Travis Wussow, vice president for public policy and general counsel at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention (ERLC), spoke in November 2019 about human rights and religious liberty in China during Providence’s Christianity and National Security Conference in Washington, DC. The following is a transcript of the lecture.

When I told Mark I wanted to talk about China and countering China, he said, “Be sure to include some Southern Baptist flair,” which I took as an invitation to have an altar call. I assume all of you will be ready for that at the end of my presentation.

For those of us who are free traders, many of us at the beginning of the Trump Administration’s trade war with China were very skeptical about the enterprise, the wisdom of it, the outcomes, the kinds of impacts this would have on our relationship, and how this might upset long-standing U.S. policy in Asia. The outcome of the trade war remains to be seen as it’s still ongoing, but to give the Trump Administration credit, they’ve certainly gotten China’s attention. For those of us who are trade advocates, human rights advocates, and, within that, religious liberty advocates, this presents an opportunity. Having gotten China’s attention and injected some instability into our relationship with China, that’s what we’ll be talking about today.

I don’t know that I would call myself a China hawk, but certainly, China is a rogue actor in the international system on at least four fronts. China has been abusing the international trade system. This includes forced intellectual property transfers, intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, and so on. China has also become the loan shark of international aid in the 21st century.

The Belt and Road is one example of this. If you are a developing country and don’t want to jump through all the hoops the Americans, the IMF, or the World Bank would have you go through, China is ready to give aid. Your ability to repay and the impact on your economy are secondary considerations.

The third point is connected to this, which is that China has been accumulating over the last decade what has been called sharp power—something beyond the soft power strategy that the United States has employed since World War II, with a little more of an edge.

Fourth, China is an aggressive regional actor on security, through extraterritorial claims, building and militarizing islands, and underwater reefs.

On all of these fronts, the United States has recognized and developed a strategy to confront China. We can argue about whether these strategies are effective, whether we’re doing enough, or whether we’re doing too much. Trade is one area where there is sharp disagreement among conservatives about our approach. In other areas, we might be ten years behind in terms of international aid, trying to sway developing nations and competing with China’s strategy of buying allegiance through debt.

There’s another area where China has been an aggressive actor, and that has been through its narrative on human rights and international norms. This is an area where we are just beginning to grapple with China. China’s abuses in terms of human rights are well known, but I want to run through some of these and drill down to a few of them.

Right now, between half a million and a million, with some estimates even higher, Uyghur Muslims in Western China, in Xinjiang province, are held in what are essentially concentration camps. The same tools of mass surveillance and population control are now being deployed in and around Christian churches, even in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai. There are a number of churches where facial recognition cameras have been installed inside the facilities, raising ominous questions about what that information is being used for. There are reports of organ harvesting from failing detainees going back some time. There is extraterritorial surveillance and interrogation of Han Chinese living outside of China. China is also known for its censorship and state control of media.

These things have been going on for some time. In the face of this, China has received criticism and faced international pressure. Every nation puts forward its own narrative, its own explanation for why they are doing what they are doing. They try to save face and come up with an explanation. China is unique in this regard, and I think it will yield long-term damage to their national norms for three reasons.

First, they are advancing a very aggressive narrative with intellectual and logical connection points to arguments made by Middle Eastern regimes and by the North Korean regime. Second, their campaign is much more aggressive and sophisticated than anything other countries have done, certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union. Third, their effectiveness is something we have to grapple with.

Going back to the first point, their aggressive moral rationale. There was a time in the early 2000s when groups like mine would complain about China’s human rights record, and our missionaries in China would encourage us to take it easy, saying things were actually getting better. The unregulated, non-state-controlled churches were still underground but growing. In some cases, they were able to have signs, and the government seemed to tolerate them.

Within the last few years, this began to shift. Around 2012, 2013, 2014, this began to change. President Xi gave a speech in April 2016 explaining his vision for religion. In this famous speech, he said that religious practice in China must be “scientized,” meaning religion would be tolerated but must conform and be subordinated to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.

In addition to this, the move in 2016 was coupled with an explosion from China of English-language human rights publications distributed widely across international fora. They promote the Chinese dream for religious freedom and attempt to rewrite the narrative of what human rights looks like in China. An example of this in Xinjiang is the argument China has made that these retraining camps, as they call them, or labor training camps, are regrettable but necessary. They claim that before the regime came to power, Western China was lawless and unstable. These are all English-language publications being widely distributed.

The regime has rotating exhibitions at the UN and other international fora almost constantly. I was in Geneva earlier this year, and the Chinese government had set up a 20- or 30-panel array focused on Xinjiang, showing happy, smiling leaders and the message that everything is fine, with nothing to see here.

In a way, this isn’t fooling anybody. Western democracies see what China is doing and can see straight through this. There aren’t many liberal democracies actually taking this seriously. But there is a difference between this and how, for example, Saudi Arabia responds to international pressure. Saudi Arabia hunkers down and weathers the storm. They are not trying to advance a different narrative or distribute talking points to the rest of the world in the same way China has.

The second thing that makes what China is doing unique is this aggressive campaign. At the end of 2017, China completed its process in the Universal Periodic Review. 

The Universal Periodic Review is the main human rights mechanism managed at the UN office in Geneva by the Human Rights Council. For those unfamiliar with it, it is essentially a 360 review of each country. Every country goes through it every four years. The United States is going through it now. It involves a ramp-up in propaganda, inviting other nations to your country, and showcasing the best your country has to offer. It includes self-reports, specific studies conducted by assigned countries, and input from civil society.

In the face of that, China ramped up its staff in Geneva, with squads of diplomats roaming around cashing in their chips. At the end of that process, connected to the third point on effectiveness, China could credibly claim to have emerged without criticism from any non-Western democracy. Even the criticism from Western democracies was muted.

We must remember they are telling a story. For Americans, the PR may seem unimportant and absent from our newspapers, but for the rest of the world, this is significant. Rogue actors are watching what China did and what they got away with.

Consider the timing. In November 2018, during the hearings, reports broke in the United States that China had been luring Uyghur students who had studied abroad back to China to place them in reeducation camps. This shows brazenness and confidence that they could get away with it without facing widespread criticism. While the U.S. and EU countries said things, the kind of international condemnation this would have drawn ten years ago was absent.

This is effective and working. What China has accomplished in the international conversation through official international fora on human rights norms has been highly effective. There’s no way China doesn’t view their UPR experience as a success. This isn’t the same context, but consider how China views what happened with the NBA. They’re undoubtedly unhappy that Daryl Morey wasn’t fired, but many of you likely saw the video of Derek Tietsel simply holding up a sign about Uyghurs at a pregame. That sign was confiscated by some unknown executive. That’s insane. China is able to exert influence even in our own country.

China is making arguments justifying their actions in Xinjiang and towards Christians. These arguments are outward, aggressive, and, in some ways, working. For realists, while norms may not seem central to shaping state behavior, they do matter. These norms are at risk.

There is likely disagreement among scholars about China’s aspirations. Do they want to be a global superpower, or are they trying to defend themselves and maintain a buffer? On this issue, it doesn’t matter. Their actions result in the same thing. Whether they aim to usurp the international order and become the sole hegemon or just defend themselves, they are eroding the system that has brought peace, prosperity, and a platform for American interests abroad.

What do we do about this? I want to conclude with two points. First, human rights in China must be part of our agenda among the other issues like trade and military strategy. Second, the international community needs U.S. leadership.

Human rights must be part of our agenda. Significant speeches and statements, such as Vice President Pence’s and Secretary Pompeo’s statement on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, have been aimed at China. Ambassador Sam Brownback has given multiple speeches criticizing China. These speeches should not be dismissed as mere talk, especially as they occur during trade negotiations. The Chinese pay attention to these statements.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. government sanctioned several tech companies providing technology in Xinjiang. Travel restrictions were placed on officials carrying out atrocities in Xinjiang. These steps are significant, though they fall short of global Magnitsky sanctions, which many of us have called for. However, many U.S. tools remain underutilized. The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) designates China as a country of particular concern, which is significant rhetorically, but the only sanction imposed is a double-hatted export restriction on crime control and detection equipment.

Our government could demand that Ambassador Brownback be given unfettered access to Xinjiang to conduct an unimpeded investigation and interview detainees and those affected. That would provide a credible counter-narrative to China’s claims. Currently, no one knows exactly what is happening in these camps.

The international community needs U.S. leadership. The systems of the international order are less than a century old and, despite their apparent stability, are vulnerable. Rogue actors like China and others with long civilizational histories see this time in their own context. As imperfect as international human rights fora are, now that the U.S. has withdrawn from the Human Rights Council, there is a vacuum. No single EU country can stand up to China as the U.S. could. Annual statements criticizing China have diminished. A small country like Iceland cannot withstand the full force of China’s sharp power.

The U.S. has taken steps, such as the international religious freedom ministerial and the formation of the New Earth Alliance, to provide leadership and cover for other countries to act. However, if we withdraw from the Human Rights Council, we must consider other fora, like the General Assembly or the Security Council, to lead a strategy countering China’s moral arguments.

To conclude, this Administration deserves credit for gaining China’s attention and pushing back. The question is whether we will counter China comprehensively—economically, militarily, through international aid, and on the plane of norms that sustain the intellectual ecosystem for stability. Will we challenge them on that front as well? 

Sorry, I forgot the altar call, but I’m not sure we have time for that today.

Q&A 

Question: My name is Nick Carlson, I’m with Liberty University. And I’m just wondering, how important is the development of a light 5G network to China? What are they doing in that area and how will that help them? And should we maybe look at that as something that we need to be putting more energy into as a country? 

Answer: Well I think it’s really important to China and I think it is important to the United States and you know, I know that it has been a focus of Chairman Pi’s policy at the FCC and you mentioned another important point which is, when, I guess it was about a year ago, there was a lot of controversy around Huawei, which is, you know, China’s 5G producer. And we told basically all of our allies in Europe you cannot do business with Huawei. There is all of this risk around using their materials. They’re using it for espionage, etc. Etc. Etc. 

And then we said it’s okay to do work with Huawei. I think that’s a failure on our part, to push our allies into a position that was very uncomfortable for them economically and then pull it out from under them. We basically used them as leverage in our own trade, and I think that was a mistake.

To your larger point, 5G is incredibly significant. There is no doubt it will be used as another form of the Belt and Road to spread their information ecosystem to the developing world.

Question: Asia Nolty, Regent University. I guess I could be a token half-constructivist in your comment about realism and norms. My question is on the issue of American corporations, like the NBA, censoring their own employees in the United States on China’s behalf. Is there any pressure that can be brought from citizens and consumers to get them to stop behaving badly?

Answer: That’s a good question. Two examples. I don’t necessarily want to praise Facebook, but indulge me for a moment. Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown where he discussed their vision for free expression. The focus was on not censoring political ads, but there was a side discussion about China.

He was asked why they don’t operate in China, and his answer was that they didn’t feel they could in a way that was true to who they are as a company. He pointed out the censorship issue, but the bigger issue was data localization. China demands that servers containing Chinese citizens’ information must be located in China. Zuckerberg’s point was that they wouldn’t do that, because as soon as those servers are in China, the government would control them. 

What Facebook decided to do in China is one example. They chose not to deal with the constant pressure. Once China has leverage, they can control you. I’m not saying the NBA shouldn’t have a league in China. Every company will address this differently. But as fans, we ought to be outraged. The backlash against the NBA’s initial actions is significant. 

This problem will continue. I saw a video the other day, during a dance cam segment, where a kid held up a sign saying, “I support Hong Kong,” and the camera immediately cut away. That’s a problem. The NBA is an American league. They need to hear our outrage. If we can’t express ourselves at our own basketball games, that’s crazy.

Alright, we’ve got time for one more.

Question: Chongwon Li, PhD Candidate at American University. From a constructivist view, what do you think about the effectiveness of public diplomacy focusing on the Chinese people themselves to create a bottom-up effect on trends versus Chinese government policies?

Answer: That’s a good question. One way of looking at what’s happening in Hong Kong is the effectiveness of long-standing policy in cultural exchange, allowing the Chinese to see what life in the United States and the West looks like. These programs are important. They are an important part of soft power and of projecting our values.

More broadly, we’re living in a time where we’ve lost our sense of belief in our own system. America is not perfect and never has been. But I’m proud to be an American. I believe in our system, and I think it’s good for the rest of the world to study. So long as we are unsure of what America is and what our founding documents have to offer, these programs will not be as effective as they should be.

Thank you.