(TibetanReview.net, Sep16’26) – Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit later this month, and as Tibetan groups and others prepare protest receptions for him, Ranking Member Ro Khanna of the US House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Ranking Member Jim McGovern of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China jointly held a shadow hearing titled “The Void in China Policy: Why Human Rights Must Be on Trump’s Agenda with Xi at the White House”.
Those who testified at the hearing included Palden Gyal, President of International Tibet Media Organization; Tahir Imin, Founder and Director, Uyghur Post; Yaqiu Wang, Fellow at the Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania; and Jonathan Stivers, US Director, Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong; Commissioner, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
In his testimony, Palden Gyal, who lived in Tibet under Chinese rule until he was 20 years old, accused the CCP of using many tactics to erase Tibetan identity since the start of its occupation rule in the middle of the last century.
The latest of these, he said, was the “Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law”, which it began implementing on Jul 1 this year. He said this law compels Tibetans “to give up their language, religion, and traditions and assimilate into mainstream Chinese culture”, “makes Chinese the primary language of instruction,” and “expands the state boarding school system” for this purpose. He has accused China of mislabelling this law by claiming it is meant to ensure “ethnic unity.”
He has said China keeps tight control on information coming out of Tibet while keeping independent journalists out of the region so that the CCP can hide its abuses.
He has said China’s current move is, in some ways, more dangerous than the Cultural Revolution (of 1966-76). He has accused the CCP of deliberately cutting Tibetan generational ties to force their complete assimilation. He has noted that starting from kindergarten, Chinese is the only language of instruction and that nearly one million Tibetan children have been taken from their families and placed in state-run boarding schools.
He has quoted an 87-year-old grandmother in Tibet as telling him: “My heart is warm because His Holiness the Dalai Lama is still alive. But I am deeply saddened because my grandchildren speak to me only in Chinese. I cannot understand them, and we cannot talk.”
Urging the US to hold the Chinese government accountable and stand with the Tibetan people in defence of their fundamental rights, Palden Gyal has asked Congress to pass the recently introduced Assuring the Future of Tibet Act, which affirms that Tibet’s future must be decided by the Tibetan people themselves.
He has also called on President Donald Trump to directly raise Tibet in his meeting with Xi during the latter’s visit on Sep 24, calling on him to urge the latter to respect Tibetan human rights and religious freedom and to resume dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his representatives.
Earlier, the two senior lawmakers said in a Press Release Sep 10 that the Chinese government’s human rights abuses had traditionally attracted bipartisan concern in Congress. However, they expressed regret that the Trump Administration’s disregard for human rights in China and assault on organizations advocating for human rights had jeopardized bipartisan support for US human rights policy. They looked to the hearing to provide an assessment of and recommendations for US human rights policy.
Palden Gyal has spent 27 years at Radio Free Asia in Washington, DC, and five years at the Tibet Information Network in London. He has reported on Chinese policy toward Tibet and on the daily lives of the Tibetan people for more than three decades.