A House bipartisan effort to expose foreign state actors targeting dissidents on U.S. soil has drawn applause from Chinese rights activists, including a recent victim of communist China’s repression in San Francisco.
If the bill is enacted, the U.S. attorney general, in coordination with relevant federal agencies, would be required to submit a report annually to House and Senate committees on cases of transnational repression against U.S. citizens or individuals in the United States. The committees would include foreign affairs and intelligence committees in both chambers.
Each case listed in the report must have information on diplomatic measures, law enforcement actions, and protective measures provided to victims.
“With transnational repression on the rise, the American people deserve to know if foreign governments are working to intimidate, harass, harm or kill individuals within the United States whom they view as hostile to their regimes,” Schiff said in a statement last month.
“China has attempted to silence its critics by employing intimidation and harassment, particularly against members of the Chinese diaspora living in the United States but having relatives, citizenship, or financial ties to mainland China or Hong Kong,” the bill says.
The bill highlighted the violence on the streets of San Francisco in November last year when some supporters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attacked peaceful protesters from China, East Turkestan, Hong Kong, and Tibet who were there to protest CCP leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the city for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
San Francisco Incident
One of the victims of the attacks in San Francisco was Chen Chuangchuang, a lawyer based in New York and Los Angeles and the executive director of the National Committee of the Democracy Party of China.In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, Chen lauded the House lawmakers for their effort and said that the CCP’s transnational repression threatens U.S. national security and interests.
“This is a way to remind people in the free world that the threat from the CCP is real and serious,” Chen said.
He said that the free world—including the United States, Australia, Europe, and Canada—needs to “stand with the Chinese people who are pursuing freedom.”
According to the report, Chen identified his attacker as “an associate” of Joe Ma Zuolin, chairman of the East Bay Toishan Association. The report alleged that the association “has had a cordial relationship with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] consulate of San Francisco.”
Wang Juntao, chairman of the National Committee of the Democracy Party of China, recently told The Epoch Times that it was uplifting to learn about Schiff’s bill.
“I think now we see that all different areas of the international community have a clearer and clearer understanding of the nature of the CCP,” Wang said.
Persecution
Schiff’s legislation also mentioned the CCP’s attempts to suppress Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Falun Gong practitioners overseas.“There is further evidence that China continues to repress members of Uyghur ethnic communities who are living abroad by threatening their relatives with detention. China has also conducted surveillance against Tibetan activists,” the bill says.
“There is also credible evidence that China is repressing the freedoms of members of the Falun Gong.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that encourages its adherents to live by moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice was enormously popular in China by the late 1990s, with official estimates putting the number of people having taken up the practice at more than 70 million.
Perceiving the practice’s popularity as a threat to its rule, the CCP ordered the eradication of Falun Gong in 1999, launching a campaign to violently arrest Falun Gong practitioners and throw them into prisons, brainwashing centers, and forced labor camps.
Sheng Xue, a Canada-based journalist and writer, said the legislation is “very important.”
“Many Americans believed that as long as they helped China become an open and wealthy country ... China would transform into a democratic country,” Sheng told The Epoch Times, adding that those who hold this belief don’t truly understand the Chinese regime’s tyrannical nature.
Such a belief has allowed the CCP to “expand its influence unscrupulously in the United States” and target those who have fled China, Sheng said.
“This has greatly harmed the U.S. political system and national security. So this bill is essential,” she said.
