Congress will soon be asked to grant permanent normal trading relations to the Peoples Republic of China. You should not. An affirmative vote would reward the Chinese government at a time when there has been significant deterioration in its abysmal human rights record and would significantly reduce our ability to insist upon improvement in the future. It would also dramatically weaken our ability to insist that China live up to trade agreements that it has already signed, and that it routinely violates. The record is clear.
China routinely tramples human rights and religious liberty.
It is a massive user of prison labor, and, according to the Laogai Research Foundation, operates over a thousand forced labor camps, many of which produce commercial goods. The Chinese government does not allow workers to join free and independent trade unions and imprisons those who try to exercise this fundamental right to freedom of association and to organize. Tens of thousands of Chinese citizens have been detained for daring to express their religious views. For instance, Amnesty International reports that over 200 Roman Catholics were arrested when they tried to celebrate Mass in 1997. Both the US State Department and the United Nations have concluded that China's human rights record is deteriorating, not improving.