Terence Jeffery

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) joined together last week to sponsor a bipartisan bill that would require the secretary of state to determine whether the People’s Republic of China is engaging in genocide against the people of Tibet.

“Communist China is committing genocide in Tibet. There is no way around it,” Scott said in a statement about this bill. “The regime in Beijing has engaged in systematic killings, torture, forced sterilization, forced displacement, government sanctioned kidnapping and a myriad of other crimes against humanity in its oppression of the Tibetan people.”

If enacted, the “Tibet Atrocities Determination Act” would give the secretary of state a one-year deadline to make “a determination” and file a report with Congress “as to whether acts carried out by officials or agents of the People’s Republic of China against Tibetans in Tibet constitute either – (1) an ongoing genocide against the Tibetan people … or (2) crimes against humanity.”

If the secretary does determine that the PRC is committing genocide in Tibet, this would be the State Department’s second determination that this communist regime is engaging in genocide. On Jan. 19, 2021, at the end of the first Trump administration, then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo issued a determination that the PRC was engaging in genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.

In his statement on his bill calling on the secretary of state to determine if China is now committing genocide in Tibet, Scott also cited China’s treatment of the Uyghurs – and “political prisoner” Jimmy Lai.

“This is par for the course for an evil regime that is simultaneously waging a genocide against the Uyghurs, suppressing Christianity, and locking up political prisoners like my friend Jimmy Lai,” said Scott.

Lai is a Catholic Chinese businessman who ran a newspaper, the Apple Daily, out of Hong Kong. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom describes him on its website as “a media mogul, democracy activist, and advocate of religious freedom.”

The Chinese government initially arrested him in August 2020. “On 15 December 2025,” said a statement published in February by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “the High Court found Mr. Lai guilty of conspiracy to publish seditious material under the Crimes Ordinance, as well as two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces under the National Security Law.”

“Mr. Lai has denied all charges,” it said.

The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, the statement said, “had reviewed the verdict and was concerned that it criminalised the exercise of fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression, media freedom and association.”

After President Donald Trump met with Xi in South Korea on Oct. 30, 2025, EWTN reported that a “White House official told EWTN that President Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping about releasing pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai.”

As this column has noted before, the first sentence in the State Department’s latest report on human rights in China, which was published in August and covers 2024, says: “Genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year in China against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”

But despite engaging in genocide, the PRC continues to be one of America’s top trading partners. In the first three months of 2026, according to the Census Bureau, the United States purchased $60.9 billion in imports from China, making it our fourth-largest source of imports during that period – after Mexico ($138 billion), Canada ($91.6 billion) and Taiwan ($67.4 billion).

In February, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 opinion concluding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, enacted in 1977, does not give the president the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs on foreign imports – including those from China.

Now, both parties in Congress should work with Trump to enact legislation that would phase out imports from regimes like China’s that are engaging in genocide.