U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

32–308PDF WASHINGTON : 2018

CHINA’S WAR ON CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER

RELIGIOUS FAITHS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND 

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Serial No. 115–167

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov,

or http://www.Govinfo.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

DANIEL M. DONOVAN, JR., New York 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

ANN WAGNER, Missouri 

BRIAN J. MAST, Florida 

FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida 

BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

THOMAS A. GARRETT, JR., Virginia 

JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah 

VACANT 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

AMI BERA, California 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

NORMA J. TORRES, California 

BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York 

ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York 

TED LIEU, California

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

DANIEL M. DONOVAN, JR., New York 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

THOMAS A. GARRETT, JR., Virginia 

KAREN BASS, California 

AMI BERA, California 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York 

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C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Tenzin Dorjee, Ph.D., Commissioner, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom ...................................................................................................... 6

Bob Fu, Ph.D., founder and president, ChinaAid ................................................. 20

Thomas Farr, Ph.D., president, Religious Freedom Institute .............................. 43

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Tenzin Dorjee, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................ 10

Bob Fu, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ....................................................................... 25

Thomas Farr, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................. 45

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 68

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 69

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

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

Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations: 

Joint Statement by Pastors: A Declaration for the Sake of the Christian 

Faith (3rd edition, 198 pastors) ....................................................................... 70

Freedom House Special Report: The Battle for China’s Spirit, by Sarah 

Cook ................................................................................................................... 78

Senator Rubio, chairman, and Representative Smith, cochairman, CECC 

letter to Secretary Ross .................................................................................... 86

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CHINA’S WAR ON CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER 

RELIGIOUS FAITHS 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o’clock p.m., in 

room 2255, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. 

Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The committee will come to order. 

Good afternoon to everybody. 

Several years ago, during a visit to the United States, Xi Jinping 

chose to be interviewed by a Chinese reporter living in the United 

States. After the interview, President Xi asked a single question of 

this reporter, not about his family, not about whether he enjoyed 

living in the United States, or about any stories he might be writing. The one question he asked was, why do so many Chinese students and faculty living in the United States become Christians? 

Whatever was behind that question, religious freedom conditions 

in China have not improved because of it. Quite the opposite. In 

fact, President Xi Jinping has personally launched efforts to 

sinicize religion, and the Central Government has issued commands to each Provincial Party Secretary making them responsible 

to bring religion in line with Communist Party ideology. 

The Chinese government is an equal opportunity abuser of religious freedom. As you, sir, Commissioner Tenzin Dorjee, will testify, Xi Jinping’s stated goal of sinicization affects all religious communities in China, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, 

Daoists, Muslims, and Christians. 

Over the course of this year, the Chinese government has intensified the most severe crackdown on religious activity since the 

Cultural Revolution. Regulations on religious affairs, issued in February, tightened the existing restriction and new draft regulations 

are being circulated to clamp down on religious expression online. 

Churches, mosques, and temples have been demolished, crosses destroyed. Children have been prohibited from attending services, 

and surveillance cameras are being installed in churches. 

Xi Jinping talks about realizing the China dream, but when Bibles are burned, when a simple prayer over a meal in public becomes an illegal religious gathering, and when over 1 million 

Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims are interned in reeducation camps 

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and forced to renounce their faith, that dream is an unmitigated 

nightmare. Much of the news lately has been the Chinese government’s targeting of Christians. 

The sinicization campaign has affected both state-controlled and 

unregistered churches. Protestant and Catholic clergy remain in 

prison. And the human rights lawyers who defend religious believers have been jailed, disappeared, or tortured into silence. 

Xi Jinping views the fast-growing Christian churches, particularly the Protestant house church movement that does not belong 

to the state-sanctioned Protestant entities, as a threat to the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party. One of our witnesses here 

today, my good friend, the Reverend Dr. Bob Fu, has detailed on 

countless occasions the Communist Party’s vicious war on independent house churches. 

Underground churches, meaning those that do not belong to the 

state-sanctioned Patriotic Association, have faced tremendous persecution for decades, including Bishop Xu Jiamen, who I met back 

in 1994. Bishop Xu—and it was in a small apartment in Beijing—

Bishop Xu’s body bore witness to the brutality of China’s Communist Party. He was beaten, starved and tortured for his faith, 

and spent, ultimately, some 40 years in the Chinese gulag. 

Yet, when I met with him, he prayed not just for the persecuted 

church, but for the conversion of those who hate, torture, and kill. 

I was absolutely amazed at his kindness and said, ‘‘What does the 

Chinese government fear in Bishop Xu?’’ All he had in his heart 

was love and compassion, and as I said, he prayed for those who 

persecuted him and other believers of all the faiths. Unfortunately, 

only a couple of years after Bishop Xu met with me, because he 

was out only a few years, he was arrested and disappeared, and 

has not been heard from since. 

Today’s efforts to forcibly close underground parishes expanded 

this year. China’s Ethnic and Religious Bureau told the state propaganda arm, Global Times, in April, that ‘‘activities in illegallybuilt parishes will be prohibited.’’ And underground Catholic 

churches were being shuttered this very summer. 

Recent reports indicate that a deal has been struck by the Holy 

See and the Chinese government, whereby the Pope will have veto 

power over Chinese government-approved candidates to be ordained as bishops. In exchange, seven previously excommunicated 

priests ordained without papal mandate and appointed by the Chinese government will be welcomed back into the full community 

with Rome. 

Already the Vatican has been asked two validly ordained bishops 

to step aside to make way for two formerly excommunicated 

bishops. Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus in Hong Kong, has 

questioned whether Vatican officials making these decisions ‘‘know 

what true suffering is.’’

The reports are that the deal is provisional and full details are 

yet unknown. But, with the efforts underway to forcibly sinicize religion, it certainly seems an odd time to strike a deal with Xi 

Jinping in China. I hope and pray this agreement will bring true 

religious freedom for Catholics and, by extension, all people of all 

faiths who have suffered so much to maintain their faith. We will 

continue to monitor that situation closely to see if force is used by 

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the Chinese government to close all underground or unregistered 

Catholic churches as a result of the deal. 

I do look forward to hearing from our very distinguished witnesses, including Dr. Tom Farr, on what the implications of this 

deal would be and his recommendations for U.S. religious freedom 

in diplomacy. 

Finally, U.S.-China tensions are high at the moment on a myriad 

of fronts. And the Chinese government, presumably, is searching 

for ways to reduce, not escalate them. At least that is the thought. 

Taking a hammer and a sickle to the cross or jailing 1 million 

Uyghur Muslims, however, will only ensure a tougher China policy, 

one with widespread, bipartisan, and even global support. 

Frankly, I would call on the Trump administration to use all the 

tools that they have, including those that were embedded in the 

Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, which was passed 

just a couple of years ago, and the Global Magnitsky Act, which is 

designed to hold individual persecutors to account for their crimes. 

Not only making them ineligible to travel to the United States by 

way of visa denial, but also ensuring that they could not do business here because of their egregious behavior. So, that would be a 

followup that we will be asking the administration. 

We would also hope, as I think, Tom, you mentioned in your testimony, that the designation of CPC for China and others be done 

immediately. The Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act 

called for that being done by August. So, we have already seen 

some delay. 

I would say, parenthetically, that under the Obama administration, we had years of delay before CPC was designated, which is 

one of the catalysts for the language that I wrote into that bill, the 

Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act. But now we are 

several weeks past the deadline. What is the holdup? Hopefully, 

that will be remedied very soon. 

Mr. Suozzi, I yield. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for 

calling this hearing on a very important topic that doesn’t get nearly enough attention from the governments around the world. 

I want you to just know, on a personal note, that I attended my 

nephew’s wedding in California this week, and the priest who performed the wedding, who is from my hometown of Glen Cove, was 

asked by Mother Teresa in the 1980s to bring Mother Teresa’s 

order to China, and he has been working there for the past 30 

years and I think could give us some good insights as to what is 

going on in China directly related to the Catholic Church. I think 

he has been involved in trying to help negotiate this. 

In the past, China has been referred to as the ‘‘Middle Kingdom’’ 

or the ‘‘Sleeping Giant.’’ And I think we can be sure that China’s 

aspirations go beyond either of these titles. China has asserted 

itself on the global scene as an economic power, a military power, 

and a power that wishes to create a parallel international order. 

It relies on the lack of transparency to advance its interests, uses 

their economic clout to bully critics into silence, and is one of the 

world’s biggest sources of illicit capital, funding some of humanities 

worst impulses across the globe. 

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At the same time, it presents itself as an alternative to the western system through both soft and sharp power initiatives. Our national security strategy calls China a strategic competitor, and our 

top intelligence sources or officers sounded the alarm in Aspen that 

China is the No. 1 economic and national security threat. 

We have paid a lot of attention to how China acts on the global 

stage, but looking into how China treats its own gives us a chilling 

insight into the Chinese Communist Party thinks, what they believe a society should look like, what kinds of rights and dignities 

they think a government should allow to its citizenry. 

It is not the government’s role to allow freedoms. Humans are 

born free, as much as the Chinese seek to act to the contrary. 

Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, religion is being severely curtailed and repressed. He launched a campaign of harsh and systemic suppression with the goal of sinicizing China’s religious by 

infusing them with Chinese characteristics. Sinicizing has the aim 

to transform religion and ethnicity in Chinese society, a long-reaching program that seeks to homogenize the Chinese into one single 

identity and requiring loyalty to the Communist Party. 

Their concerns about having complete control and their fear of 

chaos are dictating much of this policy. This effort has resulted in 

the brutal religious persecution of Christians, both Catholic and 

Protestant; Muslims; Falun Gong; Buddhists, and others. International headlines include horrific reports of forced conversions, reeducation camps, arbitrary arrests, and torture. 

The activity in China is not new. After the People’s Republic was 

established in 1949, all religion was severely suppressed. Religions 

were viewed by the Chinese Communist Party as a threat to their 

rule, as an organizing principle besides that of the Party was condemned. 

China embraced the Marxist ideology of religion as opium of the 

masses and as a tactic for foreign influence in China. The Communist Chinese Party viewed Christianity as part and parcel of 

Western imperialism in China during the 100 years of humiliation, 

beginning in the 1840s. Religious freedom continued to be severely 

repressed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. 

A revival of the religions that began in the 1980s was marked 

by development of the unofficial Protestant house church movement and an underground Catholic movement loyal to the Vatican. 

In 1982, the Chinese constitution does name/guarantee freedom of 

belief, according to Article 36, and forbids organizations or individuals from compelling citizens to believe in or not believe in religion. 

This supposed guarantee of freedom of belief, however, does not 

guarantee freedom of practice. The practice of religion in China has 

been stifled by Chinese policy, practice, and ideology. The guiding 

ideology for religion in China is the three-self policy: Self-lead, selffunded, self-perpetuating. These mandates of ‘‘self’’ have cut off institutional support from world religions and facilitated the exclusion Communist Party’s direct control over the Chinese people’s religious practice. 

In fact, when China cut relations with the Vatican in 1951, it asserted complete control over the Patriotic Catholic Church in 

China, appointing its own bishops and clergy. Catholics in China 

5

faced either attending churches approved by Beijing or going to underground congregations. 

A new government policy further ensconced the Communist Party’s control over religion when they announced in October 2017 and 

closed the state government’s Religious Affairs Bureau, and placed 

administration over religions under the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party. 

Under Communist orders, local governments across the country 

have shut down hundreds of house churches. Catholic clergy 

anointed by the Vatican were incarcerated, and crosses on churches 

have been destroyed. A recent agreement between the Vatican and 

Beijing offers what the Vatican describes as a ‘‘gradual and reciprocal rapprochement.’’ I am hoping the witnesses here today can 

provide some insights into how this will play out. 

Another issue of major concern is the brutal persecution of China’s ethnic Muslim population, the Uyghurs. In what appears to 

amount to an ethnic cleansing, anywhere from hundreds of thousands to 1 million Muslims have been arrested and put in reeducation camps or internment. Beijing argues that these measures are 

necessary for their security to prevent separatism of this northwestern province and to counter terrorism, but the scope of repression far exceeds the perceived threat. 

Both Chinese and American officials say that 1500 Uyghurs have 

fought alongside Islam groups in Syria. But, according to a 2016 

list of foreign recruits from an Islamic State defector, only 144 

fighters came from Xinxiang. 

In these reeducation camps, the Muslims report torture, abuse, 

forced disappearances, and separation from their children, forced to 

eat pork and cremate their burials, counter to Muslim tradition. 

And while Beijing may deny that these camps exist, satellite images show the contrary, and the victims’ stories are slowly trickling 

out. 

Xinxiang has become a prototype for their police state that would 

make the dystopia Orwell described in his book, ‘‘1984,’’ seem like 

a benevolent, with multiple checkpoints, facial recognition, QR 

scanning codes on the home, thousands of police, both uniformed 

and plain-clothed. Artificial intelligence is being used to gather 

data every minute in minute detail that all feeds into a system 

that rates how loyal the individual is to the Chinese state. While 

the media has sounded the alarm, we need governments to step in 

and do more. 

I look forward to hearing the witnesses’ testimony. I yield back 

my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Suozzi, thank you very much for your testimony. 

I would like to now welcome the chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Dr. Tenzin Dorjee. He is 

also an associate professor at the Department of Human Communication Studies at California State University in Fullerton. 

He was appointed to the Commission on December 8th, 2016 and 

reappointed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on May 10th, 2018. 

On June 12, 2018, Dr. Dorjee was unanimously elected Chair of the 

Commission. 

His teaching and research interests include intercultural and 

intergenerational communication, peacebuilding, and conflict resoVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:20 Nov 08, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\092718\32308 SHIRL
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lution. Dr. Dorjee has authored and coauthored numerous articles 

and invited chapters on Tibetan culture, identity, nonviolence, 

Sino-Tibetan conflict, and intercultural communications competence. 

Dr. Dorjee is a prominent translator who worked in the Translation and Research Bureau of the Library of Tibetan Works and 

the Archives of Dharamsala in India for over 13 years. He has had 

the honor to translate for many prominent Tibetan Buddhist professors, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in India and North 

America. 

Dr. Dorjee has traveled to Burma and Iraq to monitor religious 

freedom conditions there, and has testified before the U.S. Congress before on the issue of religious freedom and conditions in 

Tibet and China, including the long arm of China in the U.S. academic institutions. 

Dr. Dorjee, welcome, and the floor is yours. 

STATEMENT OF TENZIN DORJEE, PH.D., COMMISSIONER, U.S. 

COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 

Mr. DORJEE. Chairman Chris Smith, Congressman Suozzi, and 

other members of the subcommittee, good afternoon, and thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the United States 

Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, about 

the Chinese government’s outright assault on person of any faith, 

but particularly those associated with foreigners such as Christians 

and Muslims. 

I am Tenzin Dorjee, USCIRF’s current Chair and the only Tibetan Buddhist ever appointed to serve on the Commission. 

USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. Federal Government 

Commission created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom 

Act, or IRFA. The Commission monitors the universal right of freedom of religion or belief abroad, using international standards to 

do so, and makes policy recommendations to Congress, the President, and the Secretary of State. 

I am honored to be joined at this hearing by two esteemed scholars who also work on international religious freedom, Bob Fu of 

ChinaAid and Thomas Farr of the Religious Freedom Institute. I 

look forward to their testimonies. 

USCIRF began reporting on China in our very first annual report, and has continued to do so every year since, because of that 

country’s systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom. The State Department first designated China as a ‘‘country 

of particular concern,’’ or CPC, in 1999, and has done so in every 

instance the Department has made such designations, most recently in December 2017. And USCIRF has recommended the CPC 

designation for China every single year. 

Regrettably, the conditions of USCIRF first reported in China 

nearly two decades ago have not improved. In fact, the conditions 

have worsened under President Xi Jinping due to the sinicization 

and securitization of religion. Religions must be in accord with 

Communist ideology, and religious freedom is most severely restricted in the name of national security. USCIRF has consistently 

raised these two pertinent issues at various hearings and events. 

Relatedly, USCIRF’s 2018 annual report depicted ongoing represVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:20 Nov 08, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\092718\32308 SHIRL
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sion and discrimination directed at Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur 

Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and Falun Gong practitioners. 

These abuses include: Destruction and dismantling of houses of 

worship and religious symbols; forced evictions from, and demolition of, religious educational institutions; restrictions, related to 

the practice and the study of one’s faith, on language, culture, attire, parents’ ability to name and teach their children, religious rituals and ceremonies, and freedom of movement; imprisonment of 

religious leaders and followers, as well as lawyers and human 

rights defenders advocating for religious freedom; prolonged disappearances and arbitrary detention without trial, denials of legal 

representation and medical care, and intimidation and physical assaults, sometimes through torture, to force believers to renounce 

their faith; forced attendance, or even unlawful detention, at reeducation and indoctrination facilities; and pressure to join state-sanctioned religious organizations. 

The scope and scale of these violations is staggering. Perhaps the 

best way to convey China’s horrific religious freedom conditions is 

by highlighting the human element, such as the Chinese prisoners 

that are part of USCIRF’s Religious Prisoners of Conscience 

Project. Through that project, USCIRF Commissioners advocate on 

behalf of specific individuals imprisoned for their faith background 

or religious activity. In China, Commissioners are advocating for 

three such prisoners. 

The Panchen Lama. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the Panchen Lama, 

holds the second highest position in Tibetan Buddhism and is one 

of the world’s longest-held prisoners of conscience. Chinese government authorities kidnapped the then-6-year-old boy and his family 

on May 18, 1995. They have not been heard of since. Just days before Gedhun’s abduction, His Holiness the Dalai Lama chose him 

to be the 11th Panchen Lama. The Chinese government, in complete disregard for the Tibetan people, named its own Panchen 

Lama, though most Tibetan Buddhists reject this selection. 

The Panchen Lama’s disappearance and detention is in the context of the Chinese government’s ongoing vilification of the Dalai 

Lama; its asserted control over the reincarnation system of Tibetan 

Buddhism that includes the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation; the destruction of important Buddhist sites at Larung Gar and Yachen 

Gar; the pervasive security presence through the Tibet area, including inside monasteries and nunneries, and imprisonment of 

countless Tibetans like language advocate Tashi Wangchuk, whose 

appeal of his 5-year prison sentence was denied just this August. 

Chinese repression is so extreme that at least 153 Tibetans have 

self-immolated since February 2009 in support of religious freedom, 

human rights, and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet. 

Gulmira Imin. On July 5, 2009, Gulmira Imin, an Uyghur Muslim, participated in a demonstration following the deaths of Uyghur 

migrant workers. Authorities accused her of helping to organize the 

demonstration, in part by posting information about it online. A 

court sentenced Ms. Imin to life in prison on charges of ‘‘splittism,’’ 

leaking state secrets, and organizing an illegal demonstration. Her 

only crime was defending her fellow Uyghur Muslims. 

When we think of a war on religion, Beijing’s overt criminalization of Islam certainly comes to mind. The government prevents 

8

Uyghur Muslims from observing Ramadan, invades their private 

everyday lives with pervasive security measures, prohibits children 

from attending mosque, and bans Uyghur language instruction in 

schools. 

Worst of all, the Chinese government is detaining approximately 

1 million Uyghur Muslims in unlawful detention camps, allegedly 

to provide vocational training to prevent extremism. Imagine the 

entire city of San Jose, California, a population of just over 1 million people, detained against their will. And the Chinese government is not just punishing those currently detained. Authorities 

harass and intimidate their loved ones, cruelly separating families, 

and have inflicted severe trauma on generations of Uyghurs impacted by gross ill treatment, torture, and shame just because they 

are Muslim. 

Hu Shigen. In August 2016, a Chinese court found underground 

church leader and religious freedom advocate Hu Shigen guilty of 

subversion and sentenced him to 71⁄2 years in prison and another 

5 years’ deprivation of political rights. He was one of nearly 300 

lawyers and activists arrested, detained, or disappeared as part of 

a nationwide crackdown that began on July 9, 2015, also known as 

the ‘‘709 Crackdown.’’

The already poor situation for Christians, like other religious 

groups, has markedly declined since new religious regulations came 

into effect on February 1st this year. Just days prior to the regulations, Chinese police used dynamite to annihilate the evangelical 

Golden Lampstand Church. More recently, authorities shut down 

Zion Church, one of Beijing’s largest unregistered Protestant house 

churches. 

Across several provinces, authorities have confiscated Bibles; demolished churches; moved or destroyed crosses or other religious 

symbols, sometimes replacing them with the Chinese flag, and arrested countless Christians. In an unprecedented display of frustration, hundreds of underground house church leaders and clergy 

have signed a statement calling out the Chinese government’s 

abuse of power and violations against religious freedom. 

Each of these individuals are prisoners adopted by USCIRF’s 

Commissioners through our Religious Prisoners of Conscience 

Project, but, sadly, they represent only a small fraction of the thousands wrongly imprisoned in China, many because of their faith. 

I am proud to advocate for both the Panchen Lama and Gulmira 

Imin, and my colleague Commissioner Gary Bauser is advocating 

on behalf of Hu Shigen. 

I would like to make some recommendations. It would be easy to 

think that there is little hope from a bleak assessment. However, 

there are a number of steps the U.S. Government can and should 

take to underscore religious freedom concerns in China. 

First, the State Department must immediately redesignate China 

as a CPC, a country of particular concern, for its systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom. Under the Frank 

Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, CPC designations 

should have been made by the end of August, and the USCIRF 

urges the State Department to make them as soon as possible. 

Second, in addition to the appropriate sanctions available under 

IRFA subsequent to a CPC designation, the administration should 

9

pursue targeted sanctions against specific Chinese officials and 

agencies under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability 

Act. 

Third, the State Department and the entire administration 

should build on the momentum of the historic Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom and continue their bilateral and multilateral efforts to shine a light on religious freedom concerns in China, 

such as in the Ministerial’s statement on China. 

Fourth, the administration and Members of Congress should pursue regular visits to areas in China deeply impacted by the government’s religious freedom abuses and raise religious freedom concerns, including cases of prisoners of conscience, whenever they 

interact with Chinese government counterparts. 

The House of Representatives just passed the Reciprocal Access 

to Tibet Act. The Senate should pass the Reciprocal Access to Tibet 

Act. That would deny entry into the United States for Chinese government officials responsible for creating or administering restrictions on U.S. Government officials, journalists, tourists, and others 

seeking to travel to Tibetan areas. I am a Tibet-American, and I 

would definitely like to go to see Tibet. So, I don’t have that chance 

right now. Moreover, the U.S. Congress should more actively seek 

readouts from administration officials about their interactions with 

China, in particular, to inquire about discussions related to religious freedom. 

In conclusion, I am going to say that religious freedom is called 

a universal right for a reason: It belongs to everyone everywhere. 

Everyone has the right to have a faith or no faith at all, and no 

one has the right to control it for others. When the Chinese government attacks freedom of religion or belief in a wholesale and brutal 

manner, it is incumbent upon us all to hold them to account, not 

just because they have violated the norms and standards of rulesbased international order, but because, in doing so, Beijing has assailed humanity with its blatant disregard for the human conscience. 

Thank you again for holding a hearing on such a timely and important subject. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dorjee follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Dr. Dorjee, thank you very, very much for your leadership and for that tremendous statement to the committee. 

Let me just begin now with some questions. Obviously, the State 

Department’s Ministerial that was held in July was a very, very 

important event, it had all of the high-caliber people, including Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback and, of 

course, Secretary Pompeo. You and so many others were there. 

I wonder if you could just give us your thoughts as to the followup. How well do you think the momentum that was created at 

that Ministerial has been acted upon, especially as it relates to 

China? Why have few countries signed the statement on China? Is 

it out of fear of retaliation, in your view, or some other reason? 

And you did call for looking at sanctions? One of the concerns we 

have all had for years is that the Tiananmen Square sanctions 

have been used in a double-hatting fashion when it comes to CPC, 

putting curbs on police equipment. I have argued for years that a 

new set of very specific sanctions needs to be imposed on China to 

let them know that we are not kidding. 

In the past, we have even had to fight the State Department 

when they wanted to double-hat the Ambassador-at-Large himself 

or herself, and give somebody else the portfolio, and in addition to 

that, you will be the Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, 

which we very vigorously push back on. But, on the sanctions front, 

that is what we do. If you could speak to that, I would appreciate 

it. 

Marco Rubio and I chaired a hearing just a few weeks ago, a little longer than that. It has been a month. We focused on the 

Uyghurs and a number of aspects of the people being rounded up, 

about 1 million strong, maybe more; and put into concentration 

camps, reeducation camps. And we raised strongly—and Ambassador Kelly Curry, who is our Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council at the United Nations, gave very chilling testimony 

about the problem of surveillance; that the surveillance state has 

gone from looking for speeding, like we have here, those kinds—

and that is not surveillance. That is perhaps even good law enforcement, arguably. But, there, it is everywhere. 

As he put it, ‘‘thousands of surveillance cameras, including in 

mosques; facial recognition software; obligatory content-monitoring 

apps on smartphones and GPS devices on cars; widespread new police outposts with tens of thousands of newly-hired police and even 

Party personnel embedded in people’s homes; and compulsory collection of vast biometric databases on ethnic and religious minorities throughout the region, including DNA and blood samples, 3D 

photos, iris scans, and voiceprints.’’ And he goes on from there. I 

mean, an intrusive state, the likes of which we have never seen. 

Back in 2006, I chaired a series of hearings on how Google, 

Microsoft, Cisco, and others were enabling the surveillance state to 

monitor the internet, to find out where people were, who they were 

talking to. And that continues unabated to this day. But now, doubling down, they are doing even more, and obviously, the technology here is being used elsewhere, but it could be used even more 

aggressively elsewhere as well. If you could speak to that? 

I mean, if ever there was a need for a sanctions regime, that is 

truly—and one of the things that came out in our last hearing was 

15

all of the American companies, European companies, that are just 

going along and selling them all of that equipment, which is being 

used to persecute, to torture, and to kill. 

Mr. DORJEE. Thank you for the opportunity to answer your questions. 

The Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom was a very historic one. As you said, it was held for the first time. We believe 

that it was fruitful to a certain extent and there were some positive 

outcomes that we observed. 

For example, the like-minded countries are able to organize 

maybe religious events in the coming months. A number of countries have expressed their interest to create petitions for international religious freedom Ambassadors in the governments; for example, Mongolia, Taiwan, possibly Bahrain, and Poland. And so, 

the United States, here we have been fortunate to be highly active 

and engaged in the IRFA Roundtable supporting this and efforts. 

So, USCIRF has also engaged with a number of country delegations that already have, or are seeking to create, their own religious freedom roundtables. In Denmark last month, USCIRF engaged with country delegations from Vietnam, Burma, Indonesia, 

Malaysia at a Fourth Annual Southeast Asia Freedom of Religion 

or Belief Conference. And USCIRF looks forward to staying engaged with these stakeholders as well as existing partners like the 

International Panel of Parliamentarians for the Freedom of Religion or Belief. 

And so, USCIRF looks forward to having a more active role in 

planning the process for the next Ministerial. The Commission was 

proud to host two events that were part of the official program this 

July, including a 20th anniversary of IRFA reception, a U.S. grant 

workshop; plus, the efforts of NGOs in hosting so many successful 

site events during the Ministerial. 

With regards to why few countries signed on the statement of 

China, my understanding is that participating countries had really 

limited time to review the language before the deadline to sign on. 

And also, very few, if any, had like authority to sign it without consulting back at their home governments. And so, it is probably the 

matter of being the first time and a short time that it might have 

happened. 

Mr. SMITH. Is it still open, if somebody wanted to sign it today? 

Mr. DORJEE. I believe so, but I am not sure exactly what the language reads. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Because I think, if it is, an effort should be 

made to gather further——

Mr. DORJEE. I would assume it would be, right? That we are welcoming, you know. 

Mr. SMITH. Right. 

Mr. DORJEE. But a number of countries signed—we should acknowledge them—like Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Kosovo. And we hope more will sign to that. 

With regard double-hatting, that there are issues, USCIRF, in 

our recommendations to the State Department for the CPC designations—so, 10 countries have been designated as CPC countries, 

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sion of preexisting sanctions. That includes China as well. And four 

have the waivers, if you will. 

And so, the administration has relied on this approach. While the 

statute permits the use that has the longest precedence under preexisting sanctions or indefinite waivers, it provides little incentive 

for the CPC designated government to reduce or hold egregious religious freedom violations. So, we would rather encourage the State 

Department for targeted sanctions, especially based upon religious 

freedom violations. And so, such sanctions, or the CPC designation 

must be followed by implementing a clear, direct, and unique Presidential action. 

And so, USCIRF also comments that current and future administrations and Congress need to recommend such to the full and robust application of mechanisms available under the International 

Religious Freedom Act, just as you pointed out that all the tools 

available must be used effectively. 

Mr. SMITH. So, it is time to sanction, in your view? 

Mr. DORJEE. Yes, it is, I think, time, very much time to sanction, 

yes, targeted sanctions, I must say. 

Mr. SMITH. Of course. 

Mr. DORJEE. And you also raised the issue about the Uyghur, or 

about 1 million Uyghurs’ detention. And so, the surveillance of 

every movement, you know, and they use the most up-to-date technology they could buy from the American countries available that 

they could to track down everything. And there is so much of a social control of movements, basically, of the Chinese back in their 

own country. And so, that is a serious matter. 

I think American countries, if they are involved in such trade—

of course, we are not saying don’t do the trade. Yes, you need to 

make your profits. But we must also keep in mind our human concerns and humanity at heart. And so, what are the implications of 

selling this technology to China where they put it to wrong use? 

And not only, I think, in its circumstance with the Uyghur Muslims, they have been doing the same thing back in Tibet, where in 

the monasteries they have put all kinds of surveillance. And now, 

basically, the Chinese government, they appoint administrators in 

the monasteries, so that they can—how should I say it?—plan out 

everything and control everything. 

So, such serious matters, I think the Congress and the President, 

all of us should look at. And you also mentioned how like Microsoft 

enabled that. 

Mr. SMITH. Right, right. 

Mr. DORJEE. I think a company really has to—you know, we also 

have human and social responsibility besides making money. So, 

the only thing about trade, that is what enables China to be bold 

and do—how should I say?—egregious things in violation that they 

are doing. So, we do have to put a check on that, and I very much 

agree with your mindset, yes. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, the letter by Marco Rubio and I 

to Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce, calling for bans, curbs 

on the export of those devices and that capability, without objection, it will be made a part of the record. 

I would like to yield to Mr. Suozzi. 

17

Mr. SUOZZI. So, Dr. Dorjee, thank you so much for your testimony. We really appreciate it very much. 

Looking at your biography, I see that you are very much an expert on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. I look at the population of 

China of 1.38 billion, and I looked at the different populations of 

the different religions of religious Buddhists, Chinese Buddhists, 

185 million to 250 million; Christians, Protestants, 60 to 80 million; 

Catholics, 12 million; Muslims, 21 to 23 million; Falun Gong, 7 to 

20 million, and 6 to 8 million Tibetan Buddhists. Why is it that 

China sees the Tibetan Buddhist being such a tremendous threat 

to them? Why do they have to have such control over the Tibetan 

Buddhists? And why would they imprison the second—how did you 

refer to this boy? Well, he is not a boy now; he is a man. 

Mr. DORJEE. The Panchen Lama. 

Mr. SUOZZI. ‘‘Bengee’’? 

Mr. DORJEE. Lama. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Panchen Lama. So, he is the successor? 

Mr. DORJEE. Right. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Is he——

Mr. DORJEE. He is the second highest leader in Tibetan Buddhism. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Yes. 

Mr. DORJEE. Very important, you know, for recognizing, for example, the reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Yes. 

Mr. DORJEE. So, yes, he is very important. 

Mr. SUOZZI. But why is that seen as being such a threat to 

China? 

Mr. DORJEE. China claims to have 55 national minorities, and Tibetans are counted among those 55. But my understanding is that 

Uyghur Muslims and especially Tibetan Buddhists are very distinctive in terms of their history, language, culture, and religion, which 

stands out very much, as much as China claims Tibet to be part 

of China and Tibetans to be Chinese, but the fact of the matter is 

that, on many of those other issues, Tibetans are a very distinctive 

group of people. 

And so, the Tibetan Buddhism is a core of Tibetan identity, the 

Tibetan language and Tibetan Buddhism. And so, the Tibetan language is very different Chinese. Chinese origin is a pictograph 

form, but Tibetan is based upon the ancient Sanskrit language of 

India. And so, Tibetan came straight from India. Actually, we don’t 

call it Tibetan Buddhism. When it came to the West, it started to 

be labeled, but we just call it Buddhism. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Buddhism. 

Mr. DORJEE. Right. And so, Tibet as a nation, the people, for centuries they did one thing the best they could. They did get all the 

resources, human and everything, to—how shall I say it?—to further their Buddhist faith. And that is why they are known around 

the world today. 

So, if you take the Tibetan Buddhism out of them, the Tibetan 

language, then, you know, they probably are much less to be Tibetan in terms of cultural identity. So, that is why the Chinese 

know that, if you allow Tibetans to practice their faith and speak 

their language, which is really restricted—they don’t like Tibetans 

18

to be taught in schools and universities. They require them to 

study Mandarin. And so, the Tibet language advocate Tashi 

Wangchuk, right, he called for that very right, and he has been in 

prison still. So, it is the distinctive nature of things. 

And, of course, you mentioned that Tibetans are only like a 

small, probably 6 million. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Very small. 

Mr. DORJEE. Very small. But, right now in Tibet, there are more 

Chinese than Tibetans. And so, that demographic shift and change 

probably the Chinese government thinks is the ultimate solution to 

Tibet-China issues, which is a big concern for us. And so, that is 

why I think we——

Mr. SUOZZI. But why is this small population of people such a 

threat to the Chinese government? Why do they perceive it as 

being such a threat? 

Mr. DORJEE. So, my belief is, as in the culture, as a communications scholar, whether the threat is actually there are not, it is the 

perception. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Yes. Why? 

Mr. DORJEE. Because they feel that, if you let the Tibetans to 

practice their religion and language, then those are the bases that 

they can claim that they are not Chinese anymore, right? Whereas, 

that really subverts their claim. 

And also, I mean, to add to that, I have heard that, overall, there 

are about 300 million Buddhists in China, because that includes Tibetan Buddhists. So, that, itself, is probably threatening to the Chinese government, right, because the Buddhists believe in Buddha. 

All Buddhists believe in Buddha. 

So, combined with things, it is a potential for them that there 

could be big change that could——

Mr. SUOZZI. If you include all the religious groups, the Buddhists, the Chinese Buddhists, the Protestants, the Catholics, the 

Muslims, the Tibetan Buddhists, the Falun Gong, it is 380 million 

people. There is still another billion people that are not affiliated 

with any of those religions. 

Mr. DORJEE. Exactly. 

Mr. SUOZZI. So, I met with some Chinese experts recently, and 

they pointed out to me that the big driving factor of the Chinese 

government and the Chinese hierarchy is control because they are 

afraid of chaos. They are afraid of things happening on their borders. You know, Tibet on their border, the Uyghurs out in the 

northwestern border. They are just concerned about losing control 

of their frontiers. Is that something you would agree with? 

Mr. DORJEE. Well, the Chinese is security conscious. You know, 

they may have some, and those are legitimate, of course, we understand. But, then, they use the national security as the protest to 

control everything, right, whether it has to do with national security or not. And, yes, you rightly said it. You know, they are—I am 

sorry to use this kind of word—control freaks really, China. And 

so, they have about 60 million Communist members, but there are 

380 million religious faith believers. Look at the number. There is 

a potential, of course, they think the threat, you know, to their 

power and control. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Okay. 

19

Mr. SMITH. Will the gentleman yield on that point? 

Mr. SUOZZI. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. But it is really to me control inside. I mean, they 

have no natural threat coming from Taiwan, coming from Vietnam, 

or anywhere else. And they have a military that is really a very 

high-grade military. It is really they just want power. Is that your 

view? 

Mr. DORJEE. I think it is just to stay in control and power. And, 

you know, the threat doesn’t have to be objectively this, based upon 

my research studies. It is just perception-based. 

China is very strong militarily. I don’t think these faith believers 

can really subvert the control, but, then, they believe in that, and 

that is why they——

Mr. SUOZZI. Where in the Chinese history do you think control 

comes from, this fear of chaos, or this desire to be control freaks? 

Mr. DORJEE. Well, I think, largely, in my understanding, it is 

rooted in their Communist ideology and maybe past history where 

they were dominated by other countries. So, China, culturally 

speaking, is very much concerned with what we call ‘‘face concerns.’’ They don’t want to lose their face concerns, and they want 

to be the powerful nation. Perhaps they want to be the only superpower, if possible. So, it is all combined, those things that make 

them who they are, I believe. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Just one brief thing, if I could. When we did the religious freedom law in 2016, many parts of that I think will make a difference, 

but two—we created a designated persons list for individuals who 

create egregious violations of religious freedom. And it also created 

a comprehensive religious prisoners list, persons who have been detained, imprisoned, tortured, and subjected to forced renunciation 

of faith. 

Are you satisfied that the State Department has faithfully created those two lists and they are up-to-date? 

Mr. DORJEE. I can appreciate that they are created, but I think 

we definitely would like to see more names on it. We understand 

that it has to be kept confidential until they put an action, but yes. 

And we also have, at USCIRF, amended to create a victims list and 

we are working on a database, too. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so very much for your testimony and for 

your leadership. 

Mr. DORJEE. Thank you very much for the opportunity. 

Mr. SUOZZI. Thank you so much. 

Mr. SMITH. I would like to now ask our second panel to come to 

the witness table, beginning with Dr. Bob Fu, who is the founder 

and President of ChinaAid, a former student leader during the 

Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. 

Dr. Fu graduated with a law degree in international relations 

from Remnant University in Beijing in 1993 and was a house 

church leader in Beijing until he and his wife were imprisoned in 

1996. In 1997, he was exiled to the United States with his family, 

and, in 2002, founded ChinaAid to promote religious freedom and 

the rule of law in China. 

20

Dr. Fu regularly briefs policymakers on religious freedom and, in 

2016, hosted the first-ever Asia-Pacific Regional Freedom Forum in 

Taiwan. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations 

and editor-in-chief of the journal Chinese Law and Religion Monitor, and holds a doctorate in the field of religious freedom from St. 

John’s College at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom. 

Then, we will hear from Dr. Thomas Farr, who is the President 

of the Religious Freedom Institute. Dr. Farr served for 28 years in 

the United States Army and the U.S. Foreign Service. In 1999, he 

became the first Director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom. 

Dr. Farr is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University; serves as consultant to the U.S. Catholic 

Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, and teaches regularly at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Prior to these positions, he has directed the Witherspoon Institute’s International 

Religious Freedom Task Force; was a member of the Chicago World 

Affairs Council’s Task Force on Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy; 

taught at the National Defense University, and served on the Secretary of State’s IRF Working Group. Most recently, Dr. Farr 

served as an associate professor of the practice of religion and 

world affairs at Georgetown University, where he directed the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown’s Berkely Center. 

He serves on boards of multiple organizations that seek to promote religious freedom. He has published multiple essays and 

major works on religious freedom. He holds a doctorate in history 

from the University of North Carolina, and he is also the author 

of World of Faith and Freedom, among other great writings that 

he has done. 

Dr. Fu, I yield. 

STATEMENT OF BOB FU, PH.D., FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, 

CHINAAID 

Mr. FU. Thank you, Chairman Smith, for your leadership, and 

thank you, Congressman Suozzi. 

I am also very honored to be on the same panel with the chairman, Dr. Dorjee, and Dr. Tom Farr. 

The religious freedom in China really has reached to the worst 

level that is not seen since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution by Chairman Mao in the 1960s. I will only maybe give you like 

five different aspects or symbols of those points to show why it has 

become the worst since the Cultural Revolution. 

Especially after the 19th Party Congress, the Communist Party 

has taken some unprecedented measures in cracking down on all 

independent faith groups. So, it is not only just the targeting of 

Christians or Catholics. As Chairman Dorjee just mentioned, it has 

been targeting any groups that show any independent spirit, such 

as, of course, the Tibetan Buddhists, the Uyghur Muslims in 

Xinjiang, as the chairman and Congressman Suozzi just mentioned, 

and Falun Gong, of course, and many other groups. 

So, because of the time limitation, I am asked to pay particular 

attention on the persecution against the Christians. First, we have 

not seen a level of persecution really since the end of the call for 

21

revolution on the number of religious institutions and churches 

that have been targeted or shut down. Since February the 1st, 

when the newly-enacted Regulations on Religious Affairs was 

taken into effect, in Henan Province alone, according to our documentation, the crosses of the churches, between 4,000 to 6,000 of 

churches, the crosses were being forcibly demolished or burned, as 

you can see from these latest photos. And a number of house 

churches, I mean the independent, unregistered house churches—

I mean, we are talking thousands—were being shut down. 

Last week, we just received in one particular province, in one 

particular county within the Hunan Province, which is called kind 

of the ‘‘Jerusalem of China,’’ with perhaps the largest number of 

Christians populated in that province, at least an estimated number of Christians in that province alone is over 10 million members. 

So, in one county called Jiahe County, among the 140—these are 

government-sanctioned, supposedly registered and protected 

churches—90 of them were already shut down. And a number, of 

course, of the crosses were being demolished and burned, and the 

laborers were even being detained for simply showing up in defense 

of the crosses. 

Ironically, many of those churches, even the government-sanctioned churches, when the cross was allowed to continue to exist 

inside the church, I mean on the church wall, they were forced to 

put the portrait of Chairman Mao and Chairman Xi Jinping on 

both sides of the cross. 

In the beginning of every worship service, the choir of the church 

has to sing a few Communist revolutionary songs praising the 

Communist Party before they can sing their worship-of-God songs. 

And the number of Chinese clergymen, I mean, these are even 

previously registered, approved by the government-sanctioned 

body. You know, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Christian Council are forced to go through another round of 

examination, and the first criterion they have to pass as legitimate 

clergymen is whether they can publicly pledge they will follow the 

Party’s words and the Party’s Path. 

[Mr. Fu speaks Chinese briefly.] 

‘‘Listen to the Party’s words first and follow the path of the Communist Party first.’’ And these slogans are being hanged around 

the church. I mean even many Catholic churches, on the wall, I 

mean on the door, on the entrance door, there is a slogan that says, 

‘‘Listen to the words of the Party; follow the path of the Party.’’

So, how can you have a real independent faith? I mean, the believers, as a Christian believer, we are taught to obey the command 

of the Lord, to listen to the word of the Lord. And, essentially, the 

Communist Party wants to impose them self as the Lord over the 

church. I think that tells maybe one of the essential reasons why 

these churches are being targeted. 

The second symptom we can see why that this is the worst time 

of our religious freedom in China is, for the first time since the 

Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party is now implementing a 

policy, I mean a mandate for Chinese citizens of the faithful, religious citizens, to sign a form to renounce their faith. So, we have 

produced the documentation showing the villager chief, the Communist Party chief, door to door forced the believers to sign a preVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:20 Nov 08, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\092718\32308 SHIRL
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pared form claiming that, oh, this believer were misled by an evangelist into believing Christianity. And now, after a few weeks of 

self-examination and the studies, political studies, they realized 

they made a mistake. They pled they will never believe Christianity anymore. So, this has not happened in the past. 

The No. 3 symptoms to showing the unprecedented persecution 

is burning Bibles. The last time, under the Communist Party rule, 

when a Bible-burning ceremony happened was 1967 when Chairman Mao’s wife, Madam Jiang Qing, organized a 1-minute Bibleburning ceremony in the Square of Shanghai. This is the first we 

have seen government officials went into the church, I mean confiscated all their Bibles and hymn books and Christian materials 

and piled them on the street, and started a Bible-burning ceremony. So, this is also unprecedented. 

And the No. 4 signature of this unprecedented persecution shows 

that, not only the Communist Party is doing this persecution in its 

own borders, now we have evidence showing that the kind of persecution and the methodology our Communist Party is using in 

China is being exported to the neighboring country and regions. 

Last week, we have received a documented report showing to the 

Kachin autonomous region the Communist Party officials, at least 

three or four of them were sent them in the Kachin minority areas 

inside the Burma border and directed a campaign there almost 

word-by-word, including the forced demolition of crosses from the 

rooftop of the church building in the Kachin, in the Burma area, 

including arrests and so-called sinicization like, you know, arrest 

those church pastors for interrogation. 

And they also disbanded 23 Christian schools that were started 

by Pastor John Cao, with whom I had been befriended for over 25 

years. And this year, he was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment as 

a Chinese-American pastor. And he is still suffering imprisonment, 

as we are talking now. 

So, all the Chinese house church Christians who are volunteering 

selflessly as the missionaries teaching Chinese and education in 

these schools were being rounded up—all. All of them were being 

imprisoned in the Kachin autonomous region. Then, last week, they 

were handed over to the Chinese authority, and at least eight of 

them are still being held in the Chinese prison, as we are talking. 

So, these are the measures that really, taken personally, again, 

that has not been seen since the Cultural Revolution. And how to 

tackle this? You are asking me to provide some recommendations. 

So, I have listed a few recommendations at the end of my written 

testimony. I would just highlight a couple of them, and then, I will 

add a few. 

First of all, I think I would recommend, besides the sanction put 

under the Global Magnitsky Act, I hope a Member of Congress 

should also really, and the U.S. Department of State and Treasury, 

should list more names of high-rank officials responsible for severe 

and systematic religious persecutions, as defined the USCIRF for 

sanctions. Because to sanction just one kind of middle, lower-rank, 

you know, one official is not enough. There are so many of those 

persecutors who are at large. So, we can work with the Member, 

with the Congress and the administration to produce more lists. 

23

And secondly, I urge Congress, through the CECC or other mechanisms, to target, to kind of create a watchlist, a religious persecutors watchlist, because we have a conscience, a Prisoner of Conscience list at both the CECC and the USCIRF Web site, but we 

also need to create a persecutors, to really let them know they are 

being watched. Let them know their family members, their children, their wife, and their other colleagues should be ashamed of 

those officials taking the persecution. 

And I also want to add a few recommendations. One of the way 

that we have seen the Chinese Communist Party have adopted 

really very efficiently in a sense, that targeting the religious minorities is through their internet control, through their censorship 

of the internet and smartphones, as you said. Because that is what 

they did when they are implementing this Uyghur, this 1 million 

group of Uyghur Muslims. I mean, the first thing when they are 

targeted is to check their smartphone or cut off their kind of internet access. 

I think even as the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 

even said, the kind of highway for internet freedom, for religious 

freedom, is to promote internet freedom. So, unfortunately, the 

BBG, under the current policy, only spent less than 1 percent of 

its budget on the internet circumvention. If we just appropriate 10 

percent, I think it will scare, I mean not only scare, but bring the 

true freedom for the religious practice. I think that will be very effective. I would urge Congress to take concrete measures to urge 

the BBG or mandate the BBG to do more on the internet freedom. 

And another thing I really want to urge Congress to do to help 

is those religious freedom advocates have paid a heavy price during 

the incarceration, especially during the kind of inhumane torture 

and interrogations. And we have found that in the Chinese academy of police, the police academy, they have a department specifically making studies on the kind of torture and interrogation techniques that they are using for mental torture to break the will. 

We have seen many friends, the human rights lawyers, Christian 

leaders, such as Guo Xijin, who, by the way, disappeared again for 

over a year now without knowing where he is, and Attorney Wang 

Yu, Attorney Li Heping, Attorney Huang Qi, and the other Attorney Wang Quanzhang, who is still disappearing for almost 3 years. 

They had been subject for enormous torture under these kinds of 

techniques. So, I think this warrants Congress to have a targeted 

report to study and make recommendations on these departments. 

Finally, I want to call Congress to also investigate those ChineseAmerican citizens—they are American citizens—that are being 

used as a tool, willingly or unwillingly, to spread propaganda, lies, 

deceptions. And we have evidence showing that they are buying 

radio stations on the border of U.S. and Mexico, for instance, on 

the side of the Mexico border, so that they can broadcast daily 

propaganda, deception, lies to the Chinese-populated areas along 

the California coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I think it 

warranted a particular investigation because these are people managed by the Chinese-American citizens here in the U.S., but they 

get their funding from the Chinese Communist Party propaganda 

fund. 

24

So, these are some of the recommendations I would recommend 

that the committee to take a look. 

Oh, by the way, I want to ask the chairman to grant me to submit, as part of the congressional record, the letter, the 426 Chinese 

house church leaders signed urging the Chinese government to stop 

the persecution, and they signed with their real name and their 

church affiliation in a most really bold and unprecedented way. So, 

I want to——

Mr. SMITH. But, by making it public, does that put a target on 

their back? 

Mr. FU. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. Is there any——

Mr. FU. Pardon me, Chairman. Okay. 

Mr. SMITH. By making it further public at a congressional hearing, does that a target on their back under Xi Jinping’s repressive 

police? 

Mr. FU. No, because they already made their names public. They 

want to make a statement. They are not afraid. It is time for them 

to speak up. 

Mr. SMITH. Years ago, we received testimony and read it aloud, 

and that person was brutally retaliated against for doing so. Again, 

this is the regime that most Americans still don’t have a sense is 

barbaric. It uses torture as a means pervasively against its own 

people and certainly against religious believers. But if you think it 

should go in, without objection, it will be made a part of the record. 

Mr. FU. Yes. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fu follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. I would like to now yield to Dr. Tom Farr. 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS FARR, PH.D., PRESIDENT, RELIGIOUS 

FREEDOM INSTITUTE 

Mr. FARR. Chairman Smith, Mr. Suozzi, thank you for holding 

this hearing, for inviting me here, and for being here yourselves. 

It is an honor to be here to meet Dr. Dorjee for the first time and 

to be with my old friend Bob Fu, Bob makes me angry every time 

I listen to him. Not at him, but at what he is talking about. 

The current assault on religion in China under President Xi 

Jinping is the most comprehensive assault on religion since the 

Cultural Revolution. Xi’s policy intensifies a long-existing government strategy to undermine a major threat to the authority of the 

Communist State; namely, that religion is a source of authority 

and an object of fidelity greater than the state. This characteristic 

of religion has always been anathema to totalitarian and authoritarian despots and to majoritarian democracies. Most religions, by 

their nature, limit the power of the secular state, which is why our 

Founders put it as the first of the Bill of Rights. 

President Xi’s intensification of China’s anti-religion policy includes a renewed effort to alter the fundamental nature of certain 

religions. One is Islam, as practiced by the Uyghurs in Xinjang 

Province. As we have heard today, the Chinese have recently targeted the Uyghurs for an almost genocide-like transformation and/

or elimination. Another is Tibetan Buddhism, the object for decades 

of a brutal Chinese strategy of persecution. A third is Roman Catholicism whose distinctive teachings on human rights and religious freedom pose a particular obstacle to the Communist State 

and to the impoverished Marxist-Leninist understanding of human 

nature and human dignity. 

Xi’s policy presents a major challenge to American international 

religious freedom policy. Since Congress passed the International 

Religious Freedom Act 20 years ago, our policy has consisted primarily of episodic human rights dialogs, annual reports on, and 

rhetorical denunciations of, Beijing’s periodic harsh crackdowns, 

and imposing mild and largely ineffective sanctions. None of this 

has had much impact on religious minorities or Chinese policy. 

Mr. Chairman, I support the imposition of targeted sanctions on 

Chinese officials or entities that sell surveillance equipment, but I 

want to do more. Overall, existing U.S. religious freedom policy 

simply hasn’t worked, and it is unlikely to work, in my view, in the 

face of this systematic, fierce crackdown on religion. 

It is time to try a different approach that goes as close as possible to the root of the problem. Congress and the State Department should work together to develop an all-of-government U.S. 

diplomatic strategy, not only to show them, as the chairman says 

that we are serious with targeted sanctions, but to persuade Beijing of an empirically verifiable proposition; namely, that Chinese 

minority religions, including its Catholics, are not inclined to challenge the government’s political power, but that, given the opportunity, they would further China’s domestic interests in ways the 

government desperately needs, and that no entity other than religious communities can provide. 

44

If the Chinese government viewed religious communities as useful elements of their society, and simply left them alone, those communities would very likely make substantial contributions to addressing domestic problems that are of great concern to Chairman 

Xi and the Politiburo. For example, the fragility of China’s economic growth and its social harmony, China’s moral decline and increase in corruption, the threat of violent religious extremism, and 

a huge and growing need to care for China’s poor, its sick and desperate population, its orphans, its victims of natural disasters, the 

aged, and the dying. 

A revised U.S. strategy emphasizing these themes would not be 

entirely new. As Director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, I participated in talks with the Chinese in which we made some of these arguments. They have been 

remade on occasion in recent years. But these arguments have 

been seen by the Chinese as mere assertions, talking points, made 

episodically by one office of the U.S. State Department, and largely 

ignored by other American officials. Equally important, they have 

not been accompanied by systemic, objective empirical evidence. 

To have a chance to succeed, a ‘‘Chinese interest’’ strategy must 

be an element of virtually all official U.S. interactions with China 

at all levels, and it would need to be fact-based. You can’t fool people about this stuff—nobody, the Chinese, the Indians, nobody. It 

needs to be fact-based, and it needs to be an element of virtually 

all U.S. interactions with China at all levels. And it should be conveyed within a bilateral permanent institution such as a U.S.-

China Working Group on Religion that would remove the ad hoc 

nature of past efforts. 

Such a U.S. strategy would not be expensive—important to say 

in Congress—although it would require new training of diplomats 

and the kind of diplomatic energy and will that does seem to be 

present under this Secretary of State and especially under Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam 

Brownback. I do want to say that I think his predecessor, Ambassador David Saperstein, laid the groundwork for what I am talking 

about. 

Finally, a word about Vatican diplomacy. I am concerned that 

the recent Sino-Vatican provisional agreement will not improve the 

lot of Catholics in China. Nor will it improve the status of religious 

freedom for non-Catholic religious communities. Rather, it runs the 

risk of harming religious freedom in China for everyone, as well as 

inadvertently encouraging China’s policy of altering the fundamental nature of Catholic witness. In my humble opinion as a 

Catholic, and as a long-term advocate for religious freedom for everyone, the Vatican’s charism is to support that Catholic witness 

in China, as Pope-Saint John Paul II did in Communist Poland, not 

to abet its manipulation by a ruthless Chinese Communist regime. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Farr follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Dr. Farr, thank you very much as well. 

Much of what you both have recommended, we will take very seriously and see how we can turn that into initiatives and policy. 

In the past when we did the last IRFA bill, named after that champion Frank Wolf, your input was remarkable. So, I want to thank 

you for that again in crafting a bill that I think provides more tools 

in the toolbox for the administration and makes it more of a priority. All of government, again, was included in that, not just an 

isolated view. 

But let me ask you a couple of questions. Dr. Fu, you mentioned 

Guo Xijin. And in previous hearings, we have heard Guo’s daughter 

and Guo’s wife making impassioned pleas on behalf of the father/

the husband, in the case of Mrs. Guo Xijin. And I have to tell you, 

we tried, and continue to try, to assist the lawyers in any way we 

can. How does any lawyer now in China take up a religious freedom case, knowing that he or she becomes the targeted person? 

Guo Xijin has experienced unspeakable tortures at the hands of the 

Chinese dictatorship. Just mind-numbing how they mistreat and 

hurt their own people simply for, in his case, defending people of 

faith. Are there lawyers still ready, willing, and able, courageously, 

to step up? I mean, that is above and beyond. 

Mr. FU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your concern. 

So, the rule of law, of course, in the past few years had been also 

rapidly deteriorating, and all the Chinese law firms now are mandated to have a Communist Party branch inside the law firm. 

Mr. SMITH. When did that happen? 

Mr. FU. It was just recently. I think, recently, there was a new 

kind of directive issued by the Ministry of Justice. So, the law firm 

has to establish a Party kind of group inside the law firm. 

So, as you just mentioned, the kind of massive roundup since the 

July 9th, so-called ‘‘709’’ of 2015 had a training effect on many of 

those human rights lawyers. They were disbarred—a large number 

lost their license—or ended up in prison, sentenced. And so, some 

of them, survivors, are still—and this is the spirit of the rule of 

law. We are very encouraged to see that there are still—I mean, 

it is a lesser number, but still there are some courageous lawyers 

who are still waiting to take up the cases. 

For instance, in Guizhou last year, on March 15th, there was a 

massive roundup of at least 200 house church leaders, and over 20 

of them were indicted and were labeled as evil cult, based on the 

evidence of showing they are in possession of John Calvin’s Institute of Christian Religion, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Streams in 

the Desert, this kind of devotional literature. And so, at least 12 

of them were indicted and sentenced as many as 13 years imprisonment as leaders. So, we have seen quite a number of lawyers 

still, despite of the risk, still went for their defense. 

Mr. SMITH. Could I just ask you on that—and I asked the previous witness about the whole idea of the State Department gathering names of people who are oppressing and persecuting. In your 

view—and, Dr. Farr, you might want to jump in on this one as 

well, or any question—are they getting ready to sanction enough 

people? Are the data calls going out to our FSOs, our human rights 

officers, our consulates, to be on the lookout for people who are repressing? Are we receiving names from human rights organizations 

60

like your own, that they, then, put into the database and say, 

‘‘Hmm, this person gets Magnitsky’’? How aggressive has it been, 

if at all? 

And if you could, we have had a series of hearings in this subcommittee on what I consider to the complicity of many of our colleges and universities, both located there and through the institutes that they establish on campuses here and around the world; 

soft power, if you will. 

But there, are any of these universities or colleges pushing back 

on this latest attack on religious freedom or have they been quiet 

and mute? 

Mr. FARR. Well, with respect to the State Department, Mr. 

Chairman, the answer is I don’t know, but I sure hope they are. 

They know what the law says. They know it very well. And one 

hopes that they are doing precisely what you said, putting out the 

instructions and beginning to enter them into the databank. 

I really do like the crowd that is in there now, but I have liked 

all of my colleagues in the Office of International Religious Freedom over 20 years. Somehow this stuff doesn’t always get done. 

And I think in the past it has been because of the larger State Department’s lethargy and inertia on this. I sense that is changing. 

After complaining for 20 years, I want to find something good, and 

I think—I hope it is changing on this, too. 

Universities and colleges, I am not aware of any university or 

college—I hope there are; I hope I am wrong about this—who is 

calling attention to this issue of religious freedom for the Muslims 

or the Christians or the Tibetan Buddhists, or anybody else. I 

would love to learn I am wrong about that. 

Mr. SMITH. We could write them and ask what have they said. 

I mean, I criticized NYU for what I considered to be their complicity in silence regarding human rights. I self-invited, and I went 

and I spoke at Shanghai University to NYU there. They are very 

nice people. I spoke about human rights, but I am not sure if anything has come of it. 

There needs to be, I think, a precedence that says we are just 

not going to roll over, look the other way, and look askance while 

Chinese believers and others who are being tortured, democracy, 

labor leaders. When they try forming a labor union in China, it is 

off to the gulag. 

Mr. SUOZZI. It is important to note that part of the hybrid strategies that are used by China, and others, is to take money and fund 

efforts in the United States at universities, fund Confucius Chairs, 

Confucius groups, and spread their influence in that way, and actually see what is going on here. It may be important for us to list 

where those locations and see what their universities are doing to 

actually identify Chinese human rights abuses. 

I think that we make China out to be very powerful, and like 

this big giant, and it is. But, at the same time, it has a lot of significant weaknesses as well. China has got enormous debt. It has 

got serious demographic problems related to their one-child policy 

and the male domination of a lot of these different communities. 

We have to recognize that they have a lot of vulnerabilities and 

that they are not just this 10-foot giant that there is. And we need 

61

to continue to identify what it is they are doing that makes them 

not part of the larger human conversation. 

So, thank you very much for your testimony and your help on 

these issues. 

Mr. FARR. If I could respond to that, Mr. Suozzi, on the Chinese 

vulnerabilities, not only the ones that you name. There is a demographic tragedy in the making because of all the males being born 

as a result of the one-child policy. In fact, I think it is already here 

in China. But the vulnerabilities that I mentioned, that religious 

communities in China can help solve, massive poverty still, despite 

all the economic growth—their fear that economic development 

cannot be continued. We need to be helping the Chinese to understand that their own religious communities—they are not foreign 

agents—can help them with some of this. Point one. 

In the United States, I would say that there are entities—and I 

don’t want to use this to talk about my own alone, but we have 

been doing some work, not just on China, but all the other persecutors. To go to colleges and universities in the United States, we 

have a project called Under Caesar’s Sword, which is about persecuted Christians around the world, but we also have projects on 

Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists, and others, where we are just trying to inform American college students—and, by the way, their 

faculties and administrations—that we have got a big problem, and 

it affects our interests. It is a humanitarian tragedy. But it also affects our interests as a country. And whether we are religious or 

not has nothing to do with what is going on in this global crisis 

of religious freedom and the way we ought to respond to it. 

So, we are making this argument around the country ourselves. 

But I agree with you, I think the Chinese are out there doing what 

they need to do. They know what they are doing. They know exactly what they are doing. I am not sure we do. 

Mr. SUOZZI. One of the mistakes that we make often is that we 

take our value system that we have and expect that other people 

have those values in other places. And so, we are very influenced 

in the United States of America and throughout the West by 

Judeo-Christian values. So, what is the value system of China? Is 

it Confucianism? What is the basis of the value system, and how 

does that value system look at the individual? I mean, obviously, 

the Communist value system is the state is much more important 

than the individual. So, what is the value system of China? 

Mr. FU. China’s current value system is basically the communism coupled with nationalism. And that is why this Confucius 

Institute—we have, I think, 100 of them in the United States—is 

not a kind of purity, academic, independent institution at all. It 

should really register in the Justice Department as a foreign agent 

because they are not only just teaching the Chinese language or 

culture; they are brainwashing our university students on campus 

who enroll in the programs by choosing not to have any impartial 

view, like the Tibetan issue, the Tiananmen Square, the demonstration, or the Uyghur issue, or persecution, or religious freedom at all. I mean, overall, it is a forbidden topic on the United 

States campus, and they are fully funded by the Chinese propaganda funding. 

62

Mr. SUOZZI. What is they are trying to brainwash about, though? 

What is it they are trying to tell them? 

Mr. FU. They want to tell them, basically, that China is fine and 

there’s no persecution; and that, actually, the Communist Party is 

doing great. That is the perception they want to create among the 

academicians and the students who enroll in these programs. 

So, that is, I think, as the FBI Director Wray already pointed out 

in his public hearing, I think this kind of Confucius Institutes have 

already posed a societal threat—I quote him—to the American society. I think they need to be warned and taken out, I think, if they 

don’t correct the course. 

To answer the first question about the State Department, I have 

firsthand experience in my dealing with the White House and the 

State Department over the years. At least I can testify and give 

them the credit to the current administration. I have seen really 

more proactive moments, measures, and even some unprecedented 

actions taken by the Trump administration than the previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat administrations, in 

terms of aiding those victims of the religious persecution and rescuing them. This year alone, we had, with the active support and 

help from this administration, we rescued five families who were 

in danger, and some families were rescued with the direct involvement and order by President Trump himself from the Oval Office. 

And the State Department, the career diplomats, both in Beijing 

and here in Washington, DC, I have seen for the first time they 

even reach out to me, like asking us to be sponsors for those who 

are being targeted for persecution, I mean for rescue. That was not 

done before. In the past, we have to beg the bureaucracies to even 

pay attention on that. 

So, that is some difference. I really want to give the credit. I 

think Secretary Pompeo made the first-ever announcement of sanctions on Iran during the Ministerial Advancement, the summit. It 

was also a very promising, positive step. 

Mr. SMITH. This is not political. But I remember when we had 

the five daughters testify, each of them pleading for their fathers, 

including Guo Xijin’s daughter. The Washington Post, Fred Hiatt, 

actually, did a wonderful and very incisive op-ed, signed, in The 

Washington Post. He is the editorial page director, but he wrote 

this. 

And the young ladies appealed through our committee to meet 

with President Obama. They said, ‘‘Please, you have two daughters, Mr. President. Please, meet with us, so we can convey to you 

the agony that we feel over our fathers being tortured in China.’’ 

We tried for over 1⁄2 year to get that meeting. And the final statement made back to my staff was, ‘‘He just doesn’t have the time.’’—

‘‘he’’ being President Obama. And in my opinion, that was emblematic of what we found on just about every human rights issue visa-vis China and other places as well. 

When it came to human trafficking—and I am the author of the 

Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and three other additional trafficking laws—China only drew an automatic downgrade, 

which was done by way of law. As soon as they could put it back 

up to a good grade, they did. 

63

Secretary Pompeo and this administration looked at the evidence 

and said, China is an egregious violator of human trafficking, sex 

and labor trafficking, and put them on Tier 3, which is the egregious violator category. China’s government pushed back vigorously, to no avail. 

CPC, we expect that to be designated, hopefully, soon, but with 

sanctions. And in even in the area—and you mentioned, Mr. 

Suozzi—on the whole area of coercive population control, for 8 

years under President Obama we funded organizations that were 

supportive of the Chinese government’s forced abortion policy, like 

the UN Population Fund and Marie Stopes International. This administration changed that and said, you cannot harm women and 

brutalize women with forced abortion, which was properly construed to be a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg War 

Crimes Tribunal, without us saying, at least we are not going to 

fund the organizations that are aiding and abetting those atrocities. 

Across the board we see a change. My sense is it hasn’t gone far 

enough. And we did have a good Ambassador-at-Large with Rabbi 

Saperstein in the last administration in the final years. I want to 

be completely candid and grateful to his fine work. And, of course, 

now we have a new Ambassador-at-Large who is doing a wonderful 

job. So, there is hope. 

Dr. Farr, you make a great point. Xi Jinping and his cronies 

need to understand that people of faith make good citizens. They 

are problem-solvers. They are not enemies of the state. It is your 

secret police that is truly the enemy of the people, not the believers. 

One final question, and then, Mr. Suozzi, if you want as well. 

But the question of how much worse can it get. I always want to 

know, parenthetically, in follow up to what you were saying, Dr. 

Fu—I have introduced H.R. 6010, which calls for an unclassified 

interagency report on political influence operations of the Chinese 

government and the Communist Party, which, of course, are one 

and the same. We want to know, to what extent, where, when, 

how. We know what they are trying to do vis-a-vis Hollywood, so 

that the scripts and the movies that get produced will have a benign view toward the PRC and toward the Communist Party. 

We know what they are doing all over with the Confucius Institutes. We have had hearings on that. And that is growing, not diminishing, and it is worldwide. As you know on our committee, it 

is all over Africa; it is all over Asia; it is all over—you name the 

country; they are trying to use this influence peddling. And it gets 

really bad. 

I will conclude on this one. When Chi Hoatian, the man who ordered the Tiananmen Square massacres, came and met with President Clinton, he got a 19-gun salute reception at the White House; 

went to the National War College because he was now secretary of 

defense, or the equivalent of, and got a 19-gun salute there. He 

went to the War College and said, ‘‘Nobody died at Tiananmen 

Square.’’

I put together a hearing in 2 days, had all these individuals, including a Time magazine correspondent, students, a People’s Daily 

editor, who actually paid a price for trying to write about it, beVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:20 Nov 08, 2018 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\092718\32308 SHIRL
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cause they were saying nobody died; there were no tanks. And 

Google certainly enabled that with their showing nothing but pretty pictures of Tiananmen Square, censoring out anything that 

showed the bloodshed. 

And this man got away with it. We had the hearing. We invited 

him or anybody from the Embassy to be here, but we did push back 

very, very hard. They do get away with the big lie employed systematically, unless there is an effort to speak truth to that power. 

But how much worse can it get? That would be my final question. Xi Jinping is President for life. He is trying, in my humble 

opinion, to crush all religion or make it subservient to the Communist Party. How much worse can it get? 

Mr. FARR. I think it can get much worse. I think, as I have said, 

that this is the 21st century version of the Cultural Revolution. It 

doesn’t have the Red Guards going around beating and killing and 

burning people, but it is getting pretty close. We have got a 

Stalinesque surveillance system in the Xinjang Province with all 

the stuff you talked about earlier. It is almost inconceivable how 

far you can go with this. And so, I think it is a grave mistake for 

us to underestimate what is going on in China. 

And I would just say—and, then, I will let Bob Fu talk—this is 

a humanitarian crisis, but this affects our national interests. This 

is not just about people being brutalized. It is that, but we have 

to say more than that. We have to understand this threat within 

our own national security apparatus, and I think that is a major, 

major message I would like to leave with the committee. This is a 

national security issue for the United States, as well as a humanitarian catastrophe. 

Mr. FU. Thank you, Dr. Farr. 

It is, I totally agree, a national security threat. According to a 

document released by a provincial Three-Self Patriotic Movement, 

they have a 5-year plan to sinicize the Christianity to make Christianity compatible with socialist—that is their slogan—including a 

plan to retranslate the Bible. And according to a latest outline, the 

retranslated version of the Bible would be a mixture, a summary 

of the Old Testament, some Buddhist literature, some Confucius 

teachings, and then, there is a new kind of commentary for the 

New Testament. So, that is how the so-called sinicization of religion would look like. I think it will get worse. 

Another thing you want to point out is this American gigantic social media or high-tech companies. They should be ashamed of 

themselves, like Google, Facebook. In order to just dump into the 

Chinese market, they are actively collaborating with the Chinese 

police. And you have the Chinese version of the Apple Store, purposely, deliberately; take off all the VPN tools without a consent 

from the Chinese users, so that they cannot have the limited tools 

to download or to use to supplement the internet firewall. 

You have, of course, Facebook already disclosed they are working, contracting with the Chinese government’s own companies to 

give them access, unlimited access to the Chinese customers. So, 

these are really like deliberate aiding to this worsening persecution 

trend. I think they really should be ashamed of themselves. 

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Farr? 

65

Mr. FARR. Could I just add one other thing? I hear all the 

beeping. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if it means shut 

up and——

Mr. SMITH. Oh, no, no, no. You have got time. 

Mr. FARR. Okay. This is in my written statement, which I hope 

will be in the record. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, both of your statements in their 

entirety will be a part of the record. 

Mr. FARR. Thank you. 

This goes to—maybe you won’t object, Mr. Suozzi, when I bring 

out this issue. This goes to the problem of how we fail to understand what is going in China. I want to raise the Ting Xue asylum 

case. This gentleman fled China. He had been beaten, arrested, put 

into jail, threatened with much more severe—and it was pretty severe already—if he went again to a Chinese house church. 

He made it to this country. He applied for asylum. He went before an asylum court, and the Department of Justice argued—and 

the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the Department of 

Justice’s argument—that, since he could go back to China and privately worship, in other words, worship in secret, this was not 

grounds for asylum in the United States. It was not grounds for 

a—what is the phrase?—a fear——

Mr. SMITH. Well-founded fear of persecution. 

Mr. FARR. A well-founded fear of persecution. I mean, after having been beaten and put into jail, and threatened with more of this, 

I am not sure what a well-founded fear of persecution means in the 

English language. 

But here we have the Department of Justice and the 10th Circuit—now, fortunately, the Department of Justice settled. But this 

is still the official position of the Department of Justice. With the 

help of former Solicitor General Ken Starr and others, we spoke to 

a group of over 300 asylum judges about this, and we are trying 

to get the attention of the Attorney General, who has the authority 

under the law to change this position for the Department. 

I just want to raise this for the committee. I think this is a very 

important issue that goes to China, but not just China. It goes to 

what is religion and religious freedom. If religious freedom only 

means the right to worship in private, in secret, Saudi Arabia will 

give you that right. Almost every country in the world will let Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims, or anybody else, do their thing in 

private. That is not the meaning of religious freedom in the American system. And I think it is a disgrace that any court in this land 

has taken such a position. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, Dr. Farr, thank you for that. We will initiate 

a letter——

Mr. FARR. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. And it will go to the Attorney General. 

Mr. Suozzi and I will take the lead on it. So, I thank you for that 

very important intervention. You would think that this would be 

resolved. 

Anything else you would like to add before we conclude? 

If not, thank you so very much. You have given us so much to 

act on and so many insights. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

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[Whereupon, at 3:49 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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