[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                               

 
           CHINA'S POLITICAL PRISONERS: WHERE'S GAO ZHISHENG?

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

 SUBCOMMITTEE ON GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL 
                             ORGANIZATIONS

                                   of

                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 20, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-21

                               __________

        Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
        
        
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       Available:  http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://
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                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                   MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     GREGORY MEEKS, New York, Ranking 
JOE WILSON, South Carolina               Member
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania            BRAD SHERMAN, California
DARRELL ISSA, California             GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
ANN WAGNER, Missouri                 WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
BRIAN MAST, Florida                  DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
KEN BUCK, Colorado                   AMI BERA, California
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee              JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee             DINA TITUS, Nevada
ANDY BARR, Kentucky                  TED LIEU, California
RONNY JACKSON, Texas                 SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
YOUNG KIM, California                DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida        COLIN ALLRED, Texas
BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan              ANDY KIM, New Jersey
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,       SARA JACOBS, California
    American Samoa                   KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas                SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK, 
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio                       Florida
JIM BAIRD, Indiana                   GREG STANTON, Arizona
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida               MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey         JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York             JONATHAN JACKSON, Illinois
CORY MILLS, Florida                  SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              JIM COSTA, California
NATHANIEL MORAN, TexaS               JASON CROW, Colorado    
JOHN JAMES, Michigan                 BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
KEITH SELF, Texas

            

                    Brendan Shields, Staff Director

                    Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director
                                 ------                                

 Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International 
                             Organizations

                  CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey, Chair
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida        SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania, Ranking 
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN,           Member
    American Samoa                   AMI BERA, California
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas                SARA JACOBS, California
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
JOHN JAMES, Michigan

                       Mary Vigil, Staff Director
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                               WITNESSES

Bremberg, Andrew, President, Victims of Communism Memorial 
  Foundation.....................................................    10
Fu, Bob, President, China Aid Association........................    20
He, Geng, Wife of Mr. Gao Zhisheng...............................    29
Luo, Sophie,Wife of Mr. Ding Jiaxi...............................    33
Wang, Yaqiu, Senior China Researcher, Human Right Watch..........    43
Kellogg, Thomas, Executive Director, Georgetown University Center 
  for Asian Law..................................................    52

                                APPENDIX

Hearing Notice...................................................    77
Hearing Minutes..................................................    79
Hearing Attendance...............................................    80

             ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Additional materials submitted for the record....................    81


           CHINA'S POLITICAL PRISONERS: WHERE'S GAO ZHISHENG?

                        Thursday, April 20, 2023

                          House of Representatives,
              Subcommittee on Global Health, Global
                    Human Rights, and International
                                     Organizations,
                      Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:11 a.m., in 
room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. 
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Mr. Smith. The committee will come to order, and welcome to 
all of you.
    This is I think a very, very important hearing on political 
prisoners in China and we have an amazing group of presenters--
of witnesses, people who can tell the story like perhaps no one 
else can.
    So thank you all in advance for being here and greatly 
looking forward to your testimoneys and your answers to the 
question.
    Gao Zhisheng is a smart, tenacious, compassionate, 
brilliant lawyer and writer, an absolutely courageous human 
rights defender who has been cruelly and unjustly detained by 
the Chinese Communist Party beginning in 2006, in and out of 
prison, constantly being harassed and tortured with absolute 
impunity.
    Today is Gao Zhisheng's 59th birthday and we are honored to 
welcome his wife Geng He back to testify. And this is her third 
time coming before the committee to present on behalf of her 
husband and all the other political prisoners.
    Geng He is an extraordinarily brave and pioneering and 
perserverer in her own right and articulates to the world the 
urgent message of freeing her husband and all political and 
religious prisoners.
    In 2012 Geng He testified at a hearing that I chaired of 
the congressional Executive China Commission and told us how 
Gao Zhisheng was first convicted in 2006, the beginning of a 
never-ending nightmare of torture and abuse. At the hearing she 
told us that she had asked to meet with Vice President Joe 
Biden; sadly it did not happen, and for him to at least raise 
her husband's case on the same day as our hearing. We timed it 
because guess who was in town? Xi Jinping, who was then the 
vice president of the People's Republic of China. Unfortunately 
it was not raised either.
    She testified again in 2013 and began this all-out effort 
to get both the House and the Senate and the White House to 
speak out. And of course all the human rights groups spoke out 
on his behalf and we have continued to do so today.
    When I chaired yet another hearing in 2013; we called it 
Let Our Fathers Go, it included five daughters of prisoners of 
conscience. Gao's daughter Grace told us of her and her 
family's unspeakable agony knowing that her father was being 
subjected to torture and how she and her family were harassed 
unceasingly. She went into great detail that even in her 
classroom the police would sit there intimidating and maligning 
her in front of her students, following her even into the 
bathroom, never leaving her alone for a moment. Thankfully she 
and the rest of the family were able to escape to the United 
States.
    At the hearing Grace and the other four daughters made a 
special plea and asked President Obama to meet with them. The 
daughters said that President Obama has two daughters that he 
loved so much and would empathize with their plight and would 
advocate for their fathers if they could only see him face to 
face. I tried for a year to make that happen. The White House 
told me that the President simply did not have the time to meet 
with them.
    But the Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, 
however, wrote an excellent piece about the five daughters, an 
op-ed, signed op-ed that he did on the editorial pages of the 
Washington Post. And he wrote many, many excellent editorials 
about human rights in China as well. And he called it ``The 
Five Daughters Speak Up for Their Fathers.'' And he made so 
many great points about all five of the daughters including 
Grace. And I without objection, would like to include this as 
part of the record.
    [The information referred to follows:]

    *********INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE AT PRESS 
RELEASE**********

    Mr. Smith. Today we renew our efforts once again to free 
Gao Zhisheng. Today we appeal to Xi Jinping to free other 
political prisoners as well.
    On April 10 two of China's leading human rights defenders: 
Ding Jiaxi whose wife is also here with us today as a witness; 
and Xu Zhiyoung were sentenced to more than a decade in prison. 
They were convicted on fabricated charges of subversion, just 
like Gao Zhisheng and so many others, because they bravely 
urged Chinese citizens to exercise their fundamental human 
rights.
    The Chinese Communist Party finds these men so threatening; 
and there are many women as well that have been incarcerated 
for their heartfelt beliefs, that it is trying to silence their 
voices, but it cannot silence their hopes and dreams of 
democracy and respect for universally recognized human rights.
    So we thank Geng He and Sophie Luo for being here today to 
speak about their experience of oppression under the CCP rule. 
They speak on behalf of their husbands. And we need to listen, 
both in the House and the Senate, and the White House. And the 
world needs to listen as well.
    We all know what tyranny is. We know that China has 
excelled in it, especially more recently under Xi Jinping, 
however in 1989 the world watched in horror as the Chinese 
Communist Party brutally crushed peaceful protestors in 
Tiananmen Square. China lost an entire generation of idealists 
to the tanks that rolled in that day and the savage hunt for 
human rights offenders that followed. And in Congress, we in a 
bipartisan way remember that massacre each and every year to 
honor the victims who have never received justice.
    I actually visited Beijing Prison No. 1 in 1991 along with 
Congressman Frank Wolf in a gulag that was terrible to see, and 
we saw 40 Tiananmen Square activists with shaved heads. They 
looked gaunt, they looked sickly. And they were making shoes, 
jelly shoes which were much in vogue with the young girls in 
this country at that time, and socks for export.
    Well, Frank and I got samples while we were there because 
it is in violation of the Smoot-Hawley Act. And we went to the 
commissioner of Customs and we got an import ban on them. And 
they closed down that gulag, only to open it up somewhere else, 
as we all know. But it showed that when people get onsite and 
take a look at what is going on and take with them what they 
are actually producing we have an opportunity to try to stop 
the importation of that.
    China is today blatantly and repeatedly violating its 
obligations under international law. China has ratified major 
international human rights conventions like the U.N. Convention 
Against Torture, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and 
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Refugee Convention, 
which they do not follow.
    They re-foul so many people; and they may do it again very 
soon, to North Korea where they will face some 2,000 
individuals, a horrible, horrible--they have been there and 
there is real talk now sending them back. They will go right to 
the gulag and some of them right to execution, which is 
absolutely contrary--and I hope the U.N. stands up and speaks 
out as well as all of the democracies around the world.
    Where is the accountability for Xi Jinping? The United 
States must stand up to the Chinese Communist Party and make 
clear that we will not ignore or trivialize these crimes 
against humanity. So with respect and a deep sense of urgency I 
again--once again call on the Biden Administration to please 
step and lead a global effort to free China's prisoners of 
conscience.
    It has to be in every talking point, not on page 5, but on 
page 1 of every one of the contacts that we have with the 
Chinese Communist Party starting at the very top. When the 
President talks to Xi Jinping on the phone there needs to be a 
list of people that he is advocating for. When you talk 
generically about political prisoners, right off--they pay no 
attention to it and they think it is just filler for the dialog 
to satisfy an X in the box, if you will.
    In my years in Congress including in my role as Chairman of 
the congressional Executive Commission on China and Chairman of 
the Foreign Affairs Human Rights Committee I have fought to 
ensure that human rights are kept at the forefront of U.S.-
China relations, and it started with me back in 1984 when I 
offered my first amendment on the horrific practice of forced 
abortion and forced sterilization pursuant to the one child per 
couple policy. And it continued through the years especially on 
the issue of religious freedom.
    We cannot separate human rights from other interests 
especially trade, sacrificing both Chinese victims and American 
values in the process. That is why I have sponsored the Hong 
Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which passed the House. 
Marco Rubio got it passed in the Senate. His version identical 
to ours finally went over to the President. It has had some 
impact, but it was a day late and a dollar short, sorry to say, 
because we could have done it in 2014 when I first introduced 
it.
    I have also done the Global Magnitsky Act; we added that as 
an amendment to the NDAA, and authored the Stop Forced Organ 
Harvesting Act of 2023. I want to thank Ambassador Bremberg for 
the great insights he provided us in writing that legislation. 
That passed the House on March 23 and hopefully the Senate will 
take that up very shortly. The Chinese Communist Party, 
including their embassy, is just deny, deny, deny that any of 
this is happening. And my hope is that, OK--and Charles Lee 
knows because we have done this for many, many years--it has 
got to stop and there need to be penalties. And that is what is 
imbedded in our bill.
    I also wrote the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom 
Act and was part of Frank Wolf's original 1998 act. He was the 
prime sponsor of that one. And one of the prime focuses on that 
is CPC designation for China.
    I am also the prime author of the Traffic Victim Protection 
Act of 2000 and four subsequent reauthorizations and iterations 
of it. And who is the tier 3 country each and every year? 
China. Forced labor and the horrific practice of sex-selection 
abortion in which they excel it.
    I also did a bill that never became law; it really bothered 
me big time at the time, and that was the Laogai Slave Labor 
Products Act of 1997. Passed the House; never got through the 
Senate.
    And I was the lead Republican sponsor along with my friend 
and colleague from Massachusetts called the Uyghur Forced Labor 
Prevention Act. He was the prime; I was the chief Republican. 
And that now is in the process of being implemented.
    So we are trying to get more serious. It is bipartisan. And 
I would note even on the issue of FMN back in the day, 
especially right after Tiananmen Square, there was a coalition 
of Frank Wolf, Nancy Pelosi, David Bonior of Michigan, and me, 
and others, but we were the four that kept pushing to say you 
have got to link human rights and trade or there will be no 
progress. There will only deterioration. And sure enough that 
is exactly what happened.
    When the President de-linked; and this is President 
Clinton, on May 26, 1994 human rights and trade, that is when 
the Chinese looked us in the eye and said all they care about 
is profits. And so we have got to reclaim that.
    So I have introduced a bill called the China Trade 
Relations Act of 2023 to withdraw normal trade relations from 
China unless a list of human rights protections are guaranteed 
in China including the release of political prisoners and an 
end to torture.
    Finally, in his statement prepared before sentencing Ding 
Jiaxi courageously wrote, and I quote him here, ``We are 
witnessing an unfolding battle between the forces of democracy 
and authoritarianism. The megalomania of dictatorship in the 
eternal one-party State is fast becoming--coming to an end and 
the social transformation of China is growing closer day by 
day. China is on the cusp of great change. Even from within my 
prison walls I can feel it clearly. The advancing footsteps of 
civilization come like the awakening thunder of spring.'' What 
an amazing statement for a man who is incarcerated, suffering 
because of his core beliefs for which we all agree with.
    I would like to now yield to my good friend and colleague 
Ms. Wild for any opening comments.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you to the witnesses for being here for this very 
important hearing.
    I want to thank you, Chairman Smith, for calling this 
important hearing and to all of the witnesses for their 
commitment and in some cases great personal sacrifice in 
calling attention to the issue of human rights and political 
repression in the People's Republic of China.
    As we convene this morning the Chinese Communist Party 
continues its systematic persecution of individuals and groups 
who challenge the CCP's authoritarian rule or do not fit its 
vision for a homogeneous traditional and obedient Chinese 
society.
    Just last week the PRC unjustly detained and sentenced 
human rights defenders Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi; I hope I said 
that somewhat correctly, to 14 years and 12 years in prison for 
``subversion of the State;'' I put quotes around that, when 
what they were doing was simply defending the fundamental 
freedoms in the country.
    This campaign to silence dissent and suffocate diversity 
has resulted in egregious violations of the basic human rights 
of the Chinese people across Mainland China, the dissemination 
of Hong Kong's autonomy, and most horrifically a genocide 
characterized by mass detention, torture, and forced labor in 
Xinjiang. This campaign has targeted ethnic, religious, and 
cultural minorities from the Uyghurs to the Tibetans, to 
members of the LGBTQ community. It has also targeted anyone who 
challenges the CCP's authority from journalists to lawyers to 
human rights defenders.
    On a daily basis the leaders in Beijing not only betray the 
principles of freedom and human rights that are enshrined in 
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They also violate 
China's own constitution and the international laws that it has 
ratified.
    The record of the United States in protecting civil and 
political rights is not perfect, but we should shine a light on 
those who are fighting for equality and freedom in China and in 
other countries and we must hold the PRC and other countries 
around the world, big and small, to the same standard to which 
we hold ourselves. The world is watching as the PRC government 
continues to crack down on Chinese citizens who seek simply to 
exercise their basic human rights. For their sake we cannot and 
must not be silent.
    Today we have the opportunity to hear from experts who have 
dedicated their lives to studying human rights in China and the 
region as well as from individuals who represent the human toll 
of China's repression on brave prisoners of conscience. And I 
look forward to this discussion and I thank you all.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
    Then without objection, a statement by Dr. McCormick will 
be made a part of the record, and he may be returning short.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. McCormick follows:]

    *********INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE AT PRESS 
RELEASE**********

    Mr. Smith. I would like to now introduce our very 
distinguished panel beginning first with Ambassador Andrew 
Bremberg, who is the president of the Victims of Communism 
Memorial Foundation.
    Previously Ambassador Bremberg served as the representative 
of the United States to the Office of the United Nations and 
other international organizations in Geneva. Ambassador 
Bremberg has a long history of public service. Prior to his 
work at the U.N. he served as Assistant to the President and 
Director of the Domestic Policy Council for the Executive 
Office of the President. He previously served as policy advisor 
and counsel on nominations for the Office of Senate Majority 
Leader. He also worked for the non-profit MITRE Corporation as 
a senior health policy analyst and department manager and for 
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
    He has earned his B.A. from Franciscan University in 
Steubenville in Ohio and his J.D. from Catholic University of 
America in Washington. He and his wife Maria have four children 
and live in Virginia.
    We will then hear from Pastor Bob Fu, who was a former 
student leader during the Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement 
in 1989. He did get imprisoned and had a tremendous story of 
escape. And I want to thank him for--he has never stopped 
advocating on behalf of religious freedom for all in China.
    In 1993 he graduated with a law degree on international 
relations from Renmin University in China in Beijing. He was a 
faculty member at the Beijing Party School of the CCP from 1993 
to 1996. He was also a house church leader in Beijing until he 
and his wife Heidi were imprisoned in 1996. In 1997 he was 
exiled to the U.S. In 2002 he founded China Aid to promote 
religious freedom and the rule of law in China. He graduated 
with a Ph.D. from St. John's College at the University of 
Durham in the U.K. in the field of religious freedom.
    His autobiography; and I have read it, ``God's Double 
Agent,'' was published in 2013. And he also has an academic 
book called, ``The Politics of Inclusive Pluralism.''
    He regularly testifies and briefs foreign policymakers on 
religious freedom. And I would just say when we were trying to 
effectuate the release of Chen Guangcheng, who he and his wife 
Weijing are actually here with a blind activist lawyer who 
saved so many people and that himself was incarcerated, made a 
daring escape to the United States Embassy, which to this day 
is almost unfathomable how he was able to do it.
    While he was at the embassy and then in a hospital it was 
Bob Fu who made the contacts for our committee. We had four 
hearings of calling for Chen Guangcheng release and at the 
fourth one within about 6 hours the Chinese Communist Party 
said let them go; get him out of here. Our fear was that they 
would keep him there and do terrible things; an accident as 
they often describe it. Some of the people who tried to visit 
Chen--and I thank him again for being here and his equally 
brave wife. I remember one of the lawyers who we actually have 
had here in Washington tried to visit him in the hospital. And 
he was beaten horribly by the Chinese Communist Party thugs.
    So, Bob, thank you for that and so many other things that 
you have done.
    We also have obviously Geng He, who will be testifying on 
behalf of her husband. And I have a fuller bio on her which I 
will put into the record, but as I said this is the third time 
she has come before us. She has been at many other fora, both 
here and elsewhere in other countries, never ceasing to try to 
effectuate the release of her husband and always all the 
others, too, because all the political prisoners--there is 
never a good day.
    And one of the things that she and her daughter brought out 
so clearly in previous testimony was how everybody goes to 
prison, everybody goes to the Laogai when that political 
prisoner goes. It is an all-in for the Chinese Communist Party 
thugs to make life absolutely miserable for everyone else in 
the family as well.
    So we also then will hear from Sophie Luo, a full-time 
product line quality director of a global railway company, a 
mother of two daughters, and started human rights activities in 
April 2013 with her husband, a human rights lawyer who is the 
other subject of this hearing, obviously.
    Ding was first detained and then imprisoned for three-and-
a-half years. He was forcibly disappeared for attending a 
gathering in--with like-minded lawyers and friends. He was 
severely tortured for 6 months being held in a detention center 
and terrible living conditions as of today.
    So we are looking forward to her testimony obviously very, 
very much.
    Then we are very, very happy to welcome Yaqui Wang, who is 
a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch working on issues 
including internet censorship, freedom of expression for 
protection of civil society and human rights defenders and 
women's rights in China. She has also written extensively on 
the Chinese government's role in undefining human rights 
globally and global corporations' complicity in human rights 
violations in China.
    Wang has testified before the U.S. Congress before. Her 
articles have appeared in foreign policy: The Atlantic, the 
Washington Post, and elsewhere. She has been quoted by news 
analysts such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the 
Guardian, BBC, CNN, and so many, many others.
    Prior to joining Human Rights Watch she was a researcher 
for the Committee to Protect Journalists working on press 
freedom issues in China and other Asian countries. She grew up 
in China and has an M.A. degree in international affairs from 
Georgetown University.
    Finally, we will hear from Mr. Thomas E. Kellogg, who is 
Executive Director of the Central--Center for Asian Law where 
he oversees various programs related to law and government--
governance in Asia. He is a leading scholar of legal reform in 
China, Chinese constitutionalism, and civil society movements 
in China.
    Prior to joining Georgetown Professor Kellogg was director 
of the East Asia Program at the Open Society Foundation. At OSF 
he oversaw the expansion of the foundation's work in China and 
also launched its work in Taiwan and North and South Korea.
    Professor Kellogg has written widely on law and politics in 
China, U.S.-China relations, and Asian geopolitics. He has 
lectured on Chinese law in a number of universities in the 
U.S., Europe, and China. He has also taught course on Chinese 
law at Columbia, Fordham, and Yale.
    He was a senior fellow at China's Law Center at Yale Law 
School. Prior to that he worked in the Asian Division of Human 
Rights Watch. He holds degrees from Harvard Law School and is--
was Editor in Chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and 
Hamilton College.
    Ambassador Bremberg, the floor is yours.

  STATEMENT OF ANDREW BREMBERG, VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM MEMORIAL 
                           FOUNDATION

    Mr. Bremberg. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member 
Wild, and members of the committee. Thank you for the 
opportunity to testify at this important hearing today.
    I'd like to ask that my written record statement be 
submitted as part of the record.
    Mr. Smith. Without objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Bremberg. The Chinese Communist Party is a self-
proclaimed Marxist-Leninist organization that governs according 
to a communist ideology that holds that all aspects of society 
should be controlled by the party and especially through its 
leader. Sadly for too long the United States failed to 
understand the reality of the communist nature of the CCP which 
resulted in a misguided policy of engagement.
    The premise of this policy was that if the West opened our 
markets to China that the Chinese economy and society would 
liberalize and that the CCP's leaders would come to see the 
world as the way the West does, valuing democracy, rule of law, 
and critically human rights. Sadly we were wrong.
    In the cases of Gao Zhisheng and other human rights 
champions that we will highlight today clearly demonstrate this 
fact.
    Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng whose plight is 
the focus of today's hearing is a clear case of the CCP 
targeting those who stand for human rights. I know my fellow 
panelists will highlight details of his heroic struggle.
    Last year to mark the 5-year anniversary of Gao's forced 
disappearance the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in 
partnership with the China Aid Association led by Bob Fu hosted 
an event at the Victims of Communism Museum to highlight his 
case and to urge the U.S. Government to call for his 
unconditional release. We were honored to also have Gao's wife 
Geng He, who is also on the panel today, speak at this event 
and display a stunning portrait that she had lovingly made of 
her husband.
    Just recently as we've heard other outrageous affronts to 
human rights have taken place. The CCP's conviction of legal 
scholar Xu Zhiyong and human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, whose 
wife Sophie Luo is also here, of the crime of subverting State 
power and they were sentenced with the harshest sentences 
handed down to anyone from the legal profession in the last 10 
years.
    In addition to human rights lawyers, religious leaders who 
do not conform to the CCP's mandates regarding the control of 
religion have been targeted for persecution and imprisonment. 
There are many examples I would highlight. Last year the arrest 
of 90-year-old Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen, a true champion of 
human rights and dignity for the people of both Hong Kong and 
Mainland China, clearly demonstrates this pattern. Tragically 
while there are literally thousands of known political 
prisoners across China today, this does not receive attention.
    At the same time we know that China is committing a 
genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in 
Xinjiang. I'd refer the subcommittee to the extensive work by 
VOC Senior Fellow and Director of China Studies Dr. Adrian Zenz 
on Beijing's genocidal population control strategy in Xinjiang 
including most recently the Xinjiang police files which 
contained the first images the world had seen of crimes being 
committed inside the camps including thousands of images of 
detained Uyghurs as well as classified speeches by CCP 
officials.
    Thankfully while the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang has 
finally begin--begun to receive attention around the world the 
CCP's long practice of forced organ harvesting that frequently 
targets political prisoners and prisoners of conscience 
continues without condemnation.
    I'd like to commend the near-unanimous passage by the House 
in March of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act led by 
Representative Smith and urge the Senate to quickly take up 
this bill, pass it, and send it to the President. Much needs to 
be said about the connection between forced organ harvesting 
and the plight of political prisoners.
    In conclusion, what can the U.S. do in the face of these 
horrible human rights abuses? And the simplest answer is more. 
The U.S. has an incredible capacity to press the CCP on--to 
respect human rights using both our extensive economic 
relationship between our two countries as well as our 
incredible diplomatic resources that exist around the world. 
From the highest levels in our government the United States 
must publicly and consistently call for the unconditional 
release of all political prisoners in China and do so by name.
    It is also important to raise these abuses in multilateral 
organizations like the U.N. and other international bodies. The 
CCP has become increasingly sensitive to international 
criticism in these fora and by working with other countries we 
can use international human rights mechanisms to draw attention 
to the CCP's abuses and critically hold them accountable for 
their treatment of political prisoners. There must be 
consequences for the CCP's actions.
    Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild, let me thank you again 
on behalf of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation for 
inviting me here to this important hearing on the plight of 
China's political prisoners. I look forward to answering your 
questions and discussing practical actions that we can take. 
Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Bremberg follows:]

   [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]  
    
    Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much for your testimony, for 
your leadership, both at the U.N. when you were Ambassador, 
because obviously that is where the rubber meets the road 
particularly in the Human Rights Council. So thank you for all 
of that great work.
    I would like to now yield to Mr. Bob Fu.

     STATEMENT OF BOB FU, PRESIDENT, CHINA AID ASSOCIATION

    Mr. Fu. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Ms. 
Wild. I am very honored to be testifying again and with our 
fellow panelists, the distinguished panelists who are either 
victims or the experts on the CCP's persecution.
    It's very timely I think to hold this hearing showing the 
deep plight of the victims of Xi Jinping's human rights 
violations. It is no exaggeration. I think this is the darkest, 
worst time human rights, religious freedom and rule of law in 
China since the Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao.
    I remembered before my good friend Gao Zhisheng was forced 
to disappeared in 2017. He and I had multiple phone calls. In 
one of the conversations he told me--he said, Brother Fu, I'm 
not afraid to be imprisoned again. I know what it meant because 
he had suffered already. He said sufficient torture that the 
CCP ran out of creativity on how to torture him. But we cannot 
allow his 6 years of being forced disappearance without a 
voice. So today I am so thankful you still provide a platform 
for him to be heard.
    While Gao Zhisheng's case should be highlighted and 
addressed extensively; Ms. Geng He and others will share more, 
I want to highlight other prisoners of conscience who are 
suffering in different fields.
    The Communist Party has taken a war basically against 
faith. Those who even preach on the pulpit based on John 3:16 
calling for President Xi to repent, offering the salvation of 
the Gospel to him, sentenced to 9 years imprisonment. That's 
Pastor Wang Yi, a pastor and a constitutional law scholar.
    And how much you will be punished for just establishing 16 
schools for 2,000 children in China and Burma area for minority 
group called Kachin like Chinese-American pastor John Cao, 7 
years imprisonment, He is still there, from North Carolina.
    How much punishment after you were found in possession of a 
copy of ``Pilgrim's Progress,'' reading John Calvin's 
``Institute of Christian Religion,'' or own multiple copies of 
``The Streams in the Desert,'' a popular devotional book for 
the Christians in the world? Our dear sister Ju Dianhong 
received 13 years. 13 years for being labeled as evil cult. Her 
coworker Ms. Liang Qin received 10 years imprisonment.
    Furthermore, 12 house church leaders from Golden 
Lampstand's church in Linfen, Shanxi province, were arrested 
and charged with business fraud. What is a business fraud? The 
prosecutor said they were setting up offering box in their 
church collecting tithing and offering. That's called business 
fraud. The lawyer--attorney said they are facing up to 15 years 
imprisonment. Very soon we will hear the verdict. Previously a 
senior pastor of the 12 of the church leaders, Pastor Wang 
Xiaoguang and his wife Yang Rongli already suffered three and 7 
years imprisonment in 2009.
    The CCP also tried to eliminate all forms of dissent like 
24-year old Niu Tengyu. He received 14 years imprisonment for 
allegedly posting a photo of Xi Jinping's daughter. Fourteen 
years. A professor from Nankai University, Ms. Wu Yanan, was 
also sent to the psychiatric hospital by force for simply 
raising a different voice during the white paper movement in 
the midst of a pandemic. She still has not been since that 
time.
    What's the price for just whistleblowing and revealing 
COVID-19 like the former mayor, Mr. Li Chuanliang from Jixi 
City? Six members of his family including his pregnant 
daughter, his sisters, his brother, son-in-law, plus 34 of his 
close friends, they had been all arrested for simply doing 
that.
    Of course we have already been aware of those like Dr. Wang 
Bingzhang, the modern--the father of democracy movement for 
overseas Chinese. Still suffering life imprisonment after being 
kidnapped from Vietnam by the Chinese special agents.
    Citizen journalist Zhang Haitao was sentenced to 19 years 
for what? Forwarding 205 Twitter tweets, 205, in Xinjiang. 
Nineteen years imprisonment. The list is on and on. We do not 
have even time to read all of them and their price.
    I only have--I totally agree with Ambassador Bremberg's 
recommendation for highlighting these cases and in every 
bilateral or multilateral meetings by the administration, but I 
want to call for one recommendation in particular. That is, the 
President, Vice President and Secretary of State should 
publicly meet with family of prisoners of conscience beginning 
with Ms. Geng He, beginning with Sophie Luo.
    They're in the United States. The White House does not have 
any like legal and any other hurdles from scheduling a meeting 
with these two ladies and their daughters. They're all U.S. 
soil. I think leaders' actions matter; the CCP is watching; Xi 
Jinping himself is watching, whether those human rights and 
prisoner of conscience matter to our foreign policy and to the 
mind of our leaders. That's my No. 1 recommendation. Thank you, 
Chairman.
    Mr. Smith. Pastor Fu, thank you so very much. And we will 
followup on that and make an official request of the White 
House to meet with them and maybe a few others that could tell 
the story.
    And I think nothing since--before George W. Bush and others 
went to the 2008 Olympics--which I was totally against. And 
Frank Wolf and I went over right before they happened and did 
press conferences about how awful it was that they were 
rounding up all the dissidents so they couldn't talk to the 
journalists and doing other terrible things. But that said, we 
said you at least have to meet with dissidents. So we arranged 
it, and he did.
    And I know it was a very meaningful back and forth. It went 
far beyond the amount of time that had been allocated because 
once the people who have suffered so much start talking, the 
people in power who can make a difference can really empathize 
with that plight and then do something about it.
    And so we will--it is a great idea. We will followup on it 
officially and God willing it will happen.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Fu follows:]
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Geng He?

         STATEMENT OF GENG HE, WIFE OF MR. GAO ZHISHENG

    Ms. He. Thank you very much, Congressman Chris Smith, all 
members of the House Affairs Committee. Thank you for holding 
this special hearing today, April 20, on Gao Zhisheng's 
birthday, 59th birthday. It's also a honor to wish him to live 
on his birthday, is a noble and request to USA Congress.
    First, I would like to talk about Gao Zhisheng and the 
United States. Growing in a poor rural village in West China. 
Gao Zhisheng has never set foot on America soil. Mr. James 
Madison through his minutes of the Constitution conversation of 
the United State of the America a debate has been read many 
times by Gao Zhisheng. He hopes that his country China will 1 
day become a free democratic and the constitution country like 
the United State.
    This dream has motivate him to struggle for 20 years. In 
2007 Gao Zhisheng published a open letter to the U.S. Congress 
in which Gao Zhisheng pointed out that Chinese Communist Party 
was criminal gang in the guise of State and called on U.S. 
President and the legislators to boycott the 2008 Olympic games 
in China, just like a person that President Reagan boycotted 
the Seoul Olympics.
    Since the letter was issue Gao Zhisheng has been upgraded 
from this disobedient lawyer to lap dog for the America and 
there has--and has been kidnapped for more than 15 days without 
any judicial positions and the subject to all kinds of 
appalling torture. From that day on Gao Zhisheng was never free 
again until August the 2017--no, no, no--2017, sorry, when he 
was illegally kidnapped by the Chinese Communist Party and he 
left and that there is were unknown for almost 6 years.
    The United State is not Gao Zhisheng's home country, but 
the U.S. Congress and the State Apartments have repeatedly 
issued a statement to rescue Gao Zhisheng. And on April 27, 
2006 the Congress voted to pass the Resolution 365 urging the 
Chinese government to release the Gao Zhisheng and his law 
firm's license. The United State also took in me and my two 
children during our family's most difficult time and escaped 
the tyrannical of Chinese Communist Party. Thank you, America.
    And Gao Zhisheng's closest relative were also tormented by 
the same strain as me. His sister unable to endure the 
prolonged persecution and the local police security official 
drop the--drop in the river in May 2020 to prevent his family 
from searching for him. The local police not only took identity 
document of his family members in the country, but also prevent 
them for leave--leaving their home as well.
    Even when my brother-in-law was serious ill and needed to 
seek medical treatment that was not allowed have his identical 
documents. That's making it difficult to prevent medical 
treatment in May 2016 due to serious ills. Brother-in-law jump 
to his death. We are just a normal family. And Gao Zhisheng did 
not break any Chinese communist law, but he was the so 
persecute as a CCP--as such suffered will continue today as a 
innocent Chinese citizen.
    Gao Zhisheng has been connect without trial for nearly 6 
years without any news, which is a rare evil in the world. Not 
only is there no arrest, but no organization has been 
responsible for Gao Zhisheng's abduction. No one has ever seen 
him, no one has ever heard his voice, and no one has come from 
that he is secure alive in this world.
    My husband Gao Zhisheng was nominated for the Nobel Peace 
Prize three times and he has received the various international 
awards in the United State and the Europe, but could not get 
fair trial or a phone call to his family.
    Ladies and gentlemen, my children and I thank you very much 
for giving me the opportunity to present Gao Zhisheng's story, 
to show you our wounds and to tell you our despair. I am 
implore you to help me, hold there a hope for Gao Zhisheng's 
freedom.
    First, I expect the U.S. embassy officials in China to 
visit Gao Zhisheng, a husband and a father of the U.S. citizen.
    Secondary, I would like to U.S. Congress to urgent China to 
allow Gao Zhisheng to be tried in public like ordinary public--
political prisoner and to be granted to visitation rest that a 
citizen and the entitle to. If this not can be achieved, is OK 
to have Gao Zhisheng give me a call to tell me he's still 
alive. Just knowing he are still alive is enough. I cannot see 
in the awful Gao Zhisheng's around our family suffering yet. In 
China there are many other families like ours and I hope that 
people will pay attention to Wang Bingzhang, Xu Zhiyong, Din 
Jiaxi, Wang Zang, Guo Geixiong, and other prisoners of 
conscience. Thank you, all. Sorry.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. He follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Mr. Smith. No, thank you so very much. And we do have to 
respond, we have to respond robustly. So thank you.
    The. Translator. Let me elaborate to the last to her words.
    Mr. Smith. Yes.
    The. Translator. So the last two paragraphs is the appeal 
from Ms. Geng He to the U.S. Government. They expect the U.S. 
Embassy officials in China to visit Gao Zhisheng, the husband 
and father of the U.S. citizens.
    Second, she would like the U.S. Congress to urge China to 
allow Gao Zhisheng to be tried in public like ordinary 
political prisoners and to be granted the visitation rights 
that citizens and are entitled to. If this cannot be achieved, 
it's OK at least to have Gao Zhisheng give me a call and tell 
me he's still alive. Just knowing he's alive is enough. I 
cannot see the end of Gao Zhisheng's and our family's suffering 
yet.
    In China there are many other families like ours and I hope 
that the peoples will pay attention to Wang Bingzhang, Guo 
Feixiong, and other prisoners of conscience. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you so much.
    I now yield to Ms. Sophie Luo.

        STATEMENT OF SOPHIE LUO, WIFE OF MR. DING JIAXI

    Ms. Luo. I also want to offer my statement because the 
written statement I included the two statement they send to the 
court of Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi. And also due to the time 
limitation I only read partial of my statement.
    Congress----
    Mr. Smith. Let me say do not feel too constrained about the 
time.
    Ms. Luo. OK.
    Mr. Smith. We are done voting, so we won't have to--it is 
more important that you tell your story.
    Ms. Luo. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. 
Smith, and the distinguished members of the House Foreign 
Affairs Committee. Thank you so much for inviting me today at 
today's hearing.
    I will be telling you about the case of my husband Ding 
Jiaxi and the case of Xu Zhiyong to demonstrate that why the 
spread of false disappearances, lengthy pretrial detention, and 
the harsh prison sentences in China.
    Ms. Geng He's husband Gao Zhisheng has been disappeared for 
over 5 years but has been targeted by Chinese officials since 
2006. I cannot imagine the suffering that Gao Zhisheng and his 
family have had to bear these many years. When I hear the story 
of their other family I just feel so much.
    OK. Ten days ago my husband, a human rights lawyer and 
activist, Ding Jiaxi and the leading law scholar Xu Zhiyong 
were sentenced to 12 and 14 years, respectively on the charge 
of subversion of State power, for organizing a private get-
together to discuss civil society topics for about 20 like-
minded friends in Xiamen, Fujian province in December 2019. The 
sentences were announced by a court in Shandong province 9 
months after being tried in a secret trial.
    Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong met in Beijing in late 2011 and 
led the New Citizens Movement, also called the China Citizen 
Movement, together. Their ideas and activities centered on 
getting Chinese people to take their rights as written in the 
Chinese constitution seriously and to practice these rights in 
everyday life, to become real citizens. Their peaceful and 
lawful activities in 2012 and 2013 however resulted in 
sentences of 4 years and three-and-a-half years in prison for 
charges of gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.
    After they were released from prison both Xu Zhiyong and 
Ding Jiaxi resumed their activities to promote civil rights and 
the growth of civil society. After the 2-day private gathering 
in Xiamen Chinese police detained Ding Jiaxi on December 26, 
2019, and Xu Zhiyong on February 15, 2020, and held them under 
secret detention for six and 4 months, respectively, without 
any document to families. In essence, they had disappeared.
    Later I learned that during this time they were subjected 
to torture and ill treatment including prolonged sleep 
deprivation, loud noise harassment for--continually for 10 
days, interrogation while being tightly tied to a tiger chair, 
food and water restrictions, no exposure to sunlight at all, 
and no showers.
    Let's review each step of these two cases. First, the 
disappearance, secret detention, torture, coerce the 
confession, supplicating criminal evidence, close-door trial, 
and secretly announce the sentence without even a sentence 
document released to the families.
    The authorities has been handling these two cases 
completely against the Chinese constitution and the criminal 
laws from the beginning to the end. It is very clear there is 
no law in China at all.
    There are many cases of Chinese citizens who are 
disappeared or in detention for their criticism of Xi Jinping, 
for their advocacy of human rights, teaching others to get 
around the Chinese censorship, or also for their private 
discussion of civil society. These individuals including Peng 
Lifa, Ruan Xiaohuan, Huang Xueqin, and Wang Jianbing are 
included the details of these cases in my written statement.
    Before I end my speech I must mention my dear friend Ms. Li 
Qiaochu. She has been in detention for over 2 years without a 
trial as of today. The authorities also accused her of inciting 
subversion just because she loves Xu Zhiyong dearly and speak 
for--spoke for him tirelessly.
    Based on my observation of all these cases and in the past 
10 years my main recommendation for Members of Congress, the 
Administration, and the American businesses, and the civil 
society group is please clearly say not to Chinese Communist 
Party. This is the only way to stop any more human rights 
abuses in China. The CCP is a barbaric government that does not 
respect any rule of law. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Luo follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much for your very powerful 
statement. On behalf of your husband and your friends and 
others, without objection, your full statement, and all of your 
full statements will be part of the record.
    Mr. Smith. And again this gives us as a committee and 
hopefully as a Congress and hopefully the White House and State 
Department a path forward to redouble our efforts. And so your 
testimony, both of your testimoneys, all of your testimoneys, 
but especially the two of you has to motivate us. Has to. And 
so thank you so very much.
    Ms. Luo. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. I would like to now ask Ms. Wang if she would 
proceed.

 STATEMENT OF YAQUI WANG, SENIOR CHINA RESEARCHER, HUMAN RIGHT 
                             WATCH

    Ms. Wang. Dear Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild, and 
members of the committee, thank you for convening this hearing 
to shine a spotlight on the most courageous and most righteous 
people in China, political prisoners.
    Human Rights Watch has documented and advocated on our 
behalf for over three decades. It has been almost 34 years 
since the Tiananmen Square massacre. Since then the Chinese 
Communist Party's brutality has shocked the world but failed to 
subdue veteran human rights activists like Gao Zhisheng and 
Ding Jiaxi. The CCP has also failed to suppress the rights of a 
new generation of human rights activists.
    Late last year in an astounding display of courage people 
across China, many of them young people, took to the streets to 
demand an end to the government's draconian Covid Zero 
restrictions and a call for freedom and democracy. Some even 
shouted down with the CCP. A number of protestors had been 
arrested and their whereabouts are still unclear today.
    We're living in a grim period for human rights in China, 
but there are reasons for hope. For one, many young people in 
the country are waking up to the CCP's brutal repression and 
are following the steps of towering figures like Xu Zhiyong and 
the late-Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.
    Given how important China's development means for the rest 
of the world and for the U.S.-China relation it is critical for 
U.S. political leaders and the American public to learn about 
and to show support for the younger generation activists in 
China and in the diaspora.
    To that end Human Rights Watch urges Members of Congress, 
senior administration officials, and the relevant U.S. 
authorities to, among other things, first, continue to hold 
hearings like this and speak out against the Chinese 
government's human rights abuses.
    Second, increase scholarships and resources for students 
and young activists from China to study at American 
universities and to participate in exchange programs with their 
counterparts in the U.S.
    Last but not least, expand investigation and the 
prosecution of individuals responsible for the CCP's 
transnational repression including harassment, intimidation, 
and cyber attacks of U.S.-based critics of the CCP.
    I want to end with a quote by a 26-year-old White Paper 
protestor. He said to his fellow countrymen, ``We need to 
remember what Hong Kong people told us. It's not because 
there's hope so we resist. It's only because only when we 
resist there will be hope.''
    We must stand up, bravely stand up. Young people in China 
are standing up and I hope U.S. political leaders and the 
American people will stand by them. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Wang follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much.
    Ms. Manning, I think you have to step out? Unfortunately, 
we all have places we have to be, but thank you for joining us, 
I say to my good friend, and I yield you such time.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for your 
indulgence of letting me go first.
    I want to thank all of our witnesses here today for the 
important work that you do, and particularly I want to thank 
you for speaking out and telling your stories, because those 
are the things that we will remember and keep with us. And 
thank you for giving us some hope that there are brave people 
and brave young people who are standing up. And that last quote 
was particularly memorable, so thank you for sharing that with 
us.
    Ms. Wang, can you share more about how Chinese authorities 
have cracked down on feminists and women's right activists, 
including women speaking out against sexual harassment?
    Ms. Wang. The Chinese government is harassing anybody who 
criticize the government, and some of them are in prison for 
doing it repeatedly, including human rights--women's rights 
activists. Notable cases including 2015, a group of women went 
into the public bus to disseminate leaflets advocating for--
reason went is about sexual harassment. Then five of them got 
detained. And because of a public uproar inside China and 
internationally they were released after detained for 31 days. 
And that was a very well-known case.
    After that the government keep harassing them and other 
women's rights activists until this day. And despite that 
people continue to speak up about this issue. Women's rights 
activism really, really is a sentiment shared very widely among 
the Chinese public about gender equality, given all the 
censorship and surveillance against the activists.
    So I mean, a very recent case concerns Huang Xueqin. She 
was a journalist. She--I mean she is still a journalist. She 
reported on the MeToo Movement. She interviewed over 100 people 
who had the experiences with sexual harassment. So, and she 
published his--her report. And she's a leading figure in the 
MeToo Movement. Later she was detained for her article related 
to Hong Kong for 31 days. And she was released. Then after few 
months she got detain again. Now she's in--she's been detain 
for over a year now. She's been charged with inciting 
subversion of State power, as I remember--if I remember 
correctly. And we have new--no new updates regarding her case 
and she's still awaiting trial. So those are the two memorable 
cases.
    And as I said, besides the people who are imprisoned or 
confined by the Chinese authorities there are many people who 
are harassed, intimidated, and surveilling on a daily basis.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you for sharing that with us.
    I am also deeply concerned about the rise in transnational 
repression. Just this week the FBI warned that China and Iran 
and others are going to new lengths to go after dissidents and 
pro-democracy activists the United States. What are some of the 
trends and methods that China uses to target and surveil 
activists and students abroad and how can governments work 
together to push back and hold them accountable?
    Ms. Wang. Well, I can give you example of myself. I'm from 
China, so my parents are all in China. So for speaking here I 
do not know what they're going to do to my parents, but my 
parents are under surveillance and they are periodically 
harassed by the government. So, you know, it weighs on me. I 
choose to speak up, but their safety is always on the back of 
my mind. And I know it's not just me and it happens a lot of 
other people. And some choose to continue to speak up despite 
the consequences and repercussions to their family members.
    But I'm sure there are many more who chose to self-censor. 
You know, you do not want your parents to suffer because of 
what you do.
    And then beyond the harassment and surveillance of your 
member--family members in China there are cyber attacks against 
you even for people who are in the U.S., constant shows on 
Twitter, constant harassment messages to my email accounts. So 
those are, you know, things--harassment not in a physical 
world, but all online. You know, it does affect you 
psychologically. I'm just giving example of myself. There are 
many, many more people who are like me and many more people who 
suffer more--even more severe harassment for their family 
members in China. Even more severe are like online 
intimidation, cyber attacks against them, even for them being 
in the United States.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you for your courage in speaking up, and 
we certainly hope your family is OK.
    Mr. Chairman, may I just ask one more question? Thank you.
    Mr. Kellogg, you have documented how national security law 
undermines Hong Kong's autonomy and has been deliberately used 
to target activists and silence criticism and dissent. What if 
any significant rights, protections, and freedoms do Hong 
Kongers still maintain compared to the people of Mainland 
China?
    Mr. Kellogg. Thank you, Congresswoman Manning. That's an 
excellent question. The situation in Hong Kong right now is 
particularly serious. I've been traveling to and working on--
Hong Kong and engaging with Hong Kongers for something like 20 
years, and this is the worst moment that I've seen over that 
20-year time period.
    It is true that the situation in Hong Kong is not as bad as 
the situation on the mainland, but I hesitate to even guess 
where we will be a year from now or 2 years from now if the 
current trends continue.
    As I had noted in my testimony for today, the national 
security laws being used to crack down on the expression--on 
the basic rights of Hong Kongers, including free expression, 
including efforts to participate in the political process, 
including criticism of the government even for a relatively 
less-sensitive manners like--matters like the government's 
COVID-19 policy--so we're seeing unfortunately an expansion of 
the government's use of the national security law to crack down 
on basic rights. And I'm not sure when that's going to end.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you so much.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your indulgence. I appreciate 
it.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you, Ms. Manning. Mr. Kellog.

  STATEMENT OF THOMAS KELLOGG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGETOWN 
                UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR ASIAN LAW

    Mr. Kellogg. Sir, thank you. I would also request, Chairman 
Smith, that my written testimony be submitted for the record.
    Wonderful, wonderful, thank you.
    And I want to thank both Chairman Smith and all the members 
of this very important panel, and I certainly want to thank all 
of my esteemed co-panelists for their extremely powerful and 
insightful remarks.
    I actually would like to divert for a moment from my 
testimony to just say a word or two about Xu Zhiyong, who is 
someone I personally know and have worked with over my time as 
a lawyer and, quote unquote, expert working on human rights and 
rule of law in China.
    Xu Zhiyong and I met as far as back as 2005, I believe it 
was, and we happened to be at Yale Law School in the United 
States at the same time in 2007 as, both as fellows at the 
China Law Center there.
    And I have to say, it is such an amazing experience to be 
able to talk with such an insightful critic of the Chinese 
legal system and the ways in which I learn from him about how 
the Chinese Communist Party works, how it uses its own legal 
system to subvert basic rights.
    Those are lessons that I am still drawing on today as I 
seek to understand exactly how the Communist Party, again, uses 
its legal system to crack down the rights, on the rights of its 
own citizens.
    It was deeply saddening to me personally to see him 
detained once again in 2020, as Ms. Luo described, obviously 
along with her husband, Ding Jiaxi, who I have not met but who 
is obviously a deeply impressive individual as well. And the 
fact that just this past week we are learning that Xu and Ding 
are sentenced to 14 and 12 years respectively, one can only 
imagine the effect of that on those brave individuals 
themselves and on their family members.
    I personally was deeply saddened to learn that it is a 14-
year sentence for Xu Zhigong. As I mentioned to one of my 
panelists as we were getting ready for this hearing to start, 
Xu Zhiyong and I are actually roughly the same age. And I 
hesitate to think about him spending the next 14 years in 
prison, from the time of age 50 to being roughly 64, give or 
take.
    That simply cannot stand. And I do hope that the Biden 
Administration will take up the recommendation of Chairman 
Smith and other members of this panel to certainly speak out 
about Xu Zhiyong's case and about the case of Ding Jiaxi as 
well, and about the cases of the many individuals who--brave 
individuals whose cases and whose prison sentences have been 
mentioned by the other distinguished panelists here today.
    I also met actually Huang Xueqin when she was a visiting 
fellow at Hong Kong University back in 2018, and I learned 
firsthand from her about how her feminist activism had brought 
her very much to the attention of the authorities back in 
China. And sadly it was no surprise that she was detained soon 
after she left Hong Kong and returned to mainland China.
    Now let me just say a word or two about the situation in 
Hong Kong before I close, because I am anxious for all of you 
to have a chance to present questions to Ms. Luo and Ms. Geng 
He and the other experts. As I mentioned just a moment ago the 
situation in Hong Kong is quite serious, and we are seeing the 
National Security Law being used in all sorts of ways to crack 
down on free speech and basic rights in a way that is truly 
unprecedented in the Hong Kong context.
    Hong Kong was a relatively open society for many years 
after the 1997 handover. And here I would give Beijing some 
degree of credit. They did abide by many, though by no means 
all, of the promises that they made to the U.K. Government in 
the return of Chinese sovereignty to Hong Kong in 1997.
    And for many years after 1997, Hong Kong was a relatively 
open society where you had a boisterous free press, where you 
had an opposition political parties. Where you had brave 
activists who were speaking out about both the situation in 
Hong Kong and the situation in mainland China.
    I think the squeeze really started to manifest itself in 
2014 with the so-called Umbrella Movement, and that is when you 
started to see a tightening, and a tightening of the space 
inside Hong Kong and the tightening of the pressure on 
activists, opposition politicians, journalists, and others.
    And then the explosion of pro-democracy activism that of 
course everyone in this room is well aware of with the 2019 
pro-democracy movement.
    I happened to be in Hong Kong in 2019, I interviewed many 
of the activists who led that movement and took part, and they 
too are brave souls, very much the brothers and sisters of some 
of the activists like Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi. Now many of 
them are either in prison or headed to prison, being prosecuted 
under the National Security Law.
    Let me just make two quick recommendations before I close 
and we move to the Q&A. First, I would second the 
recommendations made by others on this panel that this 
committee and the CECC remain seized on the situation in Hong 
Kong.
    We have two important dates coming up, June 12 being the 
fourth anniversary of the massive two-million-person protests 
in Hong Kong in front of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. 
That would be a good moment to have a hearing, either by this 
subcommittee or by the CECC on the current situation in Hong 
Kong.
    Or July 1, being well of course the anniversary of the Hong 
Kong handover and the third anniversary of the implementation 
of the National Security Law. So I think continuing to raise 
these issues in fora like this is very important.
    Second, I would also suggest that this committee and the 
CECC look at legislation what would increase the transparency 
obligations on U.S. businesses operating in Hong Kong.
    Of course, as this subcommittee is well aware, the National 
Security Law does have extensive investigatory powers, and they 
can request information from U.S. businesses operating in Hong 
Kong on the cases that they are pursuing.
    I would suggest that the U.S. Congress could place 
obligations under these businesses to disclose any information 
request that they get from the Hong Kong Government related to 
National Security Law prosecutions.
    I think that would stigmatize responding to those requests 
from the Hong Kong Government and make it more difficult for 
any U.S. businesses operating in Hong Kong to somehow 
facilitate prosecution of human rights activists under the 
National Security Law.
    I will close there, and I look forward to the discussion.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Kellogg follows:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Kellogg, for your 
testimony and for your advocacy, particularly in Hong Kong and 
elsewhere.
    Let me just, a couple of questions. You know, in 1994, on 
one of several trips to Beijing, I met with Wei Jingsheng, who 
was let out briefly in order get Olympics 2000. We met in a 
hotel at a restaurant. We had Chinese Communist Party leaders 
within earshot, and we knew that would happen. And he preferred 
that.
    The point that he made to me that I will never forget was 
that he said when you kowtow, this is a little bit of a 
paraphrase but it is exactly what he conveyed, when you kowtow, 
when you come in weakly with the Chinese Communist Party, when 
you are hedging your bet, they beat us more in the prison. And 
things worse.
    In a like way, when you are tough, predictable, look them 
in the eye and they know that they are dealing with strength, 
they beat us less. I have never gotten that. And to hear two 
very brave wives talk about their husbands in such a way, God 
willing we will provide some additional protection for them as 
we move ahead.
    I will never forget the, you know, if we mince our words at 
the State Department, at the White House, or in Congress 
because we want the next deal, we want to sell some more, the 
way the chamber of commerce so often shamelessly has done over 
the many years.
    I remember when we were fighting MFN and the de-linking of 
human rights with MFN, the State Department and many others, 
including the Clinton Administration, Clinton himself, our 
Ambassador in Beijing, because I went over there during that 
terrible time when we de-linked human rights and trade, they 
all said oh, somehow China will matriculate from a dictatorship 
to a democracy if we just trade more.
    I mean, I will sell you the Brooklyn Bridge if you believe 
that, and I know you know, all of you that that is just so 
naive in the extreme and self-serving. And yet that was the 
modus operandi, and it worked here on Capitol Hill when, you 
know, went we from MFN annual review, which was feckless, 
frankly, to PNTR, which got rid of all review and just it all, 
the whole enchilada to the Chinese Communist Party.
    So I never forgot--so I just want you to know that I think 
the bolder the clarity that you bring, the honesty that is 
absolute, I am speaking to the two wives especially, but all of 
you, you know, the Chinese Communist Party knows we mean 
business, and we need to accelerate not diminish our voices.
    So thank you for doing that. And you know, after Hue met 
with me, he was beaten. He finally got out under humanitarian 
parole, and the first place he came was to my committee 
hearing.
    And that is when he reiterated in a forum just like this 
the concern that so many people in Washington and other 
capitals, particularly in Europe, are mealy mouthed and so 
afraid to say anything.
    I remember even with Liu Xiaobo, because I was the one who 
led the congressional effort to put Che Guangcheng, Gao 
Zhisheng, and Liu Xiaobo to ask the Olympic--not the Olympic, 
the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to give them the prize. They 
did give to Liu Xiaobo. I think they missed a great opportunity 
with the other two.
    But when I went over and met with a lot of the people, 
including members of that commission, they were--it was almost 
apologies, because China was railing against what they had 
done. And it was very short-lived in terms of, you know, Europe 
saying oh, this is really a problem.
    I was shocked. I was in the room talking to members of the 
nominating committee, and there was a sense of did we make a 
mistake. And of course they did not.
    So I--we need to be strong and stronger and realize that we 
are in this for the short, intermediate, and long haul.
    Now, a couple questions, because I do think, as Pastor Fu 
said, that the religious freedom issue is getting far worse. I 
know I remember one time on another trip with Frank Wolf, we 
met with pastors in the House Church Movement, and every one of 
them except one got arrested, and couldn't even meet with us 
because the Chinese Communist Party precluded that.
    And we called Bob Fu on the phone to get some additional 
names. And we were in the embassy van, what were told was a 
secure phone, and during the conversation we mentioned how we 
were going to go to Tiananmen Square, and we weren't even--we 
had no time for it.
    We were going to unfurl and banner, and it said, ``Human 
rights for China.'' And within 20 minutes or so, the U.S. 
Embassy got a call that if we do that, we will be taken to the 
airport and thrown out of the country.
    So I mean, everything is porous, the ubiquitous 
surveillance State is something that has only gotten worse. And 
so I just, you know, we have got to pivot. I mean, China is an 
existential threat to its neighbors.
    Its bad governance model is being promoted all over the 
world, including in Africa. But it is certainly by force. They 
are doing it in Hong Kong, of course, and Taiwan is in the 
cross-hairs.
    So I do hope that there is a serious pivot on the part of 
the Administration. And no matter who is in the White House, 
because I had these conversations with the Trump Administration 
as well, and with previous Republican administrations, we have 
got to be bolder.
    And you all are--I mean, I will, with unanimous consent put 
in Gao Zhisheng's letter, open letter to Congress, September 
27, 2007. I was amazed when I read, and you provided it to us 
at our hearing in 2012, and I had read it before.
    And here is a man who is in the clutches of torturers 
writing the way he wrote, talking about how the Falun Gong were 
being treated with tortures that were unspeakable. Their 
genitals electrocuted, their under their arms and elsewhere. 
And just unspeakable torture. And everybody is mute in 
Washington, or semi-mute.
    And you know, we all need to get our voices I think much 
more focused on this. And again, so if you--any of you would 
want to speak to the worsening of the religious freedom issue, 
the Uyghurs are, obviously a genocide is being committed there, 
and more political prisoners.
    I remember we had, Marco Rubio and I had a hearing on the 
China Commission. And we had this wonderful young mother of 
three, who told the story about how she--they did things 
sexually to her, including with electric prods. And she cried 
out, she goes I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.
    And she asked her torturer why are you doing this. And he 
said two reasons: you are a Uyghur, and you're Muslim.
    So the religious persecution is for all comers, Christians, 
Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhists, and of course the House Church 
Movement, as well as the officially recognized churches. And it 
has gone from bad to worse. So if you want to briefly speak to 
that.
    You called it a war against faith a moment ago. I wrote an 
op-ed for the Washington Post a few years ago about the 
sinicization under Xi Jinping, and how if world leaders do not 
start speaking up about how they are just completely either 
coopting or destroying all faiths, all faiths, all comers, 
shame on us. You know, we cannot just say oh, let's trade a 
little more, things will get better. It won't, it will go from 
bad to worse.
    So if you might want to speak to that. Second, Ambassador 
Bremberg, you obviously were there in Geneva, and we know, 
because I have gone to Geneva many times in Human Right 
Commission, and we know how the Chinese Government tries to 
bully other countries to minimize their--even when they have a 
periodic review, you know, it is a slap on the wrist.
    And it seems to me we have venues that are wide open with 
treaty bodies, as well as with the U.N. Human Rights Commission 
to really take it to them. I mean, Israel gets far more focus, 
small, tiny Israel, in what I really believe is antisemitism, 
but leave that for another day.
    But, and China gets off almost scot-free. Maybe you could 
speak to that from your experience.
    And then I could ask our two wonderful wives if you could 
tell us, has anybody from the U.S. Secretary of State's Office 
or the White House been in contact with you about your 
husbands, to ask how they could help so that they could 
intervene? And that would go for our embassy as well. But the 
State Department and the White House.
    And I have other questions, but I will yield to my friend 
before asking those questions.
    Mr. Bremberg. Thank you, Chairman, I am happy to answer 
your questions about, as you said, how China unfortunately 
seems to get a free pass on human rights in multilateral or 
particularly at the U.N.
    The important thing to begin with is that for China, for 
the CCP, everything is connected to everything else. Issues are 
not separated and treated as distinctly different. And actions, 
as we know, actions speak louder than words.
    So, going back several decades, the United States and many 
of our Western partners and allies mistakenly or naively taught 
the CCP that our approach to human rights was largely about 
words only. That we would speak out aggressively about human 
rights, and we would compel or press them to make statements 
claiming to respect and respond to human rights.
    And that when they did, the action, you know, our actions 
said, OK, that is good enough. And did not press them to 
actually make any changes.
    So this pattern over decades created what we see largely 
'til today, although this is changing, in the international 
human rights space that China will, you know, it does 
everything it can to avoid public criticism, particularly when 
the criticism is done by groups of countries, rather than 
individuals. And I think that is an important tool that we 
should be using more to work collaboratively with other 
countries to draw attention to these human rights abuses.
    But basically to say, the United States or the West, you do 
not believe these things either. So why should we worry about 
it and why should we care.
    And there are--they make concerted attempts to even try to 
draw false equivalencies between, you know, injustices that 
take place, you know, in every country around the world, 
including western democracies. But to draw these false 
equivalencies that that is somehow in any way like the massive 
genocide taking place in Xinjiang.
    Two points I would like to make about those bodies. One, 
American leadership matters, particularly when it comes to the 
selection of individuals who lead U.N. organizations.
    The previous High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle 
Bachelet, was a horrible leader in that position. I met with 
her repeatedly. I would demarche her on behalf of the U.S. 
Government, begging her to care about human rights. And it was 
clear she did not.
    And the United States could have done more, you know, in 
the years previous to my arrival in Geneva, to press her office 
to do more.
    Now, thankfully we saw at the literal last minute of her 
tenure, her office finally released its report on the human 
rights abuses taking place in Xinjiang. We knew that report, 
versions of that report had been finished years previously and 
had never been released. So the United States can do more to 
press those actions.
    A second point I would say, and this is one point of just 
kind slight optimism that we are seeing, is that other 
countries, particularly western and other democratic countries, 
are beginning to see the importance of pushing back on 
language.
    There was a debate in 2018, this is when the United States 
was still a member of the Human Rights Council before we had 
withdrawn, and the United States alone could not get other, you 
know, Europeans or other countries, to come along with the U.S. 
in calling for a vote against--you know, calling for a vote, I 
should add, is sometimes viewed diplomatically as kind of 
aggressive act in and of itself and that is unfortunate.
    But calling for a vote and voting against one of China's 
human rights resolutions, where it was attempting to change the 
narrative of human rights. Briefly, to move away from the 
concept focused on individual human rights and more toward the 
idea of collective rights.
    And many of our partners were aghast and all were against 
this activity. So for that and a number of reasons, the Trump 
Administration, as we know, left the Human Rights Council.
    What was encouraging to see, though, is that 2 years later, 
in 2020, when the same resolution came up, this time the 
Europeans had realized, I will say, that we were right.
    And the Europeans called--came out and called a vote and 
voted against this en masse. And that is an important sign that 
we find opportunities to work with our partners from around the 
world to show that we actually believe in these human rights.
    But critically, not just what we say at these multi-lateral 
organizations, because those are important, but those 
statements have to be backed up by actions, by you know, other 
bilateral diplomatic responses, and critically, the economic 
relationship. And there is more we can discuss about the 
incredible tools we have at our disposal.
    Mr. Smith. Do either of you want to respond whether or not 
the State Department or the White House had been in contact? 
Then I'll go to Bob.
    The Interpreter. Yes, Ms. Geng wanted to emphasize that 
nobody has ever contacted her from the White House or State 
Department since she arrived here. For 14 years, right? In the 
last 14 years, nobody has contacted her.
    Ms. Luo. My situation is better that Geng He because I, 
also, I myself, maybe because of the language or whatever, I 
reached out to U.S. State Department. I asked for some 
communication about the cases of Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi for 
a couple times with them.
    And I believe U.S. Department of State right now are well 
aware of the cases. And they released some statement when they 
do the secret trial and do the secret sentence.
    And also, U.S. Department, they award my husband as the 
human rights--Human Rights Defense Award. So these recognitions 
support a lot.
    But what I want to say is this not really change the real 
situation of what their sentence is. So the after the two cases 
of the sentences, I asked the U.S. State Department, I request 
to see Mr. Blinken.
    Because I really, these two cases just shows to the outside 
world Chinese Communist Party, they has already demonstrated 
they are not going to respect any laws. How we can still seek 
communication with this kind of country, this kind of 
government.
    Because, yes, I saw U.S. Department, they already changed 
the way to treat China. But they still keep wanting to reach 
out to them. I want to say the only way to stop to, how to say, 
to stop CCP keep doing this is say no, we do not keep any 
connection with this kind of government. We have to cut the 
connection.
    Everyone told me it is so difficult, it is not possible. 
But why? So I ask for communication with U.S. Department of 
State further. I haven't received a confirmation yet.
    For White House, no one contacted. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. Mr. Fu.
    Mr. Fu. Just an illustration of the worst scenario that 
recently happened, I think, shame to French President Macron. 
After dining and wining with Xi Jinping, came back with the 
idea that Taiwan is not a European issue. So let's not follow 
American. Let's, you know, Americans handle that.
    Twenty-three million live in Taiwan. Does that mean you 
give a green light by playing geopolitics? I think that is, I 
mean, if human rights really just free in rule of law, at least 
equally important with those other economic, national security, 
nuclear, or climate change, whatever. But you cannot play that 
card.
    I think, I mean, it reminded me like several President 
Reagan's senior aides told this story that President Reagan 
always in his pocket holds a card with those prisoners of 
conscience from former Soviet Union. And even the former Soviet 
Union leaders kept complaining to his Secretary of State.
    But I think that, I hope other presidents, vice presidents, 
secretaries of State, whoever, from whichever party is in the 
White House, would share in the same kind of way like President 
Reagan. Have Gao Zhisheng's name, Ding Jiaxi's name, have all 
these prisoners of conscience names in his pocket whenever he 
meet with his counterpart.
    And whether it is virtually or in person, he can be 
reminded. At least tell them he is serious, this is important.
    I think I do not know. So far, we have not heard, you know, 
this is happening. Many summers have come and passed. Where are 
these names being raised? Are they being raised? At least we 
have not heard anything.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, thank you all for 
being here.
    I have to just tell you that when I was first elected to 
Congress, one of my very first meetings back home in my 
district in Pennsylvania was with a young couple with three 
daughters, one of whom had just been born in the United States, 
the other two had been born in China. And they came to me 
because both of them had parents, Uyghur Muslims, whom they had 
not heard from for a very long time.
    And I remember feeling very helpless about not being able 
to do enough to really help them. At that point they weren't 
even citizens. They were here legally but they weren't 
citizens. It was not as though, they were, you know, voters or 
anything.
    But it was just such a tragic story that it really has 
resonated with me. And quite honestly, has guided a lot of the 
work that I have wanted to do in here in Congress in the area 
of human rights. I am thrilled to be on, the ranking member on 
this committee, and along with Chairman Smith.
    But I agree, with you, sir, Mr. Fu, that often the exposure 
of the rest of the world to what is happening in China is 
restricted too much to a few Members of Congress or a few 
foreign leaders, or whatever, and not enough people are widely 
aware of it.
    And of course to your point, Mr. Bramberg, the economics of 
it is such that we do have powerful leverage that for many 
reasons we have been reluctant to use, some of which has to do 
with consumer prices and things as simple as that. Not so 
simple, but you understand.
    But at the same time, we really do need to make sure that 
we are addressing this. I mean, we probably have more power vis 
a vis China than any other nation in the world. In fact, I do 
not think it is probably, we do.
    So with that said, I also just have to comment yesterday 
the House passed by a very large bipartisan margin my bill, the 
Countering Untrusted Telecommunications Abroad Act, which was 
designed primarily, in all candor, to secure United States 
embassies abroad to make sure that the technologies that they 
are using are secure from a point of view of national security.
    But another very important motivation for me, which I 
expressed on the House floor, was my concerns about the fact 
that some of the Chinese telecoms companies, which have been 
the major provider of our technologies in our embassies, are 
engaging in some of the same human rights abuses and the same 
repressive tactics that we have heard about from the CCP.
    And so I just wanted to mention that because I do believe 
that in so much of the work that we do, the human rights issues 
come into play. And we are, many of us are trying very hard to 
take some actions that will have a real effect.
    While I am on that issue of technologies, I would like to 
address these questions to Ms. Wang and Mr. Kellogg 
specifically. One of the things I remember the people who came 
to see me in my office talking about was the widespread use of 
facial surveillance and facial recognition.
    And quite honestly I have to tell you, I mean, I came out 
of the private sector before Congress. This was not something 
that I really had heard about or knew a lot about. I have done 
a lot of studying since then.
    But with surveillance being an ever-present part of life in 
China, and I just have to stop and say I cannot even imagine 
how American citizens would respond to the idea that our--I 
mean, there's enough concerns that we all have about privacy 
and that kind of thing in this country.
    But if, imagine if Americans were being subjected to this 
kind of facial recognition, surveillance--this young couple 
came to me to tell me that their parents had literally been 
taken off the street, and they believe that facial recognition 
technology was used to identify them as Uyghur Muslims.
    Anyway, so with that use of technology in China to control 
populations, to stifle freedom of expression, how has the CCP's 
practices and use of these technologies evolved, if it has? Who 
is developing these technologies? Are these being exported 
around the world?
    And are there any kinds of counter-technologies that can be 
used to protect individuals? I will just leave it at that, and 
if you need me to run through those many questions again, I 
will. But I open it to either one of you to respond.
    Mr. Kellogg. I will just make a few brief comments on this 
front, Congresswoman. And first of all I want to salute you for 
your engagement with the Uyghur community here in the United 
States.
    I have also had the privilege of chatting with Uyghurs here 
in the United States, particularly in, you know, in Virginia 
coming into Washington to help those of us who are here in D.C. 
understand the very serious and very grave situation in 
Xinjiang and the cultural genocide that is taking place there.
    And of course you are absolutely right that technology and 
mass surveillance technology is a key part of that. Talking to 
Uyghurs themselves who have managed to escape Xinjiang since 
the opening the camps in 2017 or so talking about ubiquitous 
surveillance cameras, right. Talking about the kinds of 
checkpoint-type systems that are being set up across major 
cities in Xinjiang.
    Uyghurs who, even prior to 2017, Uyghurs who were able to 
travel inside China would often be flagged when they tried to 
do basic things like check into hotels, right. And somehow 
their data is in a system such that they are flagged 
immediately on arrival on trying to check into a hotel 
somewhere in eastern China.
    So the sort of, to come back to your question, the 
evolution of electronic surveillance in China is absolutely 
intensifying. And the roll-out has been quite significant. And 
the ways in which Chinese companies are now in a strange way on 
the cutting edge of development of facial technology is a very 
real phenomenon that I think we are all grappling with.
    I will have to do more thinking about sort of some of the 
policy responses that Congress could look to. I look forward to 
learning more about the bill that you mentioned, the Countering 
Untrusted Telecommunications Abroad Act, and I am certainly 
excited to hear that is has passed the House.
    So I think there is more work to be done there. And if it 
is OK, I would come back to you with some specifics----
    Ms. Wild. Can I just ask you, if you know, who primarily is 
developing these technologies that are being used, the 
surveillance and otherwise?
    Mr. Kellogg. Sure. It is the Chinese companies themselves, 
Hikivision and some of the other domestic Chinese companies, 
and they are obviously being given massive resources by the 
Chinese Government to move forward with this work.
    And one way you can look at the situation in Xinjiang is 
that it is basically sort of a massive lab, right, that they 
are rolling out these technologies. They are learning how to 
perfect them. They are learning how to make them even more 
accurate in terms of identifying individuals in a crowd. That 
is very scary.
    Ms. Wild. Just the idea that they are being used there and 
that they could presumably, and I am sure have been or will be 
exported elsewhere----
    Mr. Kellogg. Absolutely.
    Ms. Wild. For use around the world is terrifying. I am 
going to switch gears, unless you wanted to comment on that.
    Ms. Wang. Yes, can I just quickly add that I mean 
surveillance is not just, you know, through cameras. Facial 
recognition is also the phones. And as member of the Chinese 
diaspora, you know, we use Chinese apps.
    And for Chinese private companies, they are beholden to the 
Chinese Government. If the Chinese Government asks the 
companies to survey us, even we are living abroad, they can.
    So I think--I urge the U.S. Congress to pass legislations 
to force companies to be transparent about what kind of thing 
they are collection, what kind of content they are suppressing, 
especially for the apps that are used widely among the Chinese 
diaspora.
    Ms. Wild. Thank you, that is helpful. We will look at that 
and my office may very reach out to you for some additional 
detail, because I would like to followup on that.
    Is it OK if I ask one more, or do you need----
    Mr. Smith. Sure, I think Dr. McCormick has to go, but then 
I'll come right back.
    Ms. Wild. OK, great, thank you.
    Mr. McCormick. If you do not mind.
    Ms. Wild. No, that is fine, go ahead.
    Mr. McCormick. Thank you. So if I might ask a personal 
question, I notice that you are, Ms. Geng He, that you are 
getting very emotional right now. I would love you to share, if 
you feel comfortable, what is going through your mind right now 
with your emotions?
    And share with us, because I think that is how we connect 
with you and what we are trying to find out right now, the 
emotional content of this. Because I think most people have a 
heart. And so by being emotionally vulnerable, I think you 
would tell the best story of all.
    Ms. He. Yes, I appreciate very much you guys holding this 
hearing today at the birthday of Gao Zhisheng. Also I 
appreciate the Catholic University--United States Catholic 
University to hold the Gao Zhisheng's sculpture. And there was 
a sculpture last year, was transferred to the university over 
there.
    Yes, even though we do not know if he is alive or dead, but 
we really appreciate very much. Yes, we only hope that he is 
still alive.
    Mr. McCormick. So I just want to point out that this is 
real life and death. That what we are dealing with isn't an 
abstract thing, that is actually has people involved, people's 
lives involved, an entire nation of people's lives, the most 
populous nation in the world, or at least right up there.
    There is a book that I read not that long ago called 
``Gulag Archipelago,`` Solzhenitsyn. From about 1917 to about 
1957, I believe, about 60 million people died, either directly 
as physical violence or through starvation. As any great 
college professor could probably tell you, one of the most 
worrisome human atrocities of all time.
    You are the next author of the next book of why this 
matters and the real consequences of policy and the real 
consequences of not stepping in and doing something when the 
world should be paying attention. And actually not just talking 
about what makes a dollar, but actually what makes lives.
    I just wanted to point that out, that this is not 
unprecedented, but it is important. And that we should be 
developed as a world enough to the point where we should 
actually be taking chances when it comes to standing up for 
what is right, standing up for life, standing up for humanity, 
standing up for people, rather than just making a business 
deal.
    So for that, I thank each and every one of you for being 
here. I want to acknowledge that you are the next authors of 
history, and that we should be there to help you author that 
book as we step in and participate.
    And with that, I yield.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you. I too have read the book by 
Solzhenitsyn, and I remember one of the biggest takeaways, 
because my first trip on human rights was to Moscow-Leningrad 
in 1982 on behalf of Soviet Jews.
    And it rang so true. It is not that they do not disbelieve 
God, it is not atheism. They hate God. And he made that so 
clear. It is militant atheism.
    So yes, and you are right, we have got the book right here 
on what needs to be written, that was an excellent point. Thank 
you, Dr. Carter.
    The Interpreter. Ms. Geng has two requests. The first that 
there are two CCP government officials who have been promoted 
by their actions in persecuting Gao Zhisheng. She wants these 
two government officials to be sanctioned under the Global 
Magnitsky Act. And she wants to know how to do that.
    And you know, we have two names here, that the first one is 
Hu Minglang. He was promoted from the local government official 
to the Provincial Director of Ministry of--Department of Public 
Security.
    Another guy is Tu Hongwei
    [phonetic]. He was promoted from the local provincial 
Communist Party Committee member to the Vice Director of the 
Ministry of the Public Security at the central government 
level.
    So these two, and actually she hopes that----
    Mr. Smith. There are a number of ways of doing it. One is 
obviously for you to provide it to them. We will send it as 
well as a committee, and I thank you for making us aware of 
that.
    The Interpreter. Yes, another----
    Mr. Smith. And because obviously that act is useless if it 
is not continually taking in egregious violators of human 
rights for sanctioning. So thank you.
    The Interpreter. Yes. The other request she has that Gao 
Zhisheng has published, I mean, he has written a lot of things. 
One of things is the 2016 Human Rights Reports, which has 
160,000 captives. And also, he has experienced being tortured.
    And he also wrote the constitution, in the draft of 
constitution of the Federation of China, like for the future 
China. And also the public letters.
    So she hopes--and there is another book written by some 
American author, or by him, by Gao Zhisheng himself. It is 
called ``Unwavering Convictions.`` So she hopes that this can 
be archived by the Congress where the public can search and 
then read.
    She wanted to know, you know, the address she can mail 
these documents to.
    Mr. Smith. We will followup with you on that.
    The Interpreter. OK.
    Mr. Smith. And great idea, thank you.
    The Interpreter. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you so much.
    Now, just for the record, as a result of this hearing, I am 
going to introduce a bill calling for the release of your two 
husbands, and others. But obviously because you stand for the, 
not their concern but the concerns of all of the others. And we 
will ask that there would be a report by the Administration as 
to what they are doing.
    And I do not care who is in the White House, you know, we 
all have an obligation, I think a moral duty that is not easily 
satisfied to stand for the weakest and most vulnerable and the 
oppressed.
    And so we all have to redouble our efforts. It goes for 
Congress, it goes for the White House, State Department, and 
all others. So we will be introducing that, and I look forward 
to your help in drafting it.
    I will also say just a point of, as a direct result of our 
bill that just passed a couple of weeks ago on forced organ 
harvesting, the Chinese Government Embassy put out a rather 
almost bizarre missive to us claiming that they are all lies. 
That the Falun Gong are a cult. They are inhuman. They made the 
point that there is no Uyghur genocide.
    And in addition to that, the--so I wrote back to Xi 
Jinping, especially since his foreign ministry said that people 
can come and look themselves at what is going on in Xinjiang, 
and I said I would like to lead the delegation there.
    Our Chief of Staff on the China Commission, Piero Tozzi, 
and I would put together a group, as well as our distinguished 
leader of the Subcommittee, staff director, Mary Vigil, to go 
there, spend at least a week. So that is pending before Xi 
Jinping's people.
    You are saying there is nothing to hide? Well, we want to 
come, we want to look at it. And I am hoping that they will 
take us up on it.
    And I have been in many gulags all over the world, so there 
is the possibility, you know, when you ask, and since they said 
it is an engraved invitation, we want to come. And I think that 
would be very helpful in the process.
    I do get concerned, again, when they say there is nothing 
but lies coming out of Congress. They said that our bill on 
forced organ harvesting is one big lie.
    And yet we have irrefutable evidence and first-person 
eyewitness accounts. And again, I think you, Ambassador 
Bremberg, for the tremendous work you have done in compiling 
this. And Ethan Gutmann, who is, you know, we have had him 
testify before. He remains an amazing source of credible 
information.
    And so you know, that bill I believe will pass the Senate 
and will get to the White House. We have worked with the State 
Department. It is a collaborative bill, and it is totally 
bipartisan.
    So my hope is that we can really take that next step and 
say this cruelty that is reminiscent of the what the Nazis did. 
Joseph Mengele, he did not have this ability, but if he did, he 
would. So we need to stop this horrible practice.
    And this big lie missive that we get from the Chinese 
Government reminds me of when Chi Haotian, the Operational 
Commander of Tiananmen Square, came to the White House during 
the Clinton Administration. They have him an 19-gun salute, 
which I thought was absurd. And he went to the Army War College 
and said nobody died at Tiananmen Square, nobody.
    Well, I put together a hearing within 2 days inviting the 
Chinese Embassy, invited him to come and give an account. We 
had all these survivors of Tiananmen. Even a People's Daily 
editor who spoke truth and then all of a sudden found himself 
in prison.
    And we said, you know, you are lying. You may get away with 
it in China, but you are not going to get away with it here. So 
again, all of you speak truth to power in such a way that it 
makes such a difference.
    And if we are quiet or if we acquiesce, we enable gross 
evil. And none of you believe that, because that is why you are 
doing the great work you are doing.
    I do have a little concern, any maybe you can answer this, 
Ms. Wang, about you know, I believe in scholarships and 
bringing people in. The question comes in terms of doing that 
who vets who comes here. I had a number of hearings on 
Confucius Centers, and one especially interesting hearing with 
NYU, with the Chancellor. Very, very fine person.
    But they have a campus in Shanghai, largely paid for by the 
Chinese Communist Party. They charge about $45,000, or 
thereabouts. And it just, you know, I asked him hard questions 
about who gets in.
    Who vets the, you know, does the Chinese Communist Party 
have a corner on who the enrollees are? How free can they 
speak? Can they mention the Dalai Lama, for example, on campus 
and not be censured when they walk off the campus?
    So I invited myself, and he was kind enough, because I was 
barred from going to China up until that point because of the 
2008 Olympics. So I got a visa and went and gave a speech on 
human rights. And I am very grateful for that.
    But I am concerned about the complicity of our higher 
education. Confucius Centers, you know, the bloom is off the 
rose big time about how complicit they are the soft power 
efforts by the Chinese Communist Party. And it is also a way of 
keeping, you know, an eye and ear on their Chinese students who 
are going to those schools.
    So if there is a way that that could be done so that, you 
know, the true democrats, small D, get those scholarships, I am 
all for it. But I am just not--maybe you have some insights on 
that.
    Ms. Wang. Well, Human Rights Watch approached the Confucius 
Institutes because it is a Trojan Horse, and you know, or a 
government-funded, Chinese Government-funded programs, or you 
know, tasked by the Chinese Government's missions.
    So I think it is a easy solution is the U.S. Government and 
U.S. entities to find--fund a scholarship. So the U.S. 
Government can choose who can come in terms of who can vet. I 
mean, I am happy to help.
    I have many, you know, human rights actors in China who ask 
me that they want a sponsorship to come to the U.S. to meet 
their counterpart to learn from other activists in the U.S. You 
know, I can facilitate that. And many other civil society 
organizations can facilitate that.
    And I do think there is a tremendous need from the 
activists that they want to be here and to learn so they can be 
more empowered. And if the U.S. started to fund those programs, 
then you have the power to select how come here. And there are 
a lot of people who can help, you know, to make sure it is the 
right people who get selected.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you. I just note for the record that 
Sophie Richardson testified at our hearing on Confucius Centers 
and did a great job, so thank you.
    Just for the record, and then any final comments any of you 
would like to make, we have a hearing scheduled on the China 
Commission on May 11. It will be on Hong Kong and with a focus 
on Jimmy Lai. And we are hoping to have his son, Sebastian, 
testify. So that is, you know, in the works, and we will 
probably do another one.
    And you know, even there, just you know, official 
Washington, right after the Umbrella--and Mr. Kellogg, you made 
a good point about 2014, and we immediately introduced the Hong 
Kong Human Rights Democracy Act in 2014, believing if you 
convey to Xi Jinping, who is really calling the shots, that 
there will be dire consequences, we are not bluffing, we are 
not fooling.
    And I had official Washington, including the Committee, 
tell me I am a solution in search of a problem. He will never 
crack down, he will never, never, never. I got it from the 
White House and from the State Department, and we couldn't move 
the bill.
    And finally in a bipartisan way, we did move the bill. And 
we had some really, really great people come, Joshua Wong and 
others, to a press conference and pushed it, got it passed. But 
it was too late, it was just too late. And so hopefully we can 
get, you know, we can learn from those mistakes.
    I am going to push very hard. I have had meetings with the 
Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Jason Smith, who is 
very focused on China and PNTR. And you know, he had a hearing 
this week, and some of the--one of the witnesses said it is 
time to re-look at that.
    Well, I had that bill that would take it away, unless 
serious and sustained progress is made in human rights and 
includes release of all political prisoners and the end of all 
torture.
    So we missed it for a quarter of a century, more, long, 
since May 26, 1996, when human rights was de-linked from trade. 
Let's get it back. And I think it would have a--it would make a 
huge difference, so we are going to push that bill very, very 
hard. Your help on that would be very helpful.
    Oh, we also have another bill, Piero just reminded me, the 
Hong Kong Economic Trade Office Certification Act, which would 
look to end the New York, DC, and San Francisco Trade Offices 
that are--Marco Rubio introduced it on the set-aside, I 
introduced it here.
    So we are looking to get that passed as well. And I know 
Mr. Kellogg, on Hong Kong, that would be something I know you 
are very concerned about as well.
    Any further comments or final comments? Mr. Fu?
    Mr. Fu. I also recommend Congress to host a hearing on the 
transnational repression effort. And I myself has experienced 
some, multiple incidents, of course back to 2020.
    My home in West Texas being besieged for 3 months, we were 
exiled from our own home on American soil. The FBI, law 
enforcement had to evacuat my whole family, plus our guest from 
Taiwan and put us in a private jet, hiding in different 
locations for 3 months.
    Every day there was a group of communist thugs wearing 
masks surrounding my house from 9 o'clock-4 every day, 
sometimes as many one--over a hundred people from San 
Francisco, from Los Angeles.
    And now we know of course, this week I am glad to see that 
FBI and the DOJ had taken action, taken action by shutting down 
one of the overseas Chinese police station in Manhattan. But 
according to the New York Post, there are six more Chinese 
overseas police stations, one still in New York, one in 
Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and one in Minnesota, one 
is in Nebraska.
    So I think, I hope that law enforcement and Congress can 
press the law enforcement to take action and not let them 
continue.
    And I recently was singled out just in recent months, all 
of a sudden I got a phone call from LAPD, NYPD, Houston Police, 
and even Washington, DC. Basically, they said I booked in 
luxury hotels with a bomb threat under my name.
    It is, I mean, everywhere. So, so far, of course I 
explained to the law enforcement, the LAPD detectives, I said 
this is a communist party's kind of new tactic of transnational 
repression, you know, threats against me.
    And even as recent as last week, they booked taxi services 
from Washington, DC, to Midland, Texas. Book online taxi, 
basically said. I got a phone call that said, we are supposed 
to pick you up from the Chinese embassy. Someone booked a taxi 
for me.
    And so these are the kind of new ways of transnational 
repressive tactics. I hope, you know, Congress can pay 
attention, yes.
    Mr. Smith. On that point, we are already planning another 
hearing of the CSC--China Commission, I should say, on that, 
probably in May.
    And Co-Chairman Merkley and I are working on legislation, 
he has already introduced his, that would advance that ball to 
try to get more being done, more focus, more law enforcement 
attention to the abuse of the diaspora.
    Mr. Bremberg. Thank you for this important hearing. I just 
wanted to mention, as I had said in my opening remarks, there 
is so much that the United States can do, and we do not have 
time to go through all of that today, but I just did want to 
mention not just passing the STOP Act that I urge the Senate to 
take up.
    The United States, particularly the executive branch, has a 
multitude of tools at its disposal right now in terms of 
elevating sanctions, increasing pressures on U.S. capital 
market investments in China. The ranking member mentioned some 
of the economic concerns around importations, which are a 
problem.
    My personal opinion is that the bigger threat currently is 
about western and U.S. investments in China. And it is quite 
unconscionable that Americans, in fact most Americans through 
passive investments are in fact funding human rights abuses and 
genocide.
    And following up that actions need to speak louder than 
words, obviously the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act went 
into effect. Unfortunately, the implementation on the Uyghur 
Forced Labor Prevention Act has not been what it needs to be.
    Since its effective date, I do not believe a single company 
has been added to the list. Those are all companies that were 
previously set before the bill went into effect. There are 
thousands of companies that are clearly identified and need to 
be put on that list.
    And then just last, there's many that can be taken. Last, 
in response to a comment that Bob and you made before about 
speaking for the prisoners by name. The reference to President 
Reagan having that list.
    When I went to Geneva, I had never directly engaged with 
officials from the PRC before. At one point, and I cannot go 
into detail, the PRC Ambassador asked me to come meet on an 
unrelated topic.
    And I asked the State Department, and I had fantastic 
Foreign Service officers working for me in the mission in 
Geneva. I said where is my list? And I said to ask, I want a 
list of political prisoners that I can--whatever they ask me 
for, I want to turn around and say, well, I want these 
prisoners released, or I want to know the status of these 
prisoners.
    And the frustrating thing to me was the list did not exist, 
OK. So I made one up and brought a list and spoke with the 
Chinese Ambassador about it at the time and raised it on 
multiple occasions.
    But this is an important point that I think Congress can 
help put pressure on the executive branch on, that 
understanding that, you know, the executive branch always wants 
to keep quiet about certainly ongoing activities, but at least 
looking back over some appropriate period of time.
    It is really I think important for Congress to understand, 
OK, over some period of time, what attempts did you make in 
seeking to release prisoners, and what, you know, tools did you 
use and what were the outcomes. Because I think shamefully 
right now, if we looked at that record right now, we would see 
very little has been done.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Smith. Thank you.
    Ms. Luo. I want to support Mr. Bremberg's idea. How to say, 
as a family I of course would like to be released, my family. 
But the name of the political prisoner in China is really too 
long. It is a long list.
    I am not saying we shouldn't mention the name, it is great. 
Actually, in my written statement, first I write if we are 
doing any business or say American they want our business to go 
to China, please release all these people. Well, how do you 
explain you can respect a rule if you treat people like this?
    If you do not respect your own laws, how can we expect you 
respect international laws or basic rule of commercial doing 
business? So I will say it is--the economic discussion with a 
company, they want to go to China, do business. They always 
forgot how terrible the situation in China.
    I really wish these kind of terrible cases of Geng He's 
husband, of my husband, and Xu Zhiyong, and the tons and tons 
of the political prisoners, they should know China is very 
dangerous to do business.
    They can put an end of your employee. They can put an end 
of your employee or your managers into prison without reason, 
without any--they can lie to the world. They can do whatever 
they want, this is one point.
    Second point regarding the sanction of the companies. 
Support the business in China, especially some forced labor 
business, the list of company as for my knowledge from my 
friend, they are doing--they use the forced labor product into 
the American market. These kind of things should strictly 
prohibited and not allow them to do it.
    So that is my two points. The commercial is definitely 
related with the human rights. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith. I would just, Ambassador Bremberg, we did, I 
chaired a hearing 2 days ago on enforcement of the Uyghur 
Forced Labor Act, and some good things have happened. I think 
CBP is very sincere. But there's huge gaps, huge gaps in terms 
of the entities list. The fact that there are so few companies 
on it.
    The whole issue of transferring the goods to places like 
Vietnam and Malaysia, solar panels and the like, where all of a 
sudden it is made in Vietnam. No it is made in Xinjiang, what 
are you doing? And so there has got to be a much more 
aggressive thing.
    And one of the things that jumped off the page 2 days ago 
that I thought about, but not the way I did after the hearing, 
was that the de minimis rule of anything $800 or less does not 
get checked by anyone, and yet how do we even know?
    And there's three million packages per day coming in from 
Xinjiang. Per day. That is a lot of goods making their way into 
our borders.
    And I even asked our witnesses, you know, is anybody even 
checking to see if the $800, you know, how do you calculate 
that in that package it is $800 or less, and therefore it does 
not have to be checked.
    So those loopholes have to be closed quickly. It could be 
done administratively, and that is what we are asking in 
followup. And we are looking at legislation as well. So points 
very well taken on that.
    On the data base, you know, you make a very good point 
about that as well, with the State Department. I remember, and 
this is just a little anecdote, but Frank Wolf and I were there 
before the 2008 Olympics. We asked what prisoners, and this is 
Bush now, what prisoners are you raising to assist?
    They had no data base. We had one at the China Commission, 
an excellent one, very well vetted. So we gave them names and 
said please, would you raise these names.
    And to someone's point, I think maybe it was Bob's point 
earlier, Bob Fu, about, you know, Schultz and the whole--we 
should have learned so much from the cause of Soviet Jews. 
Because every time somebody from the U.S. Government went over 
there during the Reagan Administration, especially the 
Secretary of State, he had a list.
    And they would argue and advocate for them. When I went 
there many times, I always had a list. And I always do that 
with other places like China. But they do not. And you know, if 
they think, you know, a trade mission is coming in or something 
from the Commerce Department, they should have a list.
    And every single time, it has to be an engagement. Because 
as you pointed out so well, Sophie, just a moment ago, how do 
you trust them on their laws, including intellectual property 
rights infringement, if they cannot even treat their own people 
with respect.
    So, excellent point. And so we have got a lot to do.
    Ms. Wang, did you have anything further you want to say? 
OK.
    Thank you so much. The hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record 
at 1:26 p.m.]

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