•HRES 364
state control of religion, ‘‘Police closed many ‘under-
ground’ mosques, temples, and seminaries,’’ and authori-
ties ‘‘made strong efforts to crack down on the activities
of the unapproved Catholic and Protestant churches’’ in-
cluding the use of detention, arrest, and ‘‘reform-
through-education’’ sentences;
Whereas, although the 1997 Country Reports note several
‘‘positive steps’’ by the Chinese Government such as sign-
ing the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights and allowing the United Nations
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to visit China,
Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck has testified
regarding those reports that ‘‘We do not see major
changes [in the human rights siguation in China]. We
have not characterized China as having demonstrated
major changes in the period over the course of the last
year’’;
Whereas, in 1990, 1992, and each year since then, the
United States has participated in an unsuccessful multi-
lateral effort to gain passage of a United Nations Com-
mission on Human Rights resolution addressing the
human rights situation in China;
Whereas the Government of China has mounted a diplomatic
campaign each year to defeat the resolution and has suc-
ceeded in blocking commission consideration of such a
resolution each year except 1995, when the United States
engaged in a more aggressive effort to promote the reso-
lution;
Whereas China’s opposition to the resolution has featured an
attack on the principle of the universality of human
rights, which the United States, China, and 169 other
•HRES 364
governments reaffirmed at the 1993 United Nations
World Conference on Human Rights;
Whereas on February 23, 1998, the European Union (EU)
agreed that neither the EU nor its member states would
table or cosponsor a resolution on the human rights situ-
ation in China at the 54th Session of the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights;
Whereas on March 13, 1998, the Administration announced
that it would not seek passage of a resolution at the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights address-
ing the human rights situation in China;
Whereas without United States leadership there is little pos-
sibility of success for that resolution;
Whereas, in 1994, when the President announced his decision
to delink Most Favored Nation (MFN) status for China
from previously announced human rights conditions, the
Administration pledged that the United States would
‘‘step up its efforts, in cooperation with other states, to
insist that the United Nations Human Rights Commis-
sion pass a resolution dealing with the serious human
rights abuses in China’’ as part of the Administration’s
‘‘new human rights strategy’’;
Whereas a failure vigorously to pursue the adoption of such
a resolution would constitute an abandonment of an im-
portant component of the ‘‘expanded multilateral agen-
da’’ that the Administration promised as part of its ‘‘new
human rights strategy’’ toward China; and
Whereas Chinese democracy advocate and former political
prisoner Wei Jingsheng has stated that ‘‘[t]his [United
Nations Commission on Human Rights] resolution is a
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matter of life and death for democratic reform in China’’:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
(1) urges the President to reconsider his decision
not to press for passage of a resolution on human rights
violations in China at the 54th Session of the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights;
(2) expresses its profound regret that the European
Union will not table or cosponsor a resolution on human
rights violations in China at the 54th Session of the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights; and
(3) urges all members of the United Nations Com-
mission on Human Rights to support passage of a reso-
lution on human rights violations in China at the 54th
Session of the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights.
Attest:
Clerk.