WASHINGTON, D.C. – The so-called "economic reform" in China has failed to improve the abysmal human rights situation in China, and in major areas it is getting worse, according to experts at a hearing in Washington, D.C. on April 19, on the eve of Hu Jintao's visit to the White House.
"[T]he current Chinese regime is one of the very worst violators of human rights in the world… Few if any nations can even begin to match this unseemly record, from the systematic denial of political freedom and use of torture to interference in the most private matters of family and conscience," said Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey.
Smith chairs the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, which is under the House Committee of Foreign Relations. "Human Rights in China: Improving or Deteriorating Conditions?" was the title of the April 19 hearing.
"[T]here is the special hate Beijing pours on the Falun Gong… brutal campaign to completely eradicate Falun Gong through whatever means necessary… Like all dictators and totalitarian terror system, the PRC fears and hates what it cannot control. So it decided to destroy and intimidate those who practice Falun Gong. We see before us a Stalinist nightmare revived for the 21st century," said Rep. Chris Smith.
At the hearing, a wide range of major areas of deteriorating human rights situation in China was reviewed.
"We have all heard the recent horrific stories that China is now targeting the thousands of innocent Falun Gong prisoners it holds for organ harvesting, and perhaps not even waiting until they are dead," said Rep. Chris Smith.
The Internet Increasingly Used as a Tool of Repression
"[T]he situation with Cisco has already attained IBM-Holocaust status, and it will only get worse," said Ethan Gutmann, author of Losing the New China and former vice-chair of the Government Relations Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce Beijing.
"[W]e really don't know how many Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and small-time labor activists… can be attributed to Cisco's Policenet… And if recent reports are given credence, a hospital basement near Shenyang was being filled with thousands of Falun Gong practitioners for organ harvesting while Cisco was training the Chinese police," said Gutmann.
Ethan Gutmann characterized the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006 as a "tragedy", not an "overreaction" as some commentators put it, and that it may not be comprehensive enough. He explained that he certainly does not want intrusive government intervention and oversight of U.S. companies. The tragedy started "in the very early stages of American involvement in the Chinese Internet. It's the history of a collision course… between American corporate decisions and American values."
Internet users in China have exploded to 110 million in recent years, and there are over 13 million bloggers in China. "But lost in all these figures is the simple point that Chinese Internet freedom has actually been contracting since 1998," said Gutmann.
Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google representatives argued that "they were merely respecting local laws. Yet the laws are vague and contradictory at best," said Gutmann.
"For Western Internet companies the crackdown should have signaled an end to cyber-utopian illusions. Instead it signaled a new boom market for companies such as Nortel, Cisco and Sun Microsystems," said Gutmann.
Brutal Repression of Workers Key to Unfair Trade Advantages
"Rather than showing signs of improvement, all reports indicated conditions are worsening," said Thea M. Lee, Policy Director of American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
Minimum wages, maximum hours, and health and safety rules are not enforced. Forced labor camps are widespread in China. Some estimates of forced prison laborers range from 1.75 million to 6 million and higher. And child labor is becoming more common.
"These abuses allow producers in China, including many multinational and U.S. corporations, to operate in an environment free of independent unions, to pay illegally low wages, and to profit from the widespread violation of workers' basic human rights," said Thea Lee.
"[S]ystematic and sometimes brutal repression of fundamental workers' rights is a key contributor to the unfair advantage Chinese exports enjoy in the U.S. market and in third-country markets," she continued.
The Tragedies of China's One-Child Policy
"Coercive family-planning policy in China has slaughtered more innocent children than any war in human history… China's one-child per couple policy, decreed in 1999, has killed hundreds of millions babies… Brothers and sisters are illegal. Sex selection abortions – a direct consequence of allowing only one baby per couple, has led to gendercide – approximately 100 million girls are missing – in China," said Congressman Chris Smith.
"Networks of paid informants are used to report on unauthorized pregnancies; entire villages are punished for out-of-plan births. Officials conduct nighttime raids on couples suspected of having unauthorized children, and they keep detailed records of the sexual activity of every woman in their jurisdiction," said Steven W. Mosher, president of Population Research Institute.
According to Mosher, the one-child policy is based on ideas from the West, "more precisely from the notorious 1974 Club of Rome study that claimed we were breeding ourselves to extinction. The Limits to Growth computer simulation, carried out by a group of MIT-based systems engineers, predicted that the world would come to an end by about 2070 if population growth continued. The authors saw 'no other avenue to survival' than population control."
However, according to Mosher, the late Julian L. Simon, professor of business administration at the University of Maryland, said, " The Limits to Growth has been blasted as foolishness or fraud by almost every economist who has read it closely or reviewed it in print."
"The most decisive refutation of the study came from the Club of Rome itself, which – two years after its publication – suddenly 'reversed its position' and 'came out for more growth'," said Mosher.
China also began to experience dramatic declines in the birth rates. Nevertheless, top Communist Party leaders convinced the nation that overpopulation, instead of economic mismanagement or political turmoil, was the true source of China's backwardness. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping ordered Party officials to "Use whatever means you must to reduce the population."
"As the case of China puts in stark relief, the real danger to the people of the developing world is not 'overpopulation' at all, but rather alarmist notions of overpopulation… Instead of trying to lift their poor out of poverty, governments instead try to reduce their numbers. Authentic economic development is neglected, human-rights abuses abound, and everyone's freedoms are put at risk," according to Mosher.
Suppression of Freedom of Belief Worsening
"Citizens practicing a faith other than officially sanctioned religions are often subject to torture, imprisonment, and death, at which time prisoner organs are frequently harvested to meet demand", said Chris Smith.
The promise of religious freedom by the Chinese communist regime is a false one, according to Joseph Kung, president of the Cardinal Kung Foundation.
The Chinese communist regime views religion as a threat to its power, according to Joseph Kung.
"The persecution continues and gets worse and bolder at a time when China is making significant economic progress, at a time when China has joined the World Trade Organization... at a time when [China] will host the Olympic Games in 2008," said Joseph Kung.
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