A proposal by state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Fayetteville, deserves to be considered. A decision by the federal government regarding its diplomats should be supported. And our public servants should contemplate what more can be done.

Legislation sponsored by Mastriano would block state-funded initiatives and pension plans from investing in companies controlled by China’s dictatorial government.

The legislation does not specify the perimeters for determining when China’s government exerts too much influence or derives too much benefit from a company. On that specific point and likely on others, the proposal needs further deliberation and refining.

But the hostility of the Chinese government to basic rights is well-documented. China is falsely imprisoning men and women of its Muslim minority — likely hundreds of thousands of them — in concentration camps and treating them as slave labor. There are credible reports of forced sterilizations in these camps. The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China believes there have been nearly 10,000 political prisoners wrongfully jailed in China in the past four decades. The arrests of Apple Daily’s leadership and freezing of its assets help the Chinese government to quell freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

These are some of the reasons why the Biden administration will not send its diplomatic delegation to the 2022 Olympics, as the Associated Press reported in early December.

And we believe a boycott of the 2022 Olympics by athletes is at least worth a conversation as well.

Americans must look for ways to resist these rejections of our most treasured principles — that every man and woman has rights given by God. Blocking state money from being invested in ways that benefit the perpetrators of abuses of those God-given rights is a clear option. Keeping our public servants, who swear an oath to uphold those principles, home from Beijing is also an obvious step. Americans need to consider other steps as well.