China sanctions Rep Chris Smith

China today announced sanctions against Congressman Chris Smith, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, according to multiple media reports.

The sanctions, which are as yet unspecified, will “correspond” to sanctions imposed upon Chinese officials by the Trump Administration last week over the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in its Xinjiang region.

Congressman Smith, who represents most of Monmouth County and parts of Ocean and Mercer Counties in New Jersey, said that the FBI told him that China’s threat is real.

“Two weeks ago, I was briefed by the FBI that the threat was real and the CCP’s action could take many forms, from bribes to social media disinformation and worse and for starters–visa denial–today’s sanction,” Smith said. “When COVID-19 abates, I was/am planning a trip to Hong Kong, Beijing and to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.”

In May of this year, the Chinese Communist Party promised to “inflict pain” upon Smith, including interfering with the general election in November over his calling the Chinese government to account for the COVID-19 crisis.

Smith said that today’s announced sanction appears to be caused by his authorship of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. “In my remarks on the floor of the House during debate, I underscored the fact that President Xi Jinping is directly responsible for the genocide against the Muslims.

“We must continue to stand with the Chinese people against an increasingly authoritarian Chinese government that represses legitimate desires for liberty and justice,” Smith said.

In addition to the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, the CCP has objected to Smith’s Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Compensation for the Victims of State Misrepresentations to the World Health Organization Act of 2020 which will waive the Foreign Immunities Act to legally empower U.S. citizens to sue the government of China for monetary damages, “for personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property, occurring in the United States as a result of a willful or grossly negligent misrepresentation of information to the World Health Organization.”

Smith has fought Human Rights abuses in China for over 30 years. He has chaired more than 60 congressional hearings on Chinese human rights abuses including a landmark hearing focused on the complicity of Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft in Beijing’s censorship, surveillance, arrest and jailing of human rights and democracy activists.

Smith’s hearings have also exposed the pervasive use of forced abortion, coerced sterilization, torture, religious persecution, laogai labor, and organ harvesting by China and the CCP’s infiltration of our American colleges and universities through Confucius Institutes .

Today’s announcement by China is not their first act against Congressman Smith. In 2006, the Chinese government hacked his House computers