Academe December Newsletter: Features: "What is Academic Labor Now?"

 

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I pass along  the announcement of three feature essays in Academe's upcoming Special Issue: "What is Academic Labor Now?" This from the press release:

The December Academe newsletter offers a preview of our forthcoming special issue, “What Is Academic Labor Now?,” edited by Alissa Karl of the State University of New York College at Brockport. The issue will be published in full in February 2026.

FEATURES

The Underclass Is in Session
Teaching, research, and service in a vastly unequal academy.
By David A. Banks

How Academic Workers Have Reenergized the Labor Movement
The demographic reconfiguration and ideological reorientation of academic labor.
By Gary Rhoades

This Is Not the "New McCarthyism"—It's Worse
A shameful new chapter in the University of California’s history.
By John McCumber

Links to additional contributions follows below. It is only now that both the lamentation for what might have been lost and the calls to action to save that which is no longer viable brings a bit of sadness to the season. But this was a long time coming and represents one manifestation of the trajectories of resolution to the several vectors of contradiction that had become part of the structural landscape of post-secondary education for decades now. Agree or not, the authors bring a perspective that is worth considering as one sharpens one's own analysis, and with it engages in the values that values that drive that analysis. 

 

Reflections on President Trump: "America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War"

 

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One always ought to worry when a merchant  attempts the role of the official/bureaucrat; or when the warrior seeks to play the role of merchant; or when the Bureaucrat/official attempts the governance of warriors. None of them ever seem to get it right, if only because the cognitive lens of each are distinct enough to make rationalizing the world difficult for a merchant playing at war, a warrior playing at business or bureaucrats and merchants attempting to play the role of the other. The imaginaries of the merchant, warrior and bureaucrat are based on distinct ways of identifying and assessing  the things that are significant and the way they might be valued against their own sense of the appropriate ordering of things. ways of seeing the world. (The "Merchant" (商), the "Bureaucrat" (士) and the "Tariff War"--The Cognitive Cages of the New Apex Post-Global and the Condition of the U.S. and China in their Folie à Deux). When these distinct cognitive cages are ordered within hierarchies of values they might well produce useful synergy--assuming a dominant imaginary to rule them all.  That is so as long as the inherent tensions among them can be managed successfully. Merchants and warriors sometimes find it hard to get along (example here) etc., precisely because they cannot see the world and identify the significance of actions, issues, etc. in the same way. The contradictions become more acute, and significant enough to threaten the stability of a political-economic model, when ruling/rationalizing archetypes, taking for example, the forms described here, attempt to wield the cognitive referents of another. It works sometimes: the warrior merchant, the yeoman official; but contemporary functional differentiation of governance spaces suggest that this effort is more difficult to sustain in the current environment.    

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Such is the state of the world that our global leaders, all true archetypes of the old divisions among merchants, warriors, officials, and peasants, appear ever more desperately to act "out of character."   This is especially relevant when a merchant empire (or rather a post-global empire now run by merchants types who sometimes style themselves bureaucrats or warriors, though perhaps their foundations resonate more with the yeomanry from which they emerged) celebrates its generative moment, or better (since that generative moment occurred decades before in the sort of trade based diplomacy that opened Asian markets in the wake of European territorial imperial ambitions of an ancien regime sort) when it celebrates the idea that a merchant empire or a post-global empire of merchants can actually presume the role of bureaucratic empire while retaining its fundamental transactional merchant character. Mind you, there is neither anything wrong or special about this--the thirst and capacity for empire (though often the will for it doe snot survive three generations as Ibn Khaldun reminded his Arab readers in the 14 century). But what is dangerous--for those who lead merchant empires is the folly of actually believing that merchant empires might function, and function effectively in the world, as if they were the manifestation of bureaucratic or warrior empires, or worse, the fantasy of a yeoman empire. That, in a sense was what appeared to be the message of the 2nd leadership period of the Trump administration in early 2025 (considered in The Borderlands of America First--Marco Rubio: "100 Days of an America First State Department" and the Structures of the America First Belt & Road Initiative). Yet temptation runs deep, and flirtation across cognitive spaces may be irresistible in ways that may ultimately undo the best laid plans of merchant empire. Or it may be that even merchant empires require a base, and we are ony now being treated to a description of its breadth. 

It was with this in mind that one might better appreciate a recent Presidential Message:  America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War, the text of which follows below in full. The Presidential Message was quite inspiring. The Presidential message focused on the relations between the United States and Spain, the relationships between which was marked by a short war and the Spanish cession of a number of its colonies--some transferred to the control of the United States and others--principally Cuba, granted independence from Spain. For the President, those changing relations between the merchant empire of the United States and the old colonial Empire of Spain incarnated the best features of the co-called Monroe Doctrine that emerged from an 1823 address by President Monroe opposing further European colonization of the Americas but also protective of U.S. national territorial aspirations in the Northern Hemisphere and then morphed into a more protean concept of American protective influence in the Western Hemisphere.The Monroe Doctrine has had its share of advocates and detractors, architects and those devoted to its demolition. That is a matter of politics and the values in which it is sometimes encased, or at least encased in some sort of vision that can be articulated in ideology-principle. In this case, and with President Trump's well known concern about the state of Europe and its relationship with the U.S., its emphasis in the Presidential Message also suggests some sort of time travel backwards to the generative period of American antebellum development  projected forward to contemporary times. President Trump is not the only leader time traveling these days, at least discursively; there are others who are well known but not worth taking the time to mention for their own pathos, or better bathos. But having traveled back and forth into the 19th century, the President then offers sometimes of value that might be extracted from those perambulations: "Today, we honor the unwavering courage, conviction, and sacrifice of every hero of liberty who fearlessly confronted forces of tyranny to defend our honor, our sovereignty, and our birthright of freedom" (America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War). . . in Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. Not that this is bad or good, but that it is, and being is the essence of both politics and its narrative ideologies. 

It was kind, though, of President Trump to recall that tragic monarch, Alfonso XIII, and the even more tragic circumstances that saw the U.S. battleship Maine hobbled in old Havana Harbor, with  large loss of life, producing the sort of national  response--aided by  the precursor of today's social media managerial tools--that made war palatable to the American laboring castes, and potentially beneficial to American merchants, warriors and the newly emerging class of professional vanguardists in the growing bureaucracies that would later come to dominate political life. The loss of life on the Maine, which had been sent to Havana to protect American economic interests that were threatened during the course of the Wars of Cuban Independence that had started far earlier in the 19th century and sputtered on sporadically for the greater art of that century, " propelled the United States toward a momentous struggle for justice and ignited our Nation’s righteous determination to defend our interests and maintain our dominance in the Western Hemisphere."  (

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America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War). A merchant might have said that, after decades of sitting on the sidelines the intervention of the projection of the United States into Cuba to protect its interests made inevitable an intervention against the Spanish colonial administration for Cuban independence. Viewed in that way one might have seen in the Maine tragedy the necessary predicate for an America First style action to protect U.S. interests which in that case tilted against a competing (and increasing obsolete form of) empire and (at last for Cuban nationalists) in favor of independence form Spain. But for the nascent warrior and bureaucrat castes in the United States a distinctive narrative of the events emerged, one which the President (or his writers) nicely captured:  

The war swiftly unfolded as American troops and sailors advanced with decisive strength, securing victories from Cuba to the Philippines. At the Battle of Manila Bay, United States forces destroyed the entire royal Spanish fleet within mere hours. Additional fighting in Cuba was backed by Theodore Roosevelt’s legendary regiment of “Rough Riders,” a volunteer cavalry made up of cowboys, miners, and college athletes, who embodied the full measure of American strength, resilience, and grit. These triumphant victories across land and sea brought the Spanish Empire to its breaking point and solidified the United States of America as the greatest military force in the world.America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War).

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That is the kind of narrative that sustained generations. And it is inspiring, fashioning a view of patriotic projection that does not appear to end at the territorial borders of the United States (something that  august elements of the Trump Administration  with deep roots in the American yeomanry might have been more sensitive to). And it reflects a way of looking at the world that fit nicely into the development of U.S. elite vanguardist tastes from the progressive movement on. Yet it effectively marginalized the Merchant approach to American policy. "Merchants and bureaucrats do not speak the same language; they do not have the same concerns, they do not share the same loyalties either to structures or operations, they approach challenges form opposite sides--one from principle and the other from action.  One builds by doing and then considers what has been built, the other conceives of the building and then conforms activities to those that advance that vision." (The "Merchant" (商), the "Bureaucrat" (士) and the "Tariff War"--The Cognitive Cages of the New Apex Post-Global and the Condition of the U.S. and China in their Folie à Deux. This cognitive cage of the merchant leadership vanguard, one would have presumed, had been revived in contemporary form by the current Administration and its America First initiative--one that mirrored the official/bureaucrat version that might be said to have taken the form of the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative. The merchant lens understands everything through a transactional lens, giving definition to the constitution and management of merchant empires in which territories (physical and virtual) are spaces in which transactions can be advantageously realized; the warrior, and warrior empire through coercive control of territory and its pacification, in which overlordship can be advantageously achieved (and perhaps maintained); and the official/bureaucrat through the territories of institutional control, these empires of institutions see the world as territories (physical and virtual) in managerial terms which may be brought to a higher stage of development through values based shepherding.  

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But perhaps not. Nothing exists in pristine form. Each of these ruling styles needs the others; the issue then is not exclusivity by a leading means of organizing and rationalizing the world to make it possible to identity, assess and act in ways that can be measured against a unifying set of objectives and values. None of this is a criticism of U.S. against Spain--merely a suggestion that the analytical lens makes all the difference in the world in understanding its signification then, and what it teaches the current generations of merchant leaders for recognizing and staying true to the cognitive lenses through which the world is rationalized and U.S. interests understood and realized. 

Perhaps what the Presidential Message was meant to convey, through this analytical lens, way that Cuban independence from Spain was in some respects a brilliant example of the power of merchant thinking projected outward for inward reward with collateral benefits to the population whose interests aligned with those of the merchant empire (the classical win-win strategies of the merchant led America First Initiative and the Bureaucrat/official centered Belt & Road Initiative). Even as independence from Spain was achieved, through the intervention of the U.S. (and approval of another old Empire, the British one which had its own geopolitical reasons for the silence/approval), American merchants created a Cuban sovereignty that was dependent on American forbearance. The Platt Amendment, which also follows below, suggested a much more acutely merchant approach--one that was less interested in the bureaucrats more ancient desire for territory and more focused not on control per se but on control of the circumstances within which transactions and economic relations on a favorable basis could be managed and augmented. 

Platt was a U.S. senator from 1879 to 1905 and influenced the decision to annex Hawaii and occupy the Philippines. As chair of the Senate Committee with Relations on Cuba, he sponsored the amendment as a rider attached to the Army Appropriations Bill of 1901. Cubans reluctantly included the amendment, which virtually made Cuba a U.S. protectorate, in their constitution. The Platt Amendment was also incorporated in a permanent treaty between the United States and Cuba. * * * The Platt Amendment supplied the terms under which the United States intervened in Cuban affairs in 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1920. By 1934, rising Cuban nationalism and widespread criticism of the Platt Amendment resulted in its repeal as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America. (Platt Amendment 1903)

Politics and its shifting from a merchant to a bureaucratic/vanguardist elite between the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th century is reflected in this history. None of this is either good or bad, empire has been undergoing a tremendous transformation in the last several decades and what had once morphed into a vanguardist loosely cobbled together empire of expertise has again broken up into empires of management of productive forces but now in quite distinct ways.  The Trump Administration, robustly embedded in the cognitive cages of the merchant and merchant empire, appears, however, to also appears tempted to avoid detachment from either a warrior or bureaucrat caste approach to cobbling together and managing empire. Perhaps that is inevitable; but which comes first? and if the merchant lens orders the others, then how does that "firstness" of the merchant affect its instrumentalization of the others? That remains unclear here. Still, one is reminded that perhaps only theologians and academics hold to conceptual purity, and pragmatism may require something messier. One sees this in the Presidential Message; , But one also sees it in the construction of a Chinese empire--in the former case the merchant must deploy but control the warrior caste; in the later the bureaucrat/official must develop but also control its own warrior case; not the caste themselves but the cognitive frameworks from out of which they rationalize the world. But the danger is that pragmatics may overcome the generative cognitive approach that holds a system, including a system of empire together. That contradiction marks the discourse of the end of the Presidential Message:

On this day 127 years ago, the Treaty of Paris formally ended the conflict . . . —a pivotal moment that marked not only the conclusion of the war but the dawn of America’s role as a military superpower unlike anything the world had ever seen. Today, we recognize the territories and partnerships forged by the Treaty of Paris, where the full force of American freedom has taken root. Above all, we renew our commitment to a simple truth: Peace is maintained through strength. My Administration is proudly upholding this America First vision through our negotiations of historic peace deals in regions marked by decades of conflict—proving to nations around the world that we can turn the page on the days of endless wars and usher in a future defined by everlasting peace. (America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War).

It is also a warning to those in whose hands the development of the American "vision" is entrusted One can try but might find it challenging to have it all ways. Peace through strength requires strength for peace. And strength is not the product of accommodation with competing Empire--a Spanish one in the 19th century and others in the 21st. Peace, for the merchant, is not an absence of war but a space within which transactions  are possible that produce win-win use of the productive forces controlled by a community of transaction makers. Peace for the merchant, in the 21st century, requires not just strength but a steady protection against the bureaucrat and the warrior states that are also the key elements in shaping a transactional platform. Therein lies the great contradiction for the American merchant--a contradiction that viewed through the transactional lens of the merchant has produced a certain amount of inconsistency (though that too may be the essence of merchant governance): "As we commemorate this anniversary of our victory in the Spanish-American War, we stand united in our unwavering commitment to peace, military strength, and the enduring principles that define the American spirit." (America 250: Presidential Message on the Anniversary of our Victory in the Spanish-American War).

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Where this leads, no one knows yet. But the signalling is confusing--and perhaps that is the greatest mark of the merchant empire as long as one is content with the foundational ordering premise that the only steady state is the transaction itself.  For Cubans and and Venezuelans the revived and repurposed Monroe Doctrine provides peace through dependence. The Platt Amendment is revived in cultural form even as its formal legal constitution recedes more forcefully into history. But for Ukrainians reading this, the suggestion is clear--the 1990s did not bring sovereign independence, it brought only independence form the Soviet Union. But that left open the question of dependence--they have rejected a closer union with the reconstituted remnant of the Soviet Empire; Europe remains unwilling or unable; perhaps what might remain is a Platt Amendment for Ukraine through which the U.S. can protect its economic interest in Ukraine and establish the borders from which a  ore fruitful relationship might be undertaken with what remains of the powers to the east and the West of Ukraine.  All that is required are the discursive tropes necessary to make these realities palatable. In that respect, at least, the Chinese are a generation ahead of the Americans. And the American are still attempting to overcome the contradictions of their own cognitive framework in a conversation that is over a century old.  It is in this spirit that, indeed, all patriots can join in the commemoration of the American victory against the Spanish Empire at the end of the 19th century, and in reflecting on the critical relevance of that victory against obsolete empire in forging the merchant, bureaucratic and warrior empires that are now again emerging from out of the detritus of that even greater experiment on convergence that lasted  for the briefest of moments.  

For the people of the Western Hemisphere, at least, the commemoration reminds all  that through the lens of merchant empire, transactions between empires are a central element in ordering the spaces necessary to advance the values and objectives of each. Where those values differ--between an American merchant Empire and a Spanish colonial empire, the contradictions may be resolved by force between them when an accommodation becomes impossible. The objects of all this conflict and contradiction--spaces that colonial empire "sees" as territory to be controlled and exploited; and merchant empire "sees" as the locus of the exploitation of means of production and the cultivation of consumption (production/consumption platforms)--are conseqeuntial rather than driving forces in battles  over that space's utilization. Discourse is an essential lubricant in those conflicts and their call to "higher values" are in turn a function of the lens through which these spaces are understood. American values, then, like those of Spanish colonialism before them (and the cornucopias of other values in the contemporary marketplace of ideas) become embedded and understood with a reference to the ordering lens through which those values emerge and are applied--to enhance the value and operation of transactional spaces for merchant empires in accordance with the fundamental values of markets transactional environment in the service of which they are applied ("This tragedy propelled the United States toward a momentous struggle for justice and ignited our Nation’s righteous determination to defend our interests and maintain our dominance in the Western Hemisphere." Presidential message). But there is the problem. It is hard ti square that conceptual lens with the discursive tropes of warrior empire. A warrior empire assumes a constant state of war--to defend and expand (the contemporary Russian model, perhaps, and others). Peace is a consequences of domination; for the merchant peace is a predicate to transaction (there is a caveat for merchant cultures subordinated to and surviving on the economies of warfare). "As we commemorate this anniversary of our victory in the Spanish-American War, we stand united in our unwavering commitment to peace, military strength, and the enduring principles that define the American spirit" (Presidential Message) it may be worth a moment to consider the relationship among the three and their variability as a function of the lens used to signify and apply them. It is in that effort that the shape of America First may yet emerge more clearly, unless it too is merely a transaction within a larger market space. 

  

 

Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Issues its 2025 Annual Report

 

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 "with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. The Commission consists of nine Senators, nine Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President." (CECC About). The CECC FAQs provide useful information about the CECC. See CECC Frequently Asked Questions. They have developed positions on a number of issues.

CECC tends to serve as an excellent barometer of the thinking of political and academic elites in the United States about issues touching on China and the official American line developed in connection with those issues. As such it is an important source of information about the way official and academic sectors think about China. As one can imagine many of the positions of the CECC are critical of current Chinese policies and institutions (for some analysis see CECC). 

CECC publishes annual reports. It has just published in Annual Report for 2025.  The Press Release provides an excellent summary: 

 

December 10, 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C.—U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and U.S. Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), Chair and Cochair of the bipartisan and bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), today released the Commission’s 2025 Annual Report reviewing human rights conditions and legal developments in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as mandated by Title III of Public Law 106–286.

The full report and an executive summary are available on the CECC’s website.

“This year’s report lays bare how the Chinese Communist Party keeps breaking its word—to its own people and to the world,” said CECC Chair Senator Dan Sullivan. “Beijing signs human rights conventions, promises autonomy for Hong Kong and Tibet, and pledges to play by global trade rules, then jails dissidents, runs forced-labor factories and illegal fishing fleets, and even dispatches agents to stalk and threaten people on American soil. This report doesn’t just catalogue those abuses; it gives Congress, the administration, and our allies a blueprint to stand with victims of atrocities, defend our workers and supply chains—including our fishing and seafood industries—from slave labor, and make sure the Chinese Communist Party, not American families, pays the price for Beijing’s broken promises. I am honored to work with Representative Smith on the CECC and continue the important work of Secretary of State Rubio, who served on this commission as Chair or Ranking Member for nine years while he was in the Senate.”

“Sadly, the People’s Republic of China under the Communist Party has proven time and again that it seeks hegemony in order to impose the same tyranny it afflicts its own citizens with upon the rest of the world," said CECC Cochair Representative Chris Smith. "China is not a responsible member of the community of nations, for it is run by the Communist Party for the benefit of the Communist Party—a Party State which does not honor the treaties to which it is a State Party. The PRC is thus more than simply a strategic rival to the United States and the rest of the free world, as it is a systemic rival which seeks to undo the stable international order to which the United States has been guarantor since the end of the Second World War. How can a predatory, mercantilist nation that utilizes forced labor, steals intellectual property and massively subsidizes state-owned enterprises be a member of the World Trade Organization or any rules-based order?  The answer is that it cannot be, so long as the Communist Party maintains its monopoly on power.” 

 

The 2025 Annual Report frames the PRC’s human rights record under the theme “Promises Made, Promises Broken.” It shows how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invokes the language of “rule of law” while practicing “rule by law”—using courts, police, and regulations as political weapons to preserve one-party rule at home and bend rules abroad. It documents how Beijing signs treaties and pledges on human rights, labor, trade, and maritime conduct, then ignores those obligations in practice, turning coerced labor and state-directed subsidies into tools of economic coercion and exporting censorship and surveillance technologies that undermine freedom far beyond China’s borders. As in previous years, the report’s 18 chapters provide a detailed account of abuses inside the PRC and in areas under its control, and trace how those broken promises distort global markets, weaken international norms, and ultimately threaten the security and prosperity of the American people and our allies.

Among its major findings, the 2025 report documents:

• Expansion of state-imposed forced labor. Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) continue to expand coercive labor schemes involving Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, including transfers from traditional rural livelihoods into industrial work and confiscation of land for state-run cooperatives and developers.
• Systematic repression of religious and ethnic communities. The CCP tightens control over all major faiths, promotes the “sinicization” of religion, and suppresses Muslim, Tibetan Buddhist, Christian, Falun Gong, and other communities through mosque “rectifications,” colonial-style boarding schools, intrusive surveillance, and persecution of groups labeled as “cults.”
• Criminalization of dissent and civil society. Authorities arbitrarily detain human rights lawyers, labor organizers, journalists, women’s rights advocates, and others under vague offenses such as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” or “separatism,” often using torture, incommunicado detention, and extralegal “black jails.”
• Technology-enhanced human rights abuses. The report details how AI tools, mass data platforms, satellite internet infrastructure, and censorship technologies are embedded with CCP policies and propaganda and exported abroad, enabling other governments to replicate China’s model of digital repression.
• Erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and rule of law. National security laws continue to be weaponized to imprison pro-democracy leaders, shutter civil society, and chill press freedom, in violation of obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
• China’s overseas human rights abuses. A distinctive contribution of this year’s report is the chapter “Human Rights Violations in the U.S. and Globally,” which documents the PRC’s efforts to project repression beyond its borders. The Commission details a spectrum of tactics: harassment of diaspora communities and rights advocates, bounties and threats against overseas activists, covert “overseas police” service stations, and law-enforcement cases in the United States involving unregistered PRC agents. The chapter also highlights attempts to influence democratic processes and human rights norms by cultivating foreign politicians and political aides, spreading disinformation about U.S. elections, leveraging Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices, and working inside the U.N. system to blunt scrutiny of abuses. Taken together, the report argues, these practices show that Beijing’s human rights violations are part of a global strategy to intimidate and censor people on U.S. soil, tilt politics and policy in the PRC’s favor, and erode universal human rights standards.
• Political Prisoner Database. The report again draws extensively on the Commission’s Political Prisoner Database (PPD), which now contains 11,262 records of political and religious prisoners in China; 2,755 of these are “active detentions”—cases in which individuals are known or believed to be currently detained, imprisoned, or under coercive controls. The PPD supports congressional and executive advocacy and helps ensure that individual prisoners are not forgotten.

PRIORITY RECOMMENDATIONS AND LEGISLATION

The 2025 Annual Report includes a broad set of recommendations for Congress and the executive branch. The Chairs highlighted several priority areas—forced labor, unjustly detained Americans in China, forced organ harvesting, and transnational repression—where the report calls for concrete action and major legislative initiatives.

Key recommendations include:

• Confronting forced labor and tainted supply chains. Strengthen enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, close loopholes in small-parcel and transshipment trade, and end U.S. imports of PRC seafood caught or processed with forced labor—including on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) PRC fishing fleets as well as in processing plants that rely on North Korean and transferred Uyghur workers—so that American families, including servicemembers and children in school meal programs, are not unknowingly buying products made with slavery.
• Freeing unjustly detained Americans in China. Treat the PRC’s arbitrary prosecutions and “exit bans” as a form of hostage-taking; improve transparency in travel advisories; and deepen coordination with allies through a wrongful-detention working group so that Americans are not used as political bargaining chips.
• Ending forced organ harvesting. Expand State Department reporting on organ trafficking, restrict “organ tourism,” impose visa bans and sanctions on perpetrators, and end U.S. funding and partnerships with PRC institutions implicated in unethical transplant practices.
• Countering transnational repression and malign influence. Develop a whole-of-government strategy against PRC transnational repression, improve support for victims in diaspora communities, increase transparency around foreign interference in U.S. politics, and coordinate with allies on sanctions and law-enforcement tools to deter intimidation, digital harassment, and covert influence operations.

The report also spotlights priority bipartisan legislation that would implement these recommendations and that the Chairs have championed in Congress, including:

• The FISH Act (S. 688) – to target illegal, unreported, and unregulated PRC fishing fleets and forced labor in the PRC seafood industry.
• The Transnational Repression Policy Act (S. 2525 / H.R. 4829) – to build out U.S. authorities, reporting, and coordination to confront transnational repression on U.S. soil and globally.
• The Uyghur Genocide Accountability and Sanctions Act (S. 2560 / H.R. 4830)– to expand sanctions and restrict federal procurement of PRC seafood and other goods linked to atrocity crimes.
• The Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt Unjustly Detained in Communist China Act (H.R. 5491) – to enhance tools for securing the release of unjustly detained Americans.
• The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act (H.R. 1503) – to expand reporting and authorities to disrupt forced organ harvesting and organ tourism.
• The Hong Kong Judicial Sanctions Act (S. 1755 / H.R. 733) – to seek targeted sanctions on judges and prosecutors responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and rule of law and jailing political prisoners.

Beyond these priorities, the 2025 Annual Report makes detailed recommendations on defending human rights in Hong Kong and Tibet, confronting malign PRC influence operations, defeating the export of digital authoritarianism, evaluating U.S. human rights diplomacy, and building a robust public diplomacy strategy that exposes abuses while supporting open access to information.

Senator Sullivan and Representative Smith commended the professional work of the CECC’s research staff in producing the 2025 Annual Report and reiterated that the United States must hold the PRC to the promises it has made—to its own citizens and to the world.

 

MEDIA CONTACT:

Rita Cheng

(202) 308-6062 

A summary of the "Key Findings" from the Executive Summary follows below. They provide the categorical focus framework within which the U.S. constructs China. Key areas of analysis include: (1) freedom of expression; (2) civil society; (3) freedom of religion; (4) criminal justice; (5) access to justice; (5) governance; (6) ethnic minority rights; (7) status of women; (8) population control; (9) human trafficking; (10) worker rights; (11) public health; (12) environment; (13) business and human rights; (14) North Korean refugees in China; (15) technology enhanced authoritarianism; (16) Tibet; (17) Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; (18) Hong Kong and Macao; and (19) human rights violations in the U.S. and globally. It is not clear how this will resonate with the Trump Administration, whose transactional approach to China appears, at best, to use these as bargaining chips for the augmentation of the advantages to the United States in its America First reframing of trade and foreign relations. Something that is less helpful is the discursive detachment of the Chinese State from the Chinese Communist Party. The reasons are important for the internal debate and management of public opinion in the United States. And as a piece of propaganda it is as useful as Chinese efforts  directed against the U.S. Those effects ought to be studied with some interest on both sides of the Pacific. 

Reflections on Mohammed Gamal Abdelnour on "Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology: From “Means” to “Meanings” and from “Minds” to “Hearts”"

 

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In a recent post I considered briefly the quite powerful insights of Tugrul Keskin in “Algorithmic Ummah: Turkey’s AI Ambitions and the Neoliberal Pan-Islamist Reconfiguration of the Global South,” Presentaiton at the Conference "AI and International Relations: Perspectives from the Global South and Muslim World," (FIU, 4 December 2025). There the object was to begin to understand the hugely important magma flow of ambition, desire, and its operationalization around the construction and utilization of virtual spaces to the ends of reshaping (and controlling) the cognitive universe of physical things (and the people whoa re both its objects and its vessels). 

But all realms, including virtual realms, that are both a projection of the human and a means of externalizing the collective human for reinsertion into people, and form people, into the communities they would now feel "naturally" follow from this dialectic--all human realms--require a theology. Theology here is understood in its classical Greek sense of a rationalizing discourse on the gods. This is not God-speak, but rather humans speaking from within the cognitive cage in which, it is assumed, the divine (external) force/presence/thing/person has placed human--and humanity. It is Janus faced in the sense of rationalizing the necessary exteriorization of the rationalizing forces of cognition (the making and ordering of things including the world in which humans find themselves) and then the ordering of humans and human collectivity as a consequences of that ordering and placement (Cf., Paul Tillich, "Systematic Theology," 195). 

That theology is particularly ironic where it represents the expression of humanity outside of itself--like a divine force--which can then, from its exterior position--assume an autonomous and superior role in shaping the lebenswelt that passes for the entirety of human cognitive space. It is even more interesting, and ironic, when that divine space, that human divinity, is then shaped, in turn, or merged with, other exteriorizations, in this case religions that are grounded on an assumption of a presence that is both (1) not human; (2) a creator of the human and of humanity; and (3) a shepherd with a specific interest in managing the human flock through texts and periodic demonstration of power that can be manifested only by those who exist beyond the laws and the cognitive cages into which humanity has been placed. And for all of this, on the human plane at least, one requires a θεολόγος (theologis), one who speaks of--and for-God). That is one needs theos (θεο; the exogenous manifestation of an ordering force) and Logos (λόγος; reason, logic, the divine presence in human readable form ). And it is in the second part of the word that one re-encounters that semiosis of the divine: that the human is incapable of speaking OF the divine (in whatever form the human can grasp it) without speaking FOR the God. 

Nietzsche spoke to this, of course (Nietzsche, Götzendämmerung), but with a measure of fear and loathing; one assuming that it was possible to break free of our cognitive cages and with it of the exogenous manifestation from out of which (or into which) humanity not just humanity's cognitive cages, but the rule systems that permitted structures to arise  that could authoritatively deprive others of life, liberty or property for failure to conform to the received or produced ordering Logos.  But Nietzsche was philosophizing with a hammer (oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert; see, e.g., how one goes that task here, here, here). Others have sought to rationalize this semiosis within the cognitive cages of the Holy writ from out of which, and only through which, authoritative cognition of reality is possible. 

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But why use a hammer? Why use a hammer, a tool with a stone head in its Old Saxon reference, when one can construct a virtual manifestation of the thing that one wants to change--or explode--and so made, to unmake or make the fundamental ordering around which the virtual "hammerish" thing has been created. Where, as in older times, the hammer--martulus (Latin)--was transformed from something exogenous to the human to something intimately human, that is to a maccabeus (מַכַּבִּי, makkabī) sometimes connected to the Hebrew word for "hammer" (maqqebet; מַקָּבוֹת), which produced a collective semiotics of human, human purpose, and divine direction for interpreting and applying that purpose: it might be understood as the future patronymic of the Jewish family Maccabesus and particularly through the father of the man who secured the liberation of the Jews from the Greek Syrians, Judah Maccabee; it might signify the son as the hammer of the Jewish collective against their enemies, it might contain within it the divine guidance for battle--the acronym for מִי-כָמֹכָה בָּאֵלִם יְהוָה ; Mi kamocha Ba'elim Adonai? ("Who, oh Lord, is like You among the mighty?").  Why use a hammer when  humanity is become its own hammer, one which can be used against those nails of individual humans who stick out from the wooden plank of collective existence? 

Why use a hammer, or even a human hammer, when the virtualization of that object/function/norm makes unavoidable a realization that the simulacra of humanity are now the hammer. And thus the need to transpose, or more accurately to develop a binding dialectic among the old theology and one that can be injected into and made part of the construction of a generative virtual simulation of the entirety of ourselves.  We are the thing we use; we are the thing we create to house the aggregated compilation of what we are, or at least what our theology in the flesh  makes it possible for humanity to conceive itself and signify those thing around it (Ge, 2:19 (KJV) "And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.").  Humanity are that thing virtually and in aggregation now incarnated (that is literally "made flesh" in virtual space at least)  in and through or technological manifestations. To some extent, then, it may be worth considering whether one any longer needs either humans or an exogenous, autonomous and non-human manifestation of divine force--one needs only the construction of the spirit of the divine from out of the human and into its virtual incarnation; one only needs a virtual God, and a θεολόγος (theologis), human or virtual, one that can receive, organize, manifest, impose, and render human the virtual theology of this virtual incarnation of the divine presence. And that presence may now be constructed as much from out of humanity as it is been received from outside by humanity. Is there, in the end, a difference within  a dialectics in which both vectors operate continuously and simultaneously?

A theo-logos, then is both necessary and inevitable; and a need for a Muslim theo-logos is no different in those virtual spaces and within generative intelligence made in our own (collective) image (which theologians tell us must also  reflect, one step removed, the very image of the divine presence from out of which the makers of generative intelligence were first created), though its pathways and its dialectics with the old ways will drive it in its own peculiar path. Those are some of the orienting thoughts that emerged from a reading of Mohammed Gamal Abdelnour, Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology: From “Means” to “Meanings” and from “Minds” to “Hearts” (2025) 16(6) Religions 796 (https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16060796).  The author summarizes his work this way:

Muslim responses to Artificial Intelligence (AI) have so far focused mainly on how it challenges the human “mind”. This paper moves from the “mind” to the “heart”, which, in Islam, is not only a vessel of emotion but a cognitive, moral and spiritual centre. Charting a path between cynicism and optimism, the article proposes a third track: critical, hopeful, and ethically grounded. Utilizing indigenous Islamic concepts (e.g., ijtihād “independent reasoning”, maṣlaḥah mursalah “unrestricted public interest”, and sadd al-dharā’iʿ “blocking the means to harm”), it advocates a bottom-up approach that focuses not just on managing AI, but on shaping “who” we are in the AI age, calling for a moral vision rooted in intentionality (niyyah), moral clarity, and individual-cum-collective responsibility. (Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology; Abstract).

The object is shared with other theological, political, and normative systems: how to bend technology in the service of, but more deeply, how to transform a technology itself, into the very manifestation, the authentic expression of, the the "spiritual and ethical values" of the meta-normative cage of normative (in this case religious) lifeworld, that is the world that is made by that exogenous presence who by its very nature is the essence of the thing created. It is a small step from this starting point to θεολόγος theo-logos, the theologian: "

Addressing this subject from a practical Muslim theology perspective, this paper explores the intersection of AI and Islamic theology, using four methodical questions, as articulated by Richard R. Osmer—a key theorist in practical theology: What is going on? (the descriptive-empirical task); Why is this going on? (the interpretative task); What ought to be going on? (the normative task); How might we respond? (the pragmatic task). * * * The latter two questions. . . direct us toward a constructive theological engagement with AI. The normative task calls on Muslim scholars and communities to assess AI through the lens of Quranic values, the Prophetic model (Sunnah), and maqāṣid (higher objectives of Islam).  . .  the pragmatic task challenges Muslim theologians, technologists, and policymakers to implement faithful and effective responses. (Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology)

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Gamal Abdelnour starts with the possibilities of the virtual theologian. One argument, mirroring those of Chinese Marxists, views the entire enterprise as a Trojan Horse--the technologies of the virtual must be as corrupt and corrupting as the degenerate and haram  (حرام) premises within which it was created in liberal democratic non-Muslim Lifeworlds. The other suggests that the hammer can be distinguished from its wielder and that, purged of the corruption of its developers, can be deployed both for the Ummah  (أُمَّة; the community of Muslim believers) and against the dar al harb (دار الحرب) . Considered within this discussion is the further pone--can the virtual displace the human theologian, and from there, can it authoritatively speak for or serve as the vessel through which God speaks to  the believers. To that Gamal Abdelnour suggests the possibility of optimism--transposing the ancient Greek idea of the ikon (εἰκών ) into an Islamic context--one does not worship the object but rather uses the object as a portal to the authentic abstraction. That is, in the case of the virtual, one approaches a human abstraction of the divine as a means of reaching the "pure" abstraction that is the divine. Gamel Abdelnour then suggests that the virtual cannot displace the human theo-logos, interposing itself between its creator and THE creator: "To suggest that AI could produce theology in any meaningful sense is to conflate linguistic mimicry with spiritual apprehension and, in doing so, risks a reductive understanding of religion itself. Consequently, the claim that AI could generate its own theology represents a category error rather than a legitimate theological challenge." It is not clear that this is indeed possible, though Gamel Abdelnour is right to raise it--if the virtual represents the collective manifestation of the Ummah, and not just a particular cleric or other, then it might well be possible to suggest that the ummah speaks more clearly in its aggregated form than it does through the inspiration of an individual--unless of course, the individual is directly touched by the divine in a way that is denied the aggregated creation of humanity in itself. 

That brings him to his third and fourth questions. He suggests, in part, with respect t the third, that Islam is not burdened with the dissipation of religion that is the marker of advanced "Western" civilization--one that refuses to invest its tools with the moral and theological imprint that is taken for granted in both religious (and Marxist-Leninist) systems. "The result [Ganel Abdelnour suggests] of these historical and structural shifts is a culture awash in information but starving for wisdom. We have built machines that can simulate intelligence, process language, and make predictions—but we have not cultivated the ethical frameworks to decide how these capabilities should be used. In the absence of a shared metaphysical horizon, "(Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology) Of course, Zigmut Bauman and Martha Nussbaum may not be the sole  ikon (εἰκών ) the reflection through which opens the authentic portal to the "heart" of the "West"; but there it is, certainly in the form of the shock troops of Western elite progress to self-actualization from a certain perspective. 

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This is worth noting only for its consequent--if indeed one misreads "the West" then one might also misread both the depth and amplitude of difference and the possibilities of avoiding the sort of corruption that is the start of the analysis. All of that I leave to others who might find in that consideration something to take up their time.  But the consequences is worthy of consideration--a means over meaning approach  only covers the fundamental values that are always to be encased in virtual representations of the physical world reduced to an endless iterative consumption of the data that in the aggregate constitutes that world (to the extent it is identified as such--another issue). "AI systems, therefore, not only reflect human values but also shape them, reinforcing existing inequities under the guise of neutrality. The overarching concern is existential: without reintegrating moral, philosophical, and spiritual insights, AI risks deepening a crisis where we have immense power but little wisdom about its purpose or consequences." What is missing then, is wisdom (sophia (σοφία)) --holy wisdom (hagia sophia Ἁγία Σοφία)-- which religion must supply. It follows, then, tn contrast to elite "modernity," to means over meaning approaches (the essential corruption of "the West"), Gamel Abdelnour offers one the other part of the binary that is the usual antipodes of classical dialectics: "Islamic intellectual history offers a contrasting model. Classical Muslim education was grounded in the harmonious integration of the ʿulūm al-naqliyya (transmitted sciences such as Quranic exegesis, hadith, and jurisprudence) and ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyya (rational sciences such as logic, philosophy, and medicine)." (Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology). 

And the suggestion from out of the meta-cognitive cage of religion? That is straightforward as well--the virtual must not be constructed from out of the iterative mimetic actions and products of the human, but rather it must be first constructed within the cage of theological values, understanding and signification/organizaiton of the world of the human. Only then, and within it, might the human be embedded in a system now more closely connected to the divine. For Islam, the framework is fairly straightforward in theory. For other religions it may also be so--including the self-referencing systems of humanism, Marxist-Leninism and the religious pathways of pagans, those to which religious establishments might seek to dismiss, and certainly in some places to suppress. 

 The historical contributions of Muslim scholars to fields such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine underscore Islam’s positive orientation toward scientific advancement. The works of scholars like Ibn Sina, Al-Khwarizmi, and Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1040) were not only compatible with Islamic values but were also driven by them. Today’s AI revolution can be seen as a continuation of this intellectual tradition—seeking knowledge that is beneficial and applying it in service of humanity. What is required is not rejection but the ethical calibration of AI to align with Islamic values. (Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology).

To those ends, Gamel Abdelnour "challenges dominant AI discourses that prioritize cognitive intelligence by re-centring the Islamic theological concept of the qalb (heart) as the true locus of understanding, moral discernment, and spiritual receptivity in the Islamic tradition." (Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology). To those ends, and as is common among some intellectuals in the "West," he suggests a binary in which the power of "Western" thought becomes its primary weakness in the face of the revolutionary (or divine reaching) potential of virtual technologies: 

Modern epistemologies, shaped by Cartesian dualism and Enlightenment rationalism, have marginalized the heart’s role, reducing intelligence to computational output and sidelining moral and spiritual wisdom. In contrast, Islam’s holistic anthropology integrates intellect and spirit, proposing that the heart’s reform is not only a theological imperative but a sociotechnical necessity in an AI-driven world. (Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology).

That is true enough. Yet it also constitutes and is constituted by a way of perceiving the world, and of rationalizing those "things" that one sees (and distinguishes these from that which is not seen) that mimics rather than distinguishes the religious path from that which is deemed corrupt and corruption. And, indeed, in the concluding section, the "What is to be Done?" consequences of the excellent analysis, one returns to the foundational problem of the self as the object/source of dialogue with the divine.  

By beginning with the self, we also become co-creators of broader reform. If individual users engage AI with moral vigilance, ethical restraint, and spiritual intention, then their cumulative influence will ripple upward. Institutions are not impersonal monoliths; they are shaped by the aggregated values and expectations of individuals. Thus, a spiritually grounded grassroots reform may, in time, influence curricula, fatwas, platform design, and policy.(Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology).

Yet that is the very essence of the journey of Western philosophy beyond that which was considered, and especially that which produces a more nuanced and complicated relationship between reality, cognition, the self, and the communal self in its relationship with itself and with those exogenous presences within which traditional religion is most comfortable (my discussion here: Larry Backer, The Soulful Machine, the Virtual Self and the "Human" Condition). Gamel Abdelnour ends by challenging readers: "Looking forward, the Islamic theology of technology must move beyond binary oppositions—rejection or uncritical acceptance—and offer a third path: one of purposeful engagement. By acknowledging that technology is not neutral, and that our responses to it shape who we become, Muslims are called to reassert their moral agency in a rapidly transforming world." (Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology). One wonders, however, about the constitution of "moral agency" in a world of iterative mimetics cultivated through structures and pathways with respect to which religion may not work from or as a clean slate. 

Gamal Abdelnour's excellent article may be accessed HERE. 

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