someone who i represented for five years and who congressman smith and wolf. >> can he stand to be recognized? we all know him. congressmanman smith and wolf. president bush raised the case twice and secretary de vries raised it twice and secretary powell raised it once. the u.s. government had to be relentless. without that direct engagement, we are not going see the release of people. what i'd say about quiet diplomacy, i'd be for it if it's working, i wouldn't need to speak out the same way. if it's not working, we need to change our strategy. >> i agree with mr. chairman on your overall assessment and the past three years. the so-called diplomacy is indifference on the diplomacy.

obviously this administration took the human rights and especially religious freedom on the back seat from day one. after two years in power, there was not -- the ambassador at large for the international religious freedom was not even appointed. the first official visit was not really, you know, met with even a courtesy of assistance, i think, from the chinese government, and i suspect, the state department or the white house. i think they have done anything to protest this insult.

by refusing a presidential appointee and ambassador to visit her counterpart in china. i think this almost a self humiliating attitude certainly emboldened the dictator's persecution and indirectly, i think, increasein the interaction and human rights abuses in china. [ speaking foreign language ]

[ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: for the past few years, the position of my husband is getting worse and worse. i strongly request high level leaders in the united states government and i feel it's very important because gao's case is critical and critical for breaking through the current situations because like last year, china arrested many human rights lawyers and actually they

told them, have you heard of gao zhishe zhisheng? you probably know him, but so what? you know her? she probably went to a warehouse there. so what? we can still -- they can disappear and we have enough money. that's what they told the human rights lawyer being arrested. [ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: right now, it's very difficult to get the lawyers to help gao zhisheng, even if we are willing to pay, no lawyers can take the case. [ spoking foreign language ] >> translator: nowadays, the human rights lawyer in china pay close attention to the gao zhisheng case and know if this case can have any improvement, the situation may be different.

[ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: i really wish i can have an appointment with the leaders in the united states so that we can move this case forward. >> you have tried and they have not gotten back to you, including vice president biden? [ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: yes. we tried to contact their lawyers, but no response yet. >> let me just clarify. we did hear back from the state department with secretary clinton and offered a meeting with secretary posner and we have been offered a meeting which we will be happy to take, but we got no response from the white house. we sent in a response to the scheduler and numerous staff and the vice president's office several times and got no response, not even a sorry, we can't meet you. >> that's very disappointing, to say the least. when you juxtapose that with the

vice-president's statement in china when talking about the horrific one child per couple policy and the reliance on forced abortion and he said i'm not going to second-guess the policy and then sent an e-mail to a group that he is not really for the policy but the damage was done. those words do matter and meeting with individuals and getting fully informed about the plight of the wives and their husbands, that should have been a meeting that was sought after by the vice president and the president's office, not declined. i would like to yield to chairman frank wolf. >> thank you, mr. smith. i think this administration has been a total failure and quite frankly, i think the groups around this country should know this and not pretend it is not true. christians in egypt should know this administration has failed

them. iraqi and syrian caldian should kn know this administration has failed them. the vietnamese in vietnam, both buddhists and catholics ought to know this administration failed them. of course, the catholic bishops in china and their protestant house leaders in china should know this administration failed them. the dalai lama ought to know this administration failed them. 11 -- 11 buddhist monks and nuns have set themselves aflame. i want to bring it back to this and i did not know you had made a request. i would like to ask both of the wives if they would say publicly, i see the media here looking, but what would you say because there is still an opportunity to meet after the vice president from china leaves.

what would you say if you had an opportunity to meet with president obama? and shame on them both if they do not meet. shame on them both if they do not meet! you know that president reagan would have met with you and you know president clinton would have met with you. you know president bush would have met with you. you know president jimmy carter would have met with you. shame on them if they do. maybe they won't. this may be the only opportunity. what would both of the wives want to say if they were talking to president obama and vice president bush? [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: if i had an opportunity to meet president

obama and vice president biden, i would say my husband, gao zhisheng is good people and he always did good deeds. what he had done in china is abide with the world and stand up for international standards. why in china he has to be persecu persecuted, why he has to be suffering for all kinds of torture. please help release him immediately. >> if i had an opportunity to talk to president obama, i want to say, my husband is innocent. because of the love, he did some

things, but it's the way to show how he loves this country. so please help. >> thank you. >> thank you. let me ask our witnesses if there is anything further. do you want to perhaps touch on what the un is doing or not doing? the u.s. does play the lead, but certainly the european parliament and other parliaments and lawmakers and leaders ought to be raising their voices on behalf of the disappeared and the persecuted leaders of the human rights movement in china. >> sure. let me just say briefly. the u.n. is engaging on a couple key cases. the high commissioner on human rights is trying to go to china and seems unlikely it will happen. clearly she should go and needs

to raise her voice. she has to her credit raised her voice loudly on gao's case and frankly, needs to do a lot more. her case got a lot of attention internationally and raised the case in the parliament all-around the world. lots of different contexts. there is a lot of support for gao zhisheng. but i want to underscore that her children live in the united states now. they have protection from the united states. this gives this case in particular a special connection to our country. we have given them asylum status and gao himself has residual status based on family status. if we can reappear him and he is willing to go, he can be free and live his with his family. we need the united states to recognize the special responsibility that we have taken on, to our great credit, as a country, to gao zhisheng and his family and raise the case on the highest levels. the last thing i would just n e

note, my biggest fear about the president and vice president or secretary of state not meeting him and his wife is not exclusively about the optics of that meeting taking place and the message it would send to the chinese government. although that is very important. my biggest fear is that the chinese government repeatedly and publicly lied about what is going on and the united states and other countries have not publicly responded by saying you are lying. you are not telling the truth. we have to speak truth to power and tell the world what is really happening with this person's situation. it is not sufficient, in my view, to have a meeting with the assistant secretary at the state department to see the kind of progress we want to see on this kind of case. >> before vice president's visit, i was invited, along with

a few other leaders, had a meeting with ambassador gary lock in the state department. i was on one hand glad to hear he had made some very straightforward effort to pursue gao's whereabouts when he was missing. but on the other hand, i hope that the united states embassy or consulate can send a diplomat, if not the ambassador himself, to go to the prison and to verify and ask the chinese government to accept a representative for the international red cross. the problem is we don't know whether he's alive or not. i think the policy of just

diplomatic courtesy or formality cannot work anymore. i remembered in 2005 when one of the pastors in beijing was about to be sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for printing bibles, according to the lawyers who had the knowledge with the court, judge, it was when that news came out and i communicated with the national security kcouncil of te bu bush administration and president bush was on the way to visit beijing. on his stop he made a pointed speech and specifically mentioning about that case. you know what, later, the attorney was one of the pastor's attorneys at that time and

he was later sentenced to three years imprisonment instead. it's time, yeah, to break the silence. i give you a wide illustration of the wrong signal by the administration, especially the president has said, when he visited china, that one morning, i receive a phone call from a few human rights lawyers, they said they heard the president is waiting to meet with them, so they were waiting outside the embassy compound. so i was on the phone with consulate general or deputy general counselor at the u.s. embassy and correlating, telling him where they are and the counselor asked me to wait and call back, and i was waiting for half an hour later, instead of

the u.s. consulate or coming out to visit them, this group of human rights lawyers, including attorney john hung and the other kidnapped and tortured and met with over 200 chinese military police and rounded up and the president chose to visit the great wall. i was told by the counselor later, that because there's no guarantee for security for the president's security, so he could not meet with these human rights lawyers outside the compound of the u.s. embassy. i think what a signal you want to send to the chinese dictators, to these oppressors. i think that certainly emboldened them and made the human rights record worse. >> i would just point out,

pastor fu, the signals of indifference and really being uninformed about how powerful, if used, the leverage and voice of the president and vice president and secretary of state could actually be in getting people out of prison, who are suffering unjustly, i remember when secretary of state was en route to pay jing or china for her first visit, she said, i'm not going to allow human rights to interfere with pedaling u.s. debt and global climate change. that threw the dissidents under the bus. any amount of repairtive statements that might be made later and there weren't many certainly doesn't undo the damage of what is in the heart. my hope springs eternal that this administration will see what they are doing to the cause of democracy and the individuals who suffer for it a grave injustice by its indifference and wrong signals sending. i would ask the question, how will china ever ma trick cu late

from dictator ship to democracy if all the lawyers like gao zhisheng and others who might go that route, but it does have a chilling effect of what they might do if they know you will be met with torture and disappears and the same with miss lee and her husband, the intellectuals, professors knowing they, too, the others, we need to stand in solidarity with the oppressed and not oh prers and regrettably, we're doing just the opposite. i'd like to ask chairman wolf if he has any final comments? i'd like to ask the witnesses, starting with you, pastor, if you have any final comments to our two distinguished wives here, very strong and brave women and we thank them for their testimony. pastor fu, anything? >> i think real change will depend on two factors. the most important factor is from inside chinachina.

i think, despite the increasing persecution and perhaps the worst in two decades, in the last year, we still are hopeful. we are still hope hopeful. and not because of relaxation of the totalitarian regime, the growing rights awareness and consciousness by the chinese people. look at what had happened to that village in guangdong province and 50,000 people. when they were united and they were able to win the fight, at least temporarily, they were allowed to have their first freely and democratically election and elect their own leaders in that 50,000 people village.

it's a small step, it's a baby step, but it shows people's power. i think thousands of -- or hundreds of thousands of chinese petitioners, in spite of the black deals and imprisonment, arbitrary arrests and torture, they are still organized and they went to the chinese leadership compound in shanghai and beijing and hundreds of house church members like the beijing house church, in the past, almost ten months, since april of last year, every sunday, every sunday in the capital city of beijing, their arrest from 20 to over 100 member of this church were arrested for simply going outdoors for worship. and all the leaders including the senior pastor and all their five elders had been under house arrest without any freedom of

movement. but the members are still going there every sunday, knowing that they're going to be arrested. i think these are the hopeful signs we should count on. of course, i think that the secondary -- the contribution for china's democracy and freedom is outside. it's externally. i think we need the external aid. i think the chinese persecuted people will be greatly encour e encouraged and their moral would be greatly boosted if they hear from the president of the united states of america and tell the chinese dictators that clearly, and unwaivering, we're with you. we're with the persecuted instead of the persecutors. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thanks so much. i just want to make three brief closing comments.

the first is to emphasize the point mr. chairman you made earlier. i agree with fully. it needs to be emphasized. this is not a partisan issue. this is something that there's strong bipartisan support to keep pressure on the chinese government to improve the fundamental situation and improve the human rights situation in the country. this is a core value of the country on which this country was built upon and for us as a country we need to stay true to our fundamental values. second, i wanted to say that to the administration, that there's never a wrong time to do the right thing. and frankly, it's not too late. we may be disappointed. i personally am disappointed that we did not get this meeting we wanted for geng he. but it is an opportunity at this moment to turn the ship around or to, at least, change it's course and to recognize that at the end of the day, any administration, i believe, should be measured by results and not by effort. i don't care how hard any administration tries, i care about what they achieve and i think it's quite clear regardless of efforts being made and we might disagree on how

strong the efforts are, the results aren't there yet. and at the end of the day you need to change your tactics if you want the results because clearly, this approach is not working. lastly, i want to thank both of you, mr. chairman and mr. chairman for your tremendous leadership on this and around the world and not just here, but in china. it offes. you do tremendous leadership on behalf of the u.s. congress on all these issues and it's greatly appreciated by me, most the victims of human rights' abuses around the world who see the united states as a shining example of what they want their their own countries to become. we may be imperfect as a nation and we may have flaws and a lot of problems we need to work on and that's all true. but we can't forget where we come from and both of you deserve huge credit for your ongoing efforts over so many years. >> thank you. >> i speak in chinese.

[ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: i will speak chinese. i feel the chinese government right now is a vast interest group. [ speaking chinese ] >> translator: even though they may realize how gigantic the problems they are confronted with, it is extremely difficult for them to overcome these problems and to make amends. [ speaking chinese ] >> translator: therefore, in order to change china, it, indeed, calls for more and more people to be able to stand up and speak out. [ speaking chinese ] >> translator: as was pointed

out by my husband before he was put in jail. [ speaking chinese ] >> translator: the minds have to be explored and have to be treaded on for them to explode. if you don't test the field, you will never know the borderline and you will never know how chinese democracy will emerge and whether or not china can be democracized. >> translator: there, it calls on common efforts made by all of us. [ speaking chinese ] >> translator: as was pointed out in my testimony today, the united states of america plays

an extremely important role in all of this. [ speaking chinese ] >> translator: i very much hope that the united states of america will help china to make amends and to make a change. >> thanks. [ speaking chinese ]

>> translator: the suffering of my husband and my family showcased a widespread problem of human rights abuse in china and i repeatedly requested to meet the highest leaders in the united states, president obama, vice president biden, and also, secretary hillary clinton. i wish i can meet with them and i also hope that embassy in china can send a delegate to meet and to, at least, verify whether he's alive or not. and i really hope that the highest level of leaders in the united states with can pressure china to release them unconditionally so all the families can be united sooner. thanks. [ speaking chinese ]

>> translator: i firmly believe that 1.3 begin chinese people still don't have the basic human rights right now and if this situation continues in china, the whole human civilization won't have a perfect civilization so i hope that the whole western world and the civilized world can give more

support to the china's human rights situation and can support those human rights warriors in china so that they can be consoled when they are fighting in the dark. this kind of support not only can bring china's human rights efforts into a more brighter era, and these will also encourage support to more people to bring out their human nature light of the human nature and it will also provide tremendous courage for all of the human rights warriors in china when they struggle in the dark. and hopefully, this kind of support can bring much more encouragement to these warriors and i thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. thank you.