Sen. Cruz: ‘We Urgently Need To Have a Real, Substantive, Bipartisan Conversation About Countering the Chinese Communist Party’

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this week took to the Senate Floor to object to Senate Democrats’ shameless exploitation of the crisis in Hong Kong to undermine our immigration laws, which would recklessly enable Chinese espionage in the United States. Sen. Cruz instead offered Senate Democrats an opportunity to act against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda by passing his SCRIPT Act. Senator Cruz also addressed China’s human rights atrocities and spoke of the need to pass another one of his bills, the SHAME Act. During the debate, Democrats objected to the request to pass the SCRIPT Act. Watch Sen. Cruz’s full remarks here. Excerpts are included below.

WATCH: Cruz Calls Out Democrats for Exploiting Crisis in Hong Kong to Advance Political Agenda

On Senate Democrats’ efforts to exploit the crisis in Hong Kong to undermine existing U.S. immigration law, Sen. Cruz said:

“Today, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that our Democratic colleagues are finally discovering that the Chinese communists are not our friends. They are finally acknowledging that the Chinese communists are murdering, torturing, oppressive tyrants and our Democratic colleagues are likewise discovering that Hong Kong is a beacon for democracy, a beacon for liberty. That is indeed good news. The bad news is the bill that they have put forth is not designed to do anything about it. This is not a Hong Kong bill. It is instead a Democratic messaging bill, because House Democrats made, I think, a cynical decision to try to exploit the crisis in Hong Kong to advance their long standing goals [of] changing our immigration laws.”

On how Senate Democrats’ partisan agenda threatens our national security, Sen. Cruz said:

“This bill [...] would dramatically lower the standards for both refugee and asylum status to the point where individuals would qualify even if they cannot establish an individualized and credible fear of persecution. […] There is particular risk when doing so [because] we know [it] would be used by the Chinese communists to send even more Chinese spies into the United States. […] Last I checked, when the Chinese communist government sends spies into our country, they’re quite willing to concoct a bogus background portfolio of materials.

[…]

“We just recently had news of Chinese spies targeting members of Congress, targeting prominent Democrats. This is an espionage threat America faces of our adversaries taking advantage of our laws and targeting our leadership. The truth also is that China has confiscated passports and I’m told, stopped issuing exit visas to persons deemed problematic. As a result, China is highly unlikely to let actual dissidents leave Hong Kong.

[…]

“We urgently need to have a real substantive bipartisan conversation about countering the Chinese Communist Party, about defending the United States of America, about standing up and winning this battle. This bill doesn’t advance that objective.”

On the need to push back on the CCP’s widespread censorship and propaganda efforts by passing the SCRIPT Act, Sen. Cruz said:

“The Chinese Communist Party spends billions and billions of dollars to mislead Americans about China, and to try to shape what we see, what we hear, and think. All of these activities are part of China’s whole-of-state approach to amass influence around the world through information warfare. We need to stand together to stop it.

[…]

“The only reason the SCRIPT Act isn’t passing is because the Senate Democrats are objecting. It should not be lost on anybody that the Hollywood billionaires who are enriching themselves with this Chinese propaganda are among the biggest political donors to today’s Democratic Party.”

On the need to act against the CCP’s human rights atrocities by passing the SHAME Act, Sen. Cruz said:

“The SHAME Act focuses in particular on human rights atrocities. It focuses on over a million Uyghurs in concentration camps and other religious minorities [like] the Falun Gong practitioners, who are captured and murdered and whose organs are harvested. […] My Democratic colleagues like to say on the question of abortion, they are pro-choice. Well, the Chinese government right now is engaging in forced sterilizations and forced abortions – taking Uyghur mothers and forcing them to abort their children against their wills. Whatever the Democrats’ views on abortion in the United States is a matter of a woman’s choice, surely, they must be united in saying a government forcing a woman to abort her child, to take the life of her unborn child, is an unspeakable atrocity. The SHAME Act does something very simple – it imposes sanctions on the Chinese Communist government leaders responsible for implementing this horrific ‘1984’ style policy of forced sterilizations and forced abortions.”

Background: 

In October, Sen. Cruz introduced the Sanctioning and Highlighting Authoritarian Medicine and Eugenics (SHAME) Act, legislation sanctioning CCP officials for systematic ethnic cleansing, including through forced abortions and other coercive population control measures in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The legislation also requires the publication and maintenance of data about those officials, including their human rights records. Read the full text of the SHAME Act here.

Earlier this year, Sen. Cruz introduced the “The Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity, Protecting Talkies Act” or SCRIPT Act, legislation to cut off Hollywood studios from assistance they receive from the United States government if those studios censor their films for screening in China. This legislation is part of Sen. Cruz’s comprehensive push to combat China’s growing influence over what Americans see and hear, which includes legislation targeting information warfare from the Chinese Communist Party across higher education, sports, films, radio broadcasts, and more. Read the full text of the SCRIPT Act here.

Sen. Cruz is leading the charge to fundamentally reassess the U.S.-China relationship and counter Chinese censorship in the wake of the CCP coronavirus coverup.

In August, the CCP announced their second set of sanctions against Sen. Cruz for speaking out against the horrific human rights abuses occurring in the authoritarian state.

READ: Sen. Cruz on FoxNews.com: China Is Expanding Its Malign Influence All Over the World

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