Beijing's Cultural Genocide of Uyghurs

    Congress makes the following findings:
            (1) The Government of the People's Republic of China has a 
        long history of repressing Turkic Muslims, particularly 
        Uighurs, in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
            (2) In May 2014, Chinese authorities launched their latest 
        ``Strike Hard against Violent Extremism'' campaign, using wide-
        scale, internationally-linked threats of terrorism as a pretext 
        to justify pervasive restrictions on and human rights 
        violations of members of the ethnic minority communities of the 
        Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The August 2016 transfer of 
        former Tibet Autonomous Region Party Secretary Chen Quanguo to 
        become the Xinjiang Party Secretary prompted an acceleration in 
        the crackdown across the region. Scholars, human rights 
        organizations, journalists, and think tanks have provided ample 
        evidence substantiating the establishment by Chinese 
        authorities of ``reeducation'' camps. Since 2014, Chinese 
        authorities have detained no less than 800,000 Uighurs, ethnic 
        Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other ethnic minorities in these camps.
            (3) Those detained in such facilities have described forced 
        political indoctrination, torture, beatings, and food 
        deprivation, as well as denial of religious, cultural, and 
        linguistic freedoms, and confirmed that they were told by 
        guards that the only way to secure release was to demonstrate 
        sufficient political loyalty. Poor conditions and lack of 
        medical treatment at such facilities appear to have contributed 
        to the deaths of some detainees, including the elderly and 
        infirm.
            (4) Uighurs and ethnic Kazakhs, who have now obtained 
        permanent residence or citizenship in other countries, attest 
        to receiving threats and harassment from Chinese officials. At 
        least five journalists for Radio Free Asia's Uighur service 
        have publicly detailed abuses their family members in Xinjiang 
        have endured in response to their work exposing abusive 
        policies across the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
            (5) In September 2018, United Nations High Commissioner for 
        Human Rights Michele Bachelet noted in her first speech as High 
        Commissioner the ``deeply disturbing allegations of large-scale 
        arbitrary detentions of Uighurs and other Muslim communities, 
        in so-called re-education camps across Xinjiang''.
            (6) The Government of the People's Republic of China's 
        actions against Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uighur 
        Autonomous Region, whose population was approximately 13 
        million at the time of the last Chinese census in 2010, are in 
        contravention of international human rights laws, the 
        International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 
        Racial Discrimination, and the Convention against Torture and 
        Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, both 
        of which China has signed and ratified, and the Universal 
        Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on 
        Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed. Congress Gov

 China says the camps are a necessary measure against terrorism following separatist violence in Xinjiang   Getty Images

 

"[The ultimate goal is to thoroughly purge Xinjiang of all inkling of distinct identity and] identify with the country, such that, in the future, the idea of Uyghur will be in name only, but without its meaning."

Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti in self-exile

The New York Times accessed and published Chinese internal government documents that revealed a situation that confronts Uyghurs should they enquire about relatives who have been spirited away by authorities for 're-education' purposes, when they are advised in response to "treasure this chance for free education that the party and government has provided to thoroughly eradicate erroneous thinking, and also learn Chinese and job skills". Denying the Yughurs their language, their culture, their history, their religion.

 

The Beijing Chinese Communist Party loves to demonstrate to the world how proficient they are in rising to special occasions. As for example, the speed and efficiency they are able to muster during a time of SARS-CoV-2 causing the pandemic of COVID-19, by building in the blink of an eye hospital facilities to care for thousands upon thousands of people in China's great populous megapolises. They tend not, however, to focus publicly on their impressive capacity to build huge, sprawling campuses for 're-education', complete with guard towers, fences and razor wire.

 

The Chinese 'province' of Xinjiang is Muslim-dense, its ethnic and cultural origins reflective of neighbouring Uzbekistan. The region suffered a conquest by the Qing Dynasty in the 1870s -- even back then China was resolute in its determination to expand its territory by swallowing those of its neighbours to enable it to announce to the world that an unwilling, conquest-battered territory (such as Tibet) is henceforth to be recognized as Chinese. In like vein, the People's Republic of China's military aspires to fulfill its function of wresting disputed territory in the Himalaya from India. 

 

Still from video: blindfolded, head-shaven Yughur men awaiting transport by train to re-education destination

 

The vast network of 're-education centres' in China's northwest keeps growing in China's hegemonic outreach; the purpose, to pacify and integrate an ethnic culture foreign to and hostile to Chinese occupation. For its part, the CCP looks on the Xianjing-native Uyghurs as 'splittists' -- a nasty pejorative for people who yearn for freedom from oppression -- and is determined to create a spirit of 'harmony' through re-education; which is to say after breaking a people's collective spirit.

 

An estimated one, and as much as two million people in the region have been involuntarily incarcerated in the re-education facilities, mostly ethnic Turkic Uyghurs, to cure them of "crimes" charactrerized as such for attending Mosque or texting a relative in Turkey. For its part, the Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes no mention of the plight of the Uyghurs, evidently unperturbed by human rights abuses they suffer under Chinese occupation. Erdogan focuses instead on Israel, accusing it of human rights abuses against Palestinians among whom close to two million are citizens of Israel with equal rights.

 

Beijing uses the classification of "boarding schools" or "vocational training schools" when referencing the centres, for anodyne public consumption -- guard towers, high walls topped with razor wire notwithstanding. A video that had been leaked out of China in 2019 features large groups of blindfolded, shaven Uyghurs forced to kneel on the ground, awaiting processing at a train station in Xinjiang, presumably headed for a boarding school. 

 

 

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute with the use of satellite imagery assembled 3D models of close to 400 Uyghyur detention facilities located in Xinjiang. Local government construction tenders were analyzed in 2018 by Reuters, confirming the facilities to have been designed as fully equipped prisons with surveillance and security systems, when according to official Chinese designation-descriptions they are vocational training schools. Clearly, western intelligence cannot tell the difference between prisons and educational establishments.

 

Former detainees describe being subjected to brutal regimens of indoctrination replete with torture and sexual abuse for good measure, for those who stubbornly dissent from China's well-intentioned interventions on the way to creating good citizens.  Ample evidence has also surfaced that Uyghurs are forcefully used as slave labourers in Chinese factories. Some of those factories produce goods sold by brand-name international corporations relying on China for its cheap labour.

Twice the region attempted in the 1930s and 1940s -- taking advantage of political instability -- to beak away as an Islamic republic. This had most recently been attempted in 1991 on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then incidents of ethnic riots in Xinjiang and separatist Uyghur violence emerged that drew Beijing under President Xi Jinping to once-and-for-all solve the problem of troublesome Uyghurs with the launch of the Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism.

The entire population of Xinjiang between 2016 and 2017 was required to hand over biometric data like DNA samples and iris scans under the rubric of Physicals for All. And this, after residents were made to surrender their passports, while police checkpoints popped up in their cities. According to Chinese authorities, the Uyghur culture and Islamic faith is but a mental illness, or an "ideological virus". And if any nation knows about viruses, it is China.

Uyghur women were "no longer babymaking machines", having been liberated from that tiresome task by the thoughtful measures taken by Beijing to sterilize them and thus "eradicating exttremism", according to China's embassy in the United States. In interviews with Han Chinese residents n Dabancheng city, Xinjiang, investigators from the BBC asked their opinion of the presence of new high-security "re-education" centres in their midst. One man succinctly responded they were purposed for the tens of thousands of Xinjiang residents known to have "problems with their thoughts".

Once detainees "study well and their mental state is healthy, they will be able to live happily in society", explained a counsellor from one of the facilities. China's Xinjiang crackdown employs a wave of forced sterilization, birth control and abortion, revealed an AP investigation last year. Hugely successful as a control mechanism, since the birthrate is in free fall; population in some regions falling by over 80 percent.

 

Delineating Death

"However, transient resumption of cardiac activity did occur, which suggests that the physiologic processes of somatic [bodily] death after removal of life-sustaining measures occasionally include  periods of cessation and resumption of cardiac electrical and pulsatile arterial activity."

"With the heart being an organ that is strong and robust, the idea that it pauses before finally stopping is actually quite reasonable, physiologically, and probably not unreasonable for us to expect it does so."

DePPaRT Study, New England Journal of Medicine

Dr. Sonny Dhanani   Photo: Jean Levac/Postmedia

"People don't die right away."

"One of the fundamental principles of organ donation is that you must be dead to donate. We wanted to provide scientific evidence ... that one is dead before donation."

"I think  if doctors and nurses are aware that this [cardiac activity restarts] can happen, that they'll expect it, they'll counsel families."

Dr.Sonny Dhanani, critical care physician, chief, critical care, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa

 

"It's not unusual to see a flatline on the electrical tracing of the heart, followed by electrical beats, or a minute or so where there was no heartbeat, and then a heartbeat, again."

"But this is why this research was important. It helped confirm that this event can occur, but it also provides reassurance [under the current five-minute rule that] the duration of time is satisfactory."

"That somebody, when they have their organs recovered, is truly dead."

Dr.Christopher Doig, head, critical care medicine, University of Calgary

"With the heart being an organ that is strong and robust, the idea that it pauses before finally stopping is actually quite reasonable, physiologically." Photo by Getty Images

When life support is withdrawn, the process commences with the heart contracting with vigor as it is gradually starved of blood and oxygen while muscle cells begin to die off, and blood pressure drops; all of which contribute to the heart going into cardiac arrest. No longer does the brain receive blood and oxygen, nor do other organs. All the while monitors inform doctors in attendance; the catheter in the radial artery to measure blood pressure, and five sticky pads with electrocardiogram leads on chest and abdomen as second-by-second monitors record signals of a pulse, blood pressure or electrical heart activity. These monitors measure death.

 Dr.Dhanani and co-authors of the study they have named DePPaRT -- Death Prediction and Physiology after Removal of Therapy study -- as morbidly serendipitously contrived a naming as can be imagined -- monitored heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation levels in over 600 people who had undergone the withdrawal of life support. From the very time that breathing tubes and heart-supporting medications were withdrawn to a full thirty minutes following death-declaration, they were fixated on their goal; to define when death occurs.

In 14 percent of instances the researchers discovered the heart stopped and then spontaneously restarted in brief bursts of cardiac activity to evince a heart beat, a pulse. This phenomenon occurred between 6.4 seconds and four minutes and 20 seconds, intervals identifying the variance in presentations following 'pulselessness' in various dying patients. From among the entire group of some 600 subjects, none among them regained consciousness or survived beyond this end-of-life event, though the rare occasion when some do is well known.

Among all those studied no circulation restarted, and when the heart did finally stop, it was forever. None among them experienced their heart spontaneously begin beating again and continue to beat as has occurred rarely in those who have been pronounced dead once CPR ceased. What the study succeeded in doing was to validate the "no touch" rule currently in use in Canada; the obligatory five-minute wait once the heart stops, prior to definitively declaring death leading to the harvesting of the heart for an organ donation. Elsewhere, such protocols of wait-times vary from two to ten minutes.

There are over four thousand people awaiting a heart transplant to save their futures, in Canada. Dr.Dhanani's concern revolved around an lack of accepted uniformly of organ donations linked to fears of  "stories, unrelated to organ donation, about people coming back to life following a determination of death." And that determination can be decided as brain death when medical and legal death is accepted while the heart still beats, or circulatory death; the irreversible loss of heart function. Some 30 percent of organs derive from circulatory death donors, the remainder from brain death.

A precise choreography of response-and-action takes place in sequence with organ donation where doctors wait the minimal time for certainty that circulation loss is permanent before declaring death, bearing in mind that time is of the essence and not a moment longer must lapse before that declaration to ensure that the organ does not deteriorate from blood flow stoppage.

Sixteen adult ICUs in Canada, three in the Czech Republic and one in the Netherlands represented sites of study involving 631 patients whom a catastrophic illness or accident had stricken and where grieving families had agreed to their loved ones' vital signs being recorded for study purposes after removal from life support. In the study, death following cardiac arrest was declared from one minute following withdrawal of life support to as long as 11 days, five hours and 54 minutes with the median time being 60 minutes.

Unassisted resumption of heart activity was detected in 13 people by doctors and staff in the ICU. The researchers studying the data provided by the monitors identified a stop, and then a restart in 67 of 480 people using complete waveform data. A total of 30 people showed a return of cardiac activity in zero to three percent after life support withdrawal, with the longest duration of no pulse before heart activity resumed at one minute and 42 seconds. Another surprise for the researchers was the realization that electrical activity of the heart can continue for minutes once blood pressure ends.

Picture of the Heart and Great Vessels in Heart Transplant   MedicineNet

And Over To You, Comrade Capitalist Putin ...

"The Kremlin's mistake was to underestimate Navalny's level of support," 

:[When people saw Navalny's arrest on live TV on his return to Russia on Jan. 17, as well as the online release last week of a documentary about President Putin's alleged corruption], it provided a strong emotional impulse to take to the street."

Russian political observer Andrei Kolesnikov, fellow, Moscow's Carnegie Center  

A still image taken from video footage shows law enforcement officers speaking with Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny before leading him away at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow on Jan. 17. (Reuters)

"I am sick of this government of thieves."

"This is a police state that gives nothing to the people. [Putin] builds palaces for himself."

"What is this?" 

68-year-old pensioner Galina Zolina, Moscow

 

"[The protests are] not a knockout blow to the state. We shouldn't start moving into hyperbole, that this is the beginning of the end of Putinism."

"[It's a] coalition of the fed-up. People have all kinds of reasons to feel unhappy with the way things are going and [Navalny] kind of becomes the catalyst."

"It's hard to maintain the momentum [of the protests] week after week."

"One way or another, the state wants to slowly de-legitimize the protests and make them less appealing, and by outlasting them, make opposition look increasingly pointless." 

Mark Galeotti, London-based Russia analyst, host, podcast In Moscow's Shadows

Russian President Vladimir Putin does a video conference call with university students at a state residence in Zavidovo, Russia, on Monday. (Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters)

"Hypocrites continue to inflate the fake Navalny case to interfere into internal affairs of our country."

"This is a professionally prepared provocation, encouraged by embassies of Western countries."

Russian embassy, U.K., Twitter

 

"That's what terrorists do. They put women and children in front of themselves [accusing demonstrators of placing children at the fore of the protests]." 

"Nothing that is listed there [Black Sea palatial palace] as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did."

Russian President Vladimir Putin 

Law enforcement officers stand in front of participants during a rally in support of Navalny in St. Petersburg on Saturday. (REUTERS)

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking to university students through a video conference addressing the unrest of unprecedented numbers of protesters in Russian cities, the mass anti-Kremlin protest organizers are "terrorists", and there is no need to investigate -- as Alexei Navalny, returned from Germany to Russia demands -- the president's personal wealth. An issue that is the stuff of urban legends, a conspiracy theory launched by those opposed to Mr. Putin's continued rule, the best president that Russia has ever had and as far as Mr. Putin is concerned, to be the longest-governing.

The issue of a Black Sea palace supposedly owned by Vladimir Putin is nothing but slander, according to the man himself, one that first emerged years ago, and now reborn to slur his reputation. Reputed to have cost a billion dollars and described as "Putin's Palace", the deed to the immense mansion may or may not be in Mr. Putin's strong-box possession, but state funds were apparently diverted in a scheme by his loyal allies to invest him with a palace worthy of his stature, held in trust perhaps for his eventual public ownership.

In 2010, Kolesnikov claimed that a luxurious estate near the Black Sea was for Putin. A Russian website published pictures, including the one above, which it said were of the mansion. The Kremlin denied Putin had anything to do with the building. Reuters is unable to independently verify the authenticity, content, location, source or date of this photograph.

 

Tens of thousands of Russian demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday protesting against the arrest of Alexei Navalny who was determined to return to Russia after  his convalescence in Berlin, recovering from an attempted assassination with the use of the Russian military chemical nerve-agent, Novichok which failed to fatally poison its target. The second time the poison was used for a similar purpose; the first occasion in London targeting another Russian dissident who also recovered as did his daughter, poisoned by default.

For the most part, state-ordered assassinations -- of journalist-critics, political critics, oligarch critics, and any high-profile pests who feel it their right to criticize the Kremlin and Russia's president can be certain that one way or another an attempt will be made on silencing them -- are proven to be successful, whether by drive-by shootings, sharpshooters, poisoning or mysterious disappearances. This was the ultimate challenge by Navalny, to return to Russia and dare the Kremlin/Putin to take additional action.

GRAND DESIGNS: One of the pictures described by a Russian website as showing the mansion dubbed “Putin’s palace.” The Kremlin has denied Putin has anything to do with the building. Reuters

 

Which they speedily did, and Putin's current most-prominent and popular figure of opposition complicating his life now faces trumped-up charges that in a Russian court, may earn him ten years in prison from his current pretrial detention. New mass demonstrations in protest of Mr. Navalny's arrest are scheduled for the coming weekend, similar to Saturday's protest where over 3,000 people were detained. There were relatively restrained clashes by protesters against baton-wielding police with no serious injuries reported.

 

Mr. Putin had in his address to the students on Monday, referred to authorities' claims the opposition had persuaded minors to become part of the rallies, remarking that young people had no place in such situations, nor should they be manipulated for the opposition's political ends. As a master manipulator speaking to young people, the president obviously knows whereof he speaks. An investigation into the claims failed to turn up evidence of the presence of young people in the chanting, determined protest crowd.

 

Mr. Navalny and his political group opposing ongoing rule by Mr. Putin, brought even wider global and internal focus to the situation when they released a video just hours after Mr. Navalny's arrest, pointedly accusing the president of amassing wealth for himself, draining the country's treasury. The immense, sprawling Black Sea mansion was highlighted as an opulent manifestation of the grandiloquent role Mr. Putin sees for himself as a modern-day Czar of the Russian Federation.  

 

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is set to visit Moscow in the coming month to impress on the Kremlin that by arresting and imprisoning the opposition leader, Russia resembles nothing less than a dictatorship, and to urge the Russian authorities to reconsider this action in light of the harm they do themselves on the international stage. An EU meeting of European foreign ministers had reached the conclusion that a friendly visit and friendly advice to Russia might turn the situation around.

"The council considered it completely unacceptable and condemned mass detentions and police brutality over the weekend."

"We call on Russia for the release of Mr. Navalny."

Joseph Borrell, EU Foreign Policy Chief 

Riot police drag away a protester in Moscow on Saturday. More than 1,400 people were arrested in the capital alone, with 3,700 arrests reported nationwide. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)

 

China's Contractual Obligations

Immunogenicity and safety of a recombinant adenovirus type-5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine in healthy adults aged 18 years or older: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial

This randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 2 trial of the Ad5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine was done in a single centre in Wuhan, China. Healthy adults aged 18 years or older, who were HIV-negative and previous severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection-free, were eligible to participate and were randomly assigned to receive the vaccine at a dose of 1 × 10¹¹ viral particles per mL or 5 × 10¹⁰ viral particles per mL, or placebo. Investigators allocated participants at a ratio of 2:1:1 to receive a single injection intramuscularly in the arm. The randomisation list (block size 4) was generated by an independent statistician. Participants, investigators, and staff undertaking laboratory analyses were masked to group allocation. The primary endpoints for immunogenicity were the geometric mean titres (GMTs) of specific ELISA antibody responses to the receptor binding domain (RBD) and neutralising antibody responses at day 28. The primary endpoint for safety evaluation was the incidence of adverse reactions within 14 days. All recruited participants who received at least one dose were included in the primary and safety analyses. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04341389.

CanSino Biologics, China   The Lancet

Courtesy of CanSino Biologics

China-based CanSino Biologics is the brainchild of Yu Xuefeng, who studied in Canada and earned his doctorate at McGill University. He later was in the employ of Sanofi Pharmaceutical based in Toronto and eventually returned to China where he launched his vaccine business. His links to Canada gained him an insider status. The National Research Council agreed to allow the use of a Canadian-created cell line to aid in the development of a vaccine first for Ebola and following that, SARS-CoV-2. 

For reasons known only to Canada's prime minister an agreement was signed with CanSino for collaboration in the development of a COVID vaccine, at a time when relations with Beijing were beyond  strained and bad faith was redolent and in full view when the Chinese Communist Party launched its hostage diplomacy initiative by arresting and charging two Canadians in China with security breaches endangering China, and then initiating a trade war. 

 

Canada been burned in the past when dealing with China when Chinese technologists were hired to work for Canada's then-telecommunications giant Nortel Networks attaining positions of trust enabling them to lift trade secrets for their own, and Chinese hackers infiltrated and gained access to Nortel's top executive accounts spiriting away additional Nortel data which eventually helped lead to the company's demise but gaining China's telecommunications industry through Huawei where former Nortel employees worked, the edge they looked for, linked with China's military.

Once again the trusting Canadian government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who was personally transfixed with the notion that Canada would benefit hugely by association with China, in lucrative trade deals and investment, laid itself open to expropriation of Canadian technical and scientific expertise, signing a contract with CanSino to test their vaccine at Dalhousie University in conjunction with the National Research Council, which could produce samples of the vaccine. A vaccine which never arrived in Canada, as per the agreement.

A general view of Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, Pakistan where a Phase 3 trial of CanSino's COVID-19 vaccine is undergoing trials. (Reuters)

 

A vaccine that Beijing refused to allow entry to Canada, while shipping it off elsewhere for testing. "In June, the vaccine (based on the Canadian cell line) was approved for use by Chinese military forces. As for the rights to the cell-line, a comment to Global News from Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Navdeep Bains was 'The NRC (National Research Council) retains the intellectual property related to the cell line, while CanSino in turn owns all intellectual property rights for the vaccines it develops.' Canada cannot claim any revenue if the vaccine proves successful", wrote Radio Canada International journalist Mark Montgomery.

"What exactly motivated Canada to enter into such an unstable partnership in the first place given the dire state of Canada-China relations and the scandalous history of China's vaccine industry?" questioned science writer Iris Kulbatski in the health-care journal Healthy Debate. She quoted Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, former assistant deputy minister in charge of Canada's vaccine collaboration with Beijing, that China's history of creating customs 'obstacles' in any trade disagreements, as leverage was well known.

"McCuaig-Johnston further said that 'China's success in vaccines is standing on the back of Canadian researchers and scientists. Over the years we helped China develop its capacity. But China is no longer a reliable partner." There is, in fact, nothing new about China's penchant for infiltration, sabotage and subterfuge along with the stealth mining of technological and scientific data originating elsewhere, than the ill-gotten gains used by China to further its own interests. 

 

This is merely one more instance in a long history of unprincipled looting of other nations' research and development. With China taking the short-cut route to using others' intellectual property, parading it as their own, and reaping the financial benefits thereof. The question remains: why would this Canadian government see fit, all this being well known, to engage in a contractual agreement with a country that cannot be trusted, with a pharmaceutical company that has direct links to the People's Republic of China's Military?

Vials of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate, a recombinant adenovirus vaccine named Ad5-nCoV, co-developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics Inc and a team led by Chinese military infectious disease expert, are pictured in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. China Daily via REUTERS

Totalitarianism in China is Complete and Utter Control

"Hong Kong's democratic leadership has been arrested en masse,and recently citizens found they were no longer able to access certain websites."

"Under the National Security Law, the government can force websites to remove any information that could 'endanger national security'."

"Schoolbooks are being edited and teachers' roles circumscribed. It is possible that Hong Kong could see even more repression as the regime uses its tools of surveillance to quash any thought of independence."

"In the ultimate measure of extraterritorial control, the National Security Law provides that any person who speaks out against the Chinese regime anywhere in the world can be extradited and prosecuted in China."

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, Senior Fellow, Institute of Science, Society and Policy, University of Ottawa

The Chinese Communist Party is increasingly dominated by one man, Xi Jinping, whose power is stronger than any leader since Mao. Lintao Zhang / Staff / Getty Images

 

Beijing recently named two Danish politicians in an extradition request; their crime? aiding a former Hong Kong legislator in his asylum search in Denmark. That Denmark has never signed an extradition agreement with China is fortuitous both for the Danish politicians and for Denmark itself since there are no legal obligations to impel them to respond to China. On the other hand there are many countries which did sign such an extradition agreement never realizing that a complication such as the National Security Law would ever trouble them.

There are, however other avenues that Beijing can take to compel people to bend to its will and in this regard the Chinese diaspora is particularly vulnerable, no matter where they have emigrated to. They can be threatened that harm will come to their relatives still living in China to coerce them from criticizing the regime they left behind. Their relatives become virtual hostages to the diaspora -- Chinese citizens of other countries being forced to act with great circumspection to avoid payback.

Under Xi Jinping, Beijing has turned sharp left from authoritarian to totalitarian with a cult of leader-worship in full display. The Chinese Communist Party no longer indulges in any pretense to appease the sensibilities of the international community that it continues to approach the democritization of its political agenda. China's embrace of capitalism did not, after all, lead it toward a form of Chinese democracy; its growing influence in the international community, its status as a trade and technology giant have given it free rein to remove the facade of moderation as it moved steadily toward dictatorship.

Photo: NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

 

According to The Economist's 2019 Democracy Index, the current regression away from any semblance of democracy resulted in a fall of 23 places in ranking in one year. A situation that now places China near the bottom, below Iran at 153 out of 167 countries. It isn't complicated to recognize totalitarian rule; a sole political party ranks as the leading indicator. Added to which is intolerance of varying opinions and the control of its citizens' lives, along with manipulation of the system of justice. 

Citizens are monitored by its Social Credit System through WeChat and Weibo through the use of algorithms identifying those who are bold enough to mention June 4 or May 35, code for the Tiananmen Square massacre or referencing Winnie the Pooh, with a gait similar to President Xi's own. There are subtle identifiers that single out 'social deviants', as simple as late-loan payments, acquiring traffic violations to earn poor social credit scores. As a result of which people can find themselves unemployed or lacking the right to send their offspring to a good school.

 

New Chinese facial recognition technology can identify faces with masks. Source Hauyon's Website CSIS

 

Large demographics cannot gain permission to travel either within the country or abroad as punishment for low social credit scores, and citizens become careful in their exercise of the social weal as it is seen in China, to avoid appearing on the blacklists, becoming skilled in self-censorship. Domestic and foreign companies are compelled to submit to the Corporate Social Credit System, since failure to comply with regulations or speaking ill against government policies will ensure no access to grants, procurement contracts, land, or lower taxes.

Should employees or suppliers themselves gain poor scores, the company itself is punished. These credit systems are set to be further firmed up with party committees in every company prepared to ensure corporate decisions take care with their obligations to advance the interests of the Communist Party. Each citizen is obliged to study on an app that takes note when the users are scrolling too quickly to properly mentally ingest the information through the guiding ideology, Xi Jinping Thought, a three-volume publication.

 

Visitors being filmed by a security camera with facial recognition technology.
Source: Photo by NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images.

Typically, totalitarian regimes are intolerant of religions; in plain evidence in Tibet and Xinjiang where incarceration for 're-education' purposes to achieve 'harmony' and dampen 'splittism' is the overarching goal of control of people's thoughts, aspirations and loyalties. Voice pattern telephone surveillance, forced labour and mass sterilization are all part of the extensive program of brain-washing to achieve CCP loyalty in the People's Republic of China. 

When Turkic Muslim Uyghurs are released from re-education to return home, a young Han man or woman is assigned to mandatorily live with them to monitor that the family speaks Mandarin exclusively, and does not revert to its former religious practices. In this 'family program' package the Han handlers are also encouraged to marry Uyghurs in a long-term strategy of thinning the genetic stream as well as the cultural-religious landscape. 

Persecution of Chinese Christians continues, with churches seeing their crosses torn down, and where  Xi's photo and Xi Jinping Thought are given prominent place in sanctuaries while senior clerical appointments  must be approved by the Party. Officially unapproved covert House churches, when their presence is discovered are routinely shuttered, their clergy incarcerated.

Those Chinese citizens oblivious or uncaring of the backlash they will incur, speak out on such issues as free speech, environmental degradation, expropriation without compensation at their peril, known to having been subjected to daily interrogations while seated in a metal tiger chair with wrists and ankles in vices in freezing environments. Websites are shut down in their hundreds of thousands in response to 'inappropriate' content, exemplified by criticism of President Xi and his party.

 

While the novel coronavirus was unleashed globally after emerging in Wuhan, China, with the result that the world economy suffered overwhelming losses in 2020, China's economy grew 2.3 percent in that same year even as every other major economy suffered dreadful recessions. China is now on track to supplant the United States as the world's foremost economy, within a decade. When Beijing faces criticism from abroad it takes immediate punishing steps.

Australia had the unmitigated gall to ban Huawei in 2018 from its 5G upgrade, and more recently called for an international inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the process by enraging Beijing, trade barriers abruptly appeared and Australia lost roughly $3 billion in commodity sales to China in 2020. Canadian canola shippers too were targeted by Beijing following the house arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei,  on a U.S. extradition request.

'Practical' business interests are now calling on their governments to avoid unnecessarily alienating the trade giant that China is. At the centre of the most dynamic region in the world, China is a sought-after trade and investment source. The fear is that failure to 'constructively' engage with Beijing on its very own terms will result in long-term harm to other nations' business interests. And so, nations wedded to the concept of protection of human rights are prepared to set those concerns aside for the greater interests of securing prosperity linked to Chinese business opportunities.