US Commission Calls for Action Against China’s Rights Abuses, Both Internally and Abroad

Protesters stand around the gates of a stage while holding a demonstration urging then-U.S. President George W. Bush to cancel his plans to attend the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing at Lafayette Park across the street from the White House in Washington on March 31, 2008. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

China’s “horrific” rights abuses and trampling on global order require a “consistent and coordinated” response from Washington and its allies, according to an annual report (pdf) released by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) on March 31.

Whether it is systematic repression of human rights domestically, globally economic coercion, or aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy, all of Beijing’s efforts expose its bullying tactics, according to the CECC.

“This report calls attention to the limitations of China’s model of governance in meeting the needs of the Chinese people and in respecting fundamental rights both in China and globally,” CECC Chairman Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in a Thursday press release.

The 334-page 2021 report was jointly issued with Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), the co-chair of the commission, who deemed the document as a moral obligation to speak for those repressed and censored under the rule of the communist regime.

Repression at Home

CECC recommends U.S. Congress and the Biden administration to call on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to guarantee basic freedom to all citizens in accordance with its international human rights obligations, including Uyghur Muslims, Tibetians, Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and the people of Hong Kong.

The annual report came 10 days after a 65-year-old mother died in custody in China after being force-fed and tortured for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation discipline that is based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Practitioners have been brutally persecuted by the Chinese regime for more than two decades, reported the Falun Dafa Information Center. Upon her death, her family members saw her cut open esophagus and blood-stained face.

“In mainland China, authorities abandoned any pretense that the Chinese government respects religious beliefs and practices or ethnic minority cultures,” the report reads.

The regime sentenced at least 622 Falun Gong practitioners in 2020, “with the largest numbers in Liaoning, Shandong, Sichuan, Hebei, and Jilin provinces,” said the report, citing Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that tracks the persecution of the spiritual group in China.

Meanwhile, although China has long rejected accusations of abuses in the Xinjiang region, abundant findings including but not limited to sexual violence, forced sterilizations, intrauterine device insertions, and abortions, bring to light the genocide that China committed against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, the commission said.

A farmer picks cotton from a field in Hami, Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, China on Nov. 1, 2012. China Daily/Reuters

It also called on Congress to take a “zero-tolerance approach” to forced labor imports, which pose a “significant risk” to global supply chains, “in a wide range of industries including cotton harvesting, solar panel production, apparel, electronics, and personal protective equipment.”

Besides China’s ongoing repression of religious minorities, in September 2020, the regime implemented a new policy in the Inner Mongolia region to mandate Mandarin Chinese-only teaching, which would gradually wipe out the cultural identity of millions of ethnic Mongols.

This Party-led governance model in China, said the report, aims to achieve “high-functioning authoritarianism in complete disregard of the human spirit.”

Outside mainland China, Beijing’s assault on Hong Kong’s freedoms had also reached “an unprecedented level” following the enactment of the Beijing-imposed national security law, CECC stated. The Asian financial hub has since seen rewritten electoral rules, disqualified pro-democracy candidates, arbitrarily postponed elections, disbanded independent media, and jailed activists.

The bipartisan and bicameral commission also calls to expand immigration pathways for those fleeing the CCP’s persecution and extend the ban on the export of crowd control equipment to the Hong Kong police.

Overseas Abuses

While in foreign lands, the regime levied import restrictions on products from countries that China has bilateral tensions with, including Norway, Australia, the Philippines, and South Korea, according to the report. Such “dramatic new steps” amount to cross-border economic coercion and the stifling of free expression globally, especially to those who dare to criticize its iron-grip rule.

“Legal authorities needed to create a global reserve fund to assist companies, industries, and municipalities affected by targeted economic coercion,” CECC suggests, in order to build a global coalition and reduce vulnerability against economic coercion from China.

In response to China’s digital surveillance overseas, the commission said the Biden administration and Congress should also collaborate to establish an interagency ‘‘China Censorship Monitor and Action Group’’ to address China’s censorship and intimidation of American citizens, legal residents, and companies.

China could have 540 million surveillance cameras in use in 2021 and continued to export such systems to other authoritarian states, the report noted.

Yet defending values should not abet anti-Asian discrimination or fuel Beijing’s propaganda, the report said.

“The Party has sought to exploit protests in the United States, such as those against anti-Asian discrimination, as well as xenophobic rhetoric, to further its objectives.”

It suggests the administration extend to any U.S. citizen a private right of action to pursue civil litigation for wrongful employment termination or demotion for supporting human rights in China.