I 
118TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 6069 
To state the policy of the United States with respect to religious freedom 
in the People’s Republic of China, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OCTOBER 26, 2023 
Mr. ALFORD introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Com-
mittee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on the Judi-
ciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each 
case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of 
the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To state the policy of the United States with respect to 
religious freedom in the People’s Republic of China, and 
for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Combatting the Perse-
cution of Religious Groups in China Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress makes the following findings: 
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(1) According to estimates included in Inter-
national Religious Freedom reports issued by the 
Department of State, Buddhists comprise 18.2 per-
cent of the total population in the People’s Republic 
of China, Christians, 5.1 percent, Muslims, 1.8 per-
cent, followers of folk religions, 21 percent, and 
atheists or unaffiliated persons, 52.12 percent, with 
Hindus, Jews, and Taoists comprising less than 1 
percent. 
(2) The Government of the People’s Republic of 
China recognizes 5 official religions, Buddhism, Tao-
ism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism (accord-
ing to an International Religious Freedom report 
issued by the Department of State), and only reli-
gious groups belonging to 1 of the 5 sanctioned ‘‘pa-
triotic religious associations’’ representing those reli-
gions are permitted to register with the Government 
and hold worship service, excluding all other faiths 
and denying the ability to worship without being 
registered with the Government. 
(3) The activities of state-sanctioned religious 
organizations in the People’s Republic of China are 
regulated by the Chinese Communist Party, which 
manages all aspects of religious life in the country. 
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(4) The Chinese Communist Party is actively 
seeking to control, govern, and manipulate all as-
pects of faith through the ‘‘Sinicization of Religion’’, 
a process intended to shape religious traditions so 
they conform with the objectives of the Chinese 
Communist Party. 
(5) On February 1, 2018, the Government of 
the People’s Republic of China implemented new re-
ligious regulations that imposed restrictions on Chi-
nese contacts with overseas religious organizations, 
required Government approval for religious schools, 
websites, and any online religious service, and effec-
tively banned unauthorized religious gatherings and 
teachings. 
(6) There are numerous reports that authorities 
in the People’s Republic of China have forced clo-
sures of Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Taoist 
houses of worship and destroyed public displays of 
religious symbols throughout the country. 
(7) Authorities of the People’s Republic of 
China have arrested and detained religious leaders 
trying to hold services online. 
(8) There are credible reports of Chinese au-
thorities raiding house churches and other places of 
religious worship, removing and confiscating reli-
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gious paraphernalia, installing surveillance cameras 
on religious property, pressuring congregations to 
sing songs of the Chinese Communist Party and dis-
play the national flag during worship, forcing 
churches to replace images of Jesus Christ or the 
Virgin Mary with pictures of General Secretary Xi 
Jinping, and banning children and students from at-
tending religious services. 
(9) It has been reported that the Government 
of the People’s Republic of China is rewriting and 
will issue a version of the Bible with the ‘‘correct 
understanding’’ of the text according to the Chinese 
Communist Party. Authorities continue to restrict 
the printing and distribution of the Bible, Quran, 
and other religious literature and penalize publishing 
and copying businesses that handle religious mate-
rials. 
(10) According to International Religious Free-
dom reports issued by the Department of State, the 
Government of the People’s Republic of China has 
imprisoned thousands of individuals of all faiths for 
practicing their religious beliefs and often labels 
groups of those individuals as ‘‘cults’’. 
(11) According to the Department of Labor, the 
Government of the People’s Republic of China has 
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arbitrarily detained more than 1,000,000 Uyghurs 
and other mostly Muslim minorities in China’s far 
western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. 
(12) It has been reported that the Government 
of the People’s Republic of China engages in 
transnational repression activities such as relent-
lessly intimidating diaspora religious communities 
and others with ties to China. 
(13) As of October 11, 2019, the Political Pris-
oner Database maintained by the Congressional-Ex-
ecutive Commission on China counted 1,598 cases 
with information on political and religious prisoners 
known or believed to be detained or imprisoned in 
China. 
(14) As of June 30, 2023, the Political Pris-
oner Database maintained by the human rights non-
governmental organization Dui Hua Foundation 
counted 2,897 individuals imprisoned in China for 
‘‘organizing or using a ‘cult’ to undermine imple-
mentation of the law’’. 
(15) The United States Commission on Inter-
national Religious Freedom (USCIRF) maintains a 
list of religious prisoners of conscience who were im-
prisoned in China for their religious belief or non- 
belief, religious activity, religious freedom advocacy, 
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and other related issues. Those prisoners of con-
science include— 
(A) the 11th Panchen Lama, Gedun 
Choekyi Nyima, who has been held captive 
along with his parents since May 17, 1995; 
(B) Pastor Zhang Shaojie, a Three-Self 
church pastor from Nanle County in central 
Henan, who was sentenced in July 2014 to 12 
years in prison for ‘‘gathering a crowd to dis-
rupt the public order’’; 
(C) Pastor John Cao, a United States per-
manent resident from Greensboro, North Caro-
lina, who was sentenced to 7 years in prison in 
March 2018 under contrived charges of orga-
nizing illegal border crossings; and 
(D) Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain 
Covenant Church, who was arrested and sen-
tenced to 9 years in prison for ‘‘inciting to sub-
vert state power’’ and ‘‘illegal business oper-
ations’’. 
(16) Authorities of the People’s Republic of 
China continue to detain Falun Gong practitioners 
and subject them to harsh and inhumane treatment. 
(17) Since 1999, the Department of State has 
designated the People’s Republic of China as a coun-
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try of particular concern for religious freedom under 
the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 
(22 U.S.C. 6401 et seq.). 
(18) On June 17, 2020, the Uyghur Human 
Rights Policy Act of 2020 (Public Law 116–145) 
came into force, requiring reporting on human rights 
violations and abuses committed by the Government 
of the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs 
and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang 
Uyghur Autonomous Region and calling for the use 
of targeted sanctions against officials of the People’s 
Republic of China found to have engaged in such 
violations. 
(19) On June 21, 2022, section 3 of Public 
Law 117–78 (22 U.S.C. 6901 note) (commonly re-
ferred to as the ‘‘Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention 
Act’’) came into force, blocking products, goods, and 
material originating from the Xinjiang Uyghur Au-
tonomous Region from entering the United States 
due to the risk that such items were produced using 
forced labor. 
(20) The National Security Strategy of the 
United States, issued in 2017, 2015, 2006, 2002, 
1999, 1998, and 1997, committed the United States 
to promoting international religious freedom to ad-
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vance the security, economic, and other national in-
terests of the United States. 
SEC. 3. STATEMENT OF POLICY. 
(a) HOLDING SENIOR OFFICIALS OF THE PEOPLE’S 
REPUBLIC
OF CHINA RESPONSIBLE
FOR RELIGIOUS 
FREEDOM ATROCITIES.—It is the policy of the United 
States to consider any senior official of the Government 
of the People’s Republic of China who is responsible for 
or has directly carried out, at any time, atrocities includ-
ing arbitrary imprisonment, forced sterilization, torture, 
forced labor, and draconian restrictions on freedom of reli-
gion, expression, and movement against religious minori-
ties, including Christians, Uyghurs, and Falun Gong, in 
the People’s Republic of China to have committed— 
(1) a gross violation of internationally recog-
nized human rights for purposes of imposing sanc-
tions with respect to such official under the Global 
Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (22 
U.S.C. 10101 et seq.); and 
(2) a particularly severe violation of religious 
freedom 
for 
purposes 
of 
applying 
section 
212(a)(2)(G) of the Immigration and Nationality 
Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(2)(G)) with respect to such 
official. 
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(b) DEPARTMENT OF STATE PROGRAMMING TO PRO-
MOTE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC 
OF CHINA.—It is the policy of the United States— 
(1) that the Ambassador at Large for Inter-
national Religious Freedom should support efforts to 
protect and promote international religious freedom 
in the People’s Republic of China; and 
(2) for programs of the Department of State to 
protect religious minorities in the People’s Republic 
of China and combat transnational repression en-
gaged in by the People’s Republic of China. 
(c) DESIGNATION OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF 
CHINA AS A COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN FOR RE-
LIGIOUS FREEDOM.—It is the policy of the United States 
to continue to designate the People’s Republic of China 
as a country of particular concern for religious freedom 
under section 402(b)(1)(A)(ii) of the International Reli-
gious Freedom Act of 1998 (22 U.S.C. 6442(b)(1)(A)(ii)) 
as long as the Government of the People’s Republic of 
China continues to engage in particularly severe violations 
of religious freedom (as defined in section 3 of such Act 
(22 U.S.C. 6402)). 
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SEC. 4. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING PROMOTION OF 
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE PEOPLE’S RE-
PUBLIC OF CHINA. 
It is the sense of Congress that the United States 
should promote religious freedom in the People’s Republic 
of China by— 
(1) strengthening diplomacy relating to reli-
gious freedom on behalf of Christians and other reli-
gious minorities facing restrictions in the People’s 
Republic of China, including through the widespread 
engagement of international partners to combat the 
violations against religious freedom committed by 
the Government of the People’s Republic of China; 
(2) raising the cases of religious and political 
prisoners at the highest levels with officials of the 
People’s Republic of China because experience dem-
onstrates that consistently raising prisoner cases can 
result in reduced sentences, or in some cases, release 
from custody, detention, or imprisonment; 
(3) encouraging Members of Congress to be-
come advocates for prisoners of conscience in the 
People’s Republic of China through the Defending 
Freedoms Project of the Tom Lantos Human Rights 
Commission, raise the cases of those prisoners with 
officials of the People’s Republic of China, and work 
publicly for their release; 
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(4) calling on the Government of the People’s 
Republic of China to unconditionally release reli-
gious and political prisoners and ensure that detain-
ees who have not yet been released are treated hu-
manely with— 
(A) access to family, the lawyer of their 
choice, independent medical care, and inter-
national monitoring mechanisms; and 
(B) the ability to practice their faith while 
in detention; 
(5) encouraging the global faith community to 
speak in solidarity with the persecuted religious 
groups in the People’s Republic of China; and 
(6) hosting, once every 2 years, the Ministerial 
to Advance Religious Freedom organized by the De-
partment of State in order to bring together leaders 
from around the world to discuss the challenges fac-
ing religious freedom, identify means to address reli-
gious persecution and discrimination worldwide, and 
promote great respect for and preservation of reli-
gious liberty. 
SEC. 5. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING ACTION BY THE 
UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL. 
It is the sense of Congress that the United Nations 
Human Rights Council should issue a formal condemna-
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tion of the People’s Republic of China for the ongoing 
genocide against Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic 
minority groups and the persecution of Christians, Falun 
Gong, and other religious groups. 
Æ 
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