China is in a good position today, without question. Domestically, standards of living have been increasing and the economic growth of around 7% persists, and on a global scale, weak and isolationist United States leave more and more room for Chinese “soft power” – investments of various sorts – to give Beijing increasing leverage, especially so over developing nations. China may well be emerging as a global power, and with its ever-increasing importance on the international stage, it is becoming essential for nations to secure diplomatic and economic ties with the country.
However, this development has a worrying side-effect.
Despite the Human Rights situation inside China deteriorating noticeably over the last few years, the general tone towards the governing Communist Party, the CCP, has become increasingly soft. Even countries and institution which claim to be especially firm on their democratic values, including the European Union, the United Nations and the United States have, in recent times, increasingly closed their eyes to the blatant human rights abuses of the government in Beijing.
Thanks to it being the world’s second largest economy, and in some indicators having overtaken the USA, the People’s Republic is able to increasingly ignore human rights and international norms & agreements without facing consequences from the international community.
It poses a conflict of interest to western governments, who have to choose between either maintaining ties with China and looking the other way while dissidents are detained and forced “confessions” are extorted by Beijing, or being faithful to what they tout as their “western values” of freedom, rule of law and democracy.
For many developing nations, making this decision is a lot easier. China has invested heavily into infrastructure projects throughout the developing world, but especially in Africa, including megaprojects such as countless railways linking the inside of the content to the coast. Chinese influence in some regions is so strong that the preferred foreign language taught has shifted away from English or French (in most cases) and towards Mandarin Chinese. China today is offering massive and often cheap loans for these infrastructure projects (though it certainly isn’t uncommon for these to result in serious debt on the receiving country’s end). Western investment, from private companies and especially public entities, has been largely absent on the continent, and where present, the unbureaucratic nature, along with other selling points, more often than not makes China’s the preferred option.
These huge investments into oftentimes unstable developing nations is not just a charitable gift from China, however. In return, Beijing receives closer ties with numerous governments in the regions, support for its position on issues on the world stage, and economic privileges throughout the continent. Now, the PRC is aiming to take its influence one step further: the aim is to present as a viable option and ultimately export the Chinese model of governing to these developing nations. Xi Jinping, General secretary of the CCP and Chinese President, officially proclaimed this goal during the 19th National Congress of the CCP in October of 2017.
Also during this congress, Xi fastened his grip on power in China unlike anything the country had seen since Mao Zedong. “Xi Jinping thought” was enshrined alongside the thoughts of Mao in the preamble of the constitution, and Xi was also able to secure his position as general secretary of the CCP for another five years until at least 2022 – with speculations running wild that he may be looking to stay in power well beyond then. Not an entirely otherworldly assumption, as during the same congress, the CCP voted to abolish term limits for the country’s president.
It wasn’t just threats to his position originating from within the party that Xi Jinping aimed to eliminate. More and more, the general public and civil society gets to feel even tighter surveillance, censorship and restrictions than they had already been put under, in the name of “national security”.
It remains common practice in China to convict activists, oppositionals and dissidents of trumped-up or vague charges, many with televised show trials and forced “confessions”, some of which were obtained through the means of torture, as reported by the detainees to human rights organisations. China also continues to be the world leader in terms of number of annual executions, though the exact number remains a state secret despite repeated calls for transparency from the international community and pledges to comply from the side of the CCP.
A severe crackdown on human rights activists and lawyers had begun in 2015, and continued throughout 2017, with Amnesty International reporting at least 250 individuals detained. Nine people were convicted of “subverting state power”, “inciting subversion of state power” or “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. Detained lawyers reported experiencing torture, being held incommunicado at undisclosed locations for prolonged periods of time, and some being drugged or force-fed medicine.
Prominent rights activist Liu Xiaobo died in custody following authorities barring him from receiving medical treatment outside the country; though his wife was allowed to see him, all other relatives and friends were kept strictly away from Liu. Following his death, at least 10 activists were detained for holding memorials.
At least 11 further were detained for commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre which resulted in the deaths of thousands of student protestors.
Censorship and surveillance continue to be pervasive. The CCP controls practically all media in the country, and independent reporting is challenging throughout China, and severely impaired especially in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Thousands of websites continue to be blocked for residents of the PRC, including Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and authorities launched an investigation in WeChat and other online services for accounts which “spread information that endangers national security, public security and social order, including violence and terror, false information and rumours and pornography”. WeChat, a month later, updated its terms to collect a wide variety of personal and identifying information from its over 900 million users and directly enable the government to access this information.
New regulations put in place made it mandatory to register under one’s real name, and resulted in the shutdown of numerous accounts on Weibo which failed to comply. Further, new rules made owners of chat groups responsible for the content which users shared within their groups.
An unprecedented crackdown on VPNs within China – used to scale the “great firewall of China”, the system which blocks access to thousands of websites on the global, free internet – took place as well in 2017, resulting in Apple removing 674 VPN applications from its Chinese App Store in 2017.
Facing especially serious repression were minorities, especially the majorly Uyghurs in the western Xinjiang province, as well as Tibetans.
Xinjiang saw even further increased surveillance and presence of armed security forces on the street. It also became somewhat of a testing ground for “unconventional” ways of surveillance, as called for by the “strike hard” campaign which Beijing officially proclaimed in 2014, the official aim of the campaign being to eradicate terrorism. Surveillance has skyrocketed since, and thousands of residents have been arbitrarily detained and sent to “counter extremism centers”, “political study centers” and “education and transformation centers”, where they were held for unspecified time periods and forced to study Chinese law and practices.
With human rights lawyers disappearing, minorities being brutally oppressed and any dissent being crushed, it is time that the western government answer definitively the fundamental question that this poses: whether they truly are firm on their western beliefs, or whether the money is more important than the people.
As of now, it seems as though the second option is largely the accepted, as even with a further worsening human rights record, the west appears to be becoming more and more cautious and sparing with its criticism of Beijing. Ultimately, time will tell, but for now the citizens of China may well be on their own once again.
