By Jeanette Pierce, Second Place winner of the 2024 Human Rights Essay Contest – Undergraduate Division
THE SECRETARY OF STATE
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20520
July 8, 2025
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
SUBJECT: Strategic Framework for Promoting Human Rights in the People’s Republic of China
Mr. President:
As our administration continues to navigate the evolving and multifaceted relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), I submit for your consideration a strategic framework focused on advancing human rights. The PRC’s growing authoritarianism and systematic repression pose profound moral, strategic, and geopolitical challenges. A principled but pragmatic U.S. human rights policy toward China is essential not only to safeguard the values we champion as a nation but to uphold a stable, rules-based international order.
From the internment and forced labor of Uyghurs in Xinjiang to the erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong and Tibet, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has expanded its domestic control apparatus while simultaneously exporting authoritarian tools abroad. In this context, I believe the United States must adopt a long-term, integrated strategy to address these abuses through diplomatic, economic, technological, and multilateral channels. The following six policy pillars represent a comprehensive approach for your review.
1. Prioritize Human Rights in All Engagements
It is essential that human rights considerations be fully integrated into our overall strategy toward China and treated as a permanent agenda item across all bilateral and multilateral engagements. Historically, human rights discussions have been compartmentalized—raised sporadically or treated as secondary to trade, security, and climate negotiations. This fragmented approach has allowed the PRC to treat such concerns as rhetorical irritants rather than substantive obstacles to deeper engagement.
We must reframe this. Our commitment to human rights must be sustained and visible at every level of diplomatic interaction—from strategic dialogues to working-level technical exchanges. The PRC should understand clearly that a closer bilateral relationship cannot be normalized while systemic repression continues. Moreover, our embassies and consulates in China must be fully empowered to engage with human rights defenders, document abuses, and raise individual cases, while ensuring the safety and well-being of our diplomatic staff.
Public consistency will strengthen our credibility with both allies and Chinese civil society actors, many of whom look to the United States as a source of principled leadership. By elevating human rights as a consistent, inseparable component of broader foreign policy, we reinforce our values without undermining our strategic flexibility.
2. Strengthen Multilateral Pressure and Democratic Solidarity
The United States cannot succeed in promoting human rights in China through unilateral measures alone. Our impact is amplified exponentially when we work in concert with allies and like-minded democracies. To this end, I propose the formation of a Democracies for Human Rights in China Coalition, composed of countries including the European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and others. This coalition would serve as a platform for coordinated policy responses to human rights abuses perpetrated by the PRC.
Shared actions could include:
Coordinated visa bans and Magnitsky-style sanctions on CCP officials and state-run
enterprises complicit in abuses.
Technology export controls targeting surveillance infrastructure and biometric tools.
A unified public diplomacy campaign to highlight the plight of those targeted by Beijing's policies.
Expanded refugee and asylum pathways for Chinese dissidents, journalists, and persecuted minorities.
This effort would also reinforce existing partnerships in multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations Human Rights Council. Although China has historically sought to block or dilute criticism within these bodies, growing frustration among member states—especially following revelations about Uyghur internment camps—has created new opportunities for accountability. By coordinating strategy and language, the United States and its allies can drive the adoption of joint statements, investigative mechanisms, and formal condemnations that carry greater legitimacy and global weight. Multilateralism also offers an important defensive benefit: it distributes the political and economic cost of pushback. While China often retaliates against individual nations for perceived slights, it is far more hesitant to confront a united front of democratic allies acting in lockstep.
3. Target Xinjiang Abuses and Eradicate Forced Labor from Global Supply Chains
The Chinese government’s abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region—including mass surveillance, arbitrary detention, indoctrination, and forced labor—have been well-documented by U.S. agencies, international NGOs, journalists, and the United Nations. The Department of State’s 2021 designation of the situation as genocide was a historic moment, but the credibility of that stance depends on sustained follow-through.
We must ensure the robust enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). This includes expanding customs inspections, increasing corporate accountability, and strengthening public-private cooperation to map supply chains and identify goods linked to forced labor. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) must continue detaining shipments suspected of violations and work closely with the Department of Commerce and Department of Labor to improve visibility into procurement networks.
Beyond U.S. borders, we should encourage our allies to adopt complementary legislation and launch joint investigations into companies complicit in human rights abuses. The private sector also has a role to play. American businesses should be offered guidance—but also held accountable—when it comes to operating in regions with high human rights risks. Our message must be clear: forced labor has no place in our supply chains, and silence or inaction from multinational corporations is no longer acceptable.
In addition, we should use Global Magnitsky sanctions to target specific individuals and entities directly involved in forced labor operations and internment policies. This includes regional officials, private companies that manufacture in Xinjiang, and public security agencies involved in surveillance and enforcement.
4. Empower Civil Society and Expand Access to Free and Independent Information
At the heart of the CCP’s control model is a closed information ecosystem. By manipulating domestic media, censoring the internet, and stifling dissent, the PRC prevents its citizens—and much of the world—from learning the full scope of its repressive policies. This information vacuum is not only a human rights issue but a national security concern, as it enables Beijing to advance distorted narratives internationally and suppress resistance domestically.
We must significantly expand our efforts to support independent journalism, civic engagement, and internet freedom:
Increase funding for Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and other platforms providing uncensored Chinese-language content.
Support the development and dissemination of secure communication tools, VPNs, and encrypted messaging systems that help Chinese citizens bypass digital firewalls.
Partner with civil society groups working in exile and in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia to document abuses and amplify the stories of victims.
Provide targeted scholarships, grants, and fellowships for exiled Chinese journalists, activists, artists, and scholars who continue to serve as vital voices for truth.
We must also bolster protections for Chinese nationals in the United States, particularly students, dissidents, and academics who face harassment, intimidation, or coercion by Beijing’s agents abroad. This includes strengthening counterintelligence capabilities, enforcing visa restrictions for known operatives, and offering legal assistance to victims of transnational repression. By supporting civil society, we not only help defend freedom of expression but also strengthen the internal resilience of those who seek reform from within.
5. Align Economic and Technological Policy with Human Rights Standards
The United States must prevent its economic and technological power from contributing—wittingly or unwittingly—to human rights abuses in China. American-made technologies have been found in PRC surveillance systems used to monitor and detain individuals based on ethnicity, religion, or political beliefs. Our values and supply chains must be aligned.
I recommend:
Expanding Commerce Department Entity List designations to include firms engaged in biometric surveillance, predictive policing, and social credit scoring.
Enacting a human rights due diligence framework for U.S. companies operating in China, requiring risk assessments and public disclosures related to supply chains and customer use cases.
Barring federal agencies from procuring equipment or services from firms linked to forced labor, censorship technology, or mass surveillance.
Supporting a multilateral agreement with G7 and OECD nations to create shared export control standards that prevent technology transfers to authoritarian regimes.
This strategy is not about decoupling from China but about ensuring that our engagement does not come at the expense of universal values or long-term global security.
6. Maintain Patience, Consistency, and Realism
Fundamental change in China will not occur quickly. The Chinese Communist Party has embedded repression deep into its political system, and meaningful reform will require pressure both internal and external, sustained over time. While we should avoid inflated expectations or demands for regime change, we must also avoid the trap of fatalism. History teaches us that pressure works—not always instantly, but incrementally. The civil rights movement, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the end of apartheid—each was the result of long-term struggle, external solidarity, and consistent moral clarity.
Thus, we must remain:
Patient—recognizing the generational nature of this work.
Consistent ensuring our words are matched by action.
Strategic—leveraging influence wisely without pushing Beijing into reactive escalation that harms human rights advocates further.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Mr. President, the Chinese government treats human rights as a matter of sovereignty. We believe it is a matter of human dignity—one that transcends borders, cultures, and ideologies.
The United States has both the moral obligation and the strategic capacity to lead on this issue. With your support, I intend to work across the interagency to develop a detailed, operational action plan grounded in the six policy pillars outlined above. This plan will involve close coordination with the National Security Council, the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, and our international partners.
I welcome your review of these recommendations and look forward to your continued leadership on this defining issue.
Respectfully,
[Signed]
[Your Name]
Secretary of State
Reflection:
As a student committed to the justice and dignity of every human life, I believe this framework could help better the human rights injustices happening in China. I believe it is important to not only uphold human rights in our own country, but to be an example of human rights to all other countries. We need to be the change for good. We need to use our voices and actions to proclaim good. Because in the face of repression, silence can be conformity.
– Jeanette Pierce
References:
“2023 Annual Report.” CECC, 10 May 2024, www.cecc.gov/publications/annual-reports/2023-
annual-report.
“China: Freedom in the World 2024 Country Report.” Freedom House, Freedom House, 2025,
freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2024.
“2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China (Includes Hong Kong, Macau, and mTibet).” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, 2021,
www.state.gov/reports/2021-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/china/.
Lu, Alan. “China Imposes ‘countermeasures’ after Canada’s Sanctions over Human Rights.” Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Asia, 25 Dec. 2024,
www.rfa.org/english/china/2024/12/23/canada-sanction-tibet-uyghur/.
“Sanctions Programs and Country Information.” Office of Foreign Assets Control | U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2025, ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information.