Sponsors (8)
Official title: State the policy of the United States with respect to religious freedom in the People's Republic of China, and for other purposes.
Introduced October 27, 2025 by Theodore Paul Budd · Last progress October 27, 2025
The bill increases U.S. pressure, advocacy, and accountability tools to protect religious minorities in China, trading greater support and deterrence for heightened U.S.-China tensions, potential economic and diplomatic retaliation, and modest new taxpayer costs.
Religious minorities and detainees in China would receive stronger U.S. diplomatic advocacy, expanded monitoring, and programmatic assistance, improving prospects for release, humane treatment, and support.
The bill enables and clarifies use of targeted accountability tools (e.g., Global Magnitsky sanctions) and a formal 'country of particular concern' designation, increasing the ability to hold perpetrators accountable and deterring future abuses.
Formal U.S. designation and public advocacy would institutionalize human-rights pressure and mobilize international and faith-community solidarity, raising global awareness of abuses.
U.S. designations and sanctions risk provoking retaliatory measures from China that could harm trade, U.S. businesses, students, and cultural or educational exchanges.
Designating PRC officials and elevating human-rights pressure would further strain U.S.-China diplomatic relations, complicating cooperation on other strategic issues.
Public U.S. advocacy for detained individuals could lead Chinese authorities to impose harsher treatment or additional prosecutions, increasing risk to the very people the bill seeks to protect.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Labels severe PRC religious persecution as qualifying for Global Magnitsky sanctions, urges PRC designation as a CPC, and directs State Dept. monitoring and advocacy for religious minorities.
Directs U.S. policy to treat Chinese officials responsible for severe religious freedom abuses — including arbitrary detention, forced sterilization, torture, forced labor, and heavy restrictions on worship and movement — as potential perpetrators of "gross violations of internationally recognized human rights" for purposes of Global Magnitsky sanctions. It also urges the State Department to monitor PRC transnational repression, expand programs to promote religious freedom in China, press for prisoner releases and humane treatment, and calls for designating the PRC as a "country of particular concern" while strengthening diplomatic and multilateral advocacy for persecuted religious minorities.