As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary this week, bipartisan lawmakers introduced a resolution on June 25 condemning a century of gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the regime against its own citizens.
The resolution, led by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), lists more than 30 atrocities committed by the CCP from the 1930s to today, and vows that the United States will stand with the “Chinese people in their struggle for liberty.”
Among the atrocities highlighted in the resolution were a series of disastrous campaigns helmed by the CCP’s first leader, Mao Zedong. They include a massive land reform movement in the 1940s that saw millions of landlords and others deemed to be “bourgeoisie” beaten and murdered; the “Great Leap Foward” industrial plan, which sought to rapidly develop China’s steel production to British or American levels but resulted in modern history’s worst man-made disaster, with tens of millions of people dying of starvation; and the Cultural Revolution that saw the arbitrary arrest, torture, and execution of up to tens of millions of citizens deemed to be “counter-revolutionaries.”
The CCP’s bloody military suppression of unarmed student protesters during the Tiananmen Square massacre, as well as its ongoing clampdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, were also referenced in the bill.
Gallagher noted that the regime’s abuses in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Tibet today are “not a new development.”
“From the very start, brutalizing its own population was hard-wired into the CCP’s core DNA. To understand where the Party is going, we must first understand its past,” he wrote in a June 25 Twitter post.
Co-sponsor Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said that throughout its history, the Party has “used brutal Marxist doctrine to suppress individual liberty and drive unspeakable human rights atrocities.”
“As they use the 100th anniversary to legitimize their malign actions, it is more important than ever to be clear-eyed about the true nature of the CCP, which is the greatest threat to the foundation of democracy of our generation,” McCaul said in a statement.
The Chinese regime is currently preparing for major celebrations on July 1—the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party. Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City complex, and other sites around Beijing have been closed in the lead-up, and the event itself has been shrouded in secrecy.
“This centenary is not a cause for celebration—it is a time to reflect upon the egregious acts the Party has committed and honor the tens of millions of victims who suffered under the Party’s cruel regime,” Gallagher said in a statement.
The resolution calls on the U.S. government and allies to support human rights in China, “including through the use of technology to support and enable free expression.” Chinese citizens lack access to uncensored information, as they’re sealed off from the global internet through the regime’s “Great Firewall”—the world’s largest internet blockade and censorship apparatus.
The resolution concludes by stating that it “looks forward to the day that that Chinese Communist Party no longer exists.”
