Representative Doug Bereuter
Co-Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Remarks at Press Conference Releasing Annual Report
October 2, 2002

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am pleased to join Chairman Baucus and several of my fellow members of the Commission here this morning to release the first annual report of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.  The report represents the product of many months of hearings, staff roundtables and research, consultation with experts in the fields of human rights and the rule of law in China, and intensive consultations with the members of our Commission and their personal staff.  As Senator Baucus has noted, this report represents a strong commitment and effort to achieve a balanced point-of-view.  As such, it is not necessarily the report that any individual member of the Commission might have written on his or her own.  Nevertheless, I believe that the report fairly describes and analyzes the situation and trends in China with respect to the many of the issues in the Commission’s mandate.  It also provides a sensible and focused roadmap for the Commission’s work over the upcoming year.

I am impressed that the Commission’s staff was able to produce a document of this report’s readability, accuracy, and depth, despite having few staff members on board until late in the Spring. They have worked hard on this document, and we all should appreciate it.

I would make three substantive points about this report:  First, this report represents something new for the U.S. Government, and particularly the Congress, because it not only focuses on the serious continuing Chinese government abuses of fundamental human rights, but also analyzes the longer term trends and the underlying legal structure that, in many cases, has permitted or caused those abuses.   This first report grapples with perhaps the essential contradiction in U.S.-China relations:  how Americans can effectively express their deep concern about human rights practices in China and support individuals who are wrongly imprisoned while at the same time acting in a fashion so as to effectively encourage institutional changes that can help ordinary Chinese people protect their own rights and interests.  In this regard, the report tries to describe fairly the gradual, determined, and frequently unnoticed efforts of reformers inside China to build a legal infrastructure that people can use to protect themselves, hold officials accountable, and gain redress for wrongs, such as workplace accidents.  The report also shows that some key questions are hotly under debate among officials and academics in China.  One such example is the question of how to most effectively outlaw torture of criminal defendants and punish those who commit such acts.

Second, I think that the main theme of the report is that U.S. and international efforts to bring Chinese practice on human rights in line with international norms will be most effective when focused on specific rule of law systems that allow Chinese individuals to assert their rights on their own behalf.

Third and finally, real progress towards human rights and the rule of law in China has to come from within, and cannot be imposed by the United States from the outside.  This report makes over 40 recommendations for action by Congress and the Administration to encourage this kind of progress.  While some of these proposals urge that existing initiatives on prisoner advocacy and bilateral dialogue on human rights issues be continued and intensified, others recommend new programs for the Congress to fund and the Administration to implement.

Among the more notable new requests are the recommendations that the Congress fund a broad U.S. initiative for the development of the rule of law and popular legal education in China; increase funding for American NGOs to address social and economic problems of ethnic Tibetans in China; and increase funding for radio, television, and Internet programs that provide information about human rights, worker rights, and legal reform.  Other recommendations address such issues as worker rights, religious freedom, China’s Uighur minority, restrictions on the Internet, and the long-term effect of village elections.

I know that several of my fellow Commission members also wish to make remarks, so I will yield back to Chairman Baucus, with my thanks to him, to all my colleagues, and to our excellent staff, for our collaboration this past year.

Thank you.