Tag: congressional-executive commission on china

This week, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-NJ, the lead Republicans on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), sent a letter to President Joe Biden expressing their concern that...

In their letter, the senators highlighted how “the U.S. solar industry sources large amounts of polysilicon and solar products from this region, where the use of forced labor is state-sanctioned and systematic.”

Dahua Technology is a Chinese company that has reportedly developed facial recognition software to recognize and report the detection of Uyghur Muslims to Chinese authorities, facilitating the Chinese government’s ongoing genocide and other crimes against humanity against the Uyghur people.

Joining Rubio and McGovern were U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Oreg., Gary Peters, D-Mich., Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Todd Young R-Ind., and U.S. Reps. Thomas Suozzi, D-NY, Tom Malinowski, D-NJ, and Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo.

“This bipartisan bill will ensure that goods made with Uyghur forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) do not enter the United States. Earlier this year, the State Department issued a determination that the Chinese Communist Party is committing crimes against humanity and genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang,” Rubio’s office noted. 

On the last full day of the Trump administration, the U.S. State Department made that designation on Tuesday. 

Rubio and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oreg., backed including a provision “that requires the Secretary of State to determine, within 90 days after enactment, whether the persecution of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) constitutes atrocities." Earlier in the year, Rubio and U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., included similar language in their “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.”

The lawmakers expressed concern that the current rules will not effectively cut SMIC off from U.S. technology and innovation, risking our national security.

Rubio and McGovern asked the CEOs for a response to questions about their exports to the PRC, including whether they knew their technology would be used to support surveillance activities of the PRC police and security entities and whether they took steps to ensure that their products were not used for human rights abuses or to compromise U.S. national security.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus concerning Taiwan’s exclusion from the World Health Organization’s second session of the World Health Assembly (WHA).

Back in June, Rubio introduced the “Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act” with the support of U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Mary., Bob Menendez, D-NJ, Jeff Merkley, D-Oreg., and Todd Young, R-Ind. The bill “would provide those Hong Kongers who peacefully protested Beijing’s corrupt justice system, and have a well-founded fear of persecution, to be eligible for Priority 2 Refugee status” and is in “response to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) actions to implement its Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”

Earlier this year, Rubio and Merkley were joined by more than 70 members of the Senate and the House in sending a letter to Pompeo and U.S. Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin regarding the ongoing atrocities in the XUAR against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.