CHINA Individual Views of Commissioner Gary L. Bauer Individual Views of Commissioner Johnnie Moore Of the countries named each year by USCIRF as egregious violators of religious liberty, one is in a category by itself. Communist China doesn’t only deny its citizens basic human rights, including the right to seek and worship God. It is also asserting itself as a new authoritarian model for developing nations around the world. It is actively engaged in undermining international human rights standards. It utilizes its growing military power to intimidate and threaten its neighbors. China’s Communist Party (CCP) believes the United States is in inevitable decline. They believe the growth of their economic and military might cannot be stopped. They think the 21st century will be the Chinese Communist Century. If they are right, the 21st century will be a time in which human freedom and dignity shrinks while oppression grows. USCIRF policy recommendations are made annually to U.S. government officials. But in a constitutional republic like ours, public opinion is everything. I appeal to my fellow citizens to act now, individually. To U.S. corporate CEOs, stop putting your desire for greater profits in China ahead of the interests and values of our country. To the presidents of our great universities, stop accepting Chinese Communist money that will inevitably threaten academic freedom. To American consumers, don’t buy products made by suffering workers in Communist China’s slave labor camps and factories. You are subsidizing their persecution and strengthening an adversary of our country. The United States has faced and defeated great threats to human liberty before, including Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Communist Chinese don’t think we have the same courage today. They will be proven wrong, but only if each of us stands for American values. China is relapsing to its cultural revolution, but with the aid of technology Mao could have only dreamed of—all of which it is using to pursue and enable genocide. Communist China is not a “strategic competitor.” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a hostile actor whose actions imperil the world, and its abuses have been made possible by inexcusable policies endorsed by Congress and the White House over many administrations. It is time that the United States and its allies embrace a cleareyed view of the CCP, recognizing that it is singular and distinct in its disregard for human life—not just human rights and religious freedom. It aids and abets similar activities by other countries all around the world. We cannot allow the international order, in pursuit of self-interest, to continue to let China play by its own rules. Those nations around the world that ignore the CCP’s malevolence will eventually find themselves subservient to it. It is past time for our world bodies and our liberal democracies to stand up to the CCP. 18 U S C I R F | A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 2 1