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Politics

Marco Rubio, Chris Smith, CECC Warn China is Growing More Repressive

October 12, 2018 - 6:00am
Marco Rubio and Chris Smith
Marco Rubio and Chris Smith

From his perch as chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has taken aim at the communist regime leading that nation this week. 

Rubio has led the CECC since February 2017 and he served as the cochairman for two years before that. Besides sitting on the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Rubio serves on the Senate Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism Subcommittee and on the East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy Subcommittee. 

Launched in 2000 “with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China,” the CECC is made up of nine senators, nine members of the U.S. House and five administration officials approved by the president. 

The CECC released its annual report, clocking in at more than 300 pages, on Wednesday. In it, Rubio and the CECC warned that China was growing more repressive, a topic that the Florida Republican and U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-NJ, the cochairman of the CECC, focused on in a piece published by the Wall Street Journal late on Tuesday. 

“U.S. policy toward China has assumed for decades that trade, investment and other engagement would eventually persuade Beijing to accept and embrace the international order. This optimism was misplaced. The Chinese Communist Party proved resistant to change. As documented in the new 2018 annual report of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, or CECC, the party unflinchingly continues to preserve its monopoly on domestic political power through state-sponsored repression, surveillance, indoctrination and brutality,” Rubio and Smith wrote. 

“China’s government and Communist Party have become more repressive in domestic politics, more mercantilist in trade and economic policy, increasingly dismissive of international norms, and more assertive in spreading their model of authoritarian governance globally,” Rubio and Smith added. “These developments pose real challenges to the U.S. and its allies—more so now after President Xi Jinping, who also serves as the Communist Party’s general secretary, demonstrated his near-absolute policy-making authority by achieving the removal of the two-term presidential limit from the Chinese Constitution.

“Some experts have drawn comparisons between Mr. Xi and Mao Zedong, given the personalization and consolidation of power that each achieved. But whereas Mao mobilized the population through mass rallies, an intrusive dossier system and other forms of state control, he did not have the security resources or technologies that are available to Mr. Xi. As detailed in the CECC report, China’s government under Mr. Xi continues to expand social control through a pervasive video-surveillance system and an ambitious ‘social credit’ system,” they continued. 

“Technology plays a central role in China’s gross human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, where a digital surveillance state is working to transform the religious and ethnic identities of local Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities. Data-driven surveillance is facilitated by iris and body scanners, voice-pattern analyzers, DNA sequencers and facial-recognition cameras in neighborhoods, on roads and in train stations. In an alarming development that may constitute a crime against humanity, China has placed as many as one million or more Xinjiang residents in ‘political re-education’ camps,” Rubio and Smith wrote. “China has also empowered the United Front Work Department—which Mr. Xi, echoing Mao, calls the ‘magic weapon’ of the Communist Party—to influence and neutralize possible domestic and international challenges to the party’s ideological agenda. The department’s role in overseeing religious affairs was expanded this year, underscoring the party’s enduring fear that the growth of religious belief is a threat to its power.

“The continuing crackdown on China’s Christian community—including the burning of Bibles, closing of churches and demolition of crosses—is further evidence that whatever space previously existed for Chinese citizens to worship and live out their faith peacefully has all but disappeared. The United Front Work Department has also assumed management of ethnic affairs, with ominous implications for Xinjiang and Tibet. All of this is consistent with Mr. Xi’s emphasis on ‘sinicizing’ ethnic minorities and religious groups in China,” Rubio and Smith warned. 

Comments

Forget about repression in China! Eliminate the repression in this country first! The Trump administration and the Congress under the so-called 'Freedom Caucus' in the House and the fascistic leadership of McConnell in the Senate are exhibiting a LOT of signs of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, dictatorial power, and the exaltation of nation, race, and the Republican tribe over both the individual and the clear-cut preferences of the American majority! It's how Shicklgruber, Jr. got his start!

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