they are looking at the shortterm benefit, commercial benefit, much over the longer obligations 

and trend. 

So let me finish in this way. Maybe the business concerns their 

bottom line, but it is up to the government, it is up to the people, 

to hold the basic moral principle of human dignity and freedom. 

The American Congress passing the Internet Freedom Act and 

those kinds of laws and being an instrument can help us to protect 

the human rights through those technology transfers and exchanges and trade and curb the potential damage of the human 

rights violation, if those American companies engage inside of 

China. 

So I believe that kind of action from the government, from the 

Congress, is absolutely essential and critical. 

Chairman SMITH. As you know, we have introduced the Global 

Online Freedom Act, but it has run into an enormous amount of 

opposition. But we will continue fighting for it, and I thank you for 

that. 

I would like to ask Mr. Hoshur, if I could, has the situation 

changed for the Uyghurs in China since Xi Jinping came to power, 

and if so, how? 

Mr. HOSHUR. Thank you for this good question. I was actually 

thinking about it myself and was going to speak about the situation of Uyghurs. 

Since Xi Jinping came to power, the situation in the region has 

been worsening with the number of violent events taking place. 

Each time with the chance of power in China, Uyghur people are 

very hopeful for positive changes. But unfortunately, the Uyghurs 

27 

in the region, they have not seen any positive changes. Instead, 

they see the very harsh crackdowns on the activities. 

In particular, they were talking about corruption, but the corruption is not the main concern for Uyghur people. The main concern 

is the hard oppression of the people. 

What is the other very important issue? It is the execution of 

prisoners and the sentencing of political prisoners and executing 

the people, the protesters, extrajudicial killings. 

Even with the example of my brothers being currently held, and 

this is all reflecting Xi Jinping’s policies and harshness. 

Chairman SMITH. I would like to ask Mr. Gutmann, do you think 

the U.S. Government reporting on the issue of organ harvesting 

has been sufficient? Have you found receptivity to your research at 

the U.S. Department of State? And what would be your recommendations to the U.S. Government and Congress on how to 

combat the problem of organ tourism? 

Mr. GUTMANN. The first thing I would like to see is that the Department of State tell us exactly what Wang LiJun said during the 

24 hours he was in the Chengdu consulate. I think everybody 

knows that something went on, and that he talked about organ 

harvesting. There cannot be any real question of this. But we don’t 

really know what was said. 

Now, my theory—and I think it is an operating theory throughout Washington, really—is that he basically said yes, we have been 

doing this for some time. That he basically made some sort of confession. If that is not true, the State Department should tell us so. 

This is really important information. This is critical. 

The rest of that question I see as just typical bureaucratic inertia 

in Washington. And I understand that. 

If I can take the question to the current situation, following on 

what Wei Jingsheng was saying about how this is the time, with 

the Chinese economy on the ropes, this is the time to push on 

human rights. I have mixed feelings about this. 

One of the interesting things about being an outsider is that I 

can observe what is going on within the Falun Gong community 

and see the debates that go on in that community. 

There are two views right now about Xi Jinping and his leadership. One is the hope-springs-eternal side: Xi has possibilities, Bo 

Xilai is in jail, Zhou Yongkang is gone, Jiang Zemin is subject to 

lawsuits, and the whole ‘‘Dead Hand’’ faction is under attack. And 

they see all kinds of possibilities in this, and the feeling is that if 

the U.S. Government would just push, then we could get some answers. 

There is another view, which I think is more aligned with this 

report that I was showing you: Xi is expanding organ harvesting, 

and the facts on the ground seem to bear that out. 

Now there is also a synthesis view which I subscribe to: It is not 

the crime; it is the coverup. That is always the problem, yes? And 

we do have a coverup going on, and that can be more lethal. Think 

about it in extreme terms—when concentration camps were about 

to be overrun by Allied soldiers, the Nazis would kill prisoners and 

burn the place down. So for people in the Laogai System, this is 

actually a very dangerous time. 

28 

Obviously that includes Uyghurs. We have seen the level of enforced disappearances of the Uyghur community go up. It is another exponential curve. 

Yet my view is ultimately a little different than any of these 

views. It is a very pessimistic view. This is a structural problem 

within the Chinese Communist Party. They will keep repeating 

these kinds of atrocities, and it is not the crime, but the coverup, 

and so it does not matter really who is in power, because they are 

always dealing with the last coverup. So it does not matter if Xi 

would like to end the persecution of the Falun Gong and Uyghurs 

and Tibetans. He cannot, because there are too many skeletons in 

the closet. 

And in that case, if that is true, then maybe the answer for 

Washington is, perhaps the best we can do is to at least limit our 

own moral decay in these areas. 

Take the Google situation—I have always argued that Google 

should not be in China. Google should be out of China. 

Cisco should have been completely banned from China. They 

should have been held to terms for what they did: surveillance, and 

they actually were assisting with a database that was used to arrest Falun Gong practitioners. 

But the same is true here, in the medical field. We are allowing 

this to just go on. We are allowing doctors—there are doctors in the 

transplantation society who are considering starting joint ventures 

in China. Yet this is a line the West cannot cross. That is my view. 

At least we can get to that. We cannot agree on everything when 

it comes to China, not in Washington, but we can agree on some 

basic moral principles. And these are basic moral principles. We 

sense that we are crossing a line. We know we are involved in 

some terrible way with the kinds of atrocities that have been described here today. 

Chairman SMITH. If I could ask Dr. Teng, you laid out the fact 

that many of those who have been incarcerated are your friends. 

You said that Xi Jinping will not tolerate any challenge to the oneparty rule. he is living in the 1960s, and the purge of the rights 

activists is awful, but it is getting worse. 

Has the U.S. Government really weighed in on this, from the 

State Department, U.S. Ambassador in Beijing, the Assistant Secretary for Asian Affairs and, of course, the President and Vice 

President? Have they spoken out in a way that has been heard by 

Beijing that this matters to us? 

I have always believed that human rights defenders, if they are 

eviscerated by a dictatorship, where would the people go then? 

There are religious people who fill in that gap and that role, but 

defenders are using the rule of law to the best of their ability. 

I remember in the Soviet Union, the Helsinki Final Act activists 

were raising international law, particularly the Helsinki Final Act, 

from Vaclav Havel, and I was in Czechoslovakia and met with people who were part of Charter 77—they had a lot more lawyers. 

Some were clergy, the priests; some were lawyers. 

I was even in a prison camp, Beijing Prison Camp 35. And there 

was a man named Mikhail Koznikov who was a Helsinki human 

rights lawyer. And the Soviet officials did not know how to deal 

with him. He was citing chapter and verse. 

29 

And so human rights defenders are really a first, second, and 

third line of defense. And when they are being purged systematically, there has to be an absolute, robust counter-push on the part 

of democracies, including and especially the United States. 

Are we doing that, as a country? Is Obama doing it? State Department? 

Mr. TENG. Thank you. I know many international human rights 

organizations and the media have a lot of reports on the crackdown 

on rights lawyers and American State Department and—Canada 

and many other countries have also issued some statements on 

this. 

And we really appreciate it, and it is good even though we have 

not seen any direct consequence of this statement of attitude. 

So I want to say first what the international community should 

do. It is not to say something, but do something up to that, do 

something directly and indirectly to give pressure to the Chinese 

Government to make sure these political prisoners are not tortured, 

make sure the Chinese abide by its own laws and regulations. 

And second, what Xi Jinping and the Communist Party is doing 

not only harms Chinese people, but is harming the free world, 

harming the United States. 

For example, Yahoo!, Cisco, Google, what they have been doing 

may be violating the freedom of expression. In California and other 

areas, Chinese dissidents were attacked by Chinese Governmenthired hooligans. 

The Confucian Institutes and the Federations of Chinese Scholars and Students have done a lot to influence academic freedom 

negatively, and so many other things that the Communist Party 

tried their best to sell its value to the world. 

So the United States really should do something to protect its 

own freedom, and that is Obama and the Congress should not keep 

silent when meeting Xi Jinping. 

Chairman SMITH. Anyone who would like to answer, if there is. 

Do you perceive a link? 

First of all, we invited you here because you are world-renowned, 

world-class human rights activists, people who have, by your work, 

by your study, by your academic endeavors have made a huge difference. So when you speak, this Commission and, by extension, 

the Congress, hears you. 

Is there a link between human rights abuse, the deteriorating 

situation with regard to democracy, the crackdown on the human 

rights defenders and the growing animosity of China toward its 

neighbors, including the United States, but especially Japan and 

other countries that are in proximity to it? 

The work or the expansionism that we see going on in the South 

China Sea, the linkages with North Korea, especially with Iran, 

which is on a tear to get a nuclear weapon and under President 

Obama’s agreement I think it is inevitable that they will get a nuclear weapon. It is a matter of when—and not if. It was not a wellhoned—this is not the discussion for here and now; we have had 

numerous hearings on that. 

But they are in league with rogue nations everywhere, and 

teaching a bad governance model, but especially in the region, the 

threat of war by either miscalculation or by design. Your thoughts 

30 

on that as human rights continually race to the bottom, like I said 

at the beginning, with North Korea. 

And if you would add to your answers, it is outrageous that Xi 

Jinping will be at the United Nations on September 27 speaking 

about gender quality and equal rights for women when, in China, 

the Chinese women and girls are discriminated against like no 

other group of people in the world. 

I have been working and combating the one-child-per-couple policy since I first learned about it in my second term in 1983 and offered numerous amendments to defund those organizations that 

aid and abet these atrocities against women. 

This is the 55th hearing that I have chaired on human rights 

abuse in China. We have had exclusive hearings just focused on 

the one-child-per-couple policy, we heard stories from women who 

were forcibly aborted. 

As you all know, China today has more suicides of women than 

any other country in the world, and the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, in Beijing estimates 600 women per day—per day, 

not week or month—per day, commit suicide. 

Well, when a member of the People’s Congress was here visiting, 

I raised those issues with her and she went right into denial mode 

and ended the meeting. It was a meeting of the Foreign Affairs 

Committee, of which I am a member, and said, we cannot prove 

this. So I went and got the documentation and put it in her hands, 

and that was the end of that meeting. Her name is Fu. And she 

was very, very upset. I said, you are waging war against your own 

women. 

Now, the consequences from a human rights’ point of view, from 

the breakup of the family and the military consequences of having 

more men—and who knows what the number is, tens of millions 

of more men than women—40 to 50 million men will never marry 

between now and 2020 because of the extermination of the girl 

child while in the womb through a course of population control and 

abortion. 

You are only allowed one. There is a boy preference, and all of 

you know that. 

But I think our Pentagon, I think our State Department, misses 

by a mile the implications for China remaining not at war and not 

in a dire strait because of the demographic nightmare that they are 

experiencing. 

One last point, and you might want to comment on this. I am the 

prime sponsor of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Every year 

a TIP [Trafficking in Persons] Report comes out. We have minimum standards of government complicity. 

The administration this year, again in a bogus way, gave a higher grade—they failed to recognize the explosion of sex trafficking 

in China, much of it attributable to the missing daughters of China 

and men who cannot find wives, and this disparity. And it is only 

going to get worse as that disparity continues. 

And yet Xi Jinping in a week will be at the United Nations talking about equal rights for women when he ought to be at The 

Hague being held for crimes against humanity and crimes against 

women for what he has done and continues to do to his own 

women. 

31 

I do not know if Obama will mention it. I am not even sure he 

has ever mentioned it, and that is a missed opportunity. 

So if you would touch on some of these issues, if you would, as 

we conclude the hearing. But I think Wei Jingsheng, when I first 

met with him, he talked about the security issues and how we so 

misunderstand the intentions of the dictatorship—not the Chinese 

people, but the dictatorship and the animosities that have festered 

for years that go back to the Opium Wars, certainly Japan during 

their horrible atrocities committed against the Chinese people in 

World War II, all of that has festered. 

Now you have a disparity of boys and girls. Nicholas Eberstadt, 

the famous AEI [American Enterprise Institute] demographer, 

wrote a fascinating piece about what is to become of a country that 

is increasingly male and increasingly older? The economy, how does 

that continue when you have too few people supporting an elderly 

population and they all happen to be disproportionately guys? 

So if you could—any comments you might want on that, and anything else you would like to say before we conclude the hearing. 

Yes? 

Mr. GUTMANN. I have just a very brief point which I think illustrates the global effect—a very direct effect. 

We know that Chinese surgeons have been going down to Vietnam. It is not clear who the invitation came from or whether they 

invited themselves, but we know they have trained several Vietnam hospitals in organ harvesting. And they have opened up a 

transplant industry in Vietnam that did not exist before. 

Now, a couple of months ago, we learned that ISIS, or ISIL if you 

prefer, has been harvesting the organs of their political prisoners. 

This is true. And this is simply evil unchecked. Because evil not 

remarked on will surely spread, and that is exactly what we are 

seeing in this case. 

Mr. WEI. I would talk about two issues. One is about the possibility of war. Not many observed but it is a fact the Chinese Communist Party is very good at constructing personal credit by war. 

Many Chinese generals today are still speaking of what Deng 

Xiaoping did in 1979 to have the war with Vietnam and built his 

authority quickly. 

At this moment, Xi Jinping is facing major problems in political 

and economic areas, and he is thinking about using war to resolve 

his crisis inside of China. If we cannot do anything to push him for 

the improvement of human rights in China, and if we do not see 

major improvement on economic issues, he may choose a war. 

I think that he personally should have already realized that his 

way toward Mao has failed, and now he has only two choices: Either he will yield more rights to the people or start another war. 

So we should remind Mr. Obama, if he wants to leave some historical mark, the best thing he should do is push Xi Jinping to improve human rights. Xi Jinping might consider to improve human 

rights, but he needs some exterior push. 

Mr. YANG. I have a few final comments. Number one, any leader 

cannot be trusted if he or she mistreats his or her own people, history has repeatedly told us thus far. 

Another comment is that Xi Jinping’s state visit actually provides a unique opportunity for President Obama to leave a legacy, 

32 

as Mr. Wei just mentioned. And he is a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. He must remember there is another one. As we speak, he is 

languishing in a Chinese prison. 

And when we talk about women, his wife Liu Xia has been under 

house arrest for almost five years, ever since the announcement 

was made that her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize. So this is 

another woman who has been persecuted. It is just another example. 

And I think an important issue still remains how you match your 

words with deeds. Lip service does not do much. And the Chinese 

leaders and the Chinese understand the game. 

When you just provide lip service, they do not take it seriously. 

And very likely, after Xi Jinping leaves, returns to China, President Obama and the White House will release a statement saying 

how the human rights issue was raised during the meeting. We express our concern. Who knows? Who knows? 

Now what we want President Obama to do is openly commit 

himself. We want him to openly do the things that he should do 

so that people can hold him accountable. 

It is time to bring diplomacy from dark to light. 

Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. I want to thank each and every one of you for 

your expert testimony, for your passion for human rights and democracy, and it really has helped this Commission know exactly 

where we are and what we ought to be doing, and I thank you for 

that. 

Then without objection, a statement by Cochairman Senator 

Rubio will be made a part of the record, his opening comments, so 

ordered. And again, I want to thank you again for being here 

today. 

This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon at 4:07 p.m. the hearing was concluded.] 

(33) 

A P P E N D I X 

34 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF TENG BIAO

WHY XI JINPING IS PURGING CHINA’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Since July 9 2015, nearly 30 human rights lawyers have been kidnapped or arrested, most of them are my close friends. At least 300 lawyers or activists have 

been questioned or released after a short detention. 

This ongoing persecution is only a small part of Xi Jinping’s comprehensive crackdown on civil society. Since Xi came to power in late 2012, at least 2000 human 

rights defenders have been detained or sentenced, including Uyghur scholar Ilham 

Tohti and his students, Journalist Gao Yu, lawyer Xu Zhiyong, Pu Zhiqiang, Tang 

Jingling, Li Heping, Sui Muqing, Zhang Kai, Wang Quanzhang, Wang Yu, rights 

defender Guo Feixiong, Liu Ping, Zhang Shengyu, Su Changlan, dissident Qin 

Yongmin, Zhang Lin, Jiang Lijun, Hu Shigen, Yu Shiwen, Pastor Zhang Shaojie, etc. 

Some prisoners of conscience died in detention, obviously out of torture or inhuman 

treatment, like Cao Shunli and Tenzin Delek Rinpoche. 

In Zhejiang and other provinces, government destroyed thousands of church buildings, arrested pastors and Christians, demolished the crosses. Falungong practitioners were detained or sent to legal education centers, a kind of extra-legal detentions—many of them have been tortured to death. Other small religious groups are 

persecuted after the government listed them as evil cults. 

Many NGOs have been shut down, like Gongmeng (the Open Constitution Initiative). Even many NGOs focusing on Environment, women’s rights, LGBT, labor 

rights or citizen libraries are not allowed to work. 

The CCP made new regulations or policies on high education and ideology. More 

censorship on internet, textbooks, publishings and traditional media. Document 

No.9. Seven don’t talk. Mass line. Military parade. Fundamentalist Communism— 

Xi seems to be very keen on bringing back Maoist style discourse and cult of personality. 

The Chinese communist authorities, with their excessive violence, have created 

hostility, division and despair in Xinjiang and Tibet. In Xinjiang, many protests 

were labelled as terrorist attacks thus many Uyghur people were shot dead without 

any necessity and legal basis. In Tibet, the number of self-immolation has been 147, 

and 126 Tibetans have lost their lives. 79 self-immolations happened since November of 2012 when Xi came into office. Some family members of the self-immolators 

were even detained or sentenced. 

Why Xi is purging the rights activist? 

Xi is somebody living in 1960s. He never accepts the ideas of liberal democracy 

or constitutionalism or human rights. What he has been doing and is going to do, 

is to maintain the CCP’s monopoly of power. He will not tolerate any challenge to 

the one party rule. CCP never stops its punishment on activists, but Xi has a much 

lower threshold of prisons. 

But the deep reason locates in the whole political and social situation. 

China has become the second largest economy in the world. China is flexing its 

muscles by military parade, AIIB, and new message on South China Sea. By tearing 

up the promise of Hong Kong’s autonomy. Also by detaining Nobel laureate Liu 

Xiaobo, disappearing Panchen Lama, arresting more and more rights activists. But 

isn’t there a profound dread lurking behind this barbarism? 

The party’s attempts to project confidence do little to disguise its panic: It is beset 

by economic strife, antagonism between officials and the people, widespread corruption, environmental and ecological disasters, unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet, and its 

own sense of ideological crisis. The party no longer has the ability to carry out the 

frantic, Mao-style mobilizations of the past. Its ideology has lost all attraction, and 

the public’s frustration with the party is growing. People are more willing to criticize the regime in public, and the spread of access to the Internet has stunted the 

effect of the party’s inculcation, thought work and propaganda. The stock market’s 

recent crash and the tragic Tianjin blast led even the middle class to fury and disappointment. Wang qishan’s recent talk on legitimacy exactly reflects the CCP’s 

anxiety of its lack of legitimacy. The recycling of old slogans, the shutting of NGOs, 

the arrest of dissidents and enhanced controls on the spread of information—all of 

it is a sign of the party’s deep fear of a color revolution. 

35 

Compared with all of this, the rights lawyer and civil society activists are gaining 

in prestige, influence and communications and organizational capacity. Since 2003, 

more and more people joined in the Rights Defense Movement. Human rights lawyers defend civil rights, challenge the abuse of power and promote rule of law 

though taking political cases or sensitive cases. People organize more and more 

NGOs, working on various rights of the unprivileged people. Bloggers and writers 

write articles to criticize the government, or disseminate information on sensitive 

events. Activists initiate New Citizens Movement and South Street Movement to demand political rights. People gather privately to commemorate the Tiananmen Massacre. The Rights Defense Movement tends to be more organized and politicalized, 

gaining more support and respects from the general public. 

These are the reasons why Xi decided to purge the rights activists and destroy 

the growing civil society. But this crackdown won’t silence the rights lawyers and 

defenders, and it won’t stop the march toward human rights and dignity in China. 

Rights lawyers will rise from the ashes with an even deeper sense of their historical 

responsibility. 

Xi is coming here soon. Does Xi and the party wish to relive the nightmare of 

lawlessness during the Culture Revolution? When will he release China’s prisoners 

of conscience? When will this ruthless suppression of freedom end? Will the Beijing 

2022 Winter Olympics be another human rights disaster, like the 2008 Beijing 

Olympics were? We ought to ask him. 

’The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die’ . Martin 

Luther King Jr. once said. We should not keep silence when so many Chinese people 

are suffering the atrocities of CCP. History of Nazi will repeat itself when people 

choose to do nothing when Xi Jinping is going toward Hitler. Those who welcome 

Xi Jinping without raising human rights issue are helpers of the dictator. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF XIAO QIANG

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Mr. Chairman, Respected Members of the Commission, 

My name is Xiao Qiang. I am the founder and chief editor of China Digital Times, 

a bilingual China news website. I am also an adjunct professor at the University 

of California, Berkeley School of Information, where my current research focuses on 

mapping political discourses in Chinese cyberspace, measuring state censorship and 

control of the Internet, and developing cloud-based technologies to break through 

that censorship. It is my privilege to testify in front of this commission again. 

Mr. Chairman, China has the world’s largest number of Internet users, estimated 

at 641 million to date. After President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he framed 

the Internet as a battlefield for ideological control and appointed himself head of 

a top-level Internet security committee. He also established the State Internet Information Office (renamed the Cyberspace Administration of China), and continues to 

intensify restrictions and controls on the Internet freedom. 

In the past two and a half years, Xi’s administration has not only expanded its 

crackdown on freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it has also launched 

a ferocious assault on civil society. These violations of fundamental rights and freedoms have been well documented by international human rights organizations. 

For example, Freedom House’s annual report ‘‘Freedom on the Net’’ details China’s restrictions of Internet freedom by blocking and filtering access to international 

websites, censoring online content, and violating users’ rights. I recommend Freedom House’s excellent report to the Commission. 

‘‘World Press Freedom Index 2015,’’ published by Paris-based Reporters Without 

Borders, ranks China 176th out of 180 countries. 

China Digital Times closely follows the interplay of censorship, activism, and 

emerging public opinion on the Chinese Internet. In particular, we collect and translate many of the censorship directives the Party sends to state media and Internet 

companies. We also aggregate breaking news deemed ‘‘sensitive’’ by state censors. 

During the last twelve years, the China Digital Times team has published over 

2,600 such censorship directives, and using these directives has pieced together how 

the Chinese government restricts Internet freedom. Here are a few recent examples 

to illustrate these controls. 

1. From September 8, 2015, on Tibet, issued by the Cyberspace Administration 

of China: 

All websites may follow coverage of the 50th anniversary of the founding 

of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Please take care to tidy up negative and 

36 

harmful information related to the news. You may close the comments section on major stories. 

2. On September 7, 2015, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda 

Department issued a classified document, marked as notice number 320 for the year 

2015. This document instructs state media to to report positively on the economy. 

Here is one excerpt from this document: 

The focus for the month of September will be strengthening economic propaganda and guiding public opinion, as well as overall planning for domesticand foreign-facing propaganda and Internet propaganda, in order to take 

the next step in promoting the discourse on China’s bright economic future 

and the superiority of China’s system, as well as stabilizing expectations 

and inspiring confidence. 

In fact, both state and independent media have been pressured to keep economic 

reporting upbeat and to downplay the stock market crash last month as well as 

slumps earlier in the summer. A directive from August 25 requires that Chinese 

websites delete specific essays about the crash, while in June the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television instructed TV and radio stations to ‘‘rationally lead market expectations to prevent inappropriate reports from 

causing the market to spike or crash.’’ 

The central government did not stopped at issuing internal censorship and propaganda instructions. In August, Caijing reporter Wang Xiaolu confessed on CCTV to 

‘‘causing panic and disorder’’ with a negative story on the stock market slump. 

3. From September 3, 2015, concerning the military parade in Beijing, issued by 

the Central Propaganda Department: 

Do not hype or comment on those high leaders of major Western countries 

who are not attending the September 3 military parade commemorating the 

70th anniversary of the victory in the war against Japan. 

4. On August 12, 2015, a chemical explosion in the port city of Tianjin left at least 

173 dead and nearly 800 injured. China Digital Times collected a number of censorship instructions issued to state media and Internet companies regarding the accident, including the following from the Cyberspace Administration of China: 

Standard sources must be used regarding the explosions in Tianjin’s 

Tanggu Open Economic Zone. Use only copy from Xinhua and authoritative 

departments and media. Websites cannot privately gather information on 

the accident, and when publishing news cannot add individual interpretation without authorization. Do not make live broadcasts. 

5. In July, almost 200 lawyers and activists were questioned or taken into custody. The state media calls this an operation against ‘‘conspirators’’ who are 

‘‘colluding with petitioners to disturb social order and to reach their goals with ulterior motives.’’ 

Here is one censorship directive issued by the Cyberspace Administration of 

China on July 14, 2015: 

All websites must, without exception, use as the standard official and authoritative media reports with regards to the detention of trouble-making 

lawyers by the relevant departments. Personnel must take care to find and 

delete harmful information; do not repost news from non-standard sources. 

In this case, the Chinese government is persecuting and prosecuting Chinese citizens, to quote H. R. 491, for ‘‘posting or transmitting peaceful political, religious, 

or ideological opinion or belief via the Internet.’’ 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commission, I also would like to recommend the 

remarkable report, ‘‘China’s Great Cannon,’’ published by Toronto University’s Citizen Lab. The Great Cannon is an attack tool used to launch distributed denial-ofservice attacks on websites by intercepting massive amounts of web traffic and redirecting it to targeted websites. That is to say, it ‘‘weaponizes’’ unwitting Internet 

users from around the world in order to overwhelm the servers of the targeted sites. 

The first deployment of the Great Cannon was in late March 2015, targeting two 

specific users of the San Francisco-based code sharing site Github: the New York 

Times’ Chinese mirror site, and the anti-censorship organisation GreatFire.org. 

Based on this weapon’s network position across different Chinese Internet service 

providers and on similarities in its source code to the Great Firewall, the researchers at Citizen Lab and the International Computer Science Institute ‘‘believe there 

is compelling evidence that the Chinese government operates the GC [Great Cannon].’’ 

In other words, the Chinese government is not only deliberately blocking, filtering, and censoring online information based on the expression of political, reliVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
37 

gious, or ideological opinion or belief within China; it is also using technology to disrupt Internet traffic and commercial infrastructure beyond its borders. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Commission for holding this important public 

hearing on human rights in China, days before the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s 

first state visit to the United States. 

I urge President Xi Jinping to stop his repressive policies and practices. The Chinese people want and deserve more access to information and the Internet, and 

greater freedom to express their views. Chinese people desire and demand greater 

protection of human rights in their political, social, economic, and cultural life. 

I urge President Obama to engage President Xi on Internet freedom, press freedom, and freedom of expression in their meetings, not only raising concerns, but 

also insisting that future political and economic relationships be dependent on the 

Chinese government demonstrating improvements in upholding human rights. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF YANG JIANLI

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Part One. Engaging China with Moral and Strategic Clarity 

Part Two. Xi Jinping’s Foolish ‘‘Confidence’’ Leads to Unstoppable Decline 

Part Three. 64 Questions for Xi Jinping 

Part One—Engaging China with Moral and Strategic Clarity 

26 years ago, after the bloody massacre in Beijing in 1989, we came to Washington DC to plea the U.S. government to impose an economic sanction against the 

China Communist regime, in particular, to link China’s most favorite nation (MFN) 

status with human rights. We argued that continuing the normal trade with China 

would like a blood transfusion to the Communist regime, making it more aggressive 

and harming the interests of both American and Chinese people. 

But our warning fell on deaf ears. After a lengthy debate, the U.S. government 

decided to continue its engagement policy, granting permanent MFN to China and 

contending economic growth would eventually bring democracy to the country. 

Today, with money and technologies pouring in from the U.S. and other Western 

countries, with their free markets wide open for the Chinese-made goods, the Chinese Communist regime not only survived the 1989 crisis, it has catapulted into the 

21st century. The country’s explosive economic growth has brought it from near the 

bottom of the world in GDP per capita to become the number two economy in the 

world; but democracy remains yet a far-fetched dream. 

The Chinese Communist regime has instead grown into a Frankenstein’s monster, 

terrorizing peoples both domestically and internationally. 

China uses its economic power gained with the help of the West to build a formidable, fully modernized military, that has reached every corner of the earth. With 

this unprecedented power, China is now forcefully demanding a re-write of international norms and rules. China wants to create a new international order with Beijing’s dominance in the Asia-Pacific region as the centerpiece. This new order has 

threatened world peace and the current balance of power put into place since the 

World War II. 

What went wrong with the America’s engagement policy? 

In our view, the failure lies primarily lacked any moral and strategic clarity in 

its design and implementation. 

The origin of the error can trace back to the early 1970s when then Secretary of 

State Henry Kissinger claiming that by integrating Beijing into the international 

community economically and politically, China would behave responsibly, abiding by 

international norms and rules. 

This amoral, geo-political and short-term pragmatic strategy fails to see the evil 

nature and hegemonic ambition of the communist regime as reiterated in President 

Xi Jinping’s ‘‘China Dream’’ of a great red empire, to replace the western civilization 

with its socialist civilization. 

Washington Policy makers also fail to understand that economic growth may be 

a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, for cultivating democracy. Consequently, this policy has fundamentally undermined America’s national interests 

and security. 

The alternative is to engage China with a moral strategic compass: China under 

the Chinese Communist Party’s rule cannot rise peacefully, and its transition to a 

democratic country that respects human rights, rule of law, freedom of speech and 

religion, is in everyone’s best interest, including China’s own. In other words, the 

U.S. must push for a peaceful regime change in China. 

The reason for this is simple: 

38 

To support China’s totalitarian regime, a regime that ruthlessly represses its own 

people, denies universal values to justify its dictatorship, and that challenges the 

existing international order to seek its dominance, is both morally corrupt and strategically stupid. 

Like Frankenstein’s monster, China is now seeking revenge against its creator— 

the West. It will destabilize and endanger the world, for the so-called China model, 

an amoral and monstrous political system and the corrupt way of life, like the black 

plague, has been spread and infected the international community, and will eventually ruin it, but most people in the world are not aware of it, and many even being 

fooled to believe it is the future. 

China’s communists has hijacked 1.3 billion Chinese people, imposing a political 

system on them by force and coercion, running the country like a slave-owner of the 

past, obliterating their self-governance, and controlling their life without their consent. To continue support of this anti-humanity regime runs contrary to universal 

values and international law to which America has long been committed. 

While many policymakers in Washington have now realized that it is time to get 

tough on China, some still elude that the present and future conflicts between the 

US and China can be managed. Our view is, without China’s democratization, the 

US and China will unavoidably collide, because the two countries’ strategic goals 

are fundamentally different and core interests are uncompromisable. 

The only way to prevent future wars with China is to pursue its democratic transformation now. 

To start, the Congress should pass a China Democracy Act, directing the Federal 

government and all its agencies to make democracy and human rights advocacy as 

the core policy when engaging China, and requires the President to report to the 

Congress every year on the specific successes. 

The engagement policy allowed and even encouraged too many government departments to assist China just for engagement sake, and with no regard to any effort to promote political reform and freedom. The act will serve as America’s grand 

strategy on China, and the government will take coordinated actions to achieve the 

goal. 

But is a peaceful regime change possible in China? 

Absolutely. Despite restrictions, the Internet and free flow of information have 

changed China, particular the younger generations. Civic society is awakening; religions are flourishing, with rapidly increasing number of believers; the rising middle 

class, as well as disadvantaged groups, are longing for a political system that ensures equal opportunity and fairness for all. Even the upper class wants rule of law 

to protect their wealth, because without it no one is safe in China. 

China’s power elite knows this insecurity very well. The recent anti-corruption 

campaign under President Xi Jinping has turned into a life-or-death power struggle 

among the regime’s power elites, which has split the regime. The power elite face 

the choice of either destroying each other or find a Godfather-type solution where 

they give up their gangster way of life and become legitimate via a constitutional 

democracy. With sufficient pressure from the international community and from 

within, such a transformation is not entirely unlikely. 

Immanuel Kant and modern-day social science has shown that democracies are 

less disposed to go to war with each other. Long-lasting peace and friendship between the U.S. and China means that China must transition to a democracy. 

If the U.S. takes no action, we worry that China will continue down the perilous 

path of achieving its world dominance through militarism and aggression, which 

easily lead to another war that the world can not afford. 

Part Two—Xi Jinping’s Foolish ‘‘Confidence’’ Leads to Unstoppable Decline 

Prelude/Introduction 

China’s disastrous stock storm and unprecedented crackdown on defenders of 

human rights have been well recorded during my three-year observations of the Xi 

Jinping Administration. 

Since taking over top leadership in China, Xi Jinping has become a crusader in 

both political and economic arenas with aims to consolidate personal power and create a personal cult. From within the Party to his broad social life, inside officialdom 

and in the market, from the Mainland to the Hong Kong Island - what Xi has 

achieved are four ‘‘triumphs’’: power overwhelming anticorruption, political power 

overwhelming market forces, ‘‘One nation’’ state overwhelming the ‘‘two systems,’’ 

and party’s will overwhelming the rule of law. With these milestones, Xi Jinping has 

thus become an icon of ‘‘Red Guards Ruling China.’’ 

Over the last three years, particularly this past year, Xi Jinping has exposed 

clearly the spare ribs of his administration whenever he lifted his fist to show off 

his power, with his reputation on the decline, time and again. China’s public secuVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
39 

rity forces stormed the markets under hisorders in a bid to save the crashing stocks. 

Naturally, people wonder—how can anyone stop the decline of the reputation of the 

regime? Despite the superficial power of Xi’s four ‘‘triumphs’’ and his willfulness, 

people are spotting cracks of the iron curtain and sensing the fear of losing power 

on the part of the top leadership under pseudo self-confidence. 

Looking back at the economic and political conditions when Xi took power, and 

comparing them to those under his predecessor Hu Jintao, we did not notice many 

fundamental differences, with only one worthy note—people overwhelmingly felt 

across all walks of life in the country, including those insiders, that Xi Jinping 

might be the last emperor of the Communist dynasty. Thus, a dying regime’s destiny is in his hands. With this sense spreading, Xi Jinping had an apparently strong 

sense of mission of saving the Party and Communist Dynasty, and even tried to restore its vigorous authority before drifting away, leaving a legacy of being a savior. 

Under such a political tone, the fear of losing personal power, its legitimacy, and 

eroding base have been among his constant and main themes and its variations, unless Xi wants to change fundamental political system. 

During the tenure of Hu Jintao and his premier Wen Jiabao, China experienced 

the climax of what ‘‘power leads to corruption’’ means during the last decade, with 

many extreme cases on record. The past three years indicates that Xi Jinping administration has, and shall continue to show why fear of losing power not only leads 

to corruption but makes those in power mad and insanely ferocious. No matter how 

reluctant Xi Jinping is, being the last emperor of the Communist regime may well 

be his destiny. All extreme syndromes of a dying regime make China the spectacular stage of extravagance and brutality. 

To date, many political analysts are still wondering about Xi’s political logic and 

motivations, and they debate about them. However, based on my observation of Xi’s 

three-year performance sense his taking power, I have come to conclude that his 

bare bones nature was exposed despite layers of disguise. With my glimpse into the 

so-called mystery of the administration formulating his personal cult for two years, 

I can say XI presented himself before civil society a cult propaganda. Now we, the 

opposition, and the rest of the world, shall not be puzzled about his agenda, and 

need to exam XI Jinping from a different perspective. 

1. 

Xi Jinping seems destined to experience a turbulent tenure, unlike that of his 

predecessor Hu Jintao, due to the strings of a political dramas abruptly unveiled 

on the eve of his taking power. Yet, I believe it is just a heavy punch that brought 

good luck for Xi Jinping during his first two years. And that punch on the face of 

Wang Lijun, municipal security chief in Chong Qing was like a gift of blessing from 

Bo Xilai, then Party chief of Chong Qing, in southwestern China, who was believed 

to be fighting for his spot on the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee. Then 

Xi Jinping adopted a strategy to retreat for a better bargaining position in power 

struggle just before the 18th Party Congress—and it worked like magic. Xi’s acts 

skillfully held the critical ‘‘private part’’ of the power structure of the Communist 

regime hostage to bargain with an upper hand, as if the whole system dysfunctional 

and failed to respond appropriately to the unexpected incident, particularly, during 

this non-emergency state of power struggle. It was just this incident that helped Xi 

Jinping consolidated all the power much faster than his two predecessors during his 

first few years. After such a round of struggle, a minimal worthy fight, Xi has got 

rid of all potential direct rivals within the Party. 

So far, Xi has successfully avoided the awkward and weak position his predecessor Hu Jintao found himself in, in terms of power consolidation. This proves one 

of my views on Communist senior officialdom—that anyone, given the position and 

opportunity, can become a high-caliber handler in power struggle, just because, they 

have all been engaged and practicing the power struggle, trial and error, all their 

life, accumulating extraordinary wealth of experiences. And in addition, China’s rich 

history of emperor politics in the past several thousand years provides historical examples from which power grabbers can borrow. In a closed power structure, anyone 

on a vantage position may not need to be particularly bright or clever to succeed. 

Chinese politics by nature has been long filled with risks. And complicated power 

manipulation in China makes outsiders unable to comprehend these risks. In the 

very beginning of his tenure, Xi Jinping had actually experienced a quite comfortable period given the mixed and often negative social reactions to Bo Xilai’s notorious performance. He appealed the ‘‘glory’’ of Mao era in the form of chanting the 

oldies and (illegally) cracking down the ‘‘underground gangs.’’ This provided perfect 

timing for Xi Jinping to restart the long-due political reforms for a new round of 

vital social development, if Xi intended to curb the coming back of the extreme leftwing. But the fact of the matter was, Xi took over the banner of the disgraced Bo 

40 

Xilai, in disguise of swinging between the left and right, and ended up embracing 

dictatorship in alignment with the left-wing, and with omnipotence. 

It is critical for us to understand that Xi Jinping is the party chief, not a democratically elected head of state. Xi, being not only the son (literally) of Xi Zhongxun 

(one of the revolutionary elders, famous for his open mindedness), but the captain 

of the Communist cruise (pirate) ship, and therefore, Xi had, to begin with, to keep 

balance of power among those surrounding him, consolidating power within the 

party to maintain his stable leadership position. From this position, and his logic, 

Xi must take the path of ‘‘political correctness’’ to minimize potential risks. Xi’s ‘‘red 

gene’’ confines his moves. The so-called ‘‘Red gene’’ still exists in the oncemarginalized groups of Party apparatchiks and group of bootlickers during the market-oriented reform era, who obviously survived and now being revived by Xi 

Jinping, who has become their master and great leader. Naturally, when Xi Jinping 

has gradually become a de facto descendent of the disgraced Bo Xilai’s left-wing, 

these bootlickers are responsible to their masters and upper social elites, and they 

test the psychological tolerance of the general public by offering flattery remarks 

and praise hymns to Xi Jinping, while at the same time, state machinery increasingly tightened control of expression, and in curbing thought, politicizing almost everything in China. 

Since taking office, Xi Jinping has intensified crackdown on opinion leaders of 

civil society, in the name of curbing ‘‘gossip mongering,’’ and the regime shamelessly 

utilized paid online bloggers, party-anointed writers in huge amounts to monitor domestic web-sphere, overwhelmed by brainwashing campaigns, highlighting Zhou 

Xiaoping-style official gossipers, just for the purpose of misleading the general public, to align with Party lines and catchy phrases. 

Now the general public has become coldly silent. Their silence is much quieter 

than that of the silence of Hu Jintao era. Now we also know the reasons – suppression of Qing Huohuo, Xue Manzi, among others, arrests being made to crack down 

Xu Zhiyong, Guo Yushan, Gao Yu, Pu Zhiqiang, Guo Feixiong, Wu Gan, Wan Yu, 

etc. and even worse, the gun-down of innocent people like Xu Chunhe . . . 

2. 

The era under Hu Jintao, along with his premier Wen Jiabao, experienced allaround social, economic and political crisis in China, and saw no progressive moves 

to address the issues. It was labeled ‘‘muddling along with a bomb on a timer.’’ 

When in power, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao were eager to pass such a bomb onto 

the next successor, and retreat peacefully in retirement. Xi Jinping, on the other 

hand, exposed a strong intention even in the very beginning of his term. Xi seems 

not to getting the ‘‘bomb’’ onto his successor, nor did he ever try to defuse such a 

bomb. Instead, XI Jinping wanted to make an even more powerful bomb, the Xistyle one, to destroy the inherited bombs, all in one. 

The bomb in the hands of Hu-Wen Administration then was made within the 

Party itself – amid unprecedented epidemic corruption of government officials and 

party apparatchiks, and the social crisis caused by crony capitalism with Chinese 

characteristics in which the government officials and business elites have joined 

hand in hand in shameless and cruel exploitation of the voiceless public. Such a horrific matter of fact has been universally acknowledged including Xi Jinping himself, 

who must be more alert to the urgency than anyone else because of his self-claimed 

destiny to save the Party and the Communist regime from the unstoppable collapse. 

Naturally, overwhelming anti-corruption has been a main driving force of his administration since its start. For a newly installed ruler like Xi Jinping, who has embodied aggressive agendas, to consolidate personal power dominates his operations. 

His other goal is to disable potential rivals who tried in vain to steal power away 

from him, in the name of anti-corruption. With power grabbing being a constant 

struggle for Xi Jinping, social crisis caused by corruption receive relatively less attention as it is less of a headache for him. 

What’s more, the Communist Party, as a whole system, is totally corrupted, anticorruption is a de facto anti-Party itself. Xi Jinping certainly would not act like conducting suicide bombing against his own Party. XI never intends to push his Party 

for a fundamental change of system. Then anti-corruption features selective targets 

from the very start, serving his purpose to consolidate his personal power. Now that 

power struggle and anti-corruption have jointly moved his agenda into a ‘‘be or not 

to be’’ situation in which the Party and the regime need to answer. It is an integral 

part of political power struggle to have anti-corruption move forward just for his 

own political interests. 

Lack of legitimacy has been raised when the ongoing anticorruption campaigns 

target certain selected groups, because none of the elements inside the Party are 

intrinsically clean. ‘‘Why me, not him? ’’ they ask. Therefore, its legitimacy has been 

41 

challenged after the New York Times reporter Michael Forsythe reported on the 

family wealth of Xi Jinping. As anti-corruption has been utilized for power struggle, 

those party factions and individuals under investigation or fallen officials of this 

struggle shall not lay down their arms. Strings of events highlight this ongoing internal struggle, such as the New York Times stories (there must be internal ‘‘Deep 

Throat’’ within the Party feeding information to the media), war of words between 

politically well-connected wealthy businessman Guo Wengui (who fled China) and 

his rivals on mainland China, to the mystery of the missing (believed to have fled 

to U.S., in hiding, perhaps in process of seeking political asylum) Ling Wancheng 

who is believed to have possession of lots of top classified information about the 

Communist regime (this wealthy businessman is a brother of Ling Jihua, then top 

aid to Hu Jintao), among some of the high-profile cases. All these dramas reveal 

that rivals within the top tier of the Communist Party hold in possession of vital, 

classified top security information as powerful as a nuclear device to destroy any 

other internal competitors. Therefore, for Xi Jinping, the ideal mode would be to 

maintain a kind of power balance, like ‘‘nuclear deterrent’’ for his anti-corruption 

campaigns, drifting away from his ‘‘nuclear war’’ style against his rivals in the first 

few years. 

On the economy, which has been experiencing slowdown since last year, the communist regime realizes its potential social crisis looming overhead because it is believe that legitimacy only depends on high growth of the economy, as it was in the 

past decades. Under current political environment, Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption 

could face overwhelming challenges from his rivals, given any crisis arising soon. 

In the power struggle of the Communist Party of China, fabricating crimes is a wellknown game serving for any power players. Xi Jinping’s crimes are prominent, readily available to the advantage of his rivals. As Xi himself knows this much better 

than any layman on the street, he has switched his anti-corruption back to the 

mode of ‘‘old norm’’ under the ‘‘new norm’’ economic situations. 

To address a more fundamental issue regarding its legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party, Xi Jinping tried to bet his hope on the success of his anti-corruption 

campaign, which, on the contrary, has drifted away in the opposite direction, for its 

own inherent logic. Such a high-profile show earned him nothing more than some 

scattered hurrays from the disengaged, innocent grassroots. In other words, Xi 

Jinping is facing his own Catch-22, because anti-corruption means anti-Party itself. 

What’s next, will Xi have to reheat his cold, half-cooked rice meal? 

3. 

It may be too early to conclude that Xi Jinping will be a flash in a pan, just like 

then the ‘‘great leader’’ Hua Guofeng (who helped topple the Mao’s wife and her 

‘‘Gang of Four’’). Xi’s power struggle and his temporary triumphs over his rivals so 

far reminds people of those television episodes adapted from a historical novel authored by Er Yuehe. As Xi has delivered too many awe-inspiring performances, for 

example, Xi recently cited ‘‘house rule’’ in place of rule of law, depending on informers and his own imperial-appointed special envoys, usually undercover, to carry out 

his anti-corruption campaigns. All these dirty games are just like the same old, already disappeared Chinese dynasties. The very nature of his imperial-style actions 

indicates Xi Jinping’s political thinking and mindset which are so backward as imperial palace coup of the old days. It must be acknowledged that politics is never 

merely about power or power struggle. More essential contents do exist beyond rim 

of power struggle in politics. What can be said about Xi is that he is a doomed politician based on his performances up to date, which clearly bears the symptom of a 

dying political system. 

It is as easy as ABC to list challenges facing the Xi Administration: ethnic issues 

in Tibet and Xin Jiang Autonomous Regions, universal ballot in Hong Kong, maritime disputes in East and South China Seas, housing bubble, stock market turbulence, overwhelming debts, increasing pressure on currency exchange rate, rising 

unemployment, difficult job market facing graduating college students, rights 

abuses, massive rights self-defenders, and huge number of mass-incidents involving 

protesters and demonstrators, all across the country, etc., and etc. 

Ironically, we see a ‘‘self-confident’’ Xi Jinping wearing on the track of a superficially robust Communist Party with its so-called ‘‘three confidences’’ theory. Xi 

seems to have good reasons to have such ‘‘confidence,’’ just from the perspective of 

a inflated powerful political party. Therefore, he has been aggressive on all sides. 

On Hong Kong, the Communist Cabinet, through its State Council Information 

Office, issued a white paper on The Practice of the ‘‘One Country, Two Systems’’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, in June of 2014, stating that 

‘‘As a unitary state, China’s central government has comprehensive jurisdiction over 

all local administrative regions, including the HKSAR. The high degree of autonomy 

42 

of HKSAR is not an inherent power, but one that comes solely from the authorization by the central leadership.’’ Furthermore, ‘‘(it is necessary to stay alert to) prevent and repel the attempt made by a very small number of people who act in collusion with outside forces to interfere with the implementation of ‘‘one country, two 

systems’’ in Hong Kong.’’ Such aggressive rhetoric pronounced just before the schedule referendum in the middle of June initiated by grassroots ‘‘Occupy Central’’ 

movement was indeed intended to suppress the growing popular demand for a ‘‘universal suffrage’’ in Hong Kong. As a result, local populace was thus angered and 

mobilized to support ‘‘Occupy Central.’’ This foolish communist move further led to 

the fiasco at the Hong Long Legislature ballot on June 18, defeating the central government proposal for a fake democracy in selecting its Chief Executive in Hong 

Kong by a stunning 28 to 8, to the surprise of many observers. 

Xi Jinping has been so aggressive to take actions suppressing civil society in 

China. Xi’s predecessors normally were defensive in dealing with domestic dissidents over the past two decades since Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. The Communist regime realized its disillusion of the Communist ideology that has been put 

aside by the general populace, as well as its own ruling class. However, all Communist rulers, such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, has been rights 

abusers when they had to deal with and eventually cracked down dissidents, including the underground Library Democratic Party (1992), open fight for registration of 

a newly established Democratic Party (1998), Falungong activists (1999), Charter 

’08 signatory movement (2008). These ferocious crackdowns severely violated the legitimate rights of the Chinese citizens. Such suppression reflects an overwhelming 

fear of the Communist regime for losing its control of power, and would definitely 

show no mercy or any hesitation to take immediate action to curb any dissidents. 

A recent example was the crackdown on ‘‘Jasmine Movement’’ in 2011, which was 

seen as instinct of any authoritarian regime, and perhaps under the directive of 

then Vice President Xi Jinping. After Xi became the top leader, he has conducted 

series of suppression, much more severe than ever, leading to large-scale arrests of 

rights defense lawyers before the 25th commemoration of Tiananmen Massacre 

(1989), and hundreds of cases of detention and arrests of human rights lawyer 

(2014). 

From these campaigns, we can see the difference between the Xi regime and his 

predecessors in dealing with dissidents. Xi has been more aggressive in demonizing 

grassroots opinion leaders. This backward step was the result of directives from Xi 

Jinping regime under the self-blown ‘‘Three Confidences’’ in defiance of historic current. It is a worthy note that Xi Jinping has been more relentless to suppress relatives and family members of those involved dissidents, even after he took down his 

political rival Zhou Yongkong whose suppression machinery had earned him not 

only the title ‘‘Szar,’’ but also billions of dollars in personal and family wealth. 

With more than 200 human rights activists and defense lawyers under attack, the 

‘‘Great Leader’’ Xi Jinping anchored as a high tightrope walker amid skyrocketing 

stock markets that crashed his reputation, perhaps his self-confidence. The Chinese 

stock market itself is a government-run scam, with little real link to China’s real 

economy. When it rose so dramatically by the end of 2014, that Chinese official 

media admitted that such a stock phenomenon was propped up by government policy ONLY. So many naı ̈ve, often first-time stock buyers believed that this was the 

high time for Xin Jinping regime to start distributing ‘‘bonuses.’’ In May 2015 the 

official Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily and the state news agency Xinhua 

jointly bragged ‘‘New Beginning of a Bull Market.’’ What a beautiful sovereign scam! 

Soon after the holy hymn came the crash of 1700 points on Shanghai Index, as 

flashy as it was rising. Now the Big Brother again confidently heavy handed the 

markets, with a string of confidence-building measures, like freezing IPOs, handing 

over tons of cash for mandatory purchase of stocks by large brokers, even worse, 

dispatching security agents to ‘‘investigate’’ any short-selling manipulation, in collaboration with ‘‘foreign forces.’’ All these efforts failed to drive any rebounding effect, thus prompting financial crisis and regime crisis in the face of the Xi regime. 

Now his image of omnipotence is in crisis again, following his humiliating defeat 

of Hong Kong ballot plan at local legislature on June 18. 

In the meantime, we now see the spectacular omnipotence of the Communist regime’s power organs—this time, on stock market, the security agents are performing 

a role in full swing to save the stock market, again under the directive of Xi Jinping, 

demanding that ‘‘No sale but purchase only’’ in plain language exposed on official 

websites. Xi’s omnipotent measures cost dearly, not only in term of money, more importantly, the confidence in the Chinese stock markets, because people now see 

clearly what is left out is nothing about market forces but market of power games, 

the white-knuckled political power intervention in market. What is left in the market is billions of dollars sovereign fund, drifting along, with no sense of destination, 

43 

while millions of tiny ordinary stock buyers are left holding the bag. It is the government who has successfully turned a ‘‘Reform Bull’’ into a monster sucker of ordinary people’s lifelines. This intervention has one more byproduct, that is, the Xi regime has been under great restraint in dealing with other urgent economic and social issues after its billions of dollars fund being held like a hostage on the dysfunctional Chinese stock market. 

From my observations in the course of nearly three years, I see a very clear choice 

made by Xi Jinping who prioritizes stabilizing his regime, and takes decisive measures to achieve his political goals. His overall strategy is to demanding obedience, 

curbing limited freedom, avoiding discussing any inherent flaws in its fundamental 

system, and strengthening control of thoughts and expressions. In addition, he brags 

of ethics and morality. 

Let’s examine several cases in hand, such as corruption, crashing stock markets, 

among others, which are organically produced by the Communist regime itself, and 

as a inevitable results of its political and economic systems. Xi’s answers are far 

from addressing these fundamental issues, rather trying to seek answers from the 

same old stuffs, like a late Party apparatchik named Jiao Yulu, and even worse, 

Xi resorted to ridiculous intervention demanding certain social groups to buy-into 

the stocks, which naturally worsened the disastrous situation. With no clue in dealing with the complicated market economic function, like stocks, Xi believes in his 

only magician recipe, or wrong description, i.e., too much power, omnipotent power 

of an authoritarian regime, to make him look like omnipotent. His nonsense running 

a government with lack of transparency has already driven people of conscience to 

adopt ‘‘non-cooperation’’ strategy to engage in a underground movement, even 

among his officialdom, not to mention, the general populace. Similarly, in Hong 

Hong, those pro-Beijing legislators achieved their unwanted results on the local Legislature floor this past June, when a bunch of the robot members failed to cast their 

ballots due to what was later nicknamed awaiting ‘‘Uncle (Liu Huang) Fa’’ who 

failed to show up on the floor because of illness on June 18, thus dooming their attempted fake democracy scheme. 

I must point out that I particularly chose the special incidents like Hong Kong’s 

failed ballot, suppression of rights defenders, and government intervention in stock 

markets, just for the pure sake of Xi Jinping’s mindset and his regime after successfully consolidating his power. In other words, we can see clearly that Xi Jinping has 

successfully destroyed the limited elements of democracy, rule of law and free market in China, in a systematic, aggressive way. XI pushed his ‘‘One Country’’ regime 

to abuse the ‘‘Two Systems’’ in Hong Kong. Xi applied his Party will to replace rule 

of law, and infringed the principles of market with his state power. All these episodes present clear images of Xi’s historic backward step in China. 

4. 

For a while, Xi Jinping seems to have won support from the general populace, 

for two reasons, one is the anti-corruption campaigns, and the other propping-up 

stock prices. Now you see his once bubbling stock market has become a hot potato, 

bearing his infamous trademark of ‘‘Uncle/Papa XI.’’ Regarding his anti-corruption, 

ordinary people have gradually changed their minds, a subtle process though. Anticorruption has brought no tangible benefits to the mass, who, on the contrary, have 

to bear rising costs of gas, highway tolls, and rising retirement age, etc., and etc. 

When Xi positions himself against democracy, free market, and rule of law, he 

would never have the real courage to take on corruption. And now we are perhaps 

on the brink of experiencing a backward step, after his short-lived anti-corruption 

show. This will also lead to huge increase of dissatisfaction of the discontent public 

who was once pumped with high-hope for a somehow clean government that serves 

the interests of the people. 

In today’s China, economic problems looming large before our eyes include increasing gap between the rich and the poor, and the systematic bottleneck in dealing with these problems. Now is the high time for Xi to make choices. What Xi has 

been pushing so far is to pouring funds to feed the state-owned enterprises 

(‘‘SOEs’’), strengthened by the paramount presence of the Party in these SOEs. Xi 

also has taken steps to pressure NGOs, from virtual space to real life, demanding 

real name registration as a new norm. We can predict that the above development 

and Xi’s follow-up measures, such as anti-corruption which has brought nothing tangible for the general populace, but tax collection outpaced GDP growth rate. To 

share minimal benefit with ordinary people out of the pockets of elites has tuned 

out to be unbearably painful. 

Regarding wealth (re)distribution in China, power has the final say, and ordinary 

people have always been ignored, powerless. When economic slowdown gets worse, 

so does widening gap between the rich and the poor. It is just the people on the 

44 

bottom of the social ladder that suffers most in hard times. Social unrest shall flourish. For those elites who have insiders’ economic intelligence understand where the 

future troubles will be arising. Therefore, we believe that Xi Jinping’s reckless performance so far has been a warming-up for the future disasters, in case he loses 

control. This can be demonstrated by his policy making, i.e. he has been utilizing 

all available resources to further control all social sectors. Does he know by doing 

so he has presented himself and his regime as the enemy of the people? Surely, he 

does, and he does not have the power or political will to reverse the course. 

We noticed that Xi Jinping has utilized the similar tactics against civil society as 

he did to his rivals and corrupted officials. Technically, this works well to a certain 

degree, which in turn poses the serious problems. Few of these suppressed civil 

leaders never surrender, nor are they lonely in fighting against injustices in China. 

They are never like those lonely corrupted officials who have been isolated from the 

Chinese society, politically and psychologically, indulged in abusing their positions. 

Economy works on its own, following its own rules. Now we have a rather clear idea 

of how Xi Jinping has been haunted by nightmares when he tried to trap pocket 

money from the general populace to pump into the low-efficient, often scandalrocked, scam-filled companies listed on the stock markets, and more importantly, Xi 

tried to release huge amounts of local government debts with stolen money through 

their stock scams. 

Crackdown on rights defenders has not produced any effective intimation among 

dissidents, nor has it silenced them. Hong Kong ballot issues shall continue haunting the Communist regime in the years to come. Paid gossip-mongers and other 

propaganda machinery have failed to achieve their goals, prompting civil society to 

adopt more subtle measures to counter the regime, in more coordinated ways. 

Power, no matter how powerful, cannot overpower the human spirit, despite ups 

and downs, when huge numbers of the voiceless in desperate situation, begin forming invisible power, and they shall be prevail in the end. This is what I believe in. 

And that is also my prediction for the future. 

Part Three—64 Questions for Xi Jinping 

I. 

1. Mr. Xi Jinping, as chief of Party, State and the Military, from where do you 

get your paycheck? From the Party, or government, or military? Are all the budgets 

for the Party, Government and the military collected from taxpayers? 

2. You have consistently emphasized that the PLA cannot be nationalized, because it belongs to the Party. If so, then why is the army paid by government budget, which come from taxpayers? 

3. Why is the Communist Party and its organs at all levels, which are said to be 

social groups, then still paid by the taxpayers? 

4. As a whole, how much does the Communist Party cost to taxpayers? 

5. How much of the taxpayers’ money did you spend on the 9/3 military parade? 

How much will the 2022 Winter Olympics cost taxpayers? 

6. DO you believe that the Chinese taxpayers (citizens) have the right to know 

where their tax money has gone or will be spent? Do you think Chinese taxpayers 

are entitled to get involved in the decision-making process regarding their tax 

money? 

II. 

7. With great stride, you even risk losing life in a potential coup to carry out anticorruption campaigns. Why then do you order your subordinates of the Communist 

Party to make public their private family wealth? As world history proves that officials’ announcement of their private wealth is one of the most effective mechanisms 

to curb corruption, why have you punished citizens demanding such announcement? 

8. In addition, freedom of expression, press freedom, and open competition among 

different political parties for public offices are effective mechanisms in fighting 

against corruption. So if you are genuine about concerns of anti-corruption, why 

don’t you let these freedoms flourish? 

9. Why don’t you let citizens get involved in your anti-corruption campaigns? 

Some people comment that in today’s China, anti-corruption is tantamount to antithe Party (CPC). Is that true? 

10. Do you believe that epidemic corruption of the Communist Party comes as a 

result of individual members’ corruption and degeneration? Do you think their corruption correlates to the authoritarian system? After your taking down an impressive number of ‘‘Tigers,’’ how can you assure that your newly appointed officials will 

not follow suit and also become corrupted? Do you think you have more orders than 

your predecessors such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao to restrain subordinates 

45 

themselves from corruption? Except for this, are you any different from those two 

predecessors? 

11. Do you think that such a large-scale number of Communist members of your 

party are influenced by Western bourgeoisie ideology? How do you explain that in 

Western governmental systems where they receive total Western education their 

level of corruption is much less? 

12. Can the Chinese taxpayers/citizens learn the facts about your family wealth? 

Is it true information revealed in the report by the New York Times report about 

your family wealth? Are you planning to take legal actions against the NYT? 

III. 

13. Do you still believe in the validity of the ‘‘Resolution on Certain Questions in 

the History of Our Party since the Founding of the. People’s Republic of China’’ on 

June 27, 1981, in which the Great Cultural Revolution was totally negated and labeled as ‘‘A Decade of Turmoil.’’ Your statement suggests that the first thirty years 

of history (1949–1979) cannot be used to negate the subsequent thirty years (1979– 

2009). Does this statement apply to the Cultural Revolution? What’s your view 

about the Cultural Revolution? 

14. After the Communist Party seized power in China, it saw the great famine, 

great turmoil, and horrific massacre. Do you know the number of abnormal and unexpected deaths that happened in China over the period of 66 years (since 1949)? 

What do you think are the causes of these tragedies? Over a half century since its 

occurrence, is it possible to announce the archived data of those deaths during the 

great famine in early 1960’s? 

15. As your family, including your father and yourself, experienced suppression 

and injustices and persecution both during and before the Cultural Revolution, what 

kind of lessons have been learned from your experiences? 

16. After Bo Xilai was arrested, there were people who believed that you do not 

agree to his Chongqing Path in the name of Chanting Red Old Melodies and Oppressing the gangsters. But it turned out to be otherwise. Is it only corruption that 

led Bo Xilai to a disgraceful fall? What is your view on Bo Xilai’s practice of ‘‘Chanting and Oppressing’’? 

17. Since your taking power, China’s central television has aired a series of public 

confession of the ‘‘crimes’’ by suspects (before they were justifiably defended in 

court. Is this practice a kind of renaissance of the Cultural Revolution? 

18. After taking power, you have established and led a number of so-called ‘‘small 

groups.’’ Are you worried about making ‘‘mistakes’’ like what Mao Zedong did after 

consolidating overwhelming power? Do you think your personal power needs some 

checks? Are there any effective checks in place? 

19. After you came to power, there were people who proposed eliminating the influence of Western Culture, particularly the foundation and principles of Western 

social sciences and humanities. Now if without any importing Western concepts, 

does China ever produce its own political science, sociology, economics, among other 

fundamental social sciences? Does Marxism and Leninism belong to Western 

thoughts and ideology? If you cancel or stop these western social sciences, what kind 

of new ones do you have to replace them? Are you going to switch back to the MaoMode of ‘‘high institutions of science and engineering’’ as Mao himself did? 

IV. 

20. Now we see that you depend on the so-called social stability maintaining a 

system inherited from Hu Jintao and Zhou Yongkang and suppressing human rights 

lawyers and other dissidents. Do you believe that Zhou Yongkang has made great 

contributions to maintaining the Communist system? 

21. Can you explain or elaborate on the So-called ‘‘7–NOs’’ that was said of originally your ideas. Were these approved by the Central Committee of the Communist 

Party? Can you explain reasons for pushing the ‘‘7–NOs’’ (including universal values, press freedom, civil society, civil rights, historical mistakes in Communist Party 

rein, crony capitalism, and judicial independence)? 

22. What kind of ‘‘state secrets’’ were leaked in the article by Gao Yu, a famous 

journalist in her 70’s? What kind of harm did her writing cause to citizens? Or is 

it a crime if her writing helps Chinese citizens learn what they are entitled to 

know? 

23. Liu Xiaobo has been sentenced to 11 years on the basis of his 6 pieces of writing. Do you think his sentence was based on his legitimate freedom of expression? 

Liu Xiaobo’s sentence terminates on June 22, 2020. If you ate still in power, will 

you let him be freed then? In your opinion, what are the differences among the politVerDate Mar 15 2010 14:37 Mar 15, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\98714.TXT DEIDRE
46 

ical environment in which Liu Xiaobo, Nelson Mandela, Va ́ clav Havel, Mohandas 

Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. experienced? 

24. Since this past July 10, more than 100 human rigths lawyers, and activists 

have been detained, arrested, disappeared, and harassed. Most were released later, 

with a small number still in custody. We know such a campaign is conducted under 

the unified order. Who is responsible for this campaign? What kind of orders have 

you issued? 

25. Are you going to stop suppressing Falungong during your tenure? What is 

your view on the global movement by Falun Gong to persecute Jiang Zemin? 

26. During the Hu Jintao-era, official data shows that China’s expenditure for 

maintaining social stability surpassed that for national defense. Is it still the same 

under your administration? If not, have you decreased your expenditures for social 

maintaining projects or increased national defense budget? 

V. 

27. Do you think the June 4 movement was a violent anti-revolutionary turmoil? 

Or was it a civil disorder? Or just a political turmoil? Did you agree that it is acceptable to send tanks and machine guns to suppress peaceful students and civilians? 

28. Do you support your father’s position against suppressing students on 

Tiananmen Square? 

29. If there were students coming to Tiananmen Square for peaceful demonstration and protest, are you going to adopt the same measures as the CPC did 26 years 

ago? If not, what are you going to do? 

30. Why has the Communist regime been working hard to cover the truth of the 

Tiananmen Massacre in June 1989? 

31. ‘‘Tankman’’ is well known throughout the world, and is said to be Wang 

Weilin. What is his real identity? What is his status now? Why has he simply disappeared? 

32. Do you support or oppose the abrupt actions in 1987 to remove Hu Yaobang 

from his position of the Secretary-General of the so-called ‘‘Democratic Life Session’’? 

33. Before your taking over the position of Secretary-General of the Communist 

Party, rumors spread that you were to reverse the Party decision on 1989 student 

movement. What is the possibility of that happening? 

VI. 

34. Seventy years ago, both Japan and Germany pushed patriotism and nationalism. As you commemorated the victory of Anti-Japanese War and Anti-Fascism, 

you similarly emphasized both patriotism and nationalism, on the same platform as 

the Nazi-German military parade. Have you noticed the inherent identical problems? 

35. In the Nazi-era, Hitler allowed his subjects on the street to watch from their 

balcony and even on roofs of buildings, why have you banned such viewer-rights in 

Beijing? None of the world leaders has banned everything else to serve their military parade, such as shutdown of stock markets, factories, hospitals, air flights, vehicles, schools, as well as no entertainment on TV, can you image anything more 

fascist than your behavior? 

36. In your speech on September 3 military parade, you shrewdly avoided touching historical details of China’s anti-Japanese war and anti-Fascism. We cannot forget the rivalry between the KMT and Communist party in China at the time, and 

that between freedom and democracy and authoritarian Communism. It was just 

these debates of the two ideologies that delayed the final triumph over Fascism. Following surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan, civil war in China broke out between KMT and the Communist party, followed by the Korea War, and Vietnam 

war. Apparently, you did not follow Mao’s suit to express appreciation of Japanese 

aggression in China that helped bring the Communist Party to power. You did not 

define the historic issue of leadership of genuine resistance against Japanese aggression, either by KMT or the Communist Party. What’s your view on the role of 

the Communist Party of China during the Cold War? Any reflections? 

37. How come the KMT veterans who fought against Japanese aggression and 

Communist forces during the Civil War have never received any benefits to support 

their lives? Even following your rhetoric that these veterans were wrong in the civil 

war fighting by against Communist forces, they deserve amnesty based on their 30- 

year long humiliation, as victims of slaughter, forced labor camps, custody, and family members who suffered from the mistreatment. Given their role in anti-Japanese 

aggression, these veterans deserve some recognition from the regime, yet none has 

been offered. How can the regime present the most basic fairness and humanity? 

47 

38. What’s your view on the fallout of Lien Chan (Taiwan’s former vice president) 

when he returned from your military parade to Taiwan where even the pro-reunification allies showed no respect for him 

39. How come most of the WWII anti-Fascism allies did not join you for the military parade on September 3? 

40. Do you think patriotism and (communist)Party-love are of the same issue? 

VII. 

41. In dealing with maritime disputes with neighboring countries, the international community is concerned about your regime becoming more militaristic. 

What is your view on the role of armed forces when addressing the disputes? 

42. China’s propaganda insists on promoting China’s soft power, however, when 

universal values, press freedom and civil society, among other principles that are 

universally acceptable, are prohibited from public discussion in China, then, what 

can you utilize to present your soft power if not for the opening wallets, and therefore, how can you persuade global community to learn from you, to give you a nod? 

43. Ling Jihua, a former senior official and chief of staff in the Communist Party’s 

headquarters, has been under custody, and his brother Ling Wancheng has fled 

China, now living in America. Your administration dispatched officers, as well as 

his daughter, to urge him to return, even coercing him to comply, which is illegal 

here in the United States. Without any legal agreement between the two governments, China sent its law enforcement officers to try to catch some one in the US. 

What are your comments 

44. USA or Russia—which one is likely to be China’s long-term ally, and why? 

45. How many family members of your officials, including most senior-level (sitting and retired) have migrated to the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, and European countries? And what about their ill-gotten wealth? Do you have accurate information about them? Do you think USA and other countries know this information? 

In other words, China’s senior leadership and their subordinates and family members, along with their records of corruption, are all in the hand of these countries. 

How can you afford confrontation with them? Not to mention, in military conflicts. 

Can you bear the consequences? Your hard-line rhetoric seems to fool your domestic 

audience does it not? 

46. China’s leaders, including you, often meet with protests and demonstration by 

the Chinese citizens wherever such a visit happens. Why is that? 

VIII. 

47. You often emphasized the ‘‘new norm’’ for the Chinese business community 

and ordinary people when the economy slows down. Meanwhile, government forces 

helped prop up stock prices, and in cracking down on ‘‘short-selling’’ following the 

market plunge, which had been reported by commentators and journalists, these 

voices have been silenced with arrests and those investment institutions and individuals threatened against any possible short-selling. Do you think this kind of 

scheme would work and save the stock markets? 

48. Your government have finally found CaiJing journalist Li Xiaolu as a scapegoat for the recent stock market crisis and forced him to confess on CCTV. If Li 

Xiaolu had the capacity to short-sell the Chinese stocks with his mere reporting, 

then he is supposed to replace Premier Li Keqiang, given such a potential. What 

do you think? 

49. On the 3rd plenary session of the 18th Party Congress, you promised to let 

market forces play a leading, even decisive role, how do you explain the government’s hand intervening in economic issues in a more aggressively manner? 

50. China’s state banks possess huge bad debts. Are they loans to the state-owned 

enterprises, local governments, or private businesses? 

51. Is Household Registration Law a kind systematic discrimination? One ‘‘People’s Deputy’’ in rural areas represents four times the number of a population than 

that of the urban areas, i.e., political rights of villagers equals a quarter of those 

in urban communities. Isn’t that blatant political discrimination? Migrant workers 

in cities pay their taxes, then why can they be denied any public services, such as 

their children’s rights to attend local public schools? 

52. China’s public services don’t match its tax collection. Thus, its fragile, limited 

social security cannot support the general mass with affordable healthcare, basic 

schooling, aging care, yet ironically, your administration still call itself a socialist 

country. How can this be the case when the country’s citizens cannot be provided 

these basic, necessary social services? 

53. As the Secretary General of the Communist Party of China, do you mean to 

realize the communism in China when you talk about your ‘‘China Dream? ’’ 

48 

IX. 

54. While visiting Russia, you said that only felt tall if the shoes fit, as rhetoric 

to hinder international community ‘‘interference’’ in the political system on your 

side. Why didn’t you say this inside China? Does this mean you fear people’s choice 

of an appropriate system to fit their own needs? 

55. Why don’t you let Tibetans, Urghurs, Mongolians, and Hong Kong residents 

to tell you if their shoes fit their feet, and in doing so, you know well in your heart 

that they will achieve genuine self-rule in their autonomous regions? 

56. You must know that His Holiness the Dalai Lama deserves high regards in 

global community. Do you think those who respect the Dalai Lama intend to confront China? Will you invite the Dalai Lama to a pilgrimage to Mount Wutai 

(Wutaishan)? 

57. Why can’t the Uyghurs keep their beards and whiskers? As you mentioned 

in your speech on military parade, the Communist ancestor was a man with great 

beard, so why do you comment on his spectacular beard? 

58. In the past 5 years, more than 140 Tibetans have died of self-immolation. 

What do you know of the reasons? If you really believe in Marxism or Confucius, 

dare you engage in self-immolation if you are encouraged to do so? 

59. The Communists of China claim to be atheists. Then why do you and your 

government insist in intervening in the reincarnation of a Living Budda in Tibetan 

Buddhism? 

60. Why has the Communist Party chief Xia Baolong of Zhejiang province ordered 

demolition of more than 1,500 churches and crosses in that province? 

X. 

61. In your first article published by the People’s Daily on December 7, 1984, entitled ’’Young and middle-aged cadres must respect the oldies’’ you said that the 

generational exchange of guards in power should be cooperation and replacement. 

‘‘Respecting the old’’ is a prerequisite for cooperation, while the latter is the foundation for replacement. In contrast, the People’s Daily recently published a piece saying ‘‘cool off’’ like tea after guests leaving, referring that those officials after retirement should not interfere with the sitting leadership. What’s your current view on 

the old comrades? Do you think the elders like Jiang Zemin has become a hindrance 

on your path to power? The late Deng Xiaoping toppled the tenure of two chiefs of 

the Communist Party, committed the Tiananmen Massacre (the crime of slaughtering innocent people) in June 1989, followed by his ‘‘Southern Inspection Tour’’ in 

1992. All these are perfect examples that demonstrate a consistent interference by 

the elders in China’s politics. Why didn’t you oppose him? 

62. Are you willing to follow suit of Chiang Ching-kuo to end a ban of political 

parties, and open up to freedom of the press, embracing constitutional democracy 

and the rule of law? Or are you in tune with your wife’s famous song ‘‘Dynasty’’ 

which echoes the old regime that those founders pass on their dynasties to their offspring, i.e., in your case, RED Siblings like you and those offspring of the first Communist leadership taking control of China under communist rule. Some people say 

you worship Mao Zedong and Vladimir Putin. If so, do you want to become a lifetime leader 

63. If drawing a comparison between Mao Zedong thought and those of your father, which influenced you the most 

64. What is your ultimate goal? Multiple choice: A. To achieve ultimate personal 

power to make sure no obstacle or challenge exists while in power. B. To ride high, 

and maintain the Communist rule in the hands of red siblings. C. To seek appropriate opportunities to achieve a peaceful political evolution for China to look up to 

the most advanced countries for democracy. D. To restore the mental outlook of 

Mao-style leadership, and even surpass Mao himself and your predecessors. 

49 


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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SHOHRET HOSHUR

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Chairman Christopher Smith, Co-chairman Marco Rubio and Commission Members, thank you for inviting me to testify this afternoon at today’s hearing, ‘‘Urging 

China’s President Xi Jinping to Stop State-Sponsored Human Rights Abuses.’’ I am 

a U.S. citizen, a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and a journalist for 

Radio Free Asia, a private, nonprofit corporation that broadcasts news and information to listeners in Asian countries where full, accurate, and timely news reports 

are unavailable, including China. 

I came to the United States in 1999, almost five years after leaving my homeland 

in China’s far western Uyghur region in 1994. The journey that took me away from 

my family did not begin by choice. I left to escape the wrath of local Chinese authorities who deemed two of my writings for local Uyghur-language newspapers as 

subversive. I was a journalist for Qorghas Radio and Television, a local media outlet 


98714.003.eps
52 

in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, when I decided to write two pieces 

about Beijing’s harsh oppression of Uyghurs. 

The choice I made then, upon leaving China, as now, was to never give up being 

a reporter covering the XUAR. To give that up would mean that a remote part of 

the world and its people—the Uyghurs—would lose one of their only lifelines to reliable news and information about what’s happening in their own neighborhoods and 

communities. When I began working for Radio Free Asia in 2007, it was a great 

opportunity to continue work that is badly needed. But it was also an opportunity 

seized by Chinese authorities as they began to harass my family. At first it was 

questions for my brothers, my sister, and my mother, asking them about my whereabouts after I left. But as my reports for RFA began to be heard by Uyghurs listening on shortwave radio and reading my stories on the web, authorities wasted little 

time in making it clear to my family—and to me—that they would one day pay a 

price for my journalism. 

In September 2009, following the broadcast of my report on the death of a jailed 

Uyghur torture victim, local authorities from my native Qorghas County visited my 

family in person. They forced my brothers to call me and demand that I leave my 

job at RFA. They told them that if I continued my work, they were in danger. In 

2009, authorities linked my report on a violent incident between migrant ethnic 

Uyghurs and Han Chinese at a factory in Shaoguan to the unrest that erupted in 

July in the XUAR capitol city of Urumqi, which became known as the Urumqi Uprising. 

For the next several years, as China ramped up its security clampdown in 

Xinjiang, violence intensified and grew more frequent. But China’s state-controlled 

media rarely reported on these deadly incidents. Radio Free Asia disclosed the majority, often through my reports. 

The threats—against my family, and, by way of my family, me—became more frequent and grave during this period. They culminated last year when all three of my 

brothers were jailed. My younger brother Tudaxun was detained in April before 

being tried in court and sentenced to five years in prison. He was charged with ‘‘endangering state security.’’ My two other brothers, Rexim and Shawket, talked with 

me about Tudaxun’s situation on the phone in June. I tried to comfort them when 

they grew understandably emotional. I told them that in time, the situation might 

improve. The next month, in July, a Chinese daily newspaper The Global Times ran 

a story attacking Radio Free Asia for its coverage of violence in Xinjiang. Though 

I wasn’t named, the article cited my June phone call with my brothers, which had 

been intercepted by state surveillance. 

In August 2014, local authorities also detained Rexim and Shawket. Their families have not seen them since. They were later charged with ‘‘leaking state secrets’’—I believe largely in connection with that phone call with me in June. They 

were also charged with ‘‘endangering state security.’’ When it became clear that the 

authorities were not going to release them, I reached out with the help of RFA to 

the Committee to Protect Journalists, which issued a press release about my brothers’ situation in January 2015. The case received wide attention in global media and 

interest here from the U.S. government. Their families and my sister were informed 

of their cases being reopened by authorities—hopeful news in China where a prosecutorial office almost never calls for the re-opening of a case submitted by police. 

But our hopes soon dimmed when it became obvious, despite this development, 

that my brothers were to remain behind bars. Eventually, after the postponing of 

several court dates that came after inquiries from the U.S. Department of State to 

Chinese officials in the embassy here in Washington and overseas in Beijing, their 

separate trials were finally held this past August at the Urumqi Intermediate 

Court. They now await their verdicts, which the judge told their lawyers would be 

issued by the Chinese Political and Law Council (‘‘Zhengfawei’’). These could come 

in two months, putting them after President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington. 

I am grateful for the attention and concern my family’s case has received in the 

global press from fellow journalists—particularly from The Washington Post and The 

New York Times and among human rights groups, U.S. officials, and members of 

Congress. We have worked with Senator Rubio and Senator Warner to raise this 

issue with State Department. This week on Monday (Sept. 14, 2015) I met with U.S. 

Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom 

Malinowski. He assured me that there is serious concern about my case throughout 

the department. 

But despite these efforts—and despite the sincere concern, for which I feel fortunate—my brothers remain in jail. The suffering continues for my mother, my sister, 

and of course my brothers’ families. Their families are fatherless and without their 

husbands, and now basically without income. My 76-year-old mother worries. 

53 

For me, one thing is certain, I cannot give up my work at Radio Free Asia. As 

tensions and violence have escalated in the XUAR, the Uyghur people yearn for 

trustworthy news. 

Today, I am here to ask for officials in the U.S. government—my government— 

and the Administration to raise this case with President Xi next week. My family 

only wants to be left alone, free from persecution by local authorities. They want 

to live their lives as citizens of a country that respects their wish to be husbands 

and fathers, looking after their families. I know my case is not unique. Many of my 

colleagues at Radio Free Asia with relatives in China also have faced retribution 

and harassment. But I hope my testimony today helps to ensure that the United 

States will continue to stand up for people like me who came to this country in hope 

of having the freedom and rights we didn’t have in our homelands. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ETHAN GUTMANN

THE ANATOMY OF MASS MURDER: CHINA’S UNFINISHED HARVEST OF PRISONERS OF

CONSCIENCE

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Thank you. 

In order to piece together the story of how mass organ harvesting of prisoners of 

conscience evolved in China, I spoke with medical professionals, Chinese law enforcement, and over 100 refugees. My interviews began in 2006. My book, The 

Slaughter, was published last year. 

I was not the first to examine this issue in depth. That distinction belongs to 

David Kilgour and David Matas, the authors of the seminal Bloody Harvest report 

of 2006. 

Nor will I be the last. The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of 

Falun Gong, a group of Chinese investigators scattered throughout the world, have 

just completed their own study. 

Based on our collective evidence (and I have included three short excerpts from 

each of these reports that I request be entered into the record), here is a brief 

timeline of what we know: 

In 1994, the first live organ harvests of death-row prisoners were performed on 

the execution grounds of Xinjiang in Northwest China. 

In 1997, following the ‘‘Ghulja massacre,’’ the first political prisoners, Uyghur activists, were harvested on behalf of high-ranking Chinese Communist Party cadres. 

In 1999, Chinese State Security launched its largest action of scale since the Cultural Revolution: the eradication of Falun Gong. 

In 2000, hospitals across China began ramping up their facilities for what would 

become an unprecedented explosion in China’s transplant activity. And by the end 

of that year, well over one million Falun Gong practitioners were incarcerated in 

labor camps, detention centers, psychiatric facilities, and black jails. 

By 2001, Chinese military hospitals were unambiguously targeting select Falun 

Gong prisoners for harvesting. 

By 2003, the first Tibetans were being targeted as well. 

By the end of 2005, China’s transplant apparatus had increased so dramatically 

that a tissue-matched organ could be located within two weeks for any foreign organ 

tourist with cash. While the execution of death-row prisoners—hardened criminals— 

supplied some of the organs, the majority were extracted from Falun Gong practitioners—a fact that wasn’t even being kept all that secret from the prisoner population, visiting foreign surgeons, or potential customers. 

Kilgour and Matas estimate 41,500 transplants were sourced from Falun Gong 

from 2000 to 2005. I estimate 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were murdered for 

their organs from 2000 to 2008. The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong believes the numbers are more likely in the hundreds of thousands. 

In early 2006, the Epoch Times revealed the first allegations of the organ harvesting of Falun Gong and was followed by the Kilgour-Matas report. 

By 2008, many analysts—I was among them—assumed that the Chinese State 

would stop harvesting prisoners of conscience for fear of international condemnation 

during the Beijing Olympics. Yet the physical examination of Falun Gong prisoners 

for their retail organs actually showed a slight uptick. 

In 2012, Wang Lijun, Bo Xilai’s right-hand man, attempted to defect at the US 

Consulate in Chengdu. Two weeks later the World Organization to Investigate the 

Persecution of Falun Gong revealed that Wang had personally received a prestigious 

54 

award for overseeing thousands of organ extractions and transplants. Fatally exposed, Chinese medical authorities declared to the Western press that they would 

cease organ harvesting of death-row prisoners over the next five years. Yet no mention was made of prisoners of conscience and third-party verification was rejected. 

It is during this period, from 2012 to the present day—even as Chinese medical 

authorities spoke publicly of shortages due to relying on voluntary organ donation— 

that a very strange anomaly occurs. While China’s hospitals have maintained strict 

Internet silence on their transplant activities since 2006, the hiring of transplant 

teams at many of the most notorious hospitals for harvesting prisoners of conscience 

is actually on the increase. In a handful of hospitals—for example, Beijing 309 military hospital—it’s practically exponential. 

Witness accounts shed light on the mystery. One spoke to me about over 500 

Falun Gong prisoners having been examined for their organs in a single day—the 

largest cattle call that I know of. A Western doctor was recently assured by a Chinese military hospital surgeon that prisoners are still being slaughtered for organs. 

And Falun Gong practitioners across China’s provinces have described police forcibly 

administering blood tests and DNA cheek swabs—not in prison, not in a detention 

center, but in their homes. 

I can’t supply a death count for House Christians, Uyghurs and Tibetans. But if 

I had to make an estimate on Falun Gong, I would double my previous numbers. 

I’m sure the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong would 

go much further. Either way, two points are clear: 

• The official number of Chinese transplants per year—10,000—is a fiction. The 

real number is likely three times that. 

• And the serial public declarations by the Chinese medical establishment of a 

new ethical environment for transplantation is simply a privacy shield to murder of prisoners of conscience. 

What can we do? We are not the moral arbitrators of this tragedy. But neither 

is the World Health Organization or the Transplantation Society. The moral authority belongs to the families across China who have lost loved ones. Until we can hear 

their voices, we need, at a minimum, to follow our convictions. 

I’m not a lawyer, but in my layman’s understanding, medical privacy ends when 

there is a gunshot involved. Why then do we adhere to strict medical privacy when 

there is an organ sourced in China? Why can’t we even make a proper estimate of 

how many Americans received transplants in China? Why do we have to make 

guesses based on a humorous, feel-good, account like Larry’s Kidney? 

This is an obscenity; for an American to go to China for an organ in 2015 is to 

participate in an ongoing crime against humanity. 

So I ask you to remove our privacy shield. And until the Chinese State offers the 

full and comprehensive accounting that the world demands, I ask you to follow the 

example of two very small but brave countries—Israel and now, just recently, Taiwan—and ban organ tourism to China. 

Thank you. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM

NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

On July 10, police came for lawyer Wang Yu. Her arrest was the first in what 

became a massive crackdown on China’s human rights defenders. Wang Yu was one 

of China’s brightest and bravest lawyers. She chose to represent clients in ‘‘sensitive 

cases,’’ such as Uyghur professor Ilham Tohti and Falun Gong practitioners. Police 

later swept up her husband and others who worked at their Beijing law firm. What 

originally looked like a targeted attack on one law firm quickly became a coordinated hunt for human-rights lawyers and legal staff across 19 Chinese provinces. 

Over the next few weeks over 300 were detained. Of that number around 27 remain 

incarcerated and 10 face charges of committing national security crimes. 

Li Heping and Zhang Kai, two lawyers well-known to the Congress and other Parliamentarians around the world—were ‘‘disappeared’’ in this crackdown. They remain missing and are reportedly denied access to family or legal counsel. Zhang Kai 

was arrested the night before a planned meeting with U.S. Ambassador at Large 

for Religious Freedom David Saperstein. 

These detentions were lawless, brutal, and shocking. Sadly, they are not without 

precedent in China. President Xi comes to the U.S. next week at a time when his 

government is staging an extraordinary assault on the rule of law, human rights, 

and civil society. Under Xi’s leadership, the Chinese government has pushed 

55 

through new laws and draft legislation that would legitimize political, religious, and 

ethnic repression, further curtail civil liberties, and expand censorship of the Internet. 

China also continues its coercive population control policies. The ‘‘One Child Policy’’ will mark its 35th anniversary next week. That’s 35 years of telling couples 

what their families must look like; thirty-five years of forced and coerced abortions 

and sterilizations; thirty-five years of children viewed by the state as ‘‘excess baggage’’ from the day they were conceived. This policy is unacceptable, it is hated, it 

is tragic, and it is wrong. We urge President Xi to do the right thing and end China’s horrific population control policies forever. 

The NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders says President Xi has ‘‘overseen one 

of the most repressive periods in the post-Mao era.’’ The CECC, whose Annual Report will be officially released in three weeks, will conclude that the Chinese government’s efforts ‘‘to silence dissent, suppress human rights advocacy, and control civil 

society are broader in scope than any other period documented since the Commission started issuing Annual Reports in 2002.’’ 

China is in a race to the bottom with North Korea for the title of world’s worst 

violators of human rights. The hope that President Xi would be a different type of 

Chinese leader has been completely destroyed. 

Nonetheless, despite the torture and arrests, despite the harassment and censorship, despite the ‘‘black jails’’ and failed promises—rights advocates, civil society activists, and religious believers continue to grow in prestige and social influence in 

China. Persecution has not silenced them—at least not at this moment. It has not 

dimmed their hope for a different kind of ‘‘China Dream’’ that embraces human 

rights, freedom, and democracy. 

U.S. policy must be geared to protect China’s rights defenders and religious communities, nurture China’s civil society, and work with those committed to the rule 

of law and fundamental freedoms. 

The U.S. cannot be morally neutral in this regard. We cannot be silent in the face 

of the Chinese government’s repression. We must show leadership and resolve because only the U.S. has the power and prestige to stand up to China’s intransigence. 

U.S.-China relations would be stronger and more stable if people like Wang Yu, Li 

Heping and Zhang Kai were in positions of leadership in the Chinese government. 

Washington is preparing to roll out the red carpet next week for President Xi and 

his delegation. Toasts will be made, statements will be exchanged, and the highly 

symbolic gesture of a state visit will give President Xi a much-needed boost of legitimacy at home. 

If President Obama fails raise human rights prominently and publicly—it is a diplomatic win for Xi Jinping. If economic and security interests grab all the headlines, 

China’s freedom advocates will despair. If there is no price paid for China’s lawlessness and repression, it is a loss for everyone who is committed to freedom and 

rights. 

We can no longer afford to separate human rights from our other interests in 

China. Human rights can’t be considered a separate track in negotiations, but integrated at all levels of engagement. 

Surprisingly, former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson agrees with this assessment. Mr. Paulson is not known as a passionate defender of human rights, but 

in his latest book ‘‘Dealing With China’’ he says that the U.S. must not shy away 

from ‘‘shining a light on human rights problems, because nothing good happens in 

the dark.’’ He says the U.S. must push for greater transparency, the free flow of 

information, and better adherence to universal standards in China—not only because they represent universal values but because they are critical parts of U.S. economic interests in China. 

It is increasingly clear that there is direct link between China’s domestic human 

rights problems and the security and prosperity of the United States. The health 

of the U.S. economy and environment, the safety of our food and drug supplies, the 

security of our investments and personal information in cyberspace, and the stability of the Pacific region will depend on China complying with international law, 

allowing the free flow of news and information, complying with its WTO obligations, 

and protecting the basic rights of Chinese citizens, including the fundamental freedoms of religion, expression, assembly, and association. 

President Obama must ‘‘shine a light’’ on China’s human rights abuses. He must 

make clear to President Xi that the suppression of rights defenders, ethnic minorities, and civil society will adversely affect U.S–China relations. And, he must use 

all the diplomatic tools available, including sanctions if necessary, to demonstrate 

that human rights protections are a critical interest of the United States. 

56 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA; 

COCHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Events in China have garnered significant media attention in recent months. 

From wildly fluctuating markets which have directly impacted American businesses 

and families, to unprecedented cyberattacks on government networks which compromised the personal data of millions of Americans—China is in the news. 

These issues, along with China’s continued aggression in the South China Sea will 

most assuredly be on the agenda during the upcoming State Visit of Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping next week. Whether the 

Obama administration will be able to secure meaningful progress on any of these 

fronts remains to be seen, although if previous rounds of cordial dialogue are any 

indication, the prospects are bleak. 

In addition to these myriad issues is China’s grave and deteriorating human 

rights landscape—a particularly intractable area in our bilateral relations, and one 

which has worsened significantly on this administration’s watch. 

The past year alone has been marked by further erosion of rule of law, tightening 

restrictions on civil society and outright attacks on human rights defenders and political dissidents. In its forthcoming annual report the Congressional-Executive 

Commission on China will document efforts to muzzle dissent and suppress human 

rights advocacy that are broader in scope than any other period since the Commission started issuing Annual Reports in 2002. 

We’ve seen human rights lawyers disappeared, churches demolished and crosses 

torn down and Tibetan Buddhist monks setting themselves aflame in desperation 

at the oppression experienced by their people. 

These are realities in Xi Jinping’s China. 

While President Xi is greeted with a 21-gun salute, a prominent human rights 

lawyer is unaccounted for, his whereabouts unknown after being taken into custody 

by the Public Security Bureau. While President Xi is wined and dined in the White 

House, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate languishes in prison. 

The CECC is featuring stories like these, and many others, through the ‘‘Free 

China’s Heroes’’ initiative in the days leading up to Xi’s visit. We are profiling the 

cases of individual prisoners of conscience in an effort to put a human face on the 

suffering that has accompanied Xi Jinping’s ascent to power. 

Too often the Obama administration wants credit for ‘‘raising human rights’’—but 

passing mentions and diminished significance in the broader bilateral agenda provides little solace to the brave men and women who face unimaginable obstacles and 

hardship for daring to claim their most basic human rights. 

At the very least President Obama should meet with U.S.-based Chinese dissidents and activists before the state visit—even invite several of them to attend 

the state dinner. 

They represent the future of China. They are writers and lawyers. They are activists and students. They have democratic aspirations and dreams for their country 

that do not include harassment, abuse and imprisonment. 

It’s time for America to get back on the right side of history—to stand with the 

oppressed not the oppressor. 

57 

SUBMISSION FOR THE RECORD

URGING CHINA’S PRESIDENT XI JINPING TO STOP STATE-SPONSORED HUMAN RIGHTS

ABUSES

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Witness Biographies 

Teng Biao, Chinese human rights lawyer, a Harvard University Law 

School Visiting Fellow, and Co-founder, the Open Constitution Initiative 

Teng Biao is a well-known human rights lawyer, Visiting Fellow at Harvard University Law School, and the Co-founder of the Open Constitution Initiatives. Dr. 

Teng Biao holds a Ph.D. from Peking University Law School and has been a visiting 

scholar at Yale Law School. He is interested in the research on human rights, judicial systems, constitutionalism, and social movements. As a human rights lawyer, 

Teng is a promoter of the Rights Defense Movement and a co-initiator of the New 

Citizens’ Movement in China. In 2003, he was one of the ‘‘Three Doctors of Law’’ 

who complained to the National People’s Congress about unconstitutional detentions 

of internal migrants in the widely known ‘‘Sun Zhigang Case.’’ Since then, Teng 

Biao has provided counsel in numerous other human rights cases, including those 

of rural rights advocate Chen Guangcheng, rights defender Hu Jia, the religious 

freedom case of Cai Zhuohua and Wang Bo, and numerous death penalty cases. 

Xiao Qiang, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, China Digital Times 

Xiao Qiang is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bi-lingual 

China news website. He is an adjunct professor at the School of Information and 

the Graduate School of Journalism (2003 - 2011), at the University of California, 

Berkeley. He is also the Principal Investigator of the Counter-Power Lab, an interdisciplinary faculty-student research group focusing on technology and free flow of 

information in cyberspace, based in the School of Information, UC Berkeley. Xiao 

became a full-time human rights activist after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 and 

was the Executive Director of the NGO Human Rights in China from 1991 to 2002. 

Xiao is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2001 and in January 2015, he 

was named to Foreign Policy magazine’s Pacific Power Index, a list of ‘‘50 people 

shaping the future of the U.S.-China relationship.’’ 

Yang Jianli, President, Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for China 

Yang Jianli is President of Initiatives for China/ Citizen Power for China. Dr. 

Yang is a scholar and democracy activist internationally recognized for his efforts 

to promote democracy in China. He has been involved in the pro-democracy movement in China since the 1980s and was forced to flee China in 1989 after the 

Tiananmen Square massacre. He holds PhDs in mathematics from the University 

of California at Berkeley and in political economy and government from Harvard 

University’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2002, Dr. Yang returned to China 

to support the labor movement and was imprisoned by Chinese authorities for espionage and illegal entry. Following his release 2007, he founded Initiatives for China, 

a non-governmental organization that promotes China’s peaceful transition to democracy. In March, 2010, Dr. Yang co-chaired the Committee on Internet Freedom 

at the Geneva Human Rights and Democracy Summit. 

Wei Jingsheng, Chairman, Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition 

Wei Jingsheng is a long-time leader for the opposition against the Chinese Communist dictatorship. He was sentenced to jail twice for a total of more than 18 years 

due to his democracy activities, including a ground breaking and well publicized 

essay he wrote in 1978: ‘‘the Fifth Modernization—Democracy’’. He is a winner of 

numerous human rights awards and the author of the book ‘‘Courage to Stand 

Alone—letters from Prison and Other Writings’’. After his exile to the USA in 1997, 

he founded and has been the chairman of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition (OCDC) which is an umbrella organization for many Chinese democracy groups, 

with members over dozens of countries. He is also the president for the Wei 

Jingsheng Foundation, and the president of the Asia Democracy Alliance. 

Shohret Hoshur, Journalist reporting news in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur 

Autonomous Region for Radio Free Asia 

Shohret Hoshur is a journalist reporting on news in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for Radio Free Asia, where he has worked since 2007. He began 

his career in 1989 in China’s far west as a TV reporter. In 1994, Chinese authorities 

58 

condemned two of his editorials as subversive, forcing him to flee his homeland. As 

stated in a New York Times profile, ‘‘[h]is accounts of violence in his homeland are 

among the few reliable sources of information about incidents in a part of China 

that the government has sought to hide from international scrutiny.’’ He graduated 

from Xinjiang University in 1987 with a degree in Uyghur literature. Shohret is now 

a U.S. citizen residing in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife. 

Ethan Gutmann, China analyst and author of ‘‘The Slaughter: Mass 

Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident 

Problem 

Ethan Gutmann is an award-winning China analyst and human-rights investigator and is the author of The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and 

China’s Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem (Prometheus, 2014) and Losing the 

New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal (Encounter Books, 

2004). He has written widely on China issues for publications such as the Asian 

Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, the Weekly Standard, National Review, and World Affairs Journal. Currently based in London, Gutmann has also 

been associated with several Washington think-tanks over the years, including the 

Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Free Congress Research and Education 

Foundation, and the Brookings Institution. 

Æ