IIA
105TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. R. 2358
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
NOVEMBER 7, 1997
Received; read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations
AN ACT
To provide for improved monitoring of human rights
violations in the People’s Republic of China.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
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TITLE I
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This title may be cited as the ‘‘Political Freedom in
China Act of 1997’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The Congress concurs in the following con-
clusions of the United States State Department on
human rights in the People’s Republic of China in
1996:
(A) The People’s Republic of China is ‘‘an
authoritarian state’’ in which ‘‘citizens lack the
freedom to peacefully express opposition to the
party-led political system and the right to
change their national leaders or form of govern-
ment’’.
(B) The Government of the People’s Re-
public of China has ‘‘continued to commit wide-
spread and well-documented human rights
abuses, in violation of internationally accepted
norms, stemming from the authorities’ intoler-
ance of dissent, fear of unrest, and the absence
or inadequacy of laws protecting basic free-
doms’’.
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(C) ‘‘[a]buses include torture and mistreat-
ment of prisoners, forced confessions, and arbi-
trary and incommunicado detention’’.
(D) ‘‘[p]rison conditions remained harsh
[and] [t]he Government continued severe re-
strictions on freedom of speech, the press, as-
sembly, association, religion, privacy, and work-
er rights’’.
(E) ‘‘[a]lthough the Government denies
that it holds political prisoners, the number of
persons detained or serving sentences for
‘counterrevolutionary crimes’ or ‘crimes against
the state’, or for peaceful political or religious
activities are believed to number in the thou-
sands’’.
(F) ‘‘[n]onapproved religious groups, in-
cluding Protestant and Catholic groups * * *
experienced intensified repression’’.
(G) ‘‘[s]erious human rights abuses persist
in minority areas, including Tibet, Xinjiang,
and Inner Mongolia[, and] [c]ontrols on religion
and on other fundamental freedoms in these
areas have also intensified’’.
(H) ‘‘[o]verall in 1996, the authorities
stepped up efforts to cut off expressions of pro-
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test or criticism. All public dissent against the
party and government was effectively silenced
by intimidation, exile, the imposition of prison
terms, administrative detention, or house ar-
rest. No dissidents were known to be active at
year’s end.’’.
(2) In addition to the State Department, credi-
ble independent human rights organizations have
documented an increase in repression in China dur-
ing 1995, and effective destruction of the dissident
movement through the arrest and sentencing of the
few remaining pro-democracy and human rights ac-
tivists not already in prison or exile.
(3) Among those were Wang Dan, a student
leader of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, sen-
tenced on October 30, 1996, to 11 years in prison
on charges of conspiring to subvert the government;
Li Hai, sentenced to 9 years in prison on December
18, 1996, for gathering information on the victims
of the 1989 crackdown, which according to the
court’s verdict constituted ‘‘state secrets’’; Liu
Nianchun, an independent labor organizer, sentenced
to 3 years of ‘‘re-education through labor’’ on July
4, 1996, due to his activities in connection with a
petition campaign calling for human rights reforms;