WASHINGTON—The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is perfecting a techno-totalitarian regime for export to the rest of the world, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) has warned.
The regime’s worsening repression of faith was in the spotlight at a roundtable hearing that the lawmaker hosted on July 12. One key takeaway, the chairman and other panelists of the House Select Committee on the CCP said, is that such abuses do not stop at Chinese borders.
“Across the board, we’ve seen the Chinese Communist Party leverage access to their market and their economic power in order to coerce American companies, international companies,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times’ sister outlet NTD.
The lawmaker made the comment in reference to a lawsuit against Cisco, accusing the California tech giant of aiding Beijing’s persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong—which encourages people to live by the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Cisco allegedly gave the regime U.S. technology and components that allowed it to build a vast surveillance network. Over a dozen adherents, including one U.S. citizen, allege that the resulting system tracked their Falun Gong-related activities online, leading to their arrest and torture in China.
Cisco Systems Chief Executive Officer John Chambers (R) and China’s Alibaba.com chairman Jack Ma offer a toast during an event in Beijing, China on Nov. 1, 2007. (STR/AFP via Getty Images) Surveillance cameras in Hangzhou, in east China’s Zhejiang Province on May 29, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
The lawmaker said the alleged business deal and its impact on the CCP’s surveillance power wouldn’t surprise him.
“It’s a manifestation of transnational repression, and ultimately, I think proves the point that the techno-totalitarian regime that the CCP is perfecting in China will not stay there. It’s a model it increasingly wants to export around the world,” he said, adding that he’s “considering a variety of pieces of legislation to counter that.”
At the roundtable, representatives for Chinese Christians, Tibetans, and Uyghurs also spoke about their suffering at the hands of China’s communist party officials, with some, in the case of house church pastor Pan Yongguang, continuing even after they fled China.
Pastor Pan Yongguang at Mayflower Church of China, who was granted asylum by the U.S. in April 2023, speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
Mr. Pan and members of Mayflower Church in China’s Shenzhen city left China in October 2019. After arriving in South Korea, many from the group received threatening phone calls from CCP officials demanding they they return to China. Members were also followed in Thailand by suspected CCP agents, while their relatives in China faced harassment and interrogation, Mr. Pan said at the hearing. In February this year, he said that Chinese police officers visited his wife’s parents in central Chinese province Hunan in order to pressure her to urge Mr. Pan to return. The stress of the blackmail and concern for her elderly parent’s welfare caused Mrs. Pan to suffer a partial heart attack.
“The Chinese Communist Party wants to dominate the world. If they achieved their goals, then what you see happening in China is going to happen around the world,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), a member of the House China Committee, told The Epoch Times.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
He pointed to Hong Kong, where authorities arrested and later fined Cardinal Joseph Zen, 91, over a support fund for pro-democracy protesters. Incidents like this speak to the importance of speaking up about the regime’s abuses, Mr. Gimenez said, because what is happening in China right now could one day “be happening to you.”
“You have to be subservient to the Chinese Communist Party” and if “you pose a threat to the Chinese Communist Party in any way, you’ll be persecuted, you’ll be in prison, and sometimes, you may even lose your life.”
People protest a government ban on face masks in Central, Hong Kong, on Oct. 4, 2019. (Laurel Chor/Getty Images) Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress, poses at a U.S.-backed Uyghur photo exhibit of dozens of people who are missing or alleged to be held in CCP-run camps in Xinjiang, China in front of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sept. 16, 2021. (Denis Balibouse /Reuters)
Multiple current and former U.S. religious freedom officials have already called attention to lobbying efforts on behalf of China that reach Washington, such as reports of big firms like Nike and Coca-Cola trying to weaken legislation banning imports from Xinjiang over forced labor concerns.
The U.S. government needs to pay closer attention to such lobbying activities and stop multinational corporations from assisting the regime’s oppression, said Frederick Davie, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Oncologist Dr. Weldon Gilcrease at the University of Utah previously told The Epoch Times that the leaders of his school’s health care system had intentionally refrained from speaking out on forced organ harvesting out of fear of economic retribution by Beijing.
Frederick Davie, Vice Chair of U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom and Strategic Advisor to the President at Union Theological Seminary (NYC), speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
To Davie, who earlier at the panel voiced concerns about the CCP using bilateral academic partnerships to make U.S. institutions “immune to the atrocities,” the incident was a case in point.
“It just proves the point of the level of influence that the Chinese economic reach has around the world and in the United States,” he told The Epoch Times.
American consumers have a part to play as well, noted Tony Perkins, former chair of the bipartisan religious freedom commission and president of the Family Research Council.
“China is actually more repressive today than they were two decades ago, and the reason is they can afford to be as American consumers fund their repression,” Mr. Perkins said at the panel.
Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
In his mind, the United States should have “no further economic transactions” with China until the human rights situation changes.
“Americans have become addicted to cheap goods—a very materialistic society—but they need to understand that the profits from that are coming back to influence policy, both here and abroad,” he told The Epoch Times.
“For our family, we read the label of where things are manufactured. And we do everything possible to keep from buying products from China, and we encourage others to do the same.”
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