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The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 "with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report
to the President and the Congress. The Commission consists of nine
Senators, nine Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior
Administration officials appointed by the President." (CECC About). The CECC FAQs provide useful information about the CECC. See CECC Frequently Asked Questions. They have developed positions on a number of issues.
CECC
tends to serve as an excellent barometer of the thinking of political
and academic elites in the United States about issues touching on China
and the official American line developed in connection with those
issues. As such it is an important source of information about the way
official and academic sectors think about China. As one can imagine many
of the positions of the CECC are critical of current Chinese policies
and institutions (for some analysis see CECC).
Recently, like others in the liberal democratic West, CECC has sought to exploit the UN's process of Universal Periodic Review (Questions submitted in advance:English/Français/Español). "More than 160 countries addressed the hearing in Geneva, Switzerland, and each only had 45 seconds to speak." (China grilled over human rights record at UN). The strategic focus centered on China's post-2018 human rights consequential policies and actions. That is quite fair. China and others have recently not been shy about doing the same. The stakes touch on the specifics that are likely to be highlighted--the situation in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, Taiwan related issues, human rights defenders, the role and freedom of civil society to challenge the state and its vanguard, and the like (see reporting here, here, here, and here). Indeed, CECC has long been diligent about keeping tabs on these policy and operational areas, rationalizing the scope of its investigations around twenty issues, many related to the objections made during the UPR process. To that end, states that are both friends and critics of China lined up to provide their 45 second assessments (here, cf. here).
Nonetheless these specifics point to the larger strategically critical role of the UPR (one that the CECC's Chinese counterparts also recognize and toward the realization of which they also work diligently). That is the control of the narratives of human rights--its episteme--that is the basis on which "facts" and "policies" can be identified, organized, assessed and judged within an authoritative apparatus (Foucault, The Order of Things (Vintage 1994)). It is to the technologies of judgment (the acceptable truth of discourse) rather than the description of facts (that themselves contain their own assessment) that are at the heart of these performances. China and the US have been using quite different measuring (or assessment) sticks to judge the effects or character of the facts proffered at the UPR. And both are working quite diligently to created epistemic community among the actors that count (states, and state affecting human collectives) in which the language, sensibilities, premises, and perspectives are deeply embedded so that judgement as a function of facts becomes inevitable. Fair enough. To that end it is both necessary to advance one's own framing discourse, and to demonize that of the "other". Amnesty International provides a nice example of the trope in the context of the Chinese UPR:
Responding to today’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) focusing on China’s human rights record, Amnesty International’s China director Sarah Brooks said: “Today’s rights review should have been a real reckoning for the Chinese authorities: a rare space for other governments to amplify the grave human rights violations faced by victims across China and beyond. “Instead, we saw China seeking to gaslight the global community, denying the scope and scale of violations of human rights documented in UN reports, while offering up its anti-human rights approach as a model for other countries. (China attempts to ‘gaslight’ international community at UN human rights review)
CECC provides a more institutionally impactful version--holding hearing at which facts and their legitimating discourse can be developed and presented. Fair enough. One expects the same of those pushing a quite different epistemic community of values and outlook. To that end, CECC has announced a program, to be presented on 1 February 2024. Entitled The PRC’s Universal Periodic Review and the Real State of Human Rights in China, it has as its object both the advancing of its own rights narrative and the de-legitimization of those sought to be advanced by their Chinese counterparts.
The CECC Press Release announcing the event and its concept note follows below along with the text of the U.S. Statement at the Universal Periodic Review of China.
The PRC’s Universal Periodic Review and the Real State of Human Rights in China
Thursday, February 1, 2024
10 am
2360 Rayburn House Office Building
The vast inconsistency between the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) official participation at United Nations human rights reviews and its actual record of gross human rights violations are once again a focus in Geneva at the United Nation’s Human Rights Council. At the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session on January 23, 2024, member states questioned the PRC delegation on the country’s compliance with its obligations under international human rights law. The PRC’s narrative regarding its own record stood in contrast to the reporting of UN treaty bodies and experts and international human rights advocacy organizations, which have documented efforts to deny a voice to independent civil society; harass Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Konger, and other human rights defenders; and coerce Member states to defend the PRC’s practices.
The UPR remains a valuable platform for the international community to publicly call out the PRC on its record of human rights violations and to recommend specific actions for the PRC to comply with its human rights obligations. The Commission will hold a hearing to examine the issues raised at the UPR and the PRC’s response. Expert testimony will highlight tactics the PRC uses to deflect international criticism of its human rights record and to reinterpret international human rights norms. The hearing will also focus on the submissions and recommendations to the UPR process by human rights defenders and civil society which amplify the voices of Chinese citizens, advocates, and victims of PRC repression and provide a fuller picture of human rights conditions in China.
Witness:
Rana Sui Inboden: Senior Fellow with the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin
Benedict Rogers: Co-founder and chief executive of Hong Kong Watch
Sophie Luo: Wife of detained Chinese human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi
The hearing will stream on the CECC’s YouTube Channel
U.S. Statement at the Universal Periodic Review of the People’s Republic of China
45th Session of the UPR Working Group
As Prepared for Delivery by Ambassador Michèle Taylor*
Thank you, Mr. President.
We recommend that China:
1. Release all arbitrarily detained individuals, including in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, many of whom were named by the UN Working Group.
2. Cease harassment, surveillance, and threats against individuals abroad and in China including Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
3. Cease discrimination against individuals’ culture, language, religion or belief; end forcible assimilation policies, including boarding schools, in Tibet and Xinjiang.
4. End torture, unjust residential detention, and persecution throughout China.
5. End forced labor, marriage, birth control, sterilization, abortion, and family separation in Xinjiang.
6. Repeal vague national security, counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, and sedition laws, including the National Security Law in Hong Kong.
7. End repressive measures against women, LGBTQI+ persons, laborers, and migrant workers, including in Hong Kong and Macao.
8. Permit the UN unhindered and meaningful access particularly in Xinjiang and Tibet.
We condemn the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang; human rights abuses in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and across China; erosion of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong; and transnational repression to silence individuals abroad.
I thank you.
*This U.S. Statement was prepared for delivery and appears as provided to the Secretariat of the Human Rights Council for the record. The text as delivered may have been shortened due to the strict time constraints during the UPR, however the full text may be attributed to Ambassador Taylor.
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