The Congressional-Executive Commission on China

announces a roundtable discussion hosted by

Senator Sherrod Brown, Cochairman

on

Current Conditions for Human Rights Defenders and Lawyers in China, and
Implications for U.S. Policy

Thursday, June 23, 2011

2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Russell Senate Office Building, Room 328A

In recent months, Chinese officials reportedly have conducted one of the harshest crackdowns in years against human rights lawyers, civic activists, and other advocates. Those targeted have advocated on behalf of specific groups and issues, such as victims of earthquakes, diseases, and tainted food, child laborers, persecuted religious groups, and political dissidents. Targeted individuals also have advocated for broader freedoms and democracy. The Internet and social media have played a prominent role in their advocacy. During the crackdown, Chinese officials reportedly have abused the law in some cases, "disappearing" some citizens outside the legal process. This roundtable will examine the implications of this crackdown on the advocacy work of those affected and the broader implications for the rule of law, the Chinese legal profession, and for U.S. policy.

This roundtable will be webcast here.

Panelists:

Elisabeth Wickeri, Executive Director and Adjunct Professor of Law, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, Fordham Law School; Member, Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers

Margaret K. Lewis, Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School

Li Xiaorong, Independent Scholar

Sarah Cook, Asia Research Analyst and Assistant Editor, Freedom on the Net, Freedom House

CECC Roundtables are open to the public. No RSVP is necessary.

Click here to download a copy of the Commission's full 2010 Annual Report.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, established by the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 as China prepared to enter the World Trade Organization, is mandated by law to monitor human rights, including worker rights, and the development of the rule of law in China, and to prepare an Annual Report to the President and Congress. The Commission by mandate also maintains a database of information on political prisoners in China—individuals who have been imprisoned by the Chinese government for exercising their civil and political rights under China's Constitution and laws or under China's international human rights obligations. The Commission's reporting and its Political Prisoner Database are available to the public online via the Commission's Web site, http://www.cecc.gov.

9.00 – 12.30h
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Room PHS 5B001, Paul-Henri Spaak Building, European Parliament
60 Rue Wiertz, Brussels, Belgium

Brussels, 17 January 2011 – Two years into Beijing’s ‘Kashgar Dangerous House Reform’, and the Old City of Kashgar in East Turkestan, or China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), faces near total destruction. There is a pressing need to assess the damage incurred, implications for the region’s Uyghur population, and to identify ways in which damage can be mitigated.

To address this urgent need, Ms Frieda Brepoels MEP will convene a conference, ‘Kashgar: An Oasis of the Silk Road on the Brink of Extinction’ at the European Parliament in Brussels from 9.00–12.30 on 27 January 2011 in collaboration with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) and the Belgian Uyghur Association.

After opening remarks by Rebiya Kadeer, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and President of the World Uyghur Congress, international experts including Henryk Szadziewski, Manager of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, Washington, and Ulrich Delius, German Society for Threatened Peoples, will provide a rare glimpse into one of the defining cultures of Central Asia and an internationally significant Silk Road city that has witnessed Tamerlane, Genghis Khan and Marco Polo but is excluded from applications for UNESCO World Heritage status due to political reasons.

Drawing on the historical lessons taught by the international case studies of Lhasa and Bruges, Vincent Metten, EU Policy Director of the International Campaign for Tibet, and Suzanne van Haeverbeek, former  Flemish world heritage expert, will discuss how international intervention may prevent Kashgar’s further destruction and avoid the total and irreversible loss of a unique site of cultural and architectural heritage.

For more information on the event please refer to http://www.unpo.org/article/12104

*     *     *
Registration is required and must be submitted before 19 January 2011
Please send your full name, date of birth, place of residence, nationality, organisation to ekrockow@unpo.org

Jamestown Foundation

Presents

China Defense & Security 2011
 
Featuring Keynote Address by
 
The Honorable Kurt M. Campbell
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
 
Thursday, February 10, 2011

Root Conference Room
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest
Washington D.C., DC 20036-2109
 
*Registration for this conference will open on January 3, 2011*

**Members of the Friends of Jamestown Program will receive a 50% discount on conference admission.**

 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
REGISTRATION:

8:30 A.M. - 9:00 A.M.
  
OPENING REMARKS:

 9:00 A.M. - 9:15 A.M
 
"MILITARY POWER IN CHINA'S GRAND STRATEGY"
Arthur Waldron
Lauder Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania

 PANEL ONE:

9:15 A.M. - 10:30 A.M.

CHINA'S RISE & GLOBAL SECURITY
 
Moderator:
L.C. Russell Hsiao
Editor, China Brief

Presenters:
"Beijing's Quasi-Superpower Diplomacy & Expanding Core Interests"
Willy Lam
Senior Fellow, The Jamestown Foundation
 
"China's Rise in the Changing Strategic Landscape"
Michael Green
Senior Adviser and Japan Chair, CSIS
Associate Professor, Georgetown University
 
"Military Balance and Cross-Strait Relations"
To be announced (TBA)
 
 COFFEE BREAK:

10:30 A.M. – 10:45 A.M.

PANEL TWO:
 
10:45 A.M. - 12:00 P.M.
FORCE STRUCTURE & MISSIONS

Moderator:
Ambassador Stapleton Roy
Director, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Presenters:
"The Chinese Armed Forces Structure and Evolving Missions"
Dennis Blasko
Former Military Intelligence Officer and Foreign Area Officer specializing in China

"The Ten Pillars of the PLAAF"
Kenneth Allen
Senior Research Analyst, DGI’s Center for Intelligence Research

"Second Artillery Corps"

Mark Stokes
Executive Director, Project 2049 Institute 
 
LUNCHEON AND KEYNOTE ADDRESS

 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM 
The Honorable Kurt Campbell
Assistant Secretary of State
Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Q & A

PANEL THREE:

1:15 PM - 2:30 PM

NAVAL MODERNIZATION & STRATEGIC THINKING

Moderator:

RADM Michael McDevitt, USN (Ret.)

Vice President, Center for Naval Analyses
 
Presenters:
"Strategic Thinking in China's Naval Modernization"
Dan Blumenthal
Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
 
"China's Anti-Access/Area Denial Capabilities"
 Andrew Erickson
Associate Professor, U.S. Naval War College
"The PLAN's Evolving Naval Doctrine & Strategy"
Nan Li
Associate Professor, U.S. Naval War College

COFFEE BREAK:

2:30 P.M. - 2:45 P.M.   
  
 PANEL FOUR:
 
2:45 P.M. - 4:00 P.M
 
THE FUTURE OF CHINA DEFENSE & SECURITY
Moderator:
Richard C. Bush III
Director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, Brookings Institution

Presenters:
"Science & Technology in China's Defense Modernization"
Tai Ming Cheung
Associate Research Scientist, IGCC

"Information Warfare and China's Cyber-warfare Capabilities"
To be announced (TBA)
"Advances in China's Space Program"
Dean Cheng
Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation

CONCLUSION:

4:00 P.M.

-------------------------------------------------- 
*** For further information please contact Hsiao@jamestown.org***

LESSONS IN DEMOCRACY
(www.lessonsindemocracy.org)
Contact: Roland Watson, roland@lessonsindemocracy.org

ANNOUNCING THE CHINESE TRANSLATION OF LESSONS IN DEMOCRACY

September 24, 2010

We are very pleased to announce the Chinese translation of Lessons in Democracy, by the Wei Jingsheng Foundation. The translation is available in two Chinese character sets, Simplified and Traditional.

The translation will be launched at a press conference in Room HC-6 of the United States Capitol, from 2.00pm - 3.30pm, September 27th. The conference will be followed by a seminar on The Sixty-One Years of Communist China, by the Asia Democracy Alliance, from 3.30pm - 5pm.

http://www.lessonsindemocracy.org/LessonsinDemocracyChineseSimplified.pdf

http://www.lessonsindemocracy.org/LessonsinDemocracyChineseTraditional.pdf

Wei Jingsheng is a leading pro-democracy advocate for China. He spent eighteen years as a political prisoner. His first imprisonment followed Deng Xiaoping’s formal announcement of the “four modernizations,” in agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology.

Mr. Wei wrote an article saying that China needed democracy as well, which article he titled the Fifth Modernization, and which he posted in 1978 on Beijing’s Democracy Wall. He was arrested, for the first time, after taking this courageous step.

The lessons were translated by Huang Ciping, Director of the Foundation. Ms. Huang, a scientist in optical physics, was previously President of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in the United States, and the Global Chinese Students and Scholars' Union.

The translation was edited by Cheng Yike. Ms. Cheng is an author and has published seven books in China, including five children’s books, a book of essays, and a biography.

Please forward these links, if possible right now, to all your Chinese friends. Please also post the links on as many China email lists, blogs and websites as possible.

The basic idea for the translation is that if the people of China want democracy, they should be interested to learn about it. Then, when they understand how their lives would be changed, practically, with freedom and human rights, they should be willing to fight for it.

This means that the lessons are not solely an educational initiative. They will have a political impact as well.

The lessons are "A" democracy guide, not "The" democracy guide. There are many approaches to teaching democracy - ours is only one of them. Our approach begins with an emphasis on the underlying principles. When people who live in dictatorships ask about democracy, they don't start with questions about the system's formal mechanisms, like elections and political parties, or its presidential and parliamentary alternatives. Instead, they want to know about the ideas: What is democracy, really? What would it mean to me? How would my life in a democratic nation be different, and better?

Again, for China, this implies that the initiative will have a political impact as well as educational. At present, many individuals and groups in China are protesting for their rights, but without a simultaneous demand for democracy. They have yet to learn that such rights can never be established and preserved unless the dictatorship that rules the country - the Communist Party of China - is replaced with democratic government.

Lessons in Democracy is a long-term initiative. It takes years to devise ways to expose a national population to the ideas of democracy, certainly in a dictatorship like China. If you can help us promote and distribute the translation, we will be off to a good start. (Thanks!)

The 2010 DOD China Report
Defining the Challenge to Taiwan 
    
Speakers: Mark Stokes
Executive Director
Project 2049 Institute

Dan Blumenthal
Resident Fellow and Director, Asian Studies
American Enterprise Institute

Dean Cheng
Research Fellow, Asian Studies Center
The Heritage Foundation
    
 Host: Walter Lohman
Director, Asian Studies Center
The Heritage Foundation
    
 Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2010
 Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
 Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium 
 or call (202) 675-1752

News media inquiries, please call (202) 675-1761 
All events can be viewed live at heritage.org.  
  
Guests are subject to Terms and Conditions of Attendance,
which can be read at heritage.org/Events/Terms-and-Conditions-of-Attendance.  

The recently released annual Department of Defense Report to Congress provides the official US assessment of China's military capabilities. What does it say explicitly - and implicitly - about the threat posed to Taiwan? How should the report findings influence pending arms sales and America's obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)? Taiwan's long-standing request for F-16s remains unfilled. Undue delays have surfaced over seemingly minor arms sales notifications to Congress. Is U.S. policy toward Taiwan taking the threat it faces into full account? Or having made the $6.4 billion second installment on the Bush-era sale to Taiwan, is the Administration tacking back to a more China-sensitive orientation? We hope to address these questions and others with top experts on the PLA and the cross-straits military balance.

Professor Yang Zhongdong talks about ethnic relations in Xinjiang.

09/23/2010 4:00PM - 6:00PM

USC Davidson Conference Center, California Room
Address: 3415 S. Figueroa, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Cost: Free
Phone: 1-213-821-4382
Website: http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=2005

Professor Yang Zhongdong, a visiting scholar from Xinjiang University’s School of Humanities, talks about recent ethnic riots in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Professor Yang argues against the use of the concept of "ethnic conflict" to describe of the 2009 riots in Xinjiang. He combines a comprehensive analysis of the riots with particular attention to social, economic, cultural, and historical factors with recollections of his own personal experiences in Xinjiang.

Professor Yang's research focus is contemporary Muslim communities in Xinjiang Province. Born in Urumqi, the region’s capital, Professor Yang is a Hui, a Muslim ethnic minority. This background helped inspire his study of the history and the culture of Xinjiang. As a scholar in Hui Studies, a fairly new discipline, Professor Yang emphasizes the importance of the ethnological discipline in his research.  Ethnology, according to Professor Yang, incorporates a large amount of fieldwork that is essential to studying one specific ethnicity.   The diversity of China dictates that an ethnological approach to studying the Xinjiang people is indispensible. His current research in Los Angeles involves comparing how religion and ethnicity shape the identity of Muslim minorities in the U.S. and China.

Monday, July 19, 2010
2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 628At this CECC roundtable, panelists will provide an analysis of conditions in the far western region of Xinjiang one year since demonstrations and rioting in Xinjiang's capital in July 2009. The 2009 events drew an international spotlight to longstanding tensions in the region and to Uyghurs' grievances toward government policies that have undermined their rights. Has the government since taken steps to address these grievances? Authorities pledged in 2010 to improve economic conditions in Xinjiang and appointed a new Party secretary for the region. How will these new developments shape Xinjiang's future? Have authorities adhered to international standards for due process in carrying out trials connected to alleged crimes committed in July 2009? How have government controls over the free flow of information affected our understanding of events in the region?

Panelists:
Kathleen E. McLaughlin, China correspondent for BNA, Inc., and freelance journalist
Sophie Richardson, Asia Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch
Stanley W. Toops, Associate Professor, Department of Geography and International Studies Program, Miami University

CECC Roundtables are open to the public. No RSVP is necessary.

CAN ANYONE HEAR US?  VOICES FROM THE 2009 UNREST IN URUMCHI 

and a roundtable discussion on

UYGHUR-HAN TENSIONS:  CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 

On July 5, 2009, thousands of young Uyghur protestors, holding the red flags of the People's Republic of China, peacefully took to the streets of Urumchi to protest against the beating and killing of several Uyghur migrant workers a week earlier at a toy factory in Guangdong province and to demand respect for the human rights of the Uyghur people. Two days later, according to Chinese government media, the death toll from street riots stood at 197 (of whom the vast majority were reported to be Han Chinese), with 1,700 injured.  Chinese President Hu Jintao left the G8 Summit in Rome early and returned to Beijing to manage the unrest, one of the worst cases of inter-ethnic violence in the history of the People's Republic of China.  

In the aftermath of the violence, independent observers voiced concerns about a large number of deaths of Uyghurs as well as Han Chinese, as well as sweeping detentions of young men in Urumchi and other cities, with 26 death sentences and nine executions officially reported to date.   

In advance of the one-year anniversary of the Urumchi unrest, analysts will assess the causes of the transformation of peaceful demonstrations into deadly inter-ethnic violence, government policy responses to the unrest, the effect of those policies on Uyghur and Han populations in Xinjiang, and the likely outcomes of the May 2010 Xinjiang Work Conference hosted by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

2:00     Report Launch:  Can Anyone Hear Us?  Voices from the 2009 Unrest in Urumchi.  What Happened?  From July 5 through the September "syringe attacks."

THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY
 
 In Cooperation with the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
 
Presents
 
The 10 Conditions of Love
A documentary about the Uyghur people and Rebiya Kadeer
 
Film introduction by Rebiya Kadeer
 
Remarks by Rep. Jim McGovern(D-MA)
 Chairman, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
 
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 4-6pm
The Pickford Theater
 The Library of Congress James Madison Building
 
 RSVP to
kellyd@ned.org 

 
10 conditionsThe 10 Conditions of Love tells the story of the Uyghurs' struggle for basic human rights in China through the remarkable life of Rebiya Kadeer, a Uyghur woman working for the rights of her people at great personal cost.  The documentary explores Ms. Kadeer's experience as an entrepreneur in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region/East Turkestan and a member of the National People's Political Consultative Committee, her subsequent imprisonment as a political dissident, and her forced exile in the United States since 2005.  Ms. Kadeer works to inform the world about the treatment of her people by the Chinese government while her family remaining in China suffers the consequences of her human rights activism.

 
Ms. Kadeer is Director of the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation, which has received NED support since 2005.  In addition, she serves on the Boards of Directors of the Uyghur American Association and the World Uyghur Congress, which also receive NED support for their work to advocate for the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of Uyghurs in China.  Ms. Kadeer's autobiography, Dragon Fighter, One Woman's Epic Struggle for Peace with China, was published in May 2009.

 
This 53-minute documentary was written and directed by Jeff Daniels and produced by John Lewis.  NED and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission are grateful to the filmmakers for their kind permission to screen the film.