You’re listening to part one of an interview with Cristina Cevallos, a first place winner of the 2025 Human Rights Essay Contest, hosted by The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights. The interview is conducted by Dr. William Saunders, Director of the Center for Human Rights. To listen to the rest of this interview, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.
Dr. William Saunders: Hi, I’m William Saunders, the Director of the Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America, where Chen Guangcheng, the famous Barefoot Lawyer, is a distinguished fellow. And on The Barefoot Lawyer podcast, we address all kinds of issues having to do with the Chinese Communist Party and the denial of human rights in China, as well as threats around the world, including the United States.
And we had an essay contest in which students considered these issues, and one of our winners was Cristina Cevallos, who is a graduate student, and she wrote an essay called, “How Do You Eat the Chinese Dragon? One Bite at a Time.” So welcome, Cristina. Tell us about your essay.
Cristina Cevallos: Hello, thank you for having me. Yeah, I titled my essay, instead of the elephant that we normally use, as The Chinese Dragon, because I believe an indirect strategy will be the best fit for our goal, that’s for the CCP to retreat from the ongoing abuses. So, I believe that this metaphor can help us [in] tackling a hard task; that’s this main goal, by breaking it down to small, manageable steps.
W: And you’re calling that an indirect strategy?
C: Yes. It is actually inspired in Liddel Hart’s ideas. So…
W: L-I-D-D-E-L.
C: Yes. I would call it, yeah, Liddel Hart. Yep.
C: Yes. So I basically have six steps that can’t be done at the same time, of course. So the first is framing the issue as a matter of national interest. So the first goal, basically, is to convince the President – because the prompt was, “What will you do if you were a Secretary of State?”
W: Yeah, so people… For people listening, what she means by “prompt” is, that’s the kind of framing question for the essay was, “What would you do as Secretary of State?”
C: Yes.
W: Go ahead.
C: So first we need to convince the President that this issue is a matter that deserves attention, and how it is related to [the] United States’ interests. So, I’ll say that defending freedom, democracy, and human rights will reinforce the USA leadership worldwide. People look up to this country, so we need to make clear that China and the United States are different, and one is better than the other one, of course.
So I will also tell him that this is an opportunity to strengthen alliances internationally with countries that think and share these values with us. And it is also an issue where our main geopolitical adversary can be weakened. So… and [I’ll] also mention that it’s a national security issue because we have Chinese spies here, everywhere, going after Chinese people that have left the country because of human rights violations.
W:Including Chen Guangcheng, of course. And people who listen to our podcast, The Barefoot Lawyer Reports, we interviewed a student from Stanford who had done an expose of all the things they were doing on the campus at Stanford, and Guangcheng has done a number of recent podcasts about how they have turned their agents against him and a man named Bob Fu, who’s the president of China Aid. So yes, they’re doing a lot of things undercutting the rights of people in the United States.
C: Yes. So, it is essential to have presidential endorsement, but we need the whole executive branch working together for this goal. So I will propose to establish a plan with key ideas and demands so we can all move forward together to this goal. That’s the first one.
W: What do you mean… Yeah. So, what do you mean we should all move together?
C: Because we…
W: It’s a coordinated plan within the executive branch?
C: Yes.
W: Of whom? Who are we coordinating with?
C: So, their different offices, for example, FBI, CIA, other offices within the executive branch that are in charge of defending human rights and American citizens. So, they all have different point of views…. but they’re all important for this goal. So, for everyone to share the importance of this issue and do something about it is critical.
W: Okay. What’s the next step?
C: So, the next one is law enforcement. We already have laws that tackle this issue. At least, most of them are about sanctions on people; individuals and organizations that have been involved with human rights violations, and other ones prohibiting the entry to the United States if they have been found guilty of committing human rights violations.
So, I feel like we need to have this in mind more often, and also pass some bills related to specific human rights violations. For example, the Uyghur Human Rights Act, the North Korean bill related to human trafficking, because Chinese people that want to flee out of the country, or North Koreans fleeing from North Korean communist government, that’s a hard place to find yourself trying to flee.
So, they are usually committing human… very… human rights violations around that area. We need to address that issue. And also, organ harvesting in the labor camps. So, this is also an issue that we can tackle passing bills.
W: Well, I mean, is it passing bills or enforcing bills, like you said, that’ve already been passed?
C: Yes. Both.
W: Both?
C: Yes.
W: Which one should we pass that we haven’t passed?
C: We have the Hong Kong Judicial Sanctions Act. It proposes actions against Hong Kong officials responsible for escalating the repression from the CCP in Hong Kong. Also, the North Korean Human Rights Reauthorization Act. This protects North Korean refugees and victims of human trafficking in China. Also, the Transnational Repression Policy Act.
And this is important because it looks for imposing sanctions on individuals conducting harassment or intimidation against US residents. So, as you said, people from China that live now in the US…
W: Including Guangcheng.
C: Yes. And another one that I got was [the] Forced Organ Harvesting Act.
W: So, the position you took in your essay, for people listening, is that the second step of this indirect strategy is to enforce the laws we have, including the Global Maginsky Act and the Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act, and then pass some additional laws, but enforce them.
Sometimes we have laws on the books and we just… we don’t enforce them vigorously.
The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world-class human rights experts from former State Department officials, to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu.