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The commission Congress built into the trade deal.

2000–present · Case 14 of 15

When Congress granted China permanent normal trade relations ahead of its accession to the World Trade Organization, it did not do so without conditions attached. The U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000, signed by President Clinton on 10 October 2000, created the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in the same legislation that opened the trade relationship.

The Commission's mandate is to monitor human rights and the development of rule of law in China, including labor conditions, and to maintain a Political Prisoner Database tracking individuals detained for their political or religious activity. It reports annually to Congress and the President, a standing obligation that has continued through every administration since, regardless of the state of the broader trade relationship.

This is a narrower claim than the one an earlier internal draft made, which pointed to general AFL-CIO advocacy with no dates or figures attached. The Commission is not a labor union and does not organize workers. What it is, and what makes it checkable, is a permanent piece of federal machinery that Congress built specifically because it did not trust normal trade relations alone to protect Chinese workers' conditions, and that machinery is still running.

One commission, every year since 2000 A standing annual reporting obligation to Congress and the President, created in the same statute that granted China permanent normal trade relations.

Sources: the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 (Pub. L. 106-286); the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's statutory mandate and Annual Report to Congress.