Last Thursday’s prime time marked another two and a half hours of what has become “must-see” TV for China watchers as the House Select Committee on the CCP held its second successful hearing. This latest one was titled “The Ongoing Uyghur Genocide”, a term that mostly only Washington uses to define what Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have endured for the last nine years, beginning with stories of torture, despair and family separation.
At this point, Committee Chairman Michael Gallagher has to be commended for running quite the show. These hearings are as timely as they are dramatic, and chock full of urgency and difficult questions targeting America’s most powerful groups – Wall Street and the multinational corporations that have lobbied for years to protect their profits from China.
“So far, the U.S. government has not sanctioned a single central government official even though they are implicated in the genocide in Xinjiang,” said Adrian Zenz, Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He was one of three witnesses that followed the opening with the two Uyghur women. “The government should spell out how it will follow through on its treaty obligation to prevent the crime of genocide. And should establish measures to prevent American investors, such as pension funds, from investing in Chinese securities tied to human rights violators, surveillance tech, and military contractors.”
Thursday’s hearing, which started at 7pm, kicked off with two Uyghur women who had spent time in Xinjiang “re-education camps”. Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Qelbinur Sidik sat side by side in the witness box, facing Gallagher and what would be an otherwise daunting-looking group of Congress seated by high paneled balconies engraved with the bald eagle on the House of Representatives seal. They spoke in the Uyghur language. Qelbinur, red-eyed, and often choking on her words, described the now relatively well-known scenes inside the Xinjiang prisons. None of it was pretty.
But at the heart of the hearing was the Q&A with the four witnesses who know the situation well, either because they have lived it, or have family members that have, or have made a life’s work out of documenting what has become the largest system of ethnic incarceration in the world.
The good news is that most of the mandatory vocational re-education campuses have been dismantled since 2018. But the prisons remain, of course, and arbitrary detention is still likely. The Uyghurs of Xinjiang seem to live in an open-air prison, however, complete with QR codes on some peoples’ doors and facial recognition surveillance as common as leaves on a tree.
The witnesses discussed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, now a law, and capital market sanctions against Chinese companies.
Here are some noteworthy exchanges from the Q&A part of Thursday’s hearing.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA): The CCP bears full responsibility for the terrible suffering of the Uyghur people and they must be held accountable. We have had targeted sanctions, export controls…but none of these measures have affected the behavior of the CCP. What further actions must we take to alter their decision-making, and raise the profile of this problem around the world?
Nury Turkel, Chair, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom: European countries, Germany and Italy, need to step up to the plane. Canada, UK and others have similar tools that we do, like the Global Magnitsky Act. They need to use it. We should put pressure on Silicon Valley, which still provides hardware, software, and investor support. We need to close the loopholes and this committee can do that.
Zenz: If you don’t impose a cost, their actions will not stop. There has to be a reputational cost for this, and for that you need pressure at the United Nations. You also need to have much more engagement with the American consumer on this issue.
Naomi Kikoler, Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Museum: China’s government cares about its reputation and they will get other countries to voice support for them. They are monitoring discussions happening in Geneva, and here today. I know that as one of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, it will be hard for China to accept that, but it should be brought up before the Security Council anyway.
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Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO): In order for the Chinese government to continue to oppress their people, it takes about $300 billion a year, I heard. Have you heard this? Is it a verifiable figure? Is it close?
Nury: I think that figure is close. It’s a reasonable number. When you look back at the time when they built all those camps and installed the surveillance cameras, they have invested zillions of dollars and now it has become an entire economy. Now they are exporters of this surveillance equipment and export slave labor products.
Rep. Luetkemeyer: In your testimony, you name names of companies that do business, who fund these people, and engage with these companies. You name Blackrock Vanguard, HSBC. How do they help fund these companies?
Nury: One of those companies bragged about raising $140 million in China alone during the pandemic. Ray Dalio. His business is thriving. Hedge funds, Silicon Valley venture capital funds are all invested in China.
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Chairman Gallagher: I was shocked to learn that Americans are pouring their money into companies like Hikvision, Huawei, Tencent and others that we are familiar with as being the power behind the Chinese state’s heavy hand over Uyghur lives. American corporations and investors have supported Beijing’s military modernization, surveillance state, and human rights violators. What does this support look like on a day-to-day basis?
Zen: The financial support comes through mutual funds, for example; American investors are investing in a broad range of Chinese companies that are on the Entity List or otherwise restricted by some government agencies like the Defense Department. Also in the private sector, we have a lot of technology benefits going to China with American companies doing research together to some extent, or providing the technology like Intel chips used for surveillance and public security. There was a lot of co-development of technology, but a lot of that has abated because of the geopolitical situation, though not all of it.
Nury: Unless you make it difficult, enhancing some legal risk, then we might be able to stop those (questionable) investments. But it’s an unconscionable practice that is still ongoing.
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Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA): For the production of solar panels…forced labor policies have wreaked havoc in my district. How can we address sanctions on these products that are coming from Xinjiang?
Zenz: The polysilicon and cotton bans are hard because most of China’s polysilicon comes from Xinjiang. The solar supply chains in China have been implicated because of forced labor in Xinjiang’s polysilicon base, and maybe companies will have to stop buying China solar.
Nury: It is hard to hear about all these companies that want to cooperate with China because they see it as working on the climate crisis. Laws are made for a reason. We need to adhere to this law (Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention). What we hear about in regard to the law and workarounds is you have transshipment or changing labels so you just don’t know where the product comes from anymore.
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Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI): We are more aware of forced labor in Xinjiang and the new law. But we need to figure out, and identify, the potential vulnerabilities in the law that still allow China to get its products into the U.S. that would not be able to get in because of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
Nury: One problem is the $800 de minimis (Customs provision for duty-free shipping). That needs to be addressed. Because of that, many consumer products are still easily available.
Rep. Stevens: A lot of things cost less than $800.
Nury: Well everything on Amazon costs less than that. Search for DJI drones on Amazon and you will have at least three dozen hits. (DJI is on the Entity List. You can still buy it on Amazon.) You have to close simple loopholes like that because you can directly ship anything banned by the Xinjiang laws right to American consumers.
Gallagher called the Chinese government “the most repressive technocratic system ever devised.
“Companies and Wall Street invest in all of this,” he said. And American consumers buy it; that is, they are allowed to purchase products from companies deemed off-limits by the Commerce Department, for instance. “We heard from two women today who have had first-hand accounts of life inside these Xinjiang camps. What else do we need to hear?”
