Chris Smith

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S. 2710, a bill that would prohibit the commercial export of covered munition items to the Hong Kong Police Force. Mr. Speaker, I especially want to thank my good friend and colleague, Chairman McGovern, for his legislation, which is pretty much a companion bill that passed a little over 1 month ago, again, on the whole idea of U.S.-originated equipment being exploited in Hong Kong against these protesters. I thank him for doing that. We have raised this at hearings, and his bill was a great bill. As the largest protest movement Hong Kong has ever seen continues, major concerns have arisen about the Hong Kong police's independence and professionalism. The people of Hong Kong are rightfully furious about well-documented cases of excessive force, brutal tactics, and tolerance of violence against protesters. The Hong Kong police themselves are now a cause of the protests. There has been widespread police misuse of crowd control equipment and less-lethal weaponry, including incidents that have seriously injured journalists. I am glad this bill is before us. After it passes, it goes to the President, and I fully expect he will sign it into law. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, the Continuing Resolution before us today not only keeps our government open and operating until December 20, 2019--as we finalize the 2020 budget--but it also extends authorities for critical services such as the National Flood Insurance Program, Community Health Centers, and the National Health Service Corps. Of particular significance to thousands of 9/11 survivors--and a giant step forward for justice--the CR also reforms the US Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism (USVSST) Fund to ensure that immediate family members--the spouses and children of the victims of 9/11--are, for the first time, given rightful access to the judgements they have won in court against the perpetrators of the attack on our Nation. The USVSST was established by Congress in December 2015 to compensate victims of international state-sponsored terrorism. It is funded entirely by criminal and civil penalties collected by the US government from foreign entities that violate U.S. sanctions--primarily related to Iran. In addition to compensating Americans who were held hostage during the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981, the 2015 legislation also sought to award any persons who have won legal judgments in a U.S. federal district court against a state sponsor of terrorism arising from acts of international terrorism. Is there any more deserving group of victims of state sponsored acts of terrorism than those who lost their parents or spouses on September 11, 2001? I don't think so. Yet, remarkably through a misinterpretation of the 2015 law by the fund's Special Master, the immediate family members--i.e. the dependents--were barred from participating--that's unfair, unjust and unconscionable. In 2017 and 2019, the fund granted awards to the Iranian hostages, their relatives, victims of U.S. embassy bombings and the Marine barracks in Lebanon--and to more distant relatives of those who were killed on 9/11. But the spouses and children of 9/11 victims were denied, barred and shown the door. With the deadline for the 2020 round of awards approaching, this past September I hosted a town meeting in Wall Township, New Jersey. Widely attended by spouses and children from across the entire tri-state area, the meeting exposed anew the struggles these survivors continue to face, the sacrifices they have endured, the efforts they have made to hold state sponsors of terrorism accountable for the deaths of their loved ones, and the madness in the decision to bar them from the USVSST. The technical correction in the CR reflects a bipartisan agreement, an equitable fix to the USVSST that permits 9/11 spouses and children to pursue their judgements in the fund while continuing the participation of other victims as well. None of this would have been possible if not for the leadership and commitment of the victim's spouses and children, people who continue to seek justice after the murders of their loved ones. Many stepped forward, and those known as the Jersey Girls--Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken, and Kathy Maher--have been tireless, factual and well-informed in advocating for the needed reforms. Kathy Wisneiwski, a surviving widow, former school vice principal, and member of my staff, has been relentless especially in working on behalf of the surviving children. And Angela Mistrulli was tenacious in working with leaders outside the tri-state area to help bring about this needed reform. With absolute clarity, Congress has now instructed the Justice Department to specifically honor the judgements of these immediate 9/11 family members.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, today we continue celebrating Poland's historic democratic breakthrough 30 years ago that led to its matriculation from dictatorship to democracy. Today, we honor the bravery, tenacity, discipline and innate goodness of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Lech Walesa and Solidarity. Some time ago, I read Lech Walesa's powerful and riveting autobiography, ``A Way of Hope.'' Filled with insight and brutally honest, the book walks the reader through a series of volatile events-- personal and public--that have literally transformed the world. In the book, we get a glimpse into Lech Walesa's deep faith--and the role his beloved mother, and her Catholic beliefs had on him; ``Neighbors came to our house to say the rosary,'' he tells us in the book. The book is filled with remembrances of family--and his love for his wife. On leadership he tells us: ``I've never wished or prepared for a leadership role: paradoxically, it's because I never really wanted it, absorbed as I was by quite different concerns, different problems which needed solving, that I found myself out in front, leading the others-- `leading the flock,' I call it with a smile.'' He tells us of the strike of 1970. ``All we wanted was to free our fellow workers, we wanted no violence.'' And that his worst fears were realized: ``Poles had fired against Poles.'' In the chapter ``The Strike and the August Agreement'' he tells us how the movement had matured: ``Until then I had been talking, bluffing, playing `on credit.' Although we pretended to be holding all the high cards, our opponents knew our game inside out, they'd been playing against us for years! But what they didn't know was the nature of our very last card: the determination that had been maturing for ten years now, since the death of three of our colleagues right in front of the second entrance to the shipyard.'' When His Holiness Pope John Paul II made his historic trip to his homeland in 1979, he counseled his flock and his country men and women, ``Be Not Afraid.'' But Lech Walesa gave us additional insight into how Solidarity and Pope John Paul II were ``inextricably bound together'' and how it almost ended in 1981: ``It was in Japan that we heard of the dramatic attempt on the Pope's life. The news broke in the middle of the night May 13-14, 1981. We were in my hotel room in Nagasaki, discussing the events of the day, and our visit the next day to the museum set up in memory of the victims of the atomic bomb. The first news flash was terrifying: the Pope was dead! The next news flash retracted it: no, the Pope was still alive, he was fighting for his life. I was overcome by a feeling of immense loneliness; the whole world seemed to have turned upside down; with our lodestar gone, some of us were wandering in a wilderness without hope. The tragedy of the Polish Pope was also the tragedy of Poland and of Solidarity: they were inextricably bound together; this was just the beginning. Then the news changed, became less alarming; there was still hope.'' In his chapter ``Martial Law,'' Lech Walesa tells us how they decided that if the militia invaded the shipyard during the night, they decided on passive resistance: ``Our greatest strength is precisely our weakness--our living bodies and empty hands confronting tanks and nightsticks.'' His wife Danuta writes in the book how she was discouraged when he was locked up during marital law but ``he seemed rather pleasant, . . . we had to be dignified about it all, become even in a place like this, we still had the upper hand; we not they were making history.'' By 1989, Solidarity leaders sat across the table from General Jaruzelski, the same General who had imposed martial law in 1981. And they negotiated what had seemed to most of the world impossible: the peaceful transition from communism to free and fair elections. In August of 1989, less than a decade after the Gdansk shipyard strikes that gave birth to Solidarity, Poland would elect its first non- communist Prime Minister since the communist takeover. Then Lech Walesa himself became President. Lech Walesa tells us in the book that in his school years ``history was my weak point.'' Studying history does not matter when you are the one who makes history by bringing freedom, respect for human rights, and enduring democracy not only to your own country, but many other nations as well.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, when the term ``genocide'' was created in 1944 to describe the systematic destruction of an entire people. Its author, Raphael Lemkin, explained the term by saying: ``It's the sort of thing Hitler did to the Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians.'' When he ordered the invasion of Poland in 1939, Adolf Hitler said: ``Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'' Mr. Speaker, in the year 2000, and again in the year 2015, I chaired two congressional hearings on the Armenian genocide. In 2000, the House was moving to pass a bipartisan resolution by Congressmen Radanovich and Bonior, H. Res. 398. After hearing fact-based, eloquent testimony from Congressmen James Rogan and David Bonior, followed by the State Department, history professors, and then witnesses from both the Armenian and the Turkish side, my subcommittee successfully marked up H. Res. 398 for consideration by the full committee. Ambassador Marc Grossman, however, testified at the hearing that President Bill Clinton was against the Armenian genocide resolution. That opposition proved to be very significant, and as we were moving with the highest expectations toward passage, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, took the extraordinary step of admonishing Speaker Hastert not to bring it to the floor. And he caved. The resolution never even got a vote. In 2007, Chairman Tom Lantos, like Chairman Henry Hyde before him, reported the resolution out of committee, sponsored by Congressmen Schiff and Radanovich; although it never got out of the committee in 2000, but he wanted it to. That was H. Res. 106. That too never made to the floor. Mr. Speaker, that changes today. The Affirming the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide, H. Res. 296, is a sense of Congress resolution that commemorates the Armenian genocide through official recognition and remembrance. The resolution wisely notes that the United States has officially recognized the Armenian genocide through the U.S. Government's May 1951 written statement to the International Court of Justice regarding the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide through President Ronald Reagan's proclamation, Number 4838, on April 22, 1981, and by H.J. Res. 148, adopted in 1975, and H.J. Res. 247, adopted in September of 1984. The resolution also points out that the U.S. played a major role in the humanitarian relief efforts and, of course, the Near East Relief agency saved tens of thousands of Armenians and others. As a matter of fact, the historian, Howard Sachar, noted it ``quite literally kept an entire nation alive,'' and that is reflected in the resolution. Yet, today, the Armenian genocide is the only genocide of the 20th century where survivors, family, and all those who care about this important issue, have been subjected to the ongoing outrage of a massive, well-funded, aggressive campaign of genocide denial, openly sustained and lavishly funded by the State authority, in this case, the Government of Turkey. The Turkish Government underwrites a disgraceful disinformation campaign to confuse the historical record. It often employs lobbyists in this town to carry that message forward. Mr. Speaker, my 2015 hearing marked the 100th year since the beginning of the genocide; and I appropriately entitled it: A Century of Denial: The Armenian Genocide and the Ongoing Quest For Justice. As Pope Francis said at his Mass marking the 100th year of genocide: ``Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.'' Mr. Speaker, the facts of the genocide were reported throughout the world as they were happening, corroborated immediately afterward by survivors and even some of the perpetrators, and have been amply documented by the historians, and in one particular book that I have read, by Ambassador Morgenthau, who was our U.S. Ambassador contemporaneously, at the time, to the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, as we know, there were about 2 million Armenians living in what was then the Ottoman Empire, now Turkey. They were living in the region that they had inhabited for 2,500 years or more. By 1923, however, over 90 percent of these Armenians had disappeared. Most of them, an estimated 1.5 million, were slaughtered. Most of them were death-marched into the desert, or shot, and many of the women were raped. The remainder, the remnant was forced into exile. U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau wrote: ``When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.'' The Encyclopedia for the Armenian Genocide states: ``During the march, many Armenians were killed indiscriminately by Ottoman forces, which left a trail of corpses along the route of the march. To break the will of the marchers, the killings were performed with swords, resulting in great bloodshed.'' And as they continued the march, they were marched into the Syrian desert where they died from starvation. At the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education exhibit at Brookdale Community College, which my good friend and colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Pallone, knows so well as well, they have many remembrances of people in our State and elsewhere who were survivors. Well, one of those survivors put it this way, and I quote her: ``Life was a matter of trying to survive. Every morning a cart would come around and take away the sick and the dead to be dumped into a common grave. They had taken my brother because he was a little sick. My crying and weeping were of no avail, especially because I was sick and petrified of being put on the cart.'' She was one of the lucky ones who survived. Let me remind my colleagues that the Genocide Convention of 1950, which the Turkish Government has ratified, makes clear--here is what the Genocide Convention says, and the Armenian genocide fits this to a T. The definition says this: ``Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of that group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. . . . `' In the case of the Armenians, it wasn't in part. It was in whole. They wanted the Armenians eviscerated from the face of the Earth. Let me just point out to my colleagues, despite Turkish Government threats--and they do make threats. At my hearing, the Ambassador made threats in the year 2000. Frank remembers that. It was outrageous. Well, 28 countries and 49 U.S. States, including my own State of New Jersey, have passed a law, resolution, or declaration recognizing the Armenian genocide. I ask Members to support this resolution. It is bipartisan, and it needs to be done. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I thank my colleague and good friend, Mr. Hoyer, for his comments. We did travel so many times to the Soviet Union, to the Eastern Bloc countries, and to Turkey. We raised issues methodically, persistently. But this issue has always been one of those unresolved, festering sores that if we could get it right--and this House going on record I think is the beginning of that process. So I thank him for his leadership over these years, for his friendship, and, above all, for that very eloquent statement. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank Anna Eshoo for her leadership throughout many decades on this issue. It was her idea to bring it up on the floor today. I want to thank her for that. Of course she had to work within the leadership to get it done, but I thank her for recommending that. Mr. Speaker, I want to remind Members that, in 2018, Anna Eshoo and I wrote the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act. It was signed by President Trump into law. That provided two things: humanitarian relief for the tens of thousands of Christians and Yazidis fleeing from ISIS; it also provided an accountability piece to collect for, hopefully, utilization in future court cases against the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. So, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman for that work that we did together and, again, for her leadership on this issue. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), the cosponsor of the resolution.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that there are no further speakers other than the chairman, and I would like to close. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As I mentioned earlier, the Encyclopedia of the Armenian Genocide states: During the march many Armenians were killed indiscriminately by the Ottoman forces, which left a trail of corpses along the route of the march. To break the will of the marchers, they used swords, resulting in great bloodshed. Marchers who survived these attacks faced starvation, as no provisions whatsoever were made. Many elderly and infirm marchers died in this way during the march. This significantly reduced numbers of marchers who, upon finally making it into the Syrian desert, were put into concentration camps and then released into the scorching desert with no food or water and to a certain death. Mr. Speaker, despite having ratified the Genocide Convention back in 1950, the Turkish Government has waged an amazingly deceitful campaign of denial and has done so over the course of decades using a variety of means to bully, intimidate, and punish Turkish citizens who dare to acknowledge the genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915. Ankara also seeks to intimidate nations. Many nations have refused to be intimidated and to be bullied: Poland, Germany, the Holy See, Italy, Russia, France, Holland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Austria, Bulgaria, the European Parliament, Luxembourg, Sweden, Chile, Argentina, Lithuania, Venezuela, Slovakia, Canada, Uruguay, Switzerland, Lebanon, Belgium, Greece, and Cyprus all have come out strongly and acknowledged the Armenian genocide. We need to do the same today. Over the years, several U.S. Presidents have acknowledged the cruelty and the carnage. But it was Ronald Reagan who called it an Armenian genocide. He said: ``Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it--and like too many other persecutions of too many other people--the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.'' To be sure, Presidents Carter, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, said strong words. They had strong words to describe it. President Bush called it the ``forced exile and the annihilation'' of 1.5 million Armenians. President Obama had promised to recognize the genocide but didn't. A Los Angeles Times story on April 21, 2015, says it all: ``Armenian hopes crushed as Obama decides not to use the word `genocide'.'' It does matter, Mr. Speaker. Genocide is a very precise term. It has real meaning in international law because of the Genocide Convention, and all Presidents and Members of Congress, I hope, will stand up and say that word. Let me remind my colleagues, because it is referenced again in the resolution, that back in 1984 we passed a joint resolution to designate April 24, 1985--it didn't pass in the Senate, but it did pass here--and it said in part that April 24, 1985, is designated as ``National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man'' and authorized the President to observe the day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, and especially for the 1.5 million people of Armenian ancestry who were the victims of genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923. So I say to my colleagues who are watching, we have gone on record before. Let's not be intimidated by Turkey, Erdogan, and others. I would like to say a special thanks to the tenacious leaders of the Armenian National Committee of America, the Armenian Assembly and the Armenian diaspora for persistently encouraging Congress to step up and pass this kind of resolution. After a century of denial, obfuscation, and lies by Turkey, it is time to affirm and reiterate the truth of the Armenian genocide and honor the victims, the survivors, and their families. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hill).

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank so many people for working so hard on this piece of legislation: my good friend, Jim McGovern, the principal cosponsor and just a great friend, on fighting tyranny in China. He chairs the China Commission. I am the ranking member. Previously, I have chaired it, and so we have gone back and forth in working that leadership. I want to thank him especially for that. Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank, of course, Chairman Engel and Ranking Member McCaul, Chairman Sherman and Ranking Member Yoho for their strong support for this bipartisan legislation. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of staffers who I will speak about in a moment. No. I will do it now: Scott Flipse for his great work on this bill, it is landmark work going back to 5 years ago; Jon Stivers; Reva Price from the Speaker's office, who has been tenacious on this legislation; Jennifer Hendrixson-White; Bryan Burack; Janice Kaguyutan; Theresa Lou; Darrow Godeski Merton; Doug Anderson; Piero Tozzi; Sabrina Tsai. Just so many very good people who have all pulled together in a bipartisan way to make sure that this legislation comes to the floor and becomes law. Mr. Speaker, since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre 30 years ago, I have had the privilege of working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including Speaker Pelosi, on human rights, the rule of law and democracy for the People's Republic of China. Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader here in the House, the Republican leader, who has put me on as his selection on the China Commission and for his strong support for this legislation as well. We have always believed, Mr. Speaker, that every person in China deserves better than the brutality so many endure every single day and the systematic violations of their universally-recognized human rights. Tragically, under President Xi Jinping, human rights abuses throughout China have significantly worsened, including the pervasive use of torture, religious persecution, and human trafficking. Solemn promises made by Beijing are rarely kept, and far too many leaders of the free world are far too eager to blindly accept fiction over fact. Broken promises are the rule, not the exception under Xi Jinping, and the people of Hong Kong are suffering because of it. During the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the world saw the courageous people of Hong Kong demanding that Beijing not renege on promises made to ensure universal suffrage, basic rights, and authentic elections in 2017. Despite President Xi Jinping's brutal crackdown on protesters then and now, triggered this time by an outrageous proposed policy to facilitate extradition, the resolve, the courage, the tenacity, and clarity of purpose of the people of Hong Kong shines through the darkness like the Sun. Two days ago, Reuters reported that President Xi Jinping told leaders in Nepal, ``Anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones.'' President Xi's government excels in crushing bodies, shattering bones, torturing dissidents, and filling concentration camps, massive crimes against humanity, for which there has been little or no accountability or sanctioning. But today, Mr. Speaker, we are simply urging the Chinese President and the Hong Kong Chief Executive--and we have that obligation under our own laws--to faithfully honor the government's promises. Honor the promises made in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration that facilitated the conveyance of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China beginning on July 1, 1997, that autonomy, human rights, including press, assembly, association, and religion, would be exactly the same as before the handover for at least 50 years. Honor the promises made in the ``Basic Law'' of Hong Kong adopted by China's National People's Congress in 1990, before the giveback of Hong Kong, that autonomy and rights would be protected. Even before the latest round of protests, Mr. Speaker, the U.S. State Department has noted that rights and liberties in Hong Kong have diminished. They are not living up to their solemn promises made in order for the Hong Kong conveyance to occur. You know, the great young leader, Joshua Wong, reminded us that a fourth of the population of Hong Kong, about 2 million people, turned out for one of the peaceful protests. Mr. Speaker, where has that ever happened? Five years ago, Mr. Speaker, in 2014, joined by Mrs. Pelosi, I introduced the bipartisan Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. We did it again in 2015, in 2017, and again this year, again, with my good friend from Massachusetts. Our new bill, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, is a blueprint for meaningful action. Specifically, the act directs the Secretary of State to certify to Congress annually whether Hong Kong continues to deserve special treatment under U.S. law different from mainland China in such matters as trade, customs, sanctions enforcement, law enforcement cooperation, and protection of human rights and the rule of law. It encourages the State Department not to deny visas based on an applicant's arrest or detention for participating in nonviolent activities in Hong Kong. It requires an annual report from the Commerce Department on whether the Hong Kong Government adequately enforces U.S. export controls and sanctions laws, including on those goods and services transshipped to North Korea, Iran, or other countries relating to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, violations of human rights, narcotics trafficking, and more. It requires an assessment of whether U.S. origin items, including software, technology, and services, have been transferred from Hong Kong to China in violation of U.S. law and have been used by China for mass surveillance, predictive policing, or for the social credit system. Now, some people might ask: What is this social credit system? Mr. Speaker, it is a ubiquitous, totalitarian ``brave new world'' system scheduled for implementation by 2020 that will use public records, online activities, and other tools of surveillance to aggregate data on every single, solitary Chinese citizen and business and use that data to monitor, shape, and rate financial, social, religious, or political behaviors. It requires the Secretary of State to submit a strategy to Congress to protect U.S. citizens and businesses in Hong Kong from the erosion of autonomy and the rule of law because of actions taken by the Chinese Communist governments. It requires the President to identify and sanction persons in Hong Kong or in mainland China responsible for the erosion of Hong Kong's autonomy and serious abuses of human rights. It tracks the Magnitsky Act, which Mr. McGovern and I worked so hard to enact into law, so that we deny visas and also deny the ability to do business here to the people who are responsible for these egregious abuses. And it requires a waiver provision that helps ensure that our actions protect the great people of Hong Kong and enhance the autonomy rather than inadvertently harming it. So it gives real flexibility to the President and to the State Department to make the right call. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I have heard it said that the business of Hong Kong is business. It is that. But it is also clear to me, now, that the business of Hong Kong is freedom and democracy. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.