Forced Abortion and Sterilization in China: the View from the Inside

FORCED ABORTION AND STERILIZATION IN CHINA: THE VIEW FROM THE INSIDE HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION JUNE 10, 1998 Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations 0 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 49-740 CC WASHINGTON : 1998 For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-057398-X o -J44-4 COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman WILLIAM GOODLING, Pennsylvania LEE HAMILTON, Indiana JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois TOM LANTOS, California DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska HOWARD BERMAN, California CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey GARY ACKERMAN, New York DAN BURTON, Indiana ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American ELTON GALLEGLY, California Samoa ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey DANA ROHRABACHER, California ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey EDWARD R. ROYCE, California SHERROD BROWN, Ohio PETER T. KING, New York CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia JAY KIM, California ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio PAT DANNER, Missouri MARSHALL "MARK" SANFORD, South EARL HILLIARD, Alabama Carolina BRAD SHERMAN, California MATT SALMON, Arizona ROBERT WEXLER, Florida AMO HOUGHTON, New York STEVE ROTHMAN, New Jersey TOM CAMPBELL, California BOB CLEMENT, Tennessee JON FOX, Pennsylvania BILL LUTHER, Minnesota JOHN McHUGH, New York JIM DAVIS, Florida LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina LOIS CAPPS, California ROY BLUNT, Missouri KEVIN BRADY, Texas RICHARD BURR, North Carolina RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff MICHAEL H. VAN DUSEN, Democratic Chief of Staff SUBCOMMITrEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania TOM LANTOS, California HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia DAN BURTON, Indiana GARY L ACKERMAN, New York CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, .',merican PETER T. KING, New York Samoa MATT SALMON, Arizona DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey LINDSEY 0. GRAHAM, South Carolina EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ROBERT WEXLER, Florida GROVER JOSEPH REES, Subcommittee Staff Director and Chief Counsel ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Professional Staff Member DOUGLAS C. ANDERSON, Counsel CATHERINE DUBOIS, Staff Associate (I) CONTENTS WITNESSES Page Ms. Nicole Hess, The Laogai Research Foundation ...................................... 6 Ms. Gao Xiao Duan, Former Administrator, Planned Birth Control Office, People's Republic of China ............................................ 8 Ms. Zhou Shiu Yon, Coercive Population Control Victim ..................... 14 Mr. Harry Hongda Wu, Executive Director, Laogai Research Foundation ........16 APPENDIX Prepared statements: Hon. Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from New Jersey and Chairman, Subcomraittce on International Operations and H u m an R ights ..............................................................................................27 M s. G ao X iao D uan ..........................................................................................30 M s. Zhou Shiu Y on ..........................................................................................57 M r. H arry Hongda W u .....................................................................................59 Additional material submitted for the record: Video narration transcript, read by Nicole Hess ...........................................133 The Wall Street Journal, "How China Uses U.N. Aid for Forced Abor- tions," written by Stephen W. Mosher, Monday, May 13, 1985 ................135 The Washington Post, "Abortion Policy Tears at China's Society," written by Michael Weisskopf, Monday, January 7, 1985 ..................... 136 The New York Times, "China's Crackdown on Births: A Stunning, and Harsh, Success," Sunday, April 25, 1993 .................................. 139 The New York Times, Brths Punished by Fine, Beating, or Ruined H om e ..............................................................................................................14 2 U.N. Population Fund, January 7, 1998, Programme of Assistance to C h in a ..............................................................................................................14 3 (III) FORCED ABORTION AND STERILIZATION IN CHINA: THE VIEW FROM THE INSIDE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1998 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:06 a.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Smith (chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. Mr. SMITH. [presiding] The Subcommittee will come to order. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Civilizations can be judged by how they treat women, children, old people, and strangers. Vulnerable people bring out the kindness in every society and also the cruelty. Ever so often, they become the object of practices so vile that they wiil cause people to recoil in horror across the centuries. One such practice is forced abortion, another is forced sterilization. The world has known for well over 15 years now that the Government of China routinely compels women to abort their unauthorized unborn children and that the Chinese men and women are often forcibly sterilized. Almost 2 months ago, I was approached by human -rights activist Harry Wu, who asked for my help in bringing an important defec- tor from the People's Republic of China into the United States. Mrs. Gao Xiao Duan was the senior official at what the Govern- ment of China euphemistically calls a "family planning clinic." She had decided that she could no longer live with herself while con- tinuing to do this work and was trying to escape to the United States in order to tell the inside story of the PRC population control program. Unfortunately, our State Department had already turned her down for a visa at the U.S. consulate at Guangzhou. She managed to escape to Manila where she was again denied a visa to enter the United States. Ultimately, I asked the Immigration and Natu- ralization Service to grant Mrs. Gao a public-interest parole so she could provide this important testimony to our Subcommittee and to the American people. INS was far more sensitive to the importance of this case than their colleagues at the State Department. They decided to allow Mrs. Gao to come to the United States to tell her Re already knew many of the gruesome details of the PRC coercive population control program. We knew, for instance, that the government routinely imposes exorbitant fines on couples who had, "unauthorized" children, sometimes amounting to three or four times the average income of the average Chinese citizen. And that they destroyed their homes and confiscated their personal property when they cannot pay. We knew that when a woman has an unauthorized pregnancy, she is typically brought to the family planning center and subjected to intense psychological pressure, often with the personal involve- ment of her boss and other people who hold power over her, until she agrees to the abortion. We knew that when th., psychological pressure does not work, women are sometimes dragged physically to abortion mills and that physical force is often also employed against both men and women when they refuse to be sterilized. We've known this for some time anXdI will ask unanimous con- sent to make a part of the record a number of articles over the course of many years. Steve Mosher broke this story after serving, doing educational work, in 1980, living among the rural Chinese, and brought to the world a story it was unwilling and perhaps even unable to accept- that forced abortion and coercive population control was part and parcel of the one-child-per-couple policy. [The information referred to appears in the appendix.] Mr. SMITH. Dr. John Aird; in writing his book, 'The Slaughter of the Innocents," and doing all kinds of other important investiga- tive work as the China-branch specialist at the U.S. Census Bu- reau, helped to uncover and to systematically, methodically lay out the case of forced abortion and forced sterilization and how it works and how it is mutually reinforcing, from the very top right down to the very bottom. In January 7, 1985, in an incisive piece in The Washington Post by Michael Weisskopf-remember this is 1985--he writes: "Chinese leaders consider their policy of one-couple-one-child a fight for na- tional survival." But he says: "A closer look reveals a different pic- ture than the one that they give about voluntarism." He points out that China is curbing its population growth, but its success is root- ed in widespread coercion, mass abortion, and intrusion by the State into the most intimate of human affairs. "The size of the family is too important to be left to the personal decision of the couple," said the Minister of Family Planning who was in China at the time. And then he goes to talk about how coercive abortion-back in 1985-and I can recall Members, when I raised this issue, look- ing at me and saying, "It can't be true." Well, it continues, regret- tably, to this day. [The article referred to appears in the appendix.] Mr. SMITH. A New

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