March 24, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 58 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S2014-S2015]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  SENATE RESOLUTION 553--EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE SENATE THAT THE 
  GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA MADE MULTIPLE SERIOUS 
 MISTAKES IN THE EARLY STAGES OF THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK THAT HEIGHTENED 
THE SEVERITY AND SPREAD OF THE ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, INCLUDING THE 
INTENTIONAL SPREAD OF MISINFORMATION TO DOWNPLAY THE RISKS OF COVID-19, 
A REFUSAL TO COOPERATE WITH INTERNATIONAL HEALTH AUTHORITIES, INTERNAL 
 CENSORSHIP OF DOCTORS AND JOURNALISTS, AND A MALICIOUS DISREGARD FOR 
                    THE HEALTH OF ETHNIC MINORITIES

  Mrs. BLACKBURN (for herself and Mr. Cotton) submitted the following 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations:

                              S. Res. 553

       Whereas records of the Government of the People's Republic 
     of China suggest that the first human became infected with 
     COVID-19 on November 17, 2019, in the Hubei Province of 
     China;
       Whereas, on December 27, 2019, Zhang Jixian, a doctor from 
     the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Chinese and Western 
     Medicine, alerted health authorities in China that several 
     individuals exhibiting mysterious, flu-like symptoms, were 
     infected with a novel strain of coronavirus;
       Whereas Dr. Yu Wenbin and a team of researchers from 
     Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden reported that the 
     Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market greatly contributed to the 
     spread of COVID-19 throughout the city of Wuhan;
       Whereas, after being informed of cases of a dangerous new 
     strain of coronavirus concentrated around the Huanan Seafood 
     Wholesale Market in Wuhan, the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China waited 5 days to shut down the market;
       Whereas Zhou Xianwang, the mayor of Wuhan, stated that 
     5,000,000 of the 14,000,000 residents of Wuhan left Wuhan 
     before the Government of the People's Republic of China 
     imposed a lockdown;
       Whereas, on December 30, 2019, Ai Fen, the director of the 
     emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital, shared a 
     diagnostic report on the then unknown COVID-19 virus with a 
     group of doctors through the social media application WeChat;
       Whereas, on December 30, 2019, Dr. Li Wenliang, warned his 
     medical school classmates of an outbreak of an unknown SARS-
     like virus through WeChat;
       Whereas, on December 31, 2019, Wuhan Central Hospital 
     authorities formally reprimanded Ai Fen for ``spreading 
     rumors'' about the virus;
       Whereas, on January 1, 2020, an official at the Hubei 
     Provincial Health Commission ordered at least 1 private 
     genomics testing company to cease testing samples of a SARS-
     like virus from Wuhan and to destroy all existing samples of 
     the virus;
       Whereas, on January 3, 2020, the Public Security Bureau of 
     Wuhan detained, questioned, and forced Dr. Li Wenliang and 7 
     other doctors to sign a letter confessing that Wenliang had 
     made ``false comments'' that ``severely disturbed the social 
     order'';
       Whereas, on January 3, 2020, the leading public health 
     authority in China, the National Health Commission, directed 
     all research institutions in China to cease publicly 
     publishing any information related to a then unknown SARS-
     like virus and ordered them to destroy existing samples of 
     the virus or transfer them to approved testing sites;
       Whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
     first asked permission to study COVID-19 in China on January 
     6, 2020, but was barred by the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China from entering the country until mid-
     February;
       Whereas authorities of the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China first publicly confirmed the existence of 
     COVID-19 on January 9, 2020, 14 days after the presence of a 
     novel strain of coronavirus was internally confirmed;
       Whereas the National Health Commission of China publicly 
     denied that COVID-19 was transmissible through person-to-
     person contact until January 15, 2020, despite having 
     uncovered contrary evidence in late December and having been 
     alerted of the transmissibility of COVID-19 on January 1, 
     2020;
       Whereas, on January 18, 2020, more than 10,000 families 
     attended the annual Lunar New Year Banquet of Wuhan, which 
     was organized and sponsored by the Wuhan city government;
       Whereas the People's Daily, the largest newspaper in China, 
     first reported on the coronavirus on January 21, 2020, nearly 
     a month after the virus was internally confirmed;
       Whereas, on February 7, 2020, 1 month after checking into 
     Wuhan Central Hospital, Dr. Li Wenliang died of a severe case 
     of COVID-19;
       Whereas the COVID-19 outbreak has disproportionately harmed 
     the persecuted Uyghur Muslim minority of China as a result of 
     actions taken by the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China;
       Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China 
     detained more than 1,000,000 Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic 
     minorities in ``re-education camps'', where crowded and 
     unsanitary conditions make the camps hotspots for viral 
     disease and leave prisoners at an elevated risk of 
     contracting COVID-19;
       Whereas, as reported by the Uyghur Human Rights Project, 
     and corroborated by video evidence and Radio Free Asia, an 
     unannounced and strictly enforced quarantine of millions of 
     residents of the predominantly Uyghur Muslim Xinjiang 
     Province of China around January 24, 2020, resulted in mass 
     starvation and shortages of basic medical supplies;
       Whereas, on February 25, 2020, Xinhua News Service reported 
     that the Government of the People's Republic of China had 
     ``re-located'' 30,000 Uyghur laborers to temporarily 
     shuttered factories in the Hotan prefecture, exposing them to 
     health risks that the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China determined were unacceptable for the ethnically Han 
     majority;

[[Page S2015]]

       Whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 
     premier infectious disease research institution in the world, 
     was well situated at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak 
     to both assist the response of the people and Government of 
     the People's Republic of China and prepare the people and 
     Government of the United States to handle the virus in the 
     case of international spread;
       Whereas the National Health Commission of China failed to 
     include individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 but 
     remained asymptomatic in its daily tally of confirmed COVID-
     19 cases, hampering the ability of public health authorities 
     in the United States to accurately account for the rate of 
     spread and the health risks of the virus;
       Whereas a Foreign Ministry Spokesman of the Government of 
     the People's Republic of China, Zhao Lijian, claimed that 
     COVID-19 originated in the United States and that the United 
     States Army brought COVID-19 to Wuhan to wage biological 
     warfare on China;
       Whereas other officials of the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China, including scientists working on the COVID-
     19 response of China, the Ambassador to South Africa of 
     China, and the Ambassador to Australia of China, have claimed 
     that there is no evidence that COVID-19 originated in China;
       Whereas, on March 4, 2020, Xinhua News Agency, an official 
     mouthpiece of the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China, published an article threatening to cut off medical 
     supply exports to the United States and ``plunge [the United 
     States] into the mighty sea of coronavirus'';
       Whereas, on March 17, 2020, the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China expelled nationals of the United States 
     working at the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and 
     the New York Times, reducing the spread of reliable 
     information on the COVID-19 outbreak in China; and
       Whereas a study by the University of Southampton found that 
     if the Government of the People's Republic of China had taken 
     action 3 weeks earlier, the spread of COVID-19 would be 
     reduced by 95 percent globally: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) calls on the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China to--
       (A) publicly state that there is no evidence that COVID-19 
     originated anywhere else but China;
       (B) denounce the baseless conspiracy that the United States 
     Army placed COVID-19 in Wuhan;
       (C) revoke the expulsion of journalists of the United 
     States;
       (D) end the detainment of Uyghur Muslims and other 
     persecuted ethnic minorities; and
       (E) end all forced labor programs;
       (2) condemns--
       (A) the censorship of the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China of doctors and journalists during the early 
     days of the COVID-19 outbreak, particularly the treatment of 
     the deceased Dr. Li Wenliang;
       (B) the refusal of the Government of the People's Republic 
     of China to allow scientists from the Centers for Disease 
     Control and Prevention to assist its response to COVID-19 for 
     more than a month after cooperation was offered, needlessly 
     endangering the lives of its own citizens and hampering the 
     early attempts of the United States to learn more about 
     COVID-19; and
       (C) the duplicitous denial of the National Health 
     Commission of China of the person-to-person transmissibility 
     of COVID-19; and
       (3) calls for the Director-General of the World Health 
     Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to retract 
     highly misleading statements of support for the response of 
     the Government of the People's Republic of China to COVID-19, 
     especially his praise for the ``commitment from top 
     leadership [of the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China], and the transparency they have demonstrated''.

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