Ocean County Leader

The following are excerpts of opening remarks by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, at the congressional hearing he chaired on July 11 entitled "Corporate Complicity: Subsidizing the PRC's Human Rights Violations":

          On July 11th’s hearing “Corporate Complicity: Subsidizing the PRC’s Human Rights Violations” will come to order.

          Since the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989—and for some even before—far too many elite leaders of America’s most profitable corporations and like-minded government enablers here and around the world have embraced and welcomed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with open arms.

          The predictably false hope that robust trade would somehow help China matriculate from a dictatorship to a functioning democracy had no compelling precedent in history—especially a country owned lot, stock and barrel by force by a brutal communist party.

          That false hope has been further exposed every year since the early 1990s by China’s ever worsening abuse and violence against its own citizens.

          The pervasive use of government sanctioned genocide, torture, rape, forced abortion, involuntary sterilization, forced organ harvesting, human sex and labor trafficking, religious persecution, kangaroo courts, free speech and assembly violations, and other crimes against humanity attest to an absolutely shameful record of wanton cruelty.

          Tragically, the abuse and violence has only gotten worse under Xi Jinping.  

          With his infamous executive order of May 26, 1994, President Clinton abolished the requirement that the Chinese Communist Party achieve “significant progress” in protecting human rights as the condition for extending Most Favored Nation status (MFN)—the elimination of import tariffs by the U.S.  

          A few months earlier in 1994, before President Clinton’s capitulation, I travelled to Beijing and met with foreign ministry officials and argued that President Clinton wasn’t going to back down or back off his promise to end MFN unless China reformed its barbaric practices. I even conveyed to CCP officials a bipartisan letter signed by 100 members of congress stating that we stand for human rights and with President Clinton.

          While there, I met with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Beijing who thought that we were wrong to link MFN and human rights.  After a spirited exchange over breakfast, I came away with the inescapable conclusion that no human rights violation by the CCP would be cause to disrupt lucrative business deals.

          A few months later—to my shock and dismay—President Clinton delinked human rights from trade.

          The symbiotic US-China trading relationship—that emerged in the 1990s and continues to this day—allowed many to become incredibly rich and powerful while conveying to the CCP extraordinary industrial capacity and know-how for both consumer goods and ominously, military products and capability. 

          That CCP military capability on July 11, however, poses an existential security threat to Taiwan, numerous nations in the region—and to the United States of America.

          On July 11, it is deeply discouraging to see the ongoing complicity of American companies in aiding and abetting the Chinese Communist Party’s heinous crimes against humanity and genocide.

          Many are complicit in concealing the PRC’s abuses.

          Many are complicit in the PRC’s restrictions on freedoms.

          Many are even complicit in amplifying the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda across our country—spreading political and ideological stances that are completely contrary to US national interests and what the United States stands for.

          American companies and consumers should not be subsidizing tyranny.

          In January, I reintroduced the China Trade Relations Act of 2023 to end MFN—now called Normal Trade Relations—to China unless there is significant progress towards protecting fundamental human rights.

          One our distinguished witnesses on July 11 has paid an enormous price—the loss of his amazing 11-year basketball career in the NBA—for his courageous stand for human rights, especially for the Uyghurs, the victims of Xi Jinping’s ongoing genocide.

          He will testify on July 11 that “After I got released, about 3 weeks later, China put the games (that had been barred from Chinese TV because he wore basketball shoes that said Free the Uyghurs) back on television. ESPN did an investigation and found out that 49 NBA owners have 10 billion dollars tied up in China.”

          The Chinese Communist Party ordered the NBA to sanction—fire—Enes Kantor Freedom and like cowards, they obeyed. 

Original source can be found here