Aircraft Ownership Transparency Act of 2019

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his lifelong commitment to promoting human rights throughout the world. I thank him, also, for his leadership in bringing this legislation to the floor today.

Madam Speaker, I also thank Mr. McCaul, Mr. Engel, and Mr. McGovern for their leadership, and Chris Smith, who has been working on this issue for decades.

Madam Speaker, I rise in remembrance of the horror perpetrated by the Chinese Government 30 years ago today and of the heroism of those who died demanding human rights and human dignity.

Again, I salute Chairman McGovern, Chairman Engel, Chris Smith, Mr. McCaul, Mr. Malinowski, and so many others for bringing this resolution forward, which ensures that we do not merely remember that dark chapter of history, but that we record it in the official proceedings of the United States Congress.

Madam Speaker, 30 years ago, 1 million students, workers and citizens--men and women full of passion, idealism, and courage-- peacefully marched for a better future.

They raised their Goddess of Democracy in the image of our own Statue of Liberty. They quoted our Founders. They dared to dream of the democracy we cherish here in the United States--not necessarily the same kind of democracy, but for democratic freedoms. They stood up for freedom, only to be cut down by a hail of bullets and a line of tanks.

Earlier this year, the Tiananmen Mothers, who lost loved ones in the massacre, wrote to the Chinese leaders. Those mothers said: ``30 years later, while the criminal evidence has been covered up . . . the hard facts of the massacre are etched into history.

``No one can erase it; no power, however mighty, can alter it; and no words or tongues, however clever, can deny it.''

Today, and on all days, we reassure these mothers that we remember and that the heroism of their children will continue to be etched in our history.

It falls on us to remember, because China still, shamefully, tries to hide and deny these heroes' legacy.

As the writer Lu Xun wrote: ``Lies written in ink cannot disguise by facts written in blood.''

The memory and the spirit of the Tiananmen protestors live on in the hearts of all those who strive for freedom in China today:

In the hearts of the Uighur communities facing unabated abuse and repression at the hands of the Chinese Government;

In the hearts of the people living in Hong Kong, where China continues to make a mockery of the ``one country, two systems'' pledge;

In the hearts of the Tibetan people, who, for decades, have faced a brutal campaign to erase their religion, their culture, and their language; and

In the hearts of journalists, human rights lawyers, Christians, and democracy activists unjustly imprisoned.

They always say--speaking of those in prison--that one great form of torture of the Chinese officials is to tell the prisoners that no one remembers them, nobody knows why they are there, they are forgotten.

Well, we are here in the House of Representatives today to tell those prisoners they are not forgotten: We know many of their names; we convey them to Chinese officials every chance we get; and we carry them in our hearts.

As Liu Xiaobo wrote in his final statement, ``I Have No Enemies'': ``Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth.''

As we support those fighting for freedom from China's oppression, we do so in the name of human rights, humanity, and truth.

If we do not speak out for human rights in China because of economic concerns, then we lose all moral authority to talk about human rights in any other place in the world.

In their March letter, the Tiananmen Mothers also quoted the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel, who once said: ``If we forget the dead, the dead will be killed a second time.''

With this resolution, the Congress pledges to the Tiananmen generation that we will never forget. With the spirit of the Tiananmen protestors in our hearts, we pledge to continue to work toward our shared dream, a dream of the day when the world's most populous nation can be called the largest democracy.

And, again, China is a very important country. The U.S.-China relationship is a very important relationship. At the time when this oppression took place, China was abusing not only the rights of their own people; they were not allowing U.S. products into China. They were abusing our trade relationship, and they were selling technologies of mass destruction and missile delivery systems to rogue countries.

We thought at the time if we highlighted what happened at Tiananmen Square, where the trade deficit at the time was $5 billion a year--it was $5 billion a year, Chairman McCaul--we thought that gave us great leverage to free the prisoners, open their markets to our products, stop their violations of our intellectual property rights, as well as stop their transfer of technologies that were unsafe--$5 billion.

With corporate America, who hoped to benefit from the trade relationship--not your everyday small- to moderate-sized businesses. They knew the abuse of China and the trade relationship. But corporate America weighed in with Democratic and Republican Presidents and said: We cannot use that trade relationship, that $5 billion as leverage to free the prisoners and make other changes. If we just proceed as we do, everything will work out.

Well, now the trade deficit with China isn't $5 billion a year. It is more than $5 billion a week--a week. We rode the dragon, and the dragon will decide when we get off.

But as a tribute to corporate America, our policy was to ignore the violations, whether it was trade violations, human rights violations, or violations of trading missiles and other technologies to rogue countries--and now over $5 billion a week. It was a serious, serious mistake.

But as we made that mistake, we also betrayed our values, our values of respecting the dignity and worth of every person and respecting their aspirations for freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of belief in this great country of China.

So with respect to our prospects for our relationship with China, I would hope that in our trade talks with them now, that we are also bringing up the important subject of our values as well as the dollars that are involved in the relationship.

Again, I salute those who have been so important in this discussion. I called

Mr. McGovern our spiritual leader as we traveled to China and within China, to Tibet, and Hong Kong, and the rest, for his incredible leadership as not only the chair of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, but the chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

Madam Speaker, I urge our colleagues to give this a big strong vote.

Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding.

Madam Speaker, today I am in support of this resolution on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I thank Representative McGovern and Representative Smith for their leadership on this resolution, which serves to remember the victims of the violence and suppression of democracy protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and calls on the current Communist Government of China to respect the universally recognized human rights of all people living in China and around the world.

I just remember as a young man watching this--as probably many of the people do--whole thing unfold on our television sets. We were rooting for these people yearning to be free, and the man standing in front of the tank. It is just emblazoned in our minds.

Thirty years ago in the spring of 1989, thousands of Chinese students began staging peaceful protests for democratic reforms in China. They were asking their Communist government for rights that are fundamental to any democracy, including: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and the elimination of official corruption.

They were asking for rights and freedoms that we enjoy in the United States, but the Chinese citizens were being denied then, and believe it or not, are still being denied today. Regardless of what we see on television, regardless of what we might think because it says, ``made in China,'' things are different in China.

When faced with the growing and intensifying peaceful protests, the Communist leaders in 1989 chose a violent and authoritarian response, and then lied about it and acted like it didn't happen. They chose to declare martial

law and to intensify their use of authoritarian tactics to oppress and control the people of China, culminating in the events in Tiananmen Square.

On June 4, 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers in armored columns of tanks outside Tiananmen Square fired directly at Chinese citizens and indiscriminately at crowds in Beijing, inflicting high civilian casualties. These were unarmed crowds, Madam Speaker, fired upon.

To this day, we still don't know how many civilians were killed that day. Estimates range from hundreds to a few thousand and we can say with confidence that thousands more civilians were wounded on June 4 and even a greater number were arrested for taking part in these protests.

We are here today to honor those who were lost and affected by the violent, authoritarian suppression of the Chinese Communist Government in 1989, and to call for an end to China's current, continued authoritarian suppression.

Unfortunately, parallels can be drawn between the Chinese Government that perpetrated the Tiananmen Square massacre and the current regime of President Xi and the Communist Party. In China today, there is official government repression of freedom of speech, religion, movement, association, and assembly.

We know at least 1 million, and some estimate up to 3 million Chinese Muslims are forcibly interned in detention camps designed to erase their religious and ethnic identities. This is something out of the 1930s and the 1940s that the world said would never happen again. It is happening right now.

The Communist government has deployed tens of millions of evasive high-tech surveillance cameras throughout the country to monitor the general public. The cameras and other forms of surveillance are used to intimidate political dissidents, religious leaders and adherents, and minority groups.

In the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas, the Communist government has installed surveillance cameras in monasteries. Tibetans also face the monitoring and disruption of telephone and internet communications.

And this is absolutely just the beginning with the establishment of the system of social credits.

The State Department's 2018 Report on Human Rights Practices in China has a long list of human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Government, to include: Unlawful killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture; arbitrary detention; political imprisonment; arbitrary interference with privacy; physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and their family members; interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association; as well as severe restrictions on religious freedoms.

I hope we can take an opportunity today to honor the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, highlighting that the Chinese people still know very little about what transpired that night.

I also hope we can have a continued conversation about the current Communist Chinese Party's authoritarian and oppressive tactics that are continuing to violate the basic human rights of the Chinese people, and I hope this is just the beginning of the conversation.

China is a clear and present danger. They have been in an economic war, and information war. They have been at war with the West, and particularly the United States, for the last several decades, and it is high time that the American people wake up. This should just be the beginning.

I thank the makers of this resolution for doing so, but I hope it is just the beginning of the conversation, but more than the conversation, the concrete actions that we take against China's aggressive and authoritarian actions, not only to their own people, but to the rest of the world, including the United States.

I hope that we not only support this President and this administration when he does the right thing, taking a hard stance against China, but that this Congress will take the lead on concrete actions regarding China's malevolent behavior around the world, but particularly in China, with their markets, with dumping on American markets, with intellectual property theft, and the list goes on and on.

Madam Speaker, it's been 30 years since the Chinese government brutally crushed the peaceful demonstrations occurring in Beijing Tiananmen Square.

The beating, the bayonetting, the torture, and detentions of the 1989 demonstrators turned the dream of freedom into a bloody nightmare.

``Tiananmen'' will always symbolize the brutal lengths China's Communist Party will go to remain in power. When the tanks rolled down the Square on June 4th, 1989--mothers lost sons, fathers lost daughters, and China lost an idealistic generation of future leaders.

The resolution before us, H. Res. 393, honors the extraordinary sacrifice endured by thousands of peaceful Chinese democracy activists who rallied for almost two months in Beijing and in over 400 other cities in China, in a heroic quest for liberty and human rights.

The government of China continues to go to astounding lengths to censor and ban open discussion of Tiananmen. This resolution sends the right message: we will never forget Tiananmen as long as the Chinese people cannot discuss its significance openly without harassment or arrest.

Some may prefer to forget this incident. To move on and look past the slaughter of peaceful demonstrators. But the memory of the dead and those arrested, tortured, and exiled requires us to honor them, respect their noble aspirations for fundamental freedoms, and recommit ourselves to the struggle for freedom and human rights in China.

It is both the right thing to do and critical to the future of U.S.- China relations.

One of the most enduring symbols of the Tiananmen demonstrations was the unveiling of the goddess of liberty statue. It was a moment that thrilled freedom-seekers around the globe. Here was this enduring symbol of freedom juxtaposed against portrait of the despot Mao Zedong.

This moment was extraordinary because it showed that when the Chinese people are able to speak publicly and freely--they ask for greater freedoms, democracy, and justice. These are universal liberties that can be found in demonstrations for liberty worldwide--we see it in Cairo and Caracas, Burma and Hong Kong, Tbilisi and Kiev.

There was a moment when we all believed the Tiananmen Square demonstrations would be a triumph of freedom and democracy. Later in 1989, the Warsaw Pact nations started to crumble and eventually the former Soviet Union fell as well. But the Communist leaders of China hung on to power through force and eventually through the help of Western governments and global corporations.

For the past 30 years, the Tiananmen demonstrations have shaped the way the Chinese government deals with dissent. Despite the country's stunning economic growth, Beijing's leaders remain terrified of their own people. China's ruling Communist Party would rather stifle, imprison, or even kill its own people than defer to their demands for freedom and rights.

There is a direct connection between the impunity and violence used to silence Tiananmen demonstrations and deny justice to the victims of the Tiananmen massacre and the impunity and violence employed now to support the internment of over a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in what only can be called concentration camps.

The egregious human rights abuses occurring in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region must end--no one can remain silent in the face of such barbarity and crimes against humanity.

But China is also the torture capital of the world, the world's largest jailer of journalists, with the globe's worst record on human trafficking and religious freedom. Human rights lawyers, Tibetans, ethnic minority groups, labor organizers, and free speech advocates all face repression and harassment when they peacefully seek universally recognized rights.

Xi Jinping talks about the ``China Dream''--but that dream is nightmare for millions upon millions upon millions of the Chinese people.

Nevertheless, repression has not dimmed the desires of the Chinese people for freedom and reform. There is an inspiring drive in China to keep fighting for freedom under very difficult and dangerous conditions.

This drive is the most important asset in promoting human rights and democratization in China. If democratic change comes to China, it will come from within, not because of outside pressure--though outside pressure continues to be critically needed.

U.S. policy, in both the short and long-term, must be, and be seen to be, supportive of advocates for peaceful change; it must support the champions of liberty, and help nurture a vibrant civil society that seeks to promote rights and freedoms for everyone in China. And, we must fight to end China's pervasive internet censorship and mass surveillance--so the Chinese people can finally learn about Tiananmen and the truth about their own government.

Our strategic and moral interests coincide when we seek to promote human rights and democratic openness in China. A more democratic China, one that respects human rights, and is governed by the rule of law, is more likely to be a productive and peaceful partner rather than strategic and hostile competitor.

I believe that someday China will be free. Someday, the people of China will be able to enjoy all of their God-given rights. And a nation of free Chinese men and women will honor, applaud, and celebrate the heroes of Tiananmen Square and all those who sacrificed so much, and so long, for freedom.

I support H. Res. 393 and the message that it sends. I hope it will re-inspire, re-energize, and reprioritize a struggle for human rights and freedom in China.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 393) remembering the victims of the violent suppression of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China on June 3 and 4, 1989, and calling on the Government of the People's Republic of China to respect the universally recognized human rights of all people living in China and around the World, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 393.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Speaker of the House.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I thank Chairman McCaul for his eloquent statement and his leadership on this issue, and I rise in very strong support of this measure.

Thirty years ago, I was here on Capitol Hill, my first job out of college. I was working on the Senate side for the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and one day, I was sitting in my cubicle and we were watching our TVs, which were tuned to this novelty station called CNN that was bringing these events live to us, something we had never really experienced before.

One day we looked up, and we saw the image of this young Chinese man with his grocery bags standing in front of that line of tanks, and we watched it unfold for about 2 minutes. It seemed like forever. We did not know what would happen. Would he be killed? Would he be run over? It was a moment that changed my life and changed the world.

We all know what happened afterwards: a massacre; mass arrests; efforts that continue to this day to bury the truth of what happened in Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese Government has tried to erase the memory of that day from our collective memory. Here is something very important, something that should command our attention: the Chinese Government today is not satisfied merely with censoring its own people. It is insisting on censoring the entire world.

It is trying to intimidate companies, and universities, and individuals all around the world into never uttering the words, ``the Tiananmen massacre.''

With this resolution, we say to the Chinese Government that they cannot intimidate the United States of America. This resolution makes clear we are going to speak the truth about the crime that they have committed 30 years ago, and all of the crimes they continue to commit today: the wholesale imprisonment of lawyers; their efforts to crush the culture and heritage of the Tibetan people; the mass surveillance technology they are exporting to the whole world; and the mass internment of innocent men, women, and children in Xinjiang.

We see the significance of these actions, not just what the Chinese Government is doing on human rights, but what is being done on trade, and in the South China Sea. All of them are an effort by the Chinese Government to break free and to rewrite the rules that keep the world safe and free.

We see the Chinese Government's attempts to silence us on these issues for what it is, a sign of weakness, not of strength.

The Chinese Government's power rests on a fragile foundation of falsehood. It depends on people forgetting the past. It depends on people believing a lie. So today, we say that they are failing, and they are going to fail. It has been 30 years. We still mark this anniversary. We still remember Liu Xiaobo and all of the heroes of the square. The footage of Tank Man still plays on TV, and thanks to the internet, more people are seeing it today than saw it in 1989.

We will carry on until we know his name, until the Chinese people have the freedom that they fought peacefully for that day and that they so richly deserve.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the author of this resolution and one of the greatest champions of human rights I have had the privilege to know.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for the purpose of closing.

I will simply say that our disagreement here, the disagreement we have been expressing in such a united way, is not with China. It is certainly not with the Chinese people. It is simply with the Chinese Government.

We stand in full agreement with the Chinese people, with everybody in China who wishes to live in a country governed by respect for the rule of law and for human rights. That is what this resolution is about.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 393, a resolution ``Remembering the victims of Tiananmen Square.''

H. Res. 393 remembers the victims of the violent suppression of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China on June 3 and 4, 1989 and calls on the Government of the People's Republic of China to respect the universally recognized human rights of all people living in China and around the world.

On June 4, 1989, a violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrations held in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square was carried out by the People's Liberation Army, following orders given by the Government of the People's Republic of China.

An estimated 1,000,000 people joined the protests in Tiananmen Square and citizens in over 400 Chinese cities staged similar protests calling for democratic reform, including not only students, but also government employees, journalists, workers, police officers, members of the armed forces, and other citizens.

These peaceful demonstrations of 1989 called upon the Government of the People's

Republic of China to eliminate corruption, accelerate economic and political reform, and protect human rights, particularly the freedoms of expression and assembly, issues that remain relevant in United States-China relations 30 years later.

Although these activists' reform efforts continue to inspire the Chinese people, the Government of the People's Republic of China takes active measures to deny its citizens the truth about the Tiananmen Square massacre, including the blocking of uncensored internet sites and social media commentary on microblog and other messaging services, and the placement of misleading information on the events of June 3 and 4, 1989, on internet sites available in China.

The Chinese government also continues to silence the voices and memory of these activists through gruesome attacks on demonstrators who recognize the false information being spread by the Chinese Government.

On May 20, 1989, martial law was declared in Beijing, China, after authorities had failed to persuade demonstrators to leave Tiananmen Square, sending thousands of armed troops, supported by tanks and other armor, moved into Beijing and the surrounding streets where the forces fired into crowds of unarmed civilians.

The ``Remembering the victims of Tiananmen Square'' Act promises to do this by expressing sympathy and solidarity to the families of those killed, tortured, and imprisoned for their participation in the pro- democracy demonstrations during the spring of 1989 in Beijing and in other cities across the People's Republic of China and verbally supporting the leaders of the Tiananmen demonstrations and all those who peacefully sought political reform, democratic transparency, the rule of law, and protections for universally recognized human rights in China.

The resolution also renounces the practices of the Chinese government's actions during and after the Tiananmen Square Protest and calls on the government to take responsibility for the number of deaths that occurred during the violent suppression of the spring 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, rehabilitate the reputations of those who participated in the demonstrations and those detained for seeking to commemorate the anniversary of the demonstrations, and cease the censoring of information and discussion about the Tiananmen Square massacre, including at Confucius Institutes worldwide.

Through these actions, H.R. 393 promises to adequately relay the United States' disappointment with the violence towards Tiananmen demonstrators and aid the advocates and protestors in their quest for protected human rights.

The Government of the People's Republic of China continues to actively suppress universally recognized rights by imprisoning or restricting the activities of pro-democracy activists, human rights lawyers, citizen journalists, labor union leaders, religious believers, members of ethnic minorities, and individuals in the Xinjiang and Tibetan regions, among many others who seek to express their political or religious views or their ethnic identity in a peaceful manner.

Despite persistent, ongoing, and sometimes brutal repression, the desire of Chinese citizens to risk life, limb, and liberty to exercise universally recognized human rights, ensure the rule of law, and promote political reform cannot be extinguished, thus the legacy of Tiananmen Square lives on.