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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, October 21, 2018

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s (“CECC”) 2018 Annual Report (“the Report”), released on October 10, 2018, comes at a crucial point in world affairs.  The United States is on the retreat from the global stage, withdrawing from key international agreements and organizations, and China appears intent to replace it.  But as the CECC’s 2018 Annual Report makes clear, with President Xi Jinping’s complete consolidation of power this year and the re-entrenchment of the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP” or “the Party”) within the state, China’s rise will likely alter the current world order and challenge U.S. values and interests.  If anything, China’s recent behavior – the public disappearance of Meng Hongwei, the former Interpol chief and the issuance of more discriminatory regulations directed at Uighurs –  only substantiates CECC’s predictions that China’s rise will not be inline with the values that have dominated the world order since the end of World War II.

Former Interpol Chief, Meng Hongwei, now in NSC confinement.

The CECC was created in 2000 to monitor China’s human rights commitments, review its progress in developing a rule of law, and maintain a database of Chinese political prisoners.  With a staff of China experts, the CECC has become a leading voice on China’s progress in regards to international human rights standards and the development of rule of law in more sensitive areas such as freedom of expression, criminal justice and access to justice.  As with its previous reports, the 2018 Annual Report is extremely well researched and extensively documented, providing an important snapshot to what is really happening in China, making it an essential read.

While prior annual reports highlighted China’s progress in trying to meet international human rights standards or deepen its commitment to rule of law, the 2018 Annual Report is devoid of any positive developments.  And rightfully so.  As the Report makes clear, three alarming developments in the past year reflect a country intent on disregarding international human rights norms and turning its back to a rule of law.

A police state in the Uighur province of Xinjiang in China’s far West. (Photo courtesy of The Week (UK)).

Perhaps the Report’s most urgent issue is the Chinese government’s mass detention of what is estimated to be 1 million Uighurs in internment camps. Without any trial or criminal charges, these internment camps reflect the Chinese government’s stated goal to “sinicize” religion, including that of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority population in Xinjiang province.  And the mass detentions show no signs of stopping. As the CECC documents, the Chinese government’s own procurement data shows its plan to build more camps.

A second worrying development is the re-entrenchment of the Party within the State.  During much of Chairman Mao’s time, the Party and the State were essentially one, but since then, the Chinese government has sought to separate the Party from the government bureaucracy.  Until now.  In March 2018, the Party Central Committee issued a restructuring plan to again embed the Party in government work, with the Party taking a leadership role.  Perhaps the most notable example of the infiltration of the Party into everyday life is the creation of the National Supervisory Commission (“NSC”), an anti-corruption commission that has the power to “confine” – in other words, extra-judicially detain – any Party member or state employee suspected of corruption for three months without access to an attorney.  Employees of state-owned enterprises, staff of public hospitals and public educators all fall under the NSC’s purview. Even non-Party members and non-state employees could be subject to “confinement” by the NSC if they too are suspected of involvement in official misconduct.  Outside of the judiciary, the NSC is anything but due process.

China’s ubiquitous security cameras. (Photo Courtesy of the Huffington Post).

Finally, the 2018 Annual Report highlights the Chinese government’s continued use of technology as a tool of repression. The Chinese government is seeking to create a biometric database as well as a “social credit system” which, if realized, could have lasting effects on certain individuals.

The 2018 Annual Report concludes by offering some key recommendations, notably addressing abuses in Xinjiang publicly – and with key allies – before the United Nations, raising the issue of human rights in all bilateral relations, not just during the Department of State’s human rights dialogues with China, and condition law enforcement cooperation, such as cooperation on extradition, on a signed agreement from the Chinese government that it will respect due process in all situations.  But one wonders if these recommendations fall on deaf ears.  The CECC is supposed to be a joint commission between Congress and the Executive.  But as reflected in the masthead for this year’s Report, the Executive positions on the CECC remain empty.  While the Trump Administration is not shy in lambasting China on a variety of issues, and in early September word was leaked that it was considering economic sanctions against China for its internment of Uighurs, the fact that key Executive positions on the CECC remain empty over a year and a half into the Trump Administration, belies any meaningful commitment by the Administration to human rights and rule of law in China.  An unfortunate development given the severe situation documented in the CECC’s 2018 Annual Report and the danger it poses to the United States and the post-World War II world order.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, October 17, 2016

In its 15 year history, perhaps no other annual report is as consequential as the one the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) released on October 6, 2016 and in the midst of China’s push to be granted Market Economy Status.  China believes that with its December anniversary of its World Trade Organization (WTO) entry, it has a legally-mandated right to be granted Market Economy Status, a status that comes with significant trade benefits.  But the CECC’s 2016 Annual Report paints a different picture, revealing a Chinese government, under the leadership of Xi Jinping (pronounced See Gin-ping), intent on consolidating the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) power at the expense of a rule of law.

In 2001, Congress created the CECC after the U.S. normalized its trade relations with China.  Prior to normalization, Congress reviewed U.S. relations with China every year to determine if most favored nations status should continue to be granted to China.  Inevitably, this annual review focused on China’s human rights record and legal development.  However, with China’s accession into the WTO, a yearly Congressional

Courtesy of china.org.cn

vote on trade relations with China was no longer possible.  As a result, in agreeing to China’s entry into WTO, the CECC was created to monitor China’s human rights, review its legal development, and maintain a political prisoners database.  Part of the CECC’s mandate is to issue an annual report concerning these issues

For certain, since the CECC’s creation, China has made great progress in creating a more vibrant and reliable legal system.  The 2016 Annual Report highlights some of these positive developments.  In 2016, the Chinese government instituted reforms to its household registration system (hukou), a system that has long kept rural residents in a second-class citizen status; it eliminated its one-child policy in favor for a two-child policy; it passed an Anti-Domestic Violence Law that recognizes psychological abuse in addition to physical violence and applies to non-married couples; it passed a Charity Law that could make it easier to create non-profits in China; with reforms to the court acceptance system, Chinese courts have accepted more sensitive cases, including China’s first gay marriage case; and in the past year, the central and local governments have increased funding to legal aid.

Zhongze Women’s Found, Guo Jianmei, given the International Women of Courage Award by Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, March 2011. (Photo Courtesy of Roshan Nebhrajani/Medill DC/Flickr)

But as the CECC’s 2016 Report makes clear, this progress is heavily overshadowed by the government’s suppression of anything it deems a threat to its rule.  In 2016, China continued its prosecution of  civil rights lawyers on charges of “subverting state power” for zealously advocating for their clients on what the CCP determined to be a sensitive issue. Ironically, less than a month after the passage of the Anti-Domestic Violence Law, in January 2016, Beijing police ordered the shutdown of the Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling and Service Center, a women’s rights organization instrumental in getting the Anti-Domestic Violence law passed.  And while China passed the Charity Law in an effort to encourage the non-profit sector, the passage of the Foreign NGO Management Law in April, seeks to limit the interaction of domestic NGOs with foreign ones, rendering illegal many of the effective relationships that have developed over the past decade and has resulted in an increasingly vibrant civil society in China.  In addition to passing the restrictive Foreign NGO Management Law, in 2016, the CCP increased its anti-Western rhetoric, equating those who seek political reform as being pawns of “hostile foreign forces.”

Images of Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai “confessing” to his crimes (Photo Courtesy of Hong Kong Free Press)

The CCP continues to censor the internet by blocking its citizens from accessing certain western media websites, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News. Domestically, it issues pronouncements on how Chinese journalists should be reporting certain news items and detains those who do not follow orders.  In 2016, in a throwback to the Cultural Revolution, the CCP increased its use of public confessions, having dissidents admit to their “crimes” on state television. These televised “confessions” included statements by foreign NGO worker Peter Dahlin, lawyer Wang Yu and the abducted Hong Kong booksellers Gui Min Hui, Cheung Chi-ping, Lan Wing-Kei and Lui Bo.

Beware of Foreign Forces (Photo Courtsey of DoD/U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Sean K. Harp/Released)

The CECC’s 2016 Annual Report makes clear that the Chinese government’s retreat on the rule of law front is not happening in a vacuum.  Instead, as the 2016 Annual Report notes, the CCP’s efforts come at a time when China is experiencing its slowest growth rate in 25 years.  Will that slow growth mean that the CCP will double down?  That next year will only see a further retrenchment of the CCP’s Cultural Revolution ideology of public confessions, suppression of dissent and the suspicion of anyone who is in contact with “foreign forces”?  All at the expense of the rule of law and the Chinese people?  Given this past year’s developments, the answers to these questions seem to point to yes.