“Freedom of speech and religious liberty are not negotiable”Smith condemns reports of transnational repression in U.S. after anti-CCP professor is blacklisted from U.S.-China Catholic conference

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), today condemned an alarming report that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials allegedly pressured the U.S.-China Catholic Association to remove a Purdue University professor and prominent religious freedom scholar from its conference because of his criticism of the CCP’s persecution of Christians. “If these reports are accurate, this is yet another outrageous example of the Chinese Communist Party extending its long arm of repression into the United States,” said Smith, who has chaired well over one hundred congressional hearings on human rights abuses in China. “Over the past several years, I have been sounding the alarm that the CCP’s persecution of political dissidents, journalists, and religious and ethnic minority groups is no longer confined within China’s borders. We cannot allow Beijing—or any other repressive regimes, for that matter—to export that repression to U.S. soil and silence an American professor for exercising his freedom of speech,” continued Smith. According to reports, Professor Fenggang Yang, who had been invited to deliver the keynote address at the U.S.-China Catholic Association’s biennial conference in Houston, was informed that Chinese government officials had raised objections to his participation and demanded that his name be removed from the program. Yang was subsequently disinvited and reportedly asked to keep the circumstances surrounding his removal confidential. Smith argued that the allegations raise serious concerns about foreign interference, religious freedom, and free speech in the United States: “An American academic should not be removed from a conference at an American institution because Chinese government officials object to his views. “And a U.S.-based religious organization should never be pressured—or voluntarily agree—to censor a scholar to accommodate the demands of a foreign authoritarian government. Americans must never surrender their constitutional freedoms to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party,” he noted. “The CCP must understand that its authoritarian reach ends at America’s shores. To confront the growing menace of foreign governments that seek to intimidate and silence dissidents on American soil, I have authored legislation—the Transnational Repression Policy Act ( HR 4829 )—that will compel the State Department to coordinate a whole-of-government strategy to disrupt networks that harass, surveil, or threaten activists, journalists, and other community leaders living lawfully in the United States. “The U.S. government must take seriously every effort by Beijing to intimidate or silence people living in the United States. Here, freedom of speech and religious liberty are not negotiable,” concluded Smith. ###