[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TRAGIC ANNIVERSARY OF THE 1989 TIANANMEN SQUARE PROTESTS AND MASSACRE
=======================================================================
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 THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 3, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-69
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
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
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Wei Jingsheng, president, Wei Jingsheng Foundation........... 6
Ms. Chai Ling, founder, All Girls Allowed........................ 10
Yang Jianli, Ph.D., president, Initiatives for China............. 23
David Aikman, Ph.D. (former Time magazine bureau chief in
Beijing)....................................................... 34
Sophie Richardson, Ph.D., China director, Human Rights Watch..... 38
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Wei Jingsheng: Prepared statement............................ 8
Ms. Chai Ling: Prepared statement................................ 14
Yang Jianli, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................... 25
David Aikman, Ph.D.: Prepared statement.......................... 36
Sophie Richardson, Ph.D.: Prepared statement..................... 40
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 68
Hearing minutes.................................................. 69
The Honorable Steve Stockman, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Texas: Prepared statement......................... 70
Written responses from Mr. Wei Jingsheng to questions submitted
for the record by the Honorable Steve Stockman................. 72
TRAGIC ANNIVERSARY OF THE 1989
TIANANMEN SQUARE PROTESTS AND
MASSACRE
----------
MONDAY, JUNE 3, 2013
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 3:59 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. Hearing will come to order. And good afternoon
to everyone. Today, this week, the world remembers the dream
that was and is the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. And
deeply honors the sacrifice endured by an extraordinarily brave
group of pro-democracy, Chinese women and men who dared to
demand fundamental human rights for all of China and for all
Chinese. Twenty-four years ago today, the world watched in awe
and wonder as hundreds of thousands of mostly young people
peacefully petitioned the Chinese Government to reform and to
democratize. China seemed to be the next impending triumph for
freedom and democracy, especially after the collapse of
dictatorships in the Soviet Union and among the Warsaw Pact
nations. But when the People's Liberation Army poured into and
around the square on June 3rd, the wonder of Tiananmen turned
to shock, tears, fear, and a sense of helplessness.
On June 3rd and 4th, and for days, weeks, and years, right
up until today, the Chinese dictatorship delivered a barbaric
response: Mass murder, torture, incarceration, the systematic
suppression of fundamental human rights, and cover-up. The
Chinese Government not only continues to inflict unspeakable
pain and suffering on its own people, but the cover-up of the
Tiananmen Square massacre is without precedent in modern
history. Even though journalists, live television, and radio
documented the massacre, the Chinese Communist party line
continues today to deny, obfuscate, and to threaten anyone who
deviates from the line.
In December 1996, General Chi Haotian, the operational
commander who ordered the murder of the Tiananmen protesters,
visited Washington, DC, as the Chinese Defense Minister. See,
he had gotten a promotion. Mr. Chi was welcomed by President
Clinton at the White House with full military honors, including
a 19-gun salute. A bizarre spectacle that I and others on both
sides of the aisle strongly protested. Why do I bring this up?
Minister Chi addressed the Army War College on that trip. And
in answer to a question said, ``Not a single person lost his
life in Tiananmen Square,'' and claimed that the People's
Liberation Army did nothing more violent than the pushing of
people during the 1989 protest. Imagine that. ``Not a single
person lost his or her life.'' Are you kidding? The big lie,
that big lie, and countless others like it, is the Chinese
Communist party line.
As chair of the subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs
Committee that handled human rights at the time, I put together
an emergency hearing within a couple of days, on December 18,
1996, with witnesses who were there on the square, including
Dr. Yang, a leader and survivor of the massacre, and including
Time Magazine bureau chief, Dr. David Aikman, two of today's
witnesses. We also invited Minister Chi Haotian, or anyone else
from the Chinese Embassy who might want to come and give an
account. He and they refused.
I guess Minister Chi thought he was back in Beijing where
the big lie is king and no one ever dares to do a fact check. A
few days ago, the U.S. Department of State asked the Chinese
Government to ``end the harassment of those who participated in
the protests and fully account for those killed, detained, or
missing.'' The response? The Chinese Foreign Ministry
acrimoniously said that the U.S. should ``stop interfering in
Chinese internal affairs so as not to sabotage U.S./China
relations.'' Sabotage Sino-American relations because our side
requests an end to harassment, because we request an
accounting? Sounds to me like they have much to hide.
President Obama, as we know, is scheduled to meet with
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday and Saturday to discuss
security and economic issues. A robust discussion of human
rights abuses in China must be on the agenda and not in a
superfluous or superficial way. It is time to get serious about
China's flagrant abuse. The Chinese Government's appalling
record should make us question even the topic that is at hand:
Can a government that crushes the rights and freedoms of its
own people be trusted on trade and on security issues?
China today is the torture capital of the world. And
victims include religious believers, ethnic minorities, human
rights defenders, like Chen Guangcheng and Gao Zhisheng, and
political dissidents. Hundreds of millions of women have been
forced to abort their precious babies, pursuant the draconian
one-child policy, which has led to gendercide, the violent
extermination of unborn girls simply because they are girls.
The slaughter of the girl-child in China is not only a massive
gender crime, but it is a security issue as well. A witness at
one of my earlier hearings, Valerie Hudson, author of a book
called ``Bare Branches'' testified that the gender imbalance
will lead, inevitably will lead to instability and chaos, and,
as she posited, even war.
She said that the one-child policy has not enhanced China's
security, but demonstrably weakened it. The abnormal sex ratio
of china does not bode well for its future, and notes that Nick
Eberstadt has famously phrased, ``What are the consequences for
a society that has chosen to become simultaneously both more
gray and more male?''
I hope policymakers both here in Washington and elsewhere
pay close attention to our witnesses because Tiananmen Square
and the massacre that followed there was a tipping point, and
the lessons learned and employed ever since by the Chinese
Government require much better understanding and due diligence
on our part and a more effective response on our part. We still
don't get it, what happened, post-Tiananmen Square.
One of our witnesses, Dr. Yang, will testify that soon
after Tiananmen, the Communist Party embraced the ubiquitous
code of corruption to enrich the elite at the expense of the
general public believing that, as he says in his testimony,
economic growth means everything to the survival and the
sustainability of the dictatorship. All of this, as he says,
was made possible, thanks to the Tiananmen Square massacre and
the political terror that was imposed on the country in the
years following.
Many of us on both sides of the aisle and Americans
throughout this country and really people who believe in
freedom around the world will never forget what took place in
Tiananmen 24 years ago. The struggle for freedom in China
continues. Someday, the people of China will enjoy all of their
God-given rights. And a nation of free Chinese women and men
will someday honor, applaud, and thank the heroes of Tiananmen
Square and all of those who sacrificed so much and so long for
freedom. I would like now to yield to my friend and colleague,
Ms. Bass, for any opening comments.
Ms. Bass. Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening today's
hearing. I think it is pretty remarkable to hear you say that
you were here when this happened and that you held the hearing
a few days later.
As you noted, this week marks 24 years since the world
watched the bravery and courage of the Chinese people and the
violent events that took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Like most people around the world, I remember exactly where I
was when those events took place. That is why the images of
Tiananmen Square are forever etched in our memories. It is
important to note that there were other protests taking place
across China as students and demonstrators of all ages took to
the streets, and there was very little coverage about what was
happening outside of Beijing.
There were images of those brutalized, those bloodied, and
of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in their demand for
greater freedoms, government accountability, and an end to
corruption. Yet it is the image of a man standing in front of a
line of tanks that we remember so well. This lone protester
embodied that of all demonstrators in China and for many around
the world in the days, years, and more than two decades since.
That one seemingly plain individual could stand with such
strength is and will ever be a remarkable and truly humbling
moment.
I will always remember this image because of what it
represents, the struggle of people everywhere against
insurmountable odds, yet it was a brave individual who showed
that a simple act of protest was bigger and more powerful than
propaganda, instruments of war, and unspeakable violence. I
want to thank today's witnesses for participating in this
hearing and reminding this committee of the important events of
Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Ms. Bass.
Like to now yield to Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank each of you
for being here today to testify. I look forward to hearing your
testimony and certainly the lessons that we need to continue to
learn as we address human rights across not only in China but
across the world. It is hard to believe that it is some 24
years ago that we are now looking back at Tiananmen Square. And
yet the tragedy is one that should not easily be forgotten. It
is one that we must keep fresh in our minds. It is one that we
must learn from. Obviously, the protests there was sparked by
the death of a reformer, someone who called for greater
government transparency, freedom of speech, economic reforms.
And, you know, that is a story that we have seen before.
You know, China itself has freed up much of its economy, it
has seen explosive growth. But yet, the human rights record is
still abysmal. We need to make sure that we hold them
accountable. We wouldn't stand for that here in our economy.
And as we are part of a global economy, we can't stand for it
in some of our greatest trading partners. In the Middle East in
the last 2\1/2\ years, we have seen unrest happen across the
Middle East following what some would call the Arab Spring. But
really, in a large part, that unrest has the same underlying
premise as Tiananmen Square: An oppressed people will
eventually rise up, and they should.
That is why this hearing is crucial. And the lessons from
Tiananmen Square have clearly not been learned in China or
abroad. And so I look forward to hearing your testimony and
what we can learn from what has happened and what is happening
and what hopefully will happen in the future and how we can
highlight this particular problem to bring the end to the
oppressive actions that continue to take back. And with that, I
yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, very much, Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Stockman.
Mr. Stockman. Mr. Chairman, I request that I can give you
my remarks so you don't have to sit through the whole thing.
Mr. Smith. Without objection.
Mr. Stockman. But I want to say one thing, though. I
remember watching on television, as many people have. And it
was really heart-rendering and warm when I saw the replica of
the Statue of Liberty and everything it stood for. And all I
can say is when we saw the tanks rolling in and as they brought
the--basically, I understand they were drugged, hyped-up people
from outside of Beijing in to roll over those people as they
were screaming for help and screaming for the rest of the
people to cry out for freedom, I mean, I just--I--it broke my
heart.
And for all those that are still fighting for freedom in
China, they represent one-quarter of this world population. And
yet we seem to turn our backs on them again and again. And I am
glad that the people here in this room stand up for freedom and
stand up for those, and I will always remember that photograph.
Yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Stockman.
I would like to now introduce our very distinguished panel.
Beginning first with Mr. Wei Jingsheng, who has served two jail
sentences, totaling more than 18 years in China, for his pro-
democracy, pro-human rights work. A father of the democracy
world movement, it was Wei Jingsheng who literally posted an
essay, the fifth modernization, which he entitled
``Democracy.'' And he had the courage to literally sign it--a
lot of those postings were anonymous--he signed his, and for
that he was incarcerated. I met with Wei very briefly when he
was briefly let out in 1994.
When the Chinese Government was seeking to get the 2000
Olympics, they eventually got Olympics later on, but they
thought releasing one high-profile political prisoner would be
enough to make possible their getting the 2000 Olympics. That
is how highly regarded he was, and is, to this day, for his
democracy promotion and human rights promotion.
In 1998, he founded and became the chairman of the Overseas
Chinese Democracy Coalition, after he was exiled, of course. He
is also President of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation and the Asia
Democracy Alliance. He has written numerous articles and
regularly speaks about human rights at a number of fora and in
the media.
We will then hear from Ms. Chai Ling, who was a key student
leader in 1989 at Tiananmen Square during those very fateful
days. When the military brutally crushed the protest on June
4th, Chai Ling was named to the government's list of the 21
most wanted students. She escaped from Beijing 10 months later.
She secretly was hidden in a cargo box for 105 hours to escape
China as she made her way to Hong Kong.
She has since gotten an MBA from Harvard. She also is the
founder of a group called All Girls Allowed, which speaks on
the behalf of the girl-child who is so viciously victimized
inside of China as part of the one-child-per-couple policy. She
also co-founded the Jenzabar Foundation, which supports
humanitarian efforts for student leaders.
We will then hear from Dr. Yang Jianli. Dr. Yang is also a
Tiananmen Square massacre survivor, and was held as a political
prisoner in China from 2002 to 2007. He is a founder of the
Initiatives for China/Citizen Power for China, Foundation for
China in the 21st Century, and founder and organizer of
Interethnic/Interfaith Leadership Conferences for the online
publication of China E-Weekly. He co-authored a democratic
constitution for China in 1993, and co-chaired The Geneva
Internet Freedom Declaration in 2010. He has been elected to
the Top 100 Chinese Public Intellectuals in each of the past 4
years. He has also represented Mr. Liu Xiaobo at the 2010 Nobel
Peace Price award ceremony. And we welcome him and thank him
for his very influential writing and leadership.
We will then hear from Dr. David Aikman, who reported for
23 years for Time Magazine in more than 50 countries, including
China. In 1989, he was in China reporting on student democracy
protests and was present when the Tiananmen Square massacre
took place. Dr. Aikman was born in the United Kingdom, but in
1992, became a U.S. citizen. He left Time in 1994 and has since
written several books and newspapers columns and lectured at
numerous places around the world. He is currently a professor
of history at Patrick Henry College. And, I would note, when he
was with Time Magazine in Beijing, he was the bureau chief.
We will then hear from Dr. Sophie Richardson, who is the
China Director at Human Rights Watch. Dr. Richardson is the
author of numerous articles on domestic Chinese political
reform, democratization, and human rights in many Asian
countries. She has testified before the European Parliament and
the U.S. Congress, including my subcommittee. I thank you and
welcome you again. She is the author of ``China, Cambodia, and
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence,'' an in depth
examination of Chinese foreign policy since 1954's Geneva
Conference, including rare interviews with policymakers. So
thank you all for being here. I would like to now turn to Mr.
Wei Jingsheng.
STATEMENT OF MR. WEI JINGSHENG, PRESIDENT, WEI JINGSHENG
FOUNDATION
[The following testimony and answers were delivered through
an interpreter.]
Mr. Wei. It has been 24 years since the June 4th massacre.
I want to testify here about people's view on this massacre
after 24 years and the impact on Chinese politics due to
people's widespread view.
The current widespread representative view of the Chinese
people is different from the view more than 20 years ago. At
that time, the most widely hold view was to ask for the redress
of the June 4th massacre from the Chinese Communist Party.
However, now more than half of the people's concern is not the
issue of redress but the investigation of the people
responsible for the crime and the demand for the Communist
Party to plead guilty for this massacre.
This change of attitude illustrates that people have
gradually lost the illusion to the Communist Party. So-called
redress is the wrong thing to be corrected. In the past, people
asked for redress because they still had the illusion about the
Communist Party and having misconception that Communist regime
is a reasonable government. Now people have their changed their
minds. This change illustrates that the people no longer
consider Communist regime as a reasonable government. In other
words, the Chinese Communist Government has seriously lost its
legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese people.
Within the Communist leadership, the view regards the
massacre 24 years ago is also changing. There are often rumors
that the new leadership will redress June 4th massacre. This is
a certain basis to political rumors in China; the Communist
Party has the habit of using rumors for political struggles.
Thus some of those rumors are often very accurate, which can
reflect the closed-door struggle within the Communist Party.
Every year before the anniversary of June 4th, the
Communist Government is very nervous. To prevent people taking
to the streets, the regime dispatch a large number of police
and puts dissidents under surveillance and house arrest. This
action alone results in lots of pressure over the Communist
Party. The main cause of this pressure is due to the public
opinion of the Chinese people. The pressure of the public
opinion from the international community is another important
reason. Over the years, those two pressure has become important
reasons for the poor image of the Chinese Communist Government,
both inside of China and internationally. This is a serious
burden to the Chinese Government and is considered to be one of
the several reasons for people to incite revolution.
When the Communist leaders who participated in the massacre
were still in power, those leaders consider this burden as what
they must bear. But now the leaders who did not participate in
the massacre has come into power and they consider as an extra
unnecessary burden. Under the premise that the burden
distresses them both diplomatically and internally, removing
this burden and reducing the hidden risk of social instability
has become an issue that the new leadership clique must
consider.
Some in the Chinese Communist leadership will naturally
think of imitating successful international experience to ease
people's lasting resentment against this massacre by way of
redressing and reparation for the June 4th massacre, thus
reduce the instability factors made by the previous
leaderships. But other people in the leadership clique consider
concessions to the people as reducing the authority of the
Communist Party that will bring new instability. So they oppose
the redress and reparation. Those two views are causing new
conflicts within the Communist Party, and have increased the
division within the Communist leadership.
Of course, to the Communist Party, this seems not the most
urgent and the biggest problem now. As China's economic crisis
looms, as its intentions with the neighboring country
intensify, improving the image and reduced domestic social
pressure by June 4th redress, is not a particularly pressing
problem. It now appears that the Communist regime still
considers this as a historical problem that can be resolved by
suppression.
For the time being, they do not have the motivation to
solve a historic problem completely. The guilty accountability
and reparation of the June 4th massacre may have to wait until
the collapse of the Communist regime in China.
Thank you to the chairman and thank you to all the
representatives.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Wei, thank you very much for your testimony
and for your extraordinary leadership.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wei follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Ms. Ling, Chai Ling.
STATEMENT OF MS. CHAI LING, FOUNDER, ALL GIRLS ALLOWED
Ms. Chai. Well, thank you to the honorable Chairman Chris
Smith, and to all the honorable Members of Congress, thank you
for your support with us in this difficult journey and battle.
And particularly, Congressman Chris Smith, thank you for your
tireless effort to uphold human rights for all the people in
China, around the world. I am deeply honored to be given the
opportunity to share the message of hope and redemption through
Christ Jesus on the 24th anniversary of Tiananmen Square
tragedy and massacre. My message is a summary of lessons
learned from a 47-year life journey, of growing up in China,
having led the Tiananmen Square movement, and now living in and
observing America for the past 23 years. The longer, fuller
version of these lessons are in my book called, ``A Heart for
Freedom.''
My message is for all the distinguished Congressional
leaders and the foreign affairs policymakers like yourself, and
also for American President Obama and China's new President Xi
Jinping, who will meet on the West Coast in a few days. It is
also for church leaders in both countries, and also for
Tiananmen Square students, dissidents, victims, our families,
and for the people at large. I believe, despite the constant
terrorism threats coming from the Middle East and the
turbulence around the rest of the world, a godly partnership
between America and China holds the key to a peaceful, stable,
and prosperous world. To understand this truth and lesson from
the Tiananmen Square massacre is the beginning of forging this
partnership. Allow me to now elaborate on my view here.
It feels like yesterday, on the morning of June 3, 1989,
Beijing, China, the sun was rising over the newly set up tents,
which I ordered them to set up to house thousands of protesting
students. Tiananmen Square was waking up to a soft female
announcer's voice declaring the arrival of a new China. As a
team of soldiers came across the Golden Water Bridge to raise
the Chinese flag, for a moment the students, the soldiers, the
flag in the square, the rising sun and the misty pink, blue sky
all coexisted in peace and harmony in great anticipation of
hope for a new China.
That night all of this was brought to an end by a brutal
massacre all of you witnessed. Ms. Bass, as you have said
earlier, you remember exactly where you were, and so do we. I
was there with my last 5,000 students standing in the square,
surrounded by tanks and troops. We stood until the last hour
when we had to leave the square, about 5 o'clock to 6 o'clock
a.m. in the morning. There was much loss, death, injury, and
imprisonment for all sides: Students, citizens, and soldiers.
It is a wound that even 24 years later remains wide open in so
many millions of Chinese people's hearts, and some are still
paying the price with their loss and grief, like the mothers of
the victims.
Others are paying with their freedom, such as Liu Xiaobo,
Bao Tong, Tan Zuoren, and many others still in prison. And I
and many others today are paying the price of living in exile,
unable to go back to our country where we grew up, for the past
24 years. And after 10 months in hiding, after being put on--
after the massacre, I was put on a most wanted list and
eventually came to America.
I spent 20 years tirelessly searching for the truth behind
the massacre. I tried to understand what had caused it to
happen, what could have been done differently to stop it, and
what was the hope for China? It was not until December 4, 2009
when I finally give my life to Jesus, I found both. It was in
pain and sorrow I discovered the truth behind the massacre. It
was Deng Xiaoping's unhealed pain and unperceived fear of
reality that conspired to justify by killing. I learned that
Deng Xiaoping, the Premier who ordered the massacre, had his
memory triggered by the peaceful student movement at Tiananmen
Square, which reminded him of his pain and suffering during the
cultural revolution and other previous political movements. I
learned that a few other elder leaders were also triggered by
the same kind of pain and suffering. And they all joined the
conclusion that if we do not stop the movement, we will have
nowhere to back down, and risk breaking our families and losing
our loved ones.
And so Li Peng, the Prime Minister in China at that time,
together with the military, executed this massacre and used
brutal force to gun down those peaceful protesters which they
labeled anti-revolutionaries who aimed to overthrow the
government. Because I was in such a key place, having played
such a key leadership role in leading the Tiananmen movement,
from my perspective, their perception and decision point could
not be further from the truth. As a student leader, I had very
little interest in either joining or overthrowing the Chinese
Government.
At the time, I was already applying to study in America.
All I wanted was to be safe, to not have to relive the
injustice, humiliation, defamation, isolation I suffered when I
tried to overcome an earlier attempted rape by a college
classmate. Many other students in Tiananmen Square were
inspired by similar desires for simple justice and freedom from
fear. Feng Congde, a key student leader of the movement, was
motivated to overcome his own fear and terror he experienced
when he was imprisoned for 18 hours in 1987. And Li Lu was
there to overcome his grandfather's fate, who died as a
rightist in prison under Mao's regime.
But the unhealed pain and misperception led Deng to believe
only a massacre would rescue and secure their power. Deng was
convinced that the only option was to kill his own people. A
decade before 1989, he was also the same leader who ordered
China's one-child policy out of fear that it was needed in
order prevent starvation. Many Chinese people still believe,
subscribe, and defend the policy as of today.
Unfortunately, exaggerated concentration of power without
any democratic process allowed one person, Deng, to order both
the killing that took place in Tiananmen Square, and the even
larger and ongoing massacre against innocent women and babies
through the brutal one-child policy.
It was in November 2009, at your hearing, Congressman Chris
Smith, that my eyes were opened up to the truth and brutality
of the one-child policy when Wu Jian testified how she was
dragged out from her hiding place and her baby, you know, had
poison injected into her tummy. Her baby struggled and died,
was chopped into pieces, taken out of her body, and my eyes
were opened up and I realized I was trying to overcome the
trauma I sustained under the Tiananmen massacre on my life. And
there is today still an ongoing Tiananmen massacre taking place
daily under China's one-child policy, harming the most
vulnerable unborn children and their mothers.
In the past 30 years, over 400 million babies were killed
through forced and coerced abortions. Later on, I came to
realize three of those 400 million babies were mine. The root
is the killing of people to solve a problem, the common way the
Chinese Government has been using over and over again, based on
not understanding and respecting the sanctity of life. I never
learned what ``sanctity of life'' meant, so I Googled it. And
the word come back: It means the state or quality of being
holy, sacred, or saintly, having ultimate importance,
inviolability. And that is what it meant. How precious life is
and should be treated.
So it was in that moment I realized we were confronting
something much bigger than what I had previous understood, much
bigger than the Chinese Government and individual leaders. We
are confronting a huge evil that could kill 400 million babies
yet still make the entire world almost blind to this horrific
crime. The evil one's scheme was exposed by a few faithful
leaders and individuals. Congressman Chris Smith, yourself, and
Congressman Frank Wolf, thank you for all of your effort in the
past 30-plus years fighting against both the one-child policy
and also defending the victims of the Tiananmen massacre. And
it was your extraordinary perseverance and dedication to defend
many, and your leadership and perseverance and dedication to
defend human rights for all people that became the key that led
me to the truth.
It was this revelation of the true face of evil that led me
to God through Jesus Christ on December 4, 2009, and helped me
discover the true hope for China and for the people and for the
leaders and for the victims and for myself. Congressman Chris
Smith, you said earlier it was a sense of hopelessness of the
evil that one felt that day when the massacre took place. Well,
we all reacted with shock and horror. Even if we fight back, we
still deep in our heart have a sense of hopelessness. Not until
I found God, who is much bigger than that, we finally were able
to receive and embrace that hope. Many of you grew up in
America and heard the story that God created Heaven and earth;
God created man and woman.
And--in his image. But man and woman distrusted and
disobeyed God. And through this sin, humanity fell. Jesus came
to the earth and offered his life on the cross by obeying God
all the way to death, and humanity was therefore redeemed
through us accepting Jesus as our God and Savior. However, when
we came from China, came to America, we never heard or were
allowed to hear this truth. Many leaders in China do not know
this precious truth. Had we known in 1989 that our struggles
were not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers
against authorities, powers of the dark world and against the
spiritual forces of evil, and had the leaders accepted this
truth, we may have been able to avoid the Tiananmen massacre,
we may have been able to end the one-child policy.
It is not too late to start a new beginning. God is not
slow to keeping his promise. And some understand this as
slowness, instead of his patience with us, not wanting anybody
to perish but for everyone to come to repentance. And this is
the same hope I have for America as well.
And so--I know my time is limited. So I would like to say,
as President Obama, President Xo Jinping meet together, I have
a few very concrete requests for them: To reverse the anti-
revolutionary turmoil ``dong luan'' verdict against Tiananmen
Square's peaceful protesters, to end the one-child policy in
China, to end gendercide in China and in America, to end
abortions in China and in America, to end the imprisonment of
political dissidents Liu Xiaobo, Bao Tong, Tan Zuoren, and
others, and to end the persecutions of churches and believers
in China and in America.
And I do, at this time, when many people after 24 years
have now seen the Tiananmen massacre being ended and to be--the
verdict being reverse, may be in process of giving a hope, but
we know we have a hope and a future that cannot be shaken
because God has promised that he will wipe every tear from our
eyes and there will be no more death, no more sorrow, no more
crying of pain: All these things will be gone forever. And all
who are victorious will inherit all the blessings. And I will
be their God and they will be my children. So with this
promise, my prayer today is, Father God, do it swiftly. In
Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Chai, thank you very much for your
testimony. And again thank you for your extraordinary
leadership over these many years.
Ms. Chai. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Chai follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. I would now like to yield to Dr. Yang.
STATEMENT OF YANG JIANLI, PH.D., PRESIDENT, INITIATIVES FOR
CHINA
Mr. Yang. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of this
committee for hosting this important and timely hearing. On the
night of June 3, 1989, the Chinese Government ordered People's
Liberation Army to clear Tiananmen Square, the center of the
peaceful democracy movement that had been carried out by
student and civilians in China's major cities for nearly 2
months. It is now 3:40 in the morning on June 4th in Beijing.
Exactly 24 years ago when in the early hours of June 4, 1989,
troops opened fire on an armed students and civilians and
cleared the square. During these hours, I was on Chung Lang
Avenue near the square and saw with my own eyes more than 30
people killed, including 11 students run over by tanks.
As a survivor, I have testified before U.S. Congress on the
massacre three times, including the 1996 hearing hosted by you,
Mr. Chairman, when China's Defense Minister Chi Haotian visited
Washington. Today I will not repeat what I said previously
about what I saw during the massacre. Instead, I will try to
deliver a few messages concerning the unresolved Tiananmen
issues and other related questions.
First, let me pass along a message from Ms. Ding Zilin, the
head of the Tiananmen Mothers. Here is the letter:
``Dear Chairman, I want to first, on behalf of
Tiananmen Mothers, express my deep gratitude to you and
U.S. Congress for your concerned support for the
families of the victims of the Tiananmen massacre.
Since 1995, the Tiananmen Mothers have written 36 open
letters to the two Congresses of China and China's
leaders calling for the reversal of the government's
verdict on the Tiananmen incident and demanding truth,
compensation, and accountability. But we have not
received any reply from the government. We ask U.S.
Congress to urge President Barack Obama to demand of
President Xi Jinping in their June 8th summit that
China fulfill its international and domestic
obligations according to the standards of humanitarian
principles and universal values and bring the crimes
against the humanity committed by Deng Xiaoping, Li
Peng, and others, in 1989, to trial and reach a just,
fair resolution as soon as possible.
``The Chinese Government took the lives of our
children 24 years ago. And it has deprived us of the
right to freely mourn our beloved. Please ask President
Obama to urge President Jinping to respect our basic
rights as human beings. In the past 24 years, 33
members of the Tiananmen Mothers have passed away
yearning for justice. And the rest are aging in
despair. Age does creep. For us, time is particularly
precious. It is in nobody's interest for President Xi
to continue to be locked in his Chinese dream. Instead,
we hope he awakens to the stern reality and address
this stain on the modern history of China. Sincerely,
Ding Zilin on behalf of the Tiananmen Mothers.''
End of the letter.
What can we say today about basic facts concerning the
tragedy? According to human rights in China, more than 2,000
people died in various Chinese cities on June 3rd and June 4th
and the days of immediately following. The Tiananmen Mothers
have documented the names of 202 victims in addition. In the
followup to June 4th, more than 500 people were imprisoned in
Beijing's Number 2 prison alone, and an unknown number were
imprisoned in other Chinese cities. An additional unknown
number were executed. However, the total number of dead,
wounded, imprisoned, and executed remains unknown because the
Chinese Government has refused to carry out a thorough
investigation of events. The government's persecution of the
Tiananmen participants continues today. Hundreds who escaped
China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre have been
blacklisted from returning home, six of them have died
overseas, and unknown numbers could not pay their last visit
before they parents passed away or attend their funerals.
Wu'er Kaixi, a student leader of 1989, has not been able to
see his parents for 24 years. Much less documented is the lives
of the ordinary participants and the Tiananmen prisoners. They
and their family members have endured unspeakable suffering in
the past 24 years. Most of them constantly subject to
harassment and surveillance have found it extremely difficult
to hold a regular job and to support their families. Some of
them were later forced to leave the country. Today, one who
recently came to United States is with us.
I want to emphasize here that Tiananmen event is not just a
one-time event. For the 24 years following the massacre, China
has never stopped its human rights violations. In considering
its record, we need look no further than these individuals,
groups, events, and policies. Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia,
Wang Bingzhang, Gao Zhisheng, Liu Xianbin, Chen Wei, Chen Xi,
Guo Quan, Ding Jiaxi, Zhao Changqing, Hada, Nurmemet Yasin,
Yang Tianshui, Dhondup Wangchen, Zhu Yufu, Tang Zuoren.
Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, house churches follow forced
abortions, forced evictions, and forced disappearances, black
jails, and the list can go on and on.
I urge U.S. Congress and the Government to stay alert to
these severe human rights violations and put pressure on the
Chinese Government to change their ways. In February 2011,
Colonel Ghadafi justified his blood actions by pointing to what
China did to those people on Tiananmen Square. This shows how
ignoring crimes in one place only encourages them to spread
elsewhere. The good news is that the U.N. suspended Libya's
membership on the Human Rights Council for killing its own
people. This same human rights standard should be applied by
the U.N. to all of its member countries, including China. The
Tiananmen Mothers and the meetings of victims of the Chinese
dictatorship rightfully ask the United States to strongly
oppose in a vote against the China regaining membership in the
U.N. Human Rights Council and to encourage other democracies to
similarly vote against it. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Yang, thank you very much for your
leadership, for your very concrete suggestions, and for
reminding us that the Tiananmen Square massacre continues to
this day.
[The prepared statement of Yang Jianli follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Dr. Aikman.
STATEMENT OF DAVID AIKMAN, PH.D. (FORMER TIME MAGAZINE BUREAU
CHIEF IN BEIJING)
Mr. Aikman. Mr. Chairman and honorable members. Twenty-four
years ago today, one of the most brutal assaults by any
government in modern history on peaceful protesters began
around 10 o'clock p.m. in the evening Beijing time. By the time
the assault was over several hours later, hundreds, perhaps
thousands of innocent civilians, including students, had been
murdered by bullets to the Chinese People's Liberation Army, or
crushed under the attacks of tanks and armored personnel
carriers. How do we know? Because scores of Chinese and foreign
eyewitnesses photographed the event and reported on it. I was
one of them.
The killing of innocent civilians is always a tragedy and
sometimes it is a crime. Most countries in the world have been
guilty of this at different times in their history, including
my own country, the United States. Over a few centuries, we
treated with great cruelty Africans brought over to this
country as slaves and Native Americans. But we came to
recognize these faults and to express contrition and an apology
for them and even asked forgiveness for them.
China is a great civilization and culture and has
contributed innumerable blessings to the human community. China
has also suffered much in recent centuries from foreign
invasion and aggression. The result is that Chinese feel a deep
sense of grievance when information about past and present
injustices is suppressed. That sense of grievance is alive in
China today about the events of June 3 and 4, 1989. What does
it say about a great nation that it has to forbid Internet
searches for the words, ``Tiananmen incident,'' or ``June the
4th,'' or even ``candle,'' or most incredibly, even the
numerals ``5, 3, 5,'' which point not to May having 35 days but
to the date June the 4th?
How can the authorities in power in China hope to have the
respect of the world when they go through these medieval
contortions to suppress information about China's own history?
All the truth-respecting people all over the world are asking
for is for China to start being honest about its own past and
present, and to investigate in a transparent manner what
happened 24 years ago. China claims that hooligans were
responsible for June the 4th. That is nonsense. Some hooligans,
no doubt, were present, just as some hooligans perhaps were
present when Martin Luther King, Jr. set in motion the civil
rights March on Washington in 1963. But only a complete idiot
today would assert that the civil rights March on Washington
was an event organized by hooligans.
China today its experiencing a multitude of protests by
citizens experiencing injustice. That multitude is growing
annually at a rate that even alarms the Chinese Government.
Sooner or later, if not addressed honestly those grievances
will coalesce into a social and political movement which could
cause a national turmoil in not just China, but in some of
China's neighbors. For the sake of honesty, of sanity, and even
regional peace, the Chinese authorities need to tell the world
the truth. China claims to respect truth because it respects
science, which requires truth to be respected. It will be a
tragedy if China continues to hobble along, dragging its
civilization and its recent history behind it, like an injured
war veteran. Greatness of civilization requires truth, honesty,
and modesty, not continued countenancing of lies like the
Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. Every Chinese and everyone in
the world will feel a sigh of relief if China begins to be
honest about its internal grievances, especially those stemming
from June the 3rd to 4th, 1989. A wise man said 2,000 years
ago, ``You will know the truth and the truth will set you
free.''
Mr. Smith. Dr. Aikman, thank you very much for your
testimony and for being here today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Aikman follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Dr. Richardson.
STATEMENT OF SOPHIE RICHARDSON, PH.D., CHINA DIRECTOR, HUMAN
RIGHTS WATCH
Ms. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
subcommittee. It is always a pleasure to be here. Thank you so
much for your devotion and your leadership on these issues; to
you, in particular, Mr. Wolf. I am used to being humbled in
this room; I am especially so today by being on this panel. It
is a little hard to add to or improve upon what has already
been said. I think my task this afternoon is to try to put some
of the events in a little bit of historical context. And it is
really a fairly basic idea that Chinese Government denial and
repression about Tiananmen in 1989 make it impossible for the
wound of Tiananmen to heal and for people inside and outside
China to trust the Chinese Government.
We see in Tiananmen the origins or pathologies of many of
the human rights abuses and broader problems that continue to
plague China today. What did Tiananmen mean in 1989? Different
things to different people. At a time when it seemed there
could be a real possibility of political reform, it meant that
people actually could challenge the government, that they could
try to exercise key rights to expression, assembly and
association, that they could try to influence a political
process that still allowed them no formal role, and for some of
the of the lions of Tiananmen, some of whom are sitting here
today and who of some of whom continue to fight for their
rights from towns and campuses and jails across China, this was
the formative experience.
The Chinese Government's reaction, on the other hand, made
starkly clear that despite some vague signs of reformist
impulses on the economic front, no dissent was to be brooked on
political matters, a position that hasn't changed much today.
For the international community, the events of June 4, 1989
were shocking insight into what the government was like at a
point in time when there had been somewhat limited contact the
end of the Cold War began to wane, there was some debate,
particularly about whether the Chinese Government could or
would be more than a trading partner.
What does Tiananmen mean now, 24 years later? I think the
Chinese Government's active efforts to wholly expunge Tiananmen
from the history books and persecute survivors and victims'
family members, let alone to provide justice, means that China
simply cannot in some ways move forward. And that until the
government is willing to investigate those events, it also has
to be viewed with profound skepticism as a partner.
For Chinese activists, so many of the issues at stake then
inform their work now, whether it is rule of law, holding
officials to account, transparency, corruption, the right to
protest. And many of them continue to confront precisely the
same kinds of problems: Official obstruction, coverups,
injustice, and denial. It is hard to offer a generalization
about what Tiananmen means for Chinese people today, because as
many panelists have described, it is very difficult to know
about the events themselves. The Washington Post had an
extraordinary article this morning. I would recommend all of
you to reading it. It is an effort to speak to survivors about
how they have--whether they have broached the subject with
their children. And there is one paragraph I would like to read
because I think it quite nicely summarizes the conundrum they
face. William Wan wrote,
``For most parents, it comes down to a choice between
protecting their children from the past or passing on
dangerous and bitter truths about the authoritarian
society they continue to live under.''
For the international community, I think Tiananmen
continues to be, especially for governments who either seek to
or feel obliged to have closer ties with the Chinese
Government, Tiananmen becomes a very uncomfortable truth. It's
there, it hasn't been dealt with, they don't want to have to
talk about it. Some of they issue statements, some of them try
not to. Periodically the EU tries to detach its arms embargo
from accountability for Tiananmen. But there isn't a clear path
forward or a clear message from all of those governments on how
to deal with the legacy.
What can be done about this? We are, of course, deeply
appreciative of the efforts made by Members of Congress,
although it is certainly my hope that as interest amongst
members in China generally grows that more people will take an
active interest in human rights issues as well. And while we
certainly appreciate the--I think it's appropriate to describe
them as elegiac statements that the State Department issues on
the anniversary, I think it is not easy for them to do that. I
think they face resistance from other parts of the
administration. And that that alone is certainly not enough.
I think the question really remains from President Obama on
down whether the U.S. is going to help fight the long, hard
fight for truth and justice and accountability for Tiananmen
and for other human rights abuses. We are at a point in time
now where the U.S. has pushed hard for accountability and
justice in various parts of the world. We now have a U.N.
Commission of Inquiry Into Human Rights Abuses in North Korea.
We have the Magnitsky Act. And yet we are left wondering
what exactly is on President Obama's human rights agenda for
later in this week when he meets with President Xi. Will he ask
for the release of political prisoners, as was once absolutely
standard practice? Will President Obama explain to Xi Jinping
that Shandong officials who have been responsible for
tormenting Chen Guangcheng and his family members shouldn't
bother trying to apply for visas to come to the United States
under the new executive order. Will President Obama ask Xi
Jinping to investigate the events of Tiananmen, and perhaps
most important in this week, to allow victims' family members
to mourn their dead.
Xi Jinping has spoken about coming to the United States to
try to establish a new relationship with the U.S. I think it is
going to be very difficult to do until such time as the Chinese
Government seeks to establish a new relationship with its own
people, one in which it is finally willing to answer their
questions about 1989. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Richardson follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Dr. Richardson, thank you very much. You know,
let us pick up on your last point about the upcoming summit on
Friday and Saturday with President Obama and President Xi. What
will President Xi's takeaway be if human rights are not
robustly discussed, if individual cases like, you mentioned,
Cheng Guangcheng are not brought up? Cheng Guangcheng sat right
where Dr. Yang is sitting, just a few weeks ago and made a
passionate appeal for his nephew and other family members who
are being retaliated against. His nephew is really a surrogate
for him. He is now free, relatively speaking, and his family,
immediate family, but the other members of his family are being
tortured, including his nephew. And Liu Xiaobo, a fellow Nobel
Peace Prize winner, just like President Barak Obama, continues
to languish in prison and, you know, his wife pretty much under
house arrest.
It seems--as you said, it used to be standard practice that
there would be political prisoners, religious prisoners and
others who would be released when summitry would occur. It
seems to me that at the very least, our side, our President
needs to make a very strong and aggressive--diplomatic, but
aggressive appeal for these people who are suffering with such
impunity.
Anyone like to handle that? Dr. Yang?
Mr. Yang. Yeah. This hearing is timely, because we all know
there is going to be a summit between President Obama and
President Xi. I strongly believe that President Obama should
set the tone of U.S.-China relations in this summit for his new
administration and for the new leadership of China.
This is a crucial moment to signal to the leadership of
China that the quality of its relationship with the United
States largely depends on how it treats its own citizens and on
whether it leads by the universally accepted human rights norms
for its international and domestic policies.
Failure on President Obama's part to speak up and address
the human rights concerns will send the wrong message to the
leadership, the new leadership, of China about U.S. priorities,
and it may encourage the new leadership, the new Chinese
leaders, to allow the human rights abuses to continue.
While we don't oppose the United States vigorously engaging
with China, with Chinese Government, on other issues, including
economic relations, treaty relations, North Korea and other
security issues, we believe and hope President Obama will
engage with some vigor on human rights concerns. So I think it
is a very good opportunity for him to raise the very important
cases of prisoners, as Mr. Chairman just mentioned: Cheng
Guangcheng, Liu Xiaobo, Wang Bingzhang, Gao Zhisheng. All these
prisoners of conscience, we are not forgetting them. And
President Obama should raise the cases in the meeting.
Mr. Smith. Yes. Mr. Wei?
Mr. Wei. I think that in the past few decades, the human
rights diplomacy of the United States has established a very
reputable image of the United States. Not only with good image,
it has also produced a very effective result, which ultimately
resulted in the collapse of the Communist clique. And
Representatives here maybe still remember since the passage of
PNTR, the permanent normal trade relations, with China, the
human rights in China situation has been rapidly deteriorated.
I think from the perspective to have a good new image of
the United States or to establish this soft power for United
States, the United States should really holding up this ticket
of human rights again.
I agree with Dr. Yang that right during the meeting between
President Obama and President Xi, we really should do something
regarding human rights; however, I feel more important for the
United States Congress and the administration to design a new
strategy and to put human rights on the front line and for the
future.
President Obama said that human rights and the universal
value is a big advantage for United States. If so, why don't
you take this advantage up front instead of waste your time
with the Communist regime for other issues? So I hope more that
the United States will have a new strategy, a new policy. I had
European politicians ask me, what is the diplomacy of the
United States? They don't have one. Because if you do not take
advantage of your universal value, then indeed you do not have
advantage diplomatically.
Mr. Smith. Let me say briefly, when Wei Jingsheng was let
out of prison in order to get the 2000 Olympics, I was actually
in Beijing and had dinner with him. He said something that I
will never forget. He said when American officials--any
official, but especially American officials, especially the
President of the United States--speaks precisely,
transparently, but boldly about human rights, they beat us less
when we are in the Laogai, or the gulags of China. When you are
vacillating, weak and dismissive of the human rights agenda,
they beat us more. It gets right down to that level, to the
prison guards and to the prison wardens.
And I am wondering, you know, for us to miss an opportunity
to speak out boldly and aggressively on behalf of these
dissidents, who are being tortured, harassed, and degraded in
every way imaginable, for us not to take that, would you, the
other panelists, agree with Mr. Wei's assessment that we need
to have a more muscular human rights policy?
And secondly, Dr. Yang, you made mention in your statement,
and I thought it was very, very interesting, that 60 peaceful
transitions to democracy have come as a surprise to the United
States, because policymakers did not pay attention to the
students, to the victims, to the activists, but we were focused
like a laser beam, regrettably, on the political elite, who
have very little regard for the human rights of other people.
You also made a point, and I thought it was very profound,
and I said in my opening that economic growth means everything;
that they have inculcated in China among the elite a corruption
that is indescribable, and that is what keeps them afloat, as
you put it in your testimony, your written testimony. And I
wonder if any of our panelists would like to speak to that.
The conventional wisdom is that if we somehow trade more
with China, they will matriculate from dictatorship to
democracy, but as you have laid out, Dr. Yang, precisely the
opposite has been occurring, especially since most favored
nation status, now PNTR, was granted. You said that we are
actually keeping the dictatorship afloat; that they have carved
out the elite, they reward the elite, and through corruption
and through gross human rights abuse, especially through
torture, they are able to keep the dictatorship intact. If you
would like to speak to that.
Mr. Aikman. Yeah. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I think the Chinese Government would learn a lot by taking
a few pages out of the history of South Africa. When the South
African apartheid regime fell, many Black Africans were very,
very angry at the way they had been treated by the regime that
had just been overturned, and so what the South African
Government decided to do was to have a truth and reconciliation
committee.
One of the things that is clear when you study China and
modern Chinese history is the Chinese Communist Party is
terrified of the Chinese people. They think that they may be
thrown out of power for not being sufficiently nationalistic.
They--and the Chinese people are terrified of the Communist
Party and the power that they have.
The only way out of this dilemma of absolutely polar
opposition and fear is for some sort of reconciliation
committee to come into place and to begin to examine the
charges the Chinese people feel they have to lay at the base of
the Communist Party and have the Communist Party be held
accountable for those crimes which they have committed.
Ms. Richardson. I actually just wanted to add a quick point
onto your question about what happens if there is no really
audible human rights-related intervention from President Obama
this coming weekend. I think it is actually two different
problems. One is that it would--it conveys such a lack of
seriousness of purpose to fail to take that opportunity. I
can't help but wonder for an administration that has said
repeatedly in public that it takes a whole-of-government
approach to promoting human rights issues, I can't help but
wonder, you know, what was on Jack Lew's agenda a couple of
weeks ago, what was on Tom Donilon's agenda, what were the
human rights issues they were taking up in this whole-of-
government approach? It is very hard to know that.
And if you say that you were going to make vigorous human
rights diplomacy a part of all of your interactions, and then
it is awfully hard to know what those were, it is very easy for
Xi Jinping to walk away and say, I didn't get challenged about
anything. Why should I take any of this terribly seriously?
And that has a related problem, which I think is ratifying
a sense of incredible exceptionalism that the Chinese Communist
Party holds up. The Chinese may have signed on to international
human rights covenants, but it is different. It gets to proceed
on these matters its way. And to not be challenged on that, I
think, only reinforces that sense. And so it is incredibly
important to finally push back hard and clearly in a way that
is audible not just to the kinds of people who are sitting in
this room, but to a much broader audience in China, which is
looking for some kind of leadership and some kind of
responsiveness to speak to the kinds of problems they are
dealing with every day.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Wei. I just want to put some addition. In the past,
lots of American officials, including congressional
Representatives, when they were dealing with the Chinese
Communist Government, they felt a lot of those officials were
very hard, like a piece of iron board, and they seemed to have
the same opinions.
In the first 20 years after June 4th massacre in 1989,
indeed that was a sort of that situation, but in the past 4
years or so, even within the Communist Government, there are
people stand out and talking about human rights and universal
values. So we should let President Obama know this is a good
opportunity, because if there is a voice for human rights, then
we could hear even more for human rights talks from the Chinese
Government. So if we talk about human rights now, emphasize
that, then it will have more impact to those officials within
the Communist leadership, which also would have more impact to
the people inside of China.
Ms. Chai. I would like to add a few words.
Mr. Smith. Please.
Ms. Chai. I do believe that this Friday when President
Obama meets with President Xi, not only does he need to
emphasize the human rights importance for China, but it is
crucial and necessary for American security to do so.
And I want to remind all of us that President Abraham
Lincoln, in his second inauguration speech about lack of
justice to free the slaves, had called the severe casualty and
loss in the war, saying,
``Fondly we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if it be
God's will that it will continue until all the wealth
piled up by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lashes shall be paid by another drawn with a sword,
as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said,
the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether.''
There is a rumor that China today finished their first
submarines. They are in the process of making five more. And
America has the most submarines in the whole world, 16 of them.
Is China going into an arms race against America?
God gave us a blueprint for how we can achieve peace. I
know today we use the words ``human rights,'' and ``democracy''
to replace the fundamental truth of God, but I think it is
really important for us to go back to that. In Isaiah 32:17,
God said, ``The fruit of their righteousness will be peace. Its
effect will be quietness and confidence forever.'' So the path
to peace is to act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with the
Lord our God.
And the crucial timing for President Obama to uplift and
honor the tradition of faith America is founded upon, one
Nation under God, is because this is the first beginning of
President Xi Jinping's legacy. He is eager to learn, he is
eager to build the right relationship with America. America
must stand strong not just for this country, but for the world.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Dr. Yang? And then I will go to Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Yang. At this point I want to address a myth, widely
believed myth, in the international community. Actually I have
been amazed by this well-entrenched myth, you know, believed by
world leaders, the policymakers and the scholars. The myth goes
as follow: That because China will punish those taking a strong
stance on human rights with its growing economic power,
affecting their all-important treaty relations with China, the
human rights issue should take a back seat. That is a myth. But
this myth is anything but tested. There is no past evidence to
show it.
We should ask--I list a lot of questions here. We should
ask, what do--do you think, the world leaders, China will do in
response to a strong human rights stance? Do you really believe
that China will quit treaty with a country whose goods it needs
because the country demands better treatment of its citizens?
How much will affect your economy, for example, United States
economy, and are you willing or able to accept this are to
come? How much will it affect China's economy? And what does it
mean to this regime?
We all know that the only source of legitimacy for this
regime to continue is economic well-being, so I think that is
the last thing that they would try to jeopardize.
Questions are, will China be willing or able to accept a
cost? So let us calculate how much we spent on the Iraq War,
which toppled a dictator. If China really retaliates against
this country with its economic power, how much are we willing
to pay to help topple China's dictatorship? How much less the
American taxpayers will pay for the spending of defense if
China becomes a democracy? So we should consider these
questions.
I found this is--you know, some fear is self-imposed fear.
We have to test it. This means to break it. I, too, have past
experience to show otherwise. I just give you a couple of
examples.
Number one, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace
Prize. The Chinese Government came out, fought to sanction
Norway for this award, and just 4 days after award ceremony,
December 14th, China and Norway struck an oil deal despite
tensions. That is in the title of Wall Street Journal, and I
read the first paragraph, okay: Beijing, China, oil field
services limited. A unit of one of China's largest oil
companies has signed a long-term oil-drilling contract with
Norway's Statoil, demonstrating that Beijing's fury over the
award of a Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo may
not stop major commercial deals.
And most recent example is Cheng Guangcheng. Both the
Congress and the executive branch took a very strong stance on
his case last year, getting him successfully to United States.
What happened afterward? We still have a normal relationship,
treaty relationship. Nothing affected the relation of the two
countries.
And for Oslo, I went back in May 2011 to check. I come to a
staff member in--you know, who is dealing with trade with China
about the quota of salmon importing--imported to China. He told
me officials, Chinese officials, who told him how to get around
of the--you know, the sanction. So they have to go through Hong
Kong to avoid the sanction.
So I think this is--this myth we have to test to break.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank each of you
for your testimony and obviously highlighting this on an
ongoing basis. The chairman has been very vocal for a number of
years on human rights violations and how we need to continue to
not only highlight that, but address it.
And I guess my concern with this hearing today is that I
have been in this very room hearing a number of issues over the
last months, whether it be child abduction, whether it be human
trafficking, whether it be a one-child policy, a number of
human rights violations and religious freedom violations not
only in China, but in a number of countries, and yet finding a
way to make that part of our negotiations or part of our
foreign policy is very difficult to put in.
And so, Dr. Yang, you mentioned that it had to have an
economic component. And I would be interested, Dr. Richardson
and Dr. Aikman, for you to comment on that. How do we highlight
it more than just having President Obama mention it this week
in terms of--that it is important? How do we get beyond the
rhetoric and make sure that we let them understand that it is a
critical thing that we are wanting to emphasize and have
corrected?
Dr. Aikman, you can go first.
Mr. Aikman. Well, I go back to South Africa. In the
pressure to get South Africa to change its policy of apartheid
and to abandon it, there were various very strict trade
regulations that American companies were willing to agree to
force the South African Government to change its policy toward
Black South Africans, and these policies were very effective.
So I think on a smaller scale, American States and cities and
corporations could put selective pressure on parts of the
Chinese Government that deals with foreign trade to force them
to adopt a more humane human rights policy.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Dr. Richardson?
Ms. Richardson. I have a long list of suggestions, but I
will give you my top three.
Mr. Meadows. Okay.
Ms. Richardson. There are certain issues for any government
that are discomfiting and they desperately want to avoid having
to talk about in public, so you can, you know, retrofit this
depending on which government you are talking about. But I
think there are three or four issues for the Chinese Government
that simply have to be made inescapable topics of conversation
at every single senior-level summit, regardless of whether it
is about a security issue, an intelligence issue, a trade
issue, you know; and it should be some combination of issues
related to ethnic minorities, individual cases, or certain key
aspects of the rule of law. And it is not difficult to figure
out how to fit that into a whole-of-government approach.
I am actually a proponent of a whole-of-government approach
partly because often--you know, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
bureaucrats from China are very good at thwarting those
conversations. Try to have that conversation with a different
part of the Chinese Government, Ministry of Justice, the public
security, and it is a very--I think it tends to be a very
different conversation, in some cases much more effective. But
doing that well requires that the President instructs Cabinet
members to do this and creates an expectation that they will
follow through on it, and they will be expected to report back.
Look, I think there is also much to be said for the idea of
setting out benchmarks on certain key issues. You know, there
shouldn't be endless rounds, for example, of labor dialogues
that don't have built into them specific concrete steps that
the Chinese side needs to take in order for there to be another
round of dialogue. And our single biggest complaint about the
human rights dialogues is that having them at all, wholly apart
from whether they are useful, has become the deliverable in and
of itself; that simply to get one scheduled and to take place
becomes the goal rather than to insist on certain kinds of
changes being made.
Mr. Meadows. So what you are saying is set a benchmark and
then say we want to see these concrete--these three or five or
six concrete steps toward reaching that benchmark needs to be
part of our foreign policy?
Ms. Richardson. Right. I mean, imagine, you know, there
were some functional equivalent of the WTO for human rights
issues. Right? I mean, there are standards that must be met,
and if one party doesn't adhere to those, there are
consequence. Right? I mean, obviously we are not going to
establish WTO for human rights issues, but it is the same
logic, that in order to have the next phase of a discussion,
you have to show some commitment, some seriousness of purpose
and some willingness to change, not that these dialogues just
become an endless series of diplomatic interactions in and of
themselves.
Mr. Meadows. One of--one of the things that we look at, and
Dr. Aikman mentioned South Africa, but one of the issues that
we have is really one of stability, that their government right
now wants to have this stable environment as there is a free
flow of information via the Internet. And obviously the
sanctioning of that creates, I guess, more freedom of speech,
which creates perhaps an unstable environment within China or
the Chinese Government.
Where--should those be--should that be one of the
benchmarks that we look at is Internet freedom and the ability
of free speech within--and promoting that as part of their
human rights? Dr. Yang?
Mr. Yang. I have a very specific suggestion for the
congressional resolution. Maybe my ideas were wild, but I have
been thinking a measure, a tax benefit. And China is huge, of
different provinces, although the governments of different
level all have the nature, same nature, but the violations vary
from place to place. So we may each year single out a number of
provinces where the human rights record is really bad, and
those who are doing business, American businessmen doing
business in these provinces, will not enjoy a tax benefit,
whatever they are, and encourage internal competition on human
rights record.
Mr. Meadows. So what you are saying is there is enough of a
difference in human rights violations within provinces within
China----
Mr. Yang. Yes.
Mr. Meadows [continuing]. That you can set that up?
Mr. Yang. Yes. So there is a variation we can take
advantage of, and we will encourage the provincial leaders to
compete for human rights record.
Mr. Meadows. And I see some nods there from Dr. Richardson
and Dr. Aikman. You would concur with that?
Mr. Aikman. Yes. I think it is quite compatible with
China's disparate state governments competing with each other
for foreign business to be able to reward those provinces that
are more favorable to human rights by giving them economic
benefits and by withholding them from the really strict regimes
in other provinces.
Mr. Yang. Yes. The local government officials, you know, we
have two criterion, two criterion for the promotion of local
officials: One is GDP; the other is stability. So GDP is a very
important thing for all the local officials.
Mr. Meadows. So which provinces would be most problematic
when it comes to human rights?
Mr. Yang. You know, Beijing, of course, is very
problematic, and Sichuan is another one. In Sichuan we have Liu
Xianbin, Chen Wei, Chen Xi, all sentenced recently to 10 years.
They are all participants of the Tiananmen Square movement. And
after they released, they resumed their activism and being
arrested again and sentenced to long prison terms.
So we can do the study very easy to come up with a record
for each province. And if it is possible for the Congress to
introduce such bill, I think it will help China to improve
human rights very effectively.
Mr. Meadows. And, Mr. Chairman, if you would, can I have
one more question, please?
So if you could comment, each one of you, and discuss
perhaps the relationship between human rights and a democratic
government versus the government that is there now. Are they
mutually exclusive, or do we have to--do we have to have that?
And I will start down on your end, Dr. Richardson.
Ms. Richardson. You have hit upon a personal pet peeve of
mine. I mean, look, it is black letter international law that
governments are meant to be formed by free and fully
enfranchised periodic elections. And last time I checked, the
leadership transition that just took place was the function of
denying 850 million people the right to vote, not premised on
soliciting their views. The fact that the U.S. and many others
failed to note that, as they regularly do around the world, is,
to me, yet another example of Chinese exceptionalism.
Do we know, if the Chinese people were allowed to vote
freely tomorrow, who or what they would choose? I think that
is--I think that is very hard to say. But is this--is the
current permutation or could it be legitimately called a
representative government? No.
Mr. Meadows. Dr. Aikman.
Mr. Aikman. Yeah. I think there are many components to a
free society. Free elections are obviously very important, but
the rule of law is even more important. If you have a society
which has innumerable elections and doesn't have the rule of
law, the protection of property rights, the protection of the
right of free speech, free--the right of religious expression,
you can have all the elections in the world, and you won't have
freedom. China needs to be held to account on standards of the
rule of law as much as standards of political democracy.
Ms. Chai. Yes. I would like to make a comment. You know,
God said man does not live on bread alone, but on every word
that comes from the mouth of God.
I do feel in the past 24 years, the U.S.-China relationship
was mostly based on economic relationships, on bread, and not
on the value and the word of God. And I do believe the leaders
of China are eager to search for what would be the system that
could really secure and create a just nation.
The Tiananmen movement started on the eve of the death of
reform leader Hu Yaobang, and he advocated for three reforms:
Economic reform, political reform and spiritual reform. But
unfortunately Deng Xiaoping only wanted one reform; that is,
economic reform. We know today, looking back, it did not work.
The most beautiful thing is not only we know it did not work,
they know it did not work.
It was when I learned one of the Chinese Government's
supported economists, Zhao Xiao, came to know Christ Jesus, it
was very powerful. He said in a recent meeting with me, in 1992
after 1989, they had the Tiananmen massacre, there was extreme
leftist control against the whole country. That was just--
everybody went into depression. And so Deng Xiaoping started,
you know, to visit the south and started the reform.
So there were a lot of people getting more wealthy, and the
country became prosperous. However, by the time they reached
1997, they realize that they still have a problem, and the gap
between rich and poor became enlarged, and the corruption
became even more vicious than ever. And so he was sent out by
the Chinese Government's think tank to America to search for
what would be the right way to build up this country. And he
had a great conclusion. He said--he said as an atheist at that
time, Zhao found God in America.
He wrote his essay, ``Free Economy With or Without
Church.'' With his permission, I paraphrase his findings. He
said, what are the biggest differences between America and
China? Was it because they differ in buildings, skyscrapers?
No. Was it because they differed in wealth? No. Was it because
they differed in scientific innovation? No. Was it because they
differed in the market economy? No. Was it because they
differed in political system? Well, not really. And so at the
end, it was because they differed in the quantity and presence
of the churches, which appear everywhere in every corner of
America's cities, towns and suburbs. It was a fear of God. And
that was absent in China.
And the fear of God kept America's crime rate lower and
relative governmental corruption down. It was the church and
belief in God that kept America hopeful, peaceful and
prosperous compared to China's economy, where people often got
rich not because of their hard work and innovation, but through
open robbery, with power and through connections.
China has no good faith rule of law in business activities,
because there is no fear of God. Particularly when they have
power, they feel they can do whatever it takes. So certain
people would lie and deceive each other to make quick buck. And
there is no fear of facing God's ultimate judgment.
That is the value, how America was founded. That is the
value Americans unfortunately do not talk so much about
everywhere, not in the media, not in the educational system,
not in the economy, not in business, not in the government, not
in foreign policy.
To my deepest regret, it took me 20 years, 19 years after
coming to America to finally come to find Jesus Christ through
my own home country's Christian hero, who endured persecution,
who suffered in prison three times where God exhibited miracles
through his suffering.
One time he was in prison, he refused food and water for 74
days. We knew it was a physical miracle that he survived, he
did not die. God enabled him to live to tell the story. The
third time he was in prison, his legs were broken, but he heard
God tell him to go. At 8 a.m. in the morning, he was able to
walk through three metal gates and got to freedom, and he
arrived to a place where the address had been given to him in
his dream, and there the brothers and sisters received him and
said, Brother Yun, the Lord told us you will be coming here
today. We have prepared for you a hiding place. Within \1/2\
hour he was able to go to the safe place. Then, only then, he
realized his legs were fully healed.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you. Thank you.
Ms. Chai. And it was this kind of experience----
Mr. Meadows. I am out of time, so I am going to----
Ms. Chai. Sorry.
Mr. Meadows [continuing]. Yield back to the chairman, but
thank you so much.
Ms. Chai. You are very welcome. Thank you.
Mr. Meadows. And I appreciate it. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Stockman.
Mr. Stockman. Yeah. I have a question, and I don't know if
it has been asked. I apologize, Mr. Chairman. I had to run down
to a function.
I want to know from our standpoint what we can do to
facilitate more freedom of expression in China. So often, I
think, to be honest, we are naive about what to do, and I think
we do the wrong thing, and we typically stick our foot in our
mouth or whatever. And I want to know from your standpoint if
you could all just give a quick summary of what we should be
doing, because I think that would help the chairman, myself,
and others.
I apologize for our ignorance, but we just look from the
outside. And as you were a Time correspondent, I read your
magazine at that time, and that--your magazine, by the way, has
changed dramatically, but that is where we get our information.
So we don't know what to do. And I apologize for that
standpoint, but we need your feedback on that.
Mr. Aikman. Well, forgive me for being the first to
respond. It is a good question.
I always think that the best thing for people to do when a
country exercises oppression and denial of free speech over its
own people is every time a representative of that country comes
outside of his country or her country, and you have a chance to
speak to that person, complain, complain, tell them this is
wrong, this is not right, this is against civilization, it is
against decency, it is against truth. You claim to want to have
a great civilization. How can you have a great civilization if
you constantly suppress truth? Grow up. And I think you have to
be very aggressive about this.
Mr. Wei. I think it is very important to bring freedom,
especially Internet freedom, such as this resolution
Representative Smith was talking about, Global Online Freedom
Act. That is really important, and that is a very solid way to
push for the progress of freedom in China, because nowadays the
Chinese Government use Internet to make their suppression, but
meanwhile the Chinese people also use Internet, and they put
the pressure back to the Chinese Government. That is the most
powerful way.
However, due to lack of freedom on Internet, so therefore,
when the government is competing with the Chinese people, the
Chinese people are put in disadvantage than the government.
There are lots of people whose blogs or speech on the Internet
are very welcomed by the people; however, those speeches were
immediately deleted by the Chinese Internet police, and so
therefore, this effect is very limited.
Mr. Stockman. But isn't some of the technology you speak of
sold by the United States to China's suppression of the Chinese
people by Yahoo, Google and other companies?
Mr. Wei. We know there are lots of American companies,
Internet company, doing business in China; however, they do
accept this restriction from the Chinese Government, and
therefore, they have a sort of censorship, which bring
inconvenience for the Chinese citizens.
Mr. Stockman. Mr. Chairman, by the way, you can put me on
your bill. I appreciate that.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Mr. Stockman. Dr. Richardson, do you have any comments on
how we could improve our communication?
Ms. Richardson. I think the only suggestion I would add to
that, partly because I think there has been tremendous interest
shown particularly by Chinese Internet users in everything from
photographs of Gary Locke buying his own coffee to, you know,
the posting of tax returns of senior U.S. officials online, the
more people like you make yourselves available for Web chats,
make sure that important discussions get translated into
Chinese--we are obviously big fans of the language services
that make it possible for people inside China to listen to VOA
and RFA--I think demonstrating how we--how people in the U.S.
Use those mechanisms both to hold our own officials to account,
but also to communicate with people who are interested in
talking to people like you to normalize that idea is really
useful and helpful.
Mr. Stockman. Actually, I watch CCTV, and I am probably one
of the few people who watch it.
Go ahead. You two.
Mr. Yang. There are a lot of things actually you can do. I
support Mr. Wei's idea. Internet is very important for people
to communicate to remain connected in China. And the U.S.
Government has some funding to support development of a
software with which the Chinese back inside China can get
around a firewall, but I heard that very small percentage of
the money actually put into good use. So I don't have the
number.
Mr. Stockman. It is shocking our Government would waste
money.
Mr. Yang. Yeah.
Mr. Stockman. Never heard of that before.
Mr. Yang. I think Congress should continue to push for that
and to get more funding for the development of a software.
Number two, I think there is some idea we should promote;
that is, reciprocity. All the Chinese officials, scholars,
whether, you know, they have opinions or views in line with the
government or not, they can express it freely here, they can
publish their papers here, you know, they can run Web sites and
everything here without censorship. But when the U.S. officials
travel in China, usually their speeches are censored. I think,
Mr. Chairman, you have personal experience there, right?
So I think, of course, complete reciprocity is impossible,
but we have to promote this kind of idea. We have to insist
that when the delegation of officials, scholars from this
country travel in China, their speeches, their communications
should not be censored. So that is the reciprocity idea we
should promote.
Ms. Chai. Yes. I am really grateful you are willing to
stand up for those voiceless people, for the people who cannot
act on their own behalf. So thank you.
And it reminded me of a story, what can we do to make
things effective for the leaders in China to receive the
message we want them to receive? And here in Colossians 3:17,
it says, ``Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all
in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father
through Him.''
I remember Bob Fu, who is not present here, and who is a
believer, defending the prosecuted churches in China; he told
me a story of a congressional leader, I forgot his name, that
when he called on behalf of a few church believers who were
being persecuted in China, the Chinese Embassy said, it is our
internal affairs. It is not your problem. And this
congressional leader said, it is my problem. They are my
brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. And there was such a
strong silence from the Chinese leaders' side. I believe that
word can be such a strong message, have such a heart, such
value.
I also heard a story when recently a senior Chinese leader
was visited by people who believed in Christ Jesus, and when
lunch was served, when they prayed, the Chinese leader in turn
was in tears. He said, ``I have never heard people pray for me
and my family in such a way, and especially I never saw anybody
pray even for the people who make the food.'' So when we truly
live into our beliefs, people really notice.
Dr. Aikman has been advocating for the South African model
for China, you know, forgiveness and truth and reconciliation.
I also studied about that part, the history, what caused that.
I know I studied Desmond Tutu's book about reconciliation. I
read it from cover to cover. And also President Nelson Mandela.
And when Nelson Mandela came out from prison after 40 years,
his first words were, I forgive them.
And we have to have the spirit of Jesus Christ, because he
forgave us; therefore, we are all equal sinners. We can forgive
each other. It is only then on that basis we can have true
reconciliation.
And last June 4th, I made a statement and sent out to the
Chinese newspapers and the Chinese community, saying, ``I
forgive them. I forgive the leaders who ordered the massacre.''
And today I am going to say that again: I forgive them.
Mr. Stockman. I thank you. And also----
Ms. Chai. And I know----
Mr. Stockman. Go ahead.
Ms. Chai. I know also that God dearly loves his children,
and God is here waiting for them to know.
Mr. Stockman. I know the home churches are growing very
quickly.
Ms. Chai. Supposedly 125 million people.
Mr. Stockman. Yeah. A lot of them I know in Guanju are--the
leaders that are very wealthy are Christians. And the only
word--I am not great in Chinese, but the only--one of the few
words I know is ``xie xie.'' So thank you so much for coming.
Ms. Chai. Thank you.
Mr. Stockman. And I just thank again the chairman for his
wonderful leadership on this. And we continue to struggle for
freedom, and I appreciate all your efforts. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Stockman.
Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber. Mr. Stockman, that is not the only word you know
in Chinese, is it?
I will direct this question to, I guess, everybody on the
panel. Will the emergence of the free market, the free market,
foster less government oppression and more human rights?
Why don't we start down here, Dr. Richardson.
Ms. Richardson. Well, we are a couple of decades into the
reform era, and as several people have noted, we have seen----
Mr. Weber. Chinese leaders get wealthy?
Ms. Richardson. Well, we have seen extraordinary economic
growth, but in some, I think, indirect ways has given some
people in China more control over their daily lives, although I
think that mostly means in a practical sense that people can
live outside of certain kinds of state constraints.
Mr. Weber. I mean, obviously there are different levels of
it, because you are talking about--or Dr. Yang was, about
provinces----
Ms. Richardson. Right.
Mr. Weber [continuing]. That actually some have less human
rights violations, and you want to hit them with a different--
American companies with a different tax code. Is that what I
understand?
Mr. Yang. Sure.
Mr. Weber. Okay.
Ms. Richardson. But I would just add that I think alongside
that economic development, that alone has brought with it some
fairly uncorrected, serious human rights abuses, in addition to
being a model that is essentially imposed on certain parts of
the country who have no ability to benefit from it and who have
no ability to opt out of it, such as in Tibet or in Xinjiang.
So I think a rising GDP isn't necessarily indicative of a
greater compliance with the rule of law. And as several people
have mentioned, there----
Mr. Weber. Well, Dr. Aikman pointed out earlier that the
greatness of society depends on truth, honesty, and modesty. I
kept waiting for him to say truth, justice, and the American
way.
But the truth of the matter is in China, those officials
define their own truth. Now, you said they believed in
scientific truth, but what Ms. Chai there is describing is the
ultimate truth, the moral truth of the universe. If China
doesn't believe in moral truth, and they get to define their
own truth, then I would submit to you that of the two, the
moral truth, that of the Lord Jesus, as she is pointing out, is
indeed tantamount in having a sweeping--and I don't want to
start preaching up here--but having a sweeping revival in
China, and then we usher in human rights, we usher in sanctity
of life.
And let me just ask you all a question. Of these five
institutions--let us take the Christian Church; let us take the
free market that I just talked about, the free market in China;
let us talk about world opinion; let us talk about U.S. policy,
that would be us; and let us talk about the Chinese people--of
those five, what is your opinion, which is the most able to
influence the Chinese Government? I will go back through them:
The Christian Church, the free market that we talked about,
world opinion, U.S. policy, or Chinese people. Most
influential.
Mr. Aikman. Mr. Congressman, if I may respond, I think
history has shown, amongst other things, that capitalism is
completely compatible with authoritarian government. The Nazis
managed to have a very authoritarian government and a very
successful capitalist system. So capitalism was thought for a
long time to be the catalyst for real freedom, but it didn't
prove to be so in China.
I think you have to change the thinking, the spiritual
values of the civilization that contains them. And China will
never, ever become a great power and a respected power unless
it changes its moral values and accepts freedom, and
reconciliation, and the values of truth and justice. I think
nothing will happen unless those things take place.
Mr. Weber. Dr. Yang?
Mr. Yang. Yes, a free market, generally speaking, helps
reduce government's repression, but the problem with China is
there is no free market there. There is no free market there.
There is tremendous government intervention in the market, in
the economy. If you have a friend here who are doing business
in China, ask him to tell you the truth of what they are doing
there. The first thing--the first order of business they have
to do is to try to find a relationship in the government.
So there is no free market. There is a big gap between the
wealthy and the poor. That is not outcome of market; that is
outcome of politics.
Mr. Weber. But to create that kind of free market where
actually that gap gets closed, and, in reality, as John Kennedy
said----
Mr. Yang. Of course, I think the five things that you just
pointed out all help to influence China. All--and the Chinese
Government, but ultimately the most important factor is Chinese
people themselves.
Mr. Weber. So how do we get them more involved in taking
this fight to the government leaders?
Mr. Yang. So, you know, what we are doing today is, you
know, one of the most important things we do. We should voice--
you know, help to voice--give a voice to those who--who cannot
have a voice in China and try to apply pressure to the China
Government so that they will give some space that the people's
voice can grow in China.
Ultimately the most important thing is the Chinese people
themselves. They have to grow democracy forces, and democracy
forces must become transformed into a viable opposition. And
for all this, without international support, our work will
become much, much more difficult.
Mr. Weber. Is that happening?
Mr. Yang. Yeah, it is happening.
Mr. Weber. So--and then now you come in behind it and say
world opinion is very important.
Mr. Yang. Of course, world opinion----
Mr. Weber. We have to stand up and say we support.
Mr. Yang. Of course. China is open. China cannot close its
door. So China is open. We get all information from the outside
world, so the Communist leaders, they understand how democracy
works. A lot of people have a misunderstanding, thinking that
they don't know, you know, how democracy works, why democracy
is good for the people of China, because--you know, sometimes
it is because they are--simply because they do know, they know
very well how democracy works, they resist the democratization.
Mr. Weber. Sure.
Mr. Yang. So I think world opinion is very important, too.
All the five factors you point out are important, but, you
know, ultimately we need people to grow, and we need a group of
leaders who can transform the group----
Mr. Weber. Who can evangelize those people.
Mr. Yang. Yeah.
Mr. Aikman. Literally.
Mr. Yang. Literally.
Mr. Weber. And we will move over to Ms. Chai.
Ms. Chai. Thank you so much for your faith and your word of
encouragement. I just rejoice in the fellowship you are sharing
with us. I want to hear more and more U.S. leaders like
yourself lift the name of Jesus up.
You listed the five things that can influence the leaders
of China, but I couldn't write them fast enough to list all of
them. My general impression is, all of them are idols, and
there is only one truth: That is Jesus Christ. And how do we
convey that? Again, God gives a word of strategy. He said in
Revelation: They triumph over him, which the evil----
Mr. Weber. By the word of their mouth and their testimony.
Ms. Chai. Amen.
Mr. Weber. Amen.
Ms. Chai. Amen, Jesus.
And we have got to share our personal testimonies of how
God's grace saved us, because the leaders of China, they are
just like us. They are created in God's image, and they have a
heart searching for truth.
And I--my heart broke, because I--in 1989, in May, before
the massacre happened, I went to search for Deng Xiaoping. I
wanted to tell him that we are not against him. We have no
animosity toward him. We wanted reform, we wanted peace.
Mr. Weber. Is the church growing in China?
Ms. Chai. Yes.
Mr. Weber. You said 125 million?
Ms. Chai. Absolutely.
And I stayed until--we stayed until 6 a.m. at Tiananmen
Square. I stayed at Tiananmen Square because I heard a rumor
that America would come if the massacre took place, or
something. America did not come. After 10 years, escaping to
America, I was devastated to realize America did not come. But
I am rejoicing: God had come to China.
Mr. Weber. His kingdom is not of this world.
Ms. Chai. Amen. And his kingdom cannot be shaken.
Mr. Weber. Let's move over to Mr. Wei.
Ms. Chai. Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Wei. So-called with the free market, then you can get
more human rights and democracy. That is just an excuse made up
by big American companies who want to do business in China, yet
they do not want to pay a price for human rights.
Mr. Weber. Does he usually have this problem of speaking
his mind? Go ahead.
Mr. Wei. When there is no rule of laws, and to do business,
one is totally reliant on some people in power, and then this
country would never have a real, true free market.
More than 10 years ago when we have this debate of
permanent normal trade relations we have talked about, even we
start the trade, and what we would have is just a true big
capitalist class in China, but not a free market. You could
only get a true free market and also a sizable middle class
when there is rule of law, and there is free speech, as well as
there is fair treatment.
So let me emphasize what I just mentioned earlier. To have
true freedom in China, you must have a free speech by the
Chinese people, and that we already have a sizable netizen
presence on the Internet, and they could put a lot of pressure
over the Chinese Government.
Mr. Weber. Let me say this. I am going to be through. Mr.
Chairman, I appreciate your indulgence. Back to Dr. Aikman, who
said that the Chinese Government fears being thrown out of
power, as I recall, because they don't display enough
nationalism----
Mr. Aikman. Yes.
Mr. Weber [continuing]. Or something to that effect. And so
how do we get it--and I understand the importance of the
Internet, and Ms. Chai, the free market is used by God to
further people's countries.
Ms. Chai. I agree.
Mr. Weber. He lifts some up and he puts others down, by the
way.
Ms. Chai. I agree. Worshiping free economy alone, by God
this is an idol.
Mr. Weber. You and I are on the same page, sister.
Ms. Chai. Thank you.
Mr. Weber. What I wanted to say is what we need to be able
to support--the Chinese people are going to have to--they are
going to have to rise up and they are going to have to make
this their aim and their goal and make it known to the
government that, the Chinese Government, that they won't stand
still for it. We are going to have to do our part, whether it
is with trade sanctions or whether it is with encouraging
evangelism, whether sending missionaries over there--sometimes
I think they need to send missionaries over here--and we also
need to be sure that we can encourage the Internet so that the
word gets out more and more and more. But I think we need of a
marriage, if you will, a partnership of policy, world opinion,
Internet, and the Chinese people taking the lead in making
their government to understand that this will no longer be
tolerated. Is that fair?
Mr. Aikman. If I could comment, I think one thing the
Chinese people don't want to see is a violent upheaval in their
own society.
Mr. Weber. When you say ``Chinese people,'' Doctor,
government or all Chinese?
Mr. Aikman. All Chinese, I think. I visited China in 1993,
and I talked to many Chinese intellectuals, some of whom had
studied in the United States and Europe. And I said to them,
don't you want to have political democracy in your country? And
they said yes.
Mr. Weber. But not at the price of bloodshed.
Mr. Aikman. But not quickly, not quickly. Because the
explosion of anarchy that would emerge from people who have no
experience at self-control in a political environment, no idea
that you have to restrain yourself and allow other people to
have their opinions. Without those constraints among the
people, I don't think you are ever going to have a safe
democracy in China.
Mr. Weber. Was it Franklin who said, ``He who trades
security for liberty will soon have neither''?
Mr. Aikman. That's correct, quite correct. I do not agree
with that opinion.
Lots of people did not realize that the Chinese people had
to be divided into three major classes. Those super rich people
are less than 1 percent. Of course, they do not want see any
change in China because they really enjoy their lives. The 10
percent of so-called middle class, their life is reasonable.
And they are not happy with the Communist rule. However,
indeed, for their own sake, they do not want see China into
chaos.
However, the very majority of Chinese who are very poor who
cannot afford to send their children to school or have the
medical care and whatever, they want to see China in chaos
because that is opportunity to topple the Chinese Government
and to have a new government to try. Those three classes are
totally different. They do not have a common language.
Unfortunately, when the foreign journalists or foreign
people went to China, the Chinese Government carefully arranged
you to meet with the first class and second class, instead of
third class. And the very importantly, this third class, all
they could speak out of their mind is on the Internet.
And the very reason for the Chinese Government even within
the government, people saying we have to reform is because they
knew if they do not reform, the people will revolt and they
will topple down the government. So, therefore, I know this
friend, he is indeed a good person, try to know China better.
But when you are in China, at least to listen to the taxi
driver, to know what they are talking about.
Mr. Weber. Public opinion. Listen, I have gone way too
long. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. Let me thank our very
distinguished panelists for their lifelong leadership on behalf
of Chinese human rights, rule of law and basic freedoms. You
know, I would say to Dr. Aikman, I know you were talking about
a very swift transfer of power. But obviously all Chinese
people demand an immediate freedom from torture, cruel and
degrading treatment. They demand an immediate freedom from
religious persecution, which would include the Christians, the
Muslim Uyghurs and the Falun Gong, who are tortured and treated
with impunity in China today. They seek immediate freedom from
coerced population control and forced abortion; immediate
freedom from censorship and surveillance of people. I think the
number that you put, Dr. Yang, was 39 million informants
nationwide in your testimony. There must be freedom from the
exploitation of labor, where only a few benefit from the labor
of the many. There are so many other freedoms that need to be
immediate and durable and sustainable.
So I want to thank each and every one of you for your
testimony. Our hope, I think collectively, is that President
Obama will be very robust and very clear in his representations
on behalf of human rights; particularly on the behalf of some
of those who have been long suffering in the Laogai and in
jails of China, to be free.
He has a huge opportunity. As I think Chai Ling said,
President Xi is brand new. He will be listening. What he hears
ought to be what really animates the United States of America
and so many other free countries, and that is that human rights
are indivisible and they are every person's--every man, woman,
and child's birthright. It belongs to them.
So thank you for your testimonies. And this hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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