Opening Remarks at CECC Hearing on Urging China’s President Xi Jinping to Stop State-Sponsored Human Rights Abuses

Sept.18, 2015

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Commission, thank you for hosting this important hearing.

26 years ago, after the Tiananmen massacre, we came to Washington DC to plea the U.S. government to link China’s most favorite nation (MFN) status with its human rights record. Without such a link, we argued, trading with China would like a blood transfusion to the Communist regime, making it more aggressive and harming the interests of both American and Chinese people.

But our warning fell on deaf ears.  After a lengthy debate, the U.S. government decided to grant permanent MFN to China contending economic growth would automatically bring democracy to the country.

With money and technologies pouring in from the U.S. and other Western countries, with their free markets wide open for the Chinese-made goods, the Chinese Communist regime not only survived the 1989 crisis, it has catapulted into the 21st century. The country’s explosive economic growth has brought it from near the bottom of the world in GDP per capita to become the number two economy in the world; but democracy remains yet a far-fetched dream. Worse, Xi Jinping regime, as you have already heard, has launched numerous assaults against China’s civil society on a scale and with a ferocity unseen in the past two decades, making Xi Jinping China’s worst  leader in 20 years in terms of human rights record.

China uses its economic power gained with the help of the West to build a formidable, fully modernized military, that has reached every corner of the earth. With this unprecedented power, China is now forcefully demanding a re-write of international norms and rules. China wants to create a new international order with its dominance in the Asia-Pacific region as the centerpiece, threatening regional and world peace.

What went wrong with the America’s engagement policy?

In my view, the failure lies primarily in the lacking of moral and strategic clarity in its design and implementation.

The origin of the error can trace back to the early 1970s when then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger claiming that by integrating Beijing into the international community economically and politically, China would behave responsibly, abiding by international norms and rules.

This amoral, geo-political and short-term pragmatic strategy fails to see the evil nature and hegemonic ambition of the communist regime as reiterated recently in Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” of a great red empire, to replace the western civilization with the so called China model.

Washington Policy makers also fail to understand that economic growth may be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, for cultivating democracy. Consequently, this policy has fundamentally undermined America’s national interests and security.

The alternative is to engage China with a moral strategic compass: China under the CCP’s rule cannot rise peacefully, and its transition to a democratic country that respects human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and religion, is in everyone’s best interest, including China’s own.

China’s totalitarian regime has hijacked 1.3 billion Chinese people, imposing a political system on them by force and coercion, running the country like a slave-owner of the past, obliterating their self-governance, and controlling their life without their consent and denying universal values to justify its dictatorship. To support this regime is morally corrupt as well as strategically stupid.

Like Frankenstein’s monster, China is now seeking revenge against its creator — the West. It will destabilize and endanger the world, for the China model, better called the China disease like the black plague, has spread and infected the international community, but most people in the world are not aware of it, and many even being fooled to believe it is the future.  Now it is the time for the U.S. to begin the era of engaging China with Moral and Strategic Clarity

To start, the Congress should pass a China Democracy Act.

It would be a binding legislation flatly stating congressional judgment that enhancing human rights, and democratic values in China is decidedly in America’s national interest. That would preclude the currently widespread but inaccurate claim that Congress must balance,on the one hand, it’s claim to support the universal value of human rights, and, on the other hand, “America’s national interest. “

The bill also would require a report from the President to Congress every year on how any government program, policy, or action during the prior twelve months has strengthened or weakened human rights and democratic values in China.

All federal departments of government – every single one – should have to report on what they’re doing to bring democracy to China by advancing human rights and the rule of law there. The Act also put them on notice to take no action, adopt no policy and implement no program that would undercut the democracy movement, or weaken human rights in China.

Such a “China Democracy Act” would give us a better idea of what successes we’ve had so far, what caused them, and how we should increase financial resources and deploy them to promote democracy and human rights.

If America expressly commits to strengthening those ideals, and visibly implements that commitment, it will enable the people of China and indeed the rest of the world to see that the words of Americans’ proud promises to support liberty everywhere are fully matched by its deeds.