{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415161", "The Epoch Times article on the CECC's 2025 Annual Report'CCP's History of \"Broken Promises,\" Human Rights Abuses Harms US, World: Congressional Commission'", "2025-12-10", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher H. Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", "chrissmith", "https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "By Catherine Yang\n\nPublished December 10, 2025\n\nChina has regressed with respect to rule of law, according to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China\u2019s (CECC) 2025 annual report, released Dec. 10, which highlights the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s (CCP) long history of breaking promises.\n\nThe commission was created in 2000 to monitor human rights and rule of law in China.\n\n\u201cBroken promises are not an exception; they are a feature of how the CCP deals with the world and with its own people,\u201d commission co-chairs Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said in a statement in the report.\n\n\u201cThese broken promises affect Americans,\u201d they stated. For example, Americans traveling to China for work or study can become subject to exit bans and arbitrary detention, Chinese forced labor becomes intertwined with U.S. supply chains, national security laws grant the regime \u201csweeping access\u201d to American data, and the regime carries out its human rights abuses extraterritorially through transnational repression such as overseas police stations.\n\nThe annual report includes dozens of recommendations aimed at curbing longstanding CCP practices that harm the United States and international community, including several bills that lawmakers have introduced this year.\n\nOfficers of China's military and police arrive for the third plenary session of the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 12, 2019. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images\n\nThe chairs called on the United States and free world allies to reject Beijing\u2019s attempts to incentivize and divide, because otherwise \u201cAmericans pay the price\u2014in security, in prosperity, and in credibility.\u201d\n\n\u201cUpholding human dignity helps keep markets fairer, travel safer, technology freer, and alliances stronger. It reduces the leverage authoritarian states\u2014led by a totalitarian [People\u2019s Republic of China]\u2014wield over people and partners,\u201d the chairs stated.\n\nIn addition to producing an annual report, the CECC maintains the Political Prisoner Database, which contained 11,262 records as of June 30, which the commission believes is an underreporting of the actual number. They include 2,755 active detentions; the rest are either believed or known to have been released, or have been executed, died in custody, or escaped.\n\nThey include Zhang Zhan, a journalist who reported on the CCP\u2019s response to the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as critics of that response who hung banners in public spaces, such as Peng Lifa, Mei Shilin, and Fang Yirong. They also include artists depicting what the regime considers sensitive issues, such as Gao Zhen, whose work depicted the Cultural Revolution, and Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet.\n\nAmong them are religious believers who do not promote and practice the CCP\u2019s version of religions, such as Xin Ruoyu, who worked on developing a Christian app that provided users access to hymns and worship music, and Zhao Ying, an elderly woman aged over 80 sentenced to more than three years in prison for giving people materials about Falun Gong.\n\nWorst Offender\n\nChina continues to rank among the worst human rights offenders in various reports. Reporters Without Borders ranked China 178 out of 180 countries and territories and the leading jailer of journalists in its 2025 press freedom reports. Freedom House scored China zero out of four on \u201cfree and independent media.\u201d\n\nThe commission saw an increase in dissent as well as suppression in recent years. It cited a China Dissent Monitor report finding a 27 percent year-on-year increase in events from a period July to September 2023 to 2024. The regime created central and local branches of the Central Society Work department in 2023 to further control society and eliminate \u201cillegal social organizations.\u201d In 2025, it tightened rules on banning these organizations.\n\nThe commission reported it observed a \u201ca coordinated campaign, led by the United Front Work Department\u201d to tighten \u201cgovernance of religion\u201d in 2025. This included suppression of ethnic minority Muslim groups, asserting authority of the Catholic Church in China despite an agreement with the Vatican, mass arrests of Protestant house church leaders, and directing \u201cconsiderable resources and attention\u201d in the CCP\u2019s continued persecution of Falun Gong.\n\nUnder the CCP, the criminal justice system is a \u201cpolitical instrument,\u201d according to the report. Dissidents can be arbitrarily detained in \u201cblack jails\u201d such as psychiatric facilities, without formal legal process, and subjected to torture and other mistreatment.\n\nInfluence Operations and Overseas Oppression\n\nThe commission reported an increase in the regime\u2019s digital activities in realms of censorship and global influence campaigns. For instance, U.S.-based OpenAI found accounts that \u201cappear to originate in China\u201d using AI to write articles criticizing the United States and denouncing a critic of the regime.\n\nThe regime\u2019s regulations require embedding \u201ccore values of socialism\u201d into its AI models, raising concerns about how Chinese AI and software can expand the regime\u2019s censorship model.\n\nBeijing is also building out physical infrastructure by way of satellite expansion, which has raised concerns about the regime\u2019s ability to spread its digital authoritarianism.\n\nIts efforts to suppress critics internationally are \u201cmultifaceted,\u201d according to the report, which cites bounties the regime placed on Hong Kong activists, as well as passport cancellations, harassment, hacking, and diplomatic pressure for extradition of dissidents.\n\nThe commission noted that several pieces of legislation addressing transnational repression have already been introduced, and recommended that the government produce a threat assessment of CCP transnational repression and whether there are statutory gaps.\n\nIt also recommended an interagency hub be formed to address the CCP\u2019s malign influence on civil society and institutions.\n\nLong History of Broken Agreements\n\nIn addition to Chinese laws that outline several human rights protections, Beijing has signed onto several international human rights and standards agreements that the regime continually violates, according to the report.\n\nIn 1979, Beijing ratified the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations which requires consular officers to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state, and Chinese embassies in the United States have many times found to be engaging in the CCP\u2019s transnational repression against critics of the regime, such as the high profile incident of instigating violence against peaceful protestors during the 2023 APEC summit in San Francisco, and carrying out espionage.\n\nIn 1981, it ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, requiring a commitment to reverse laws or regulations that perpetuate racial discrimination. Yet the CCP is currently actively erasing minority cultures by forcing Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongolian children to attend \u201ccolonial boarding schools\u201d that teach a CCP-centric curriculum and penalize the use of native languages and cultural customs.\n\nIn 1984, Beijing ratified the Sino-British Joint Declaration, meant to guarantee Hong Kong \u201ca high degree of autonomy\u201d with independent executive, legislative, and judicial powers. In recent years, the world witnessed as the CCP cracked down on protesters in Hong Kong and the passing of vaguely worded national security laws that give the CCP sweeping power to target dissenters.\n\nIn 1988, the regime ratified the Convention Against Torture, but regular reports from human rights lawyers and religious prisoners show that the regime is continuing to torture political and religious prisoners such as the Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners, which have found to be targets of live organ harvesting by the regime. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that teachers truth, compassion, and tolerance. It was introduced to the public in China in the early 1990s and banned by the regime in 1999. The commission recommended passing bills introduced that would prohibit U.S. public funds from paying for medical care related to organ transplants obtained in China and sanction perpetrators of organ harvesting.\n\nIn 1996, it ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the regime has violated by building and militarizing artificial islands in contested territory in the South China Sea and increasing maritime aggression against Philippine vessels.\n\nIn 2001, Beijing ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which includes agreements safeguarding fair labor practices. However, the only labor union in China is one led by the CCP, and the regime typically treats strikes as a criminal offense. Multiple investigations in recent years have also uncovered regime-imposed slave labor, including the exploitation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.\n\nAn Environmental Justice Foundation investigation also revealed the forced labor of North Korean workers on Chinese fishing ships, and the Brazilian government has accused China\u2019s BYD of employing at least 163 workers in \u201cslave-like conditions\u201d and withholding workers\u2019 passports and salaries. The report also noted that workers are subjected to \u201cexcessive overtime practices,\u201d including coffee farm workers in Yunnan who supply coffee to Starbucks and Nestle.\n\nThe covenant also protects parents\u2019 freedom to choose schools to \u201censure the religious and moral education of their children,\u201d which the CCP continues to violate.\n\nIn 2022, the regime ratified the Forced Labor Convention, but the commission found that systemic forced labor practices involving Uyghurs and Turkic minorities have expanded in Xinjiang this past year. The United States government considers the CCP\u2019s persecution of the Uyghur minority a genocide and has enacted law to prohibit the entry of goods made with forced labor in response. The commission recommended strengthening existing mechanisms and expediting the blacklisting of companies using forced labor and mandating transparency in supply chains. The vast majority of Chinese cotton is produced in Xinjiang, and U.S. lawmakers have pressed for better disclosures and due diligence from Chinese fashion retailers.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415161"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8255746215581894, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}