Apple, the Houston Rockets, the NBA, Tiffany & Co and Activision Blizzard this week joined the long and growing list of international companies to run afoul of Beijing and the rabid jingoistic nationalism it encourages as a way of distracting its citizenry from their lack of rights or voice in governance.
At issue was the real — or imagined — support for the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which has joined the list of taboo subjects for “outside criticism” that includes Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang.
Four decades ago, as Beijing began opening its doors to foreign companies and capitalism, Western policymakers and businesspeople eager to tap into China’s vast market said that such exposure would gradually lead to China becoming democratic, with human rights improving alongside the economy. Time has proven just how wrong they were, and are.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not stopped jailing and killing dissidents, Falun Gong members and others, brutally repressing Tibetans and Christians who do not follow state-sanctioned churches or destroying the religion and culture of the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
Being a Muslim does not automatically make one a terrorist, despite Beijing’s efforts to conflate Islamic radicalism and militant attacks elsewhere with Uighurs living according to their religious beliefs. Neither does advocating democracy and the preservation of humans rights in Hong Kong make one a separatist, despite what Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai (蔡崇信) has said.
For too long, too many in the world have stood silent in the face of atrocities in China, but speaking up for human rights is not interference in a nation’s internal affairs.
Most people condemn the actions of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist government, and the atrocities they committed before and during World War II, yet it is important to remember that those actions did not occur in a vacuum.
Many leading businesspeople and government officials were willing to ignore what was happening in Germany before the war, because they believed that business or sports could be separated from politics, even though the Nazis established their first concentration camps just weeks after Hitler became chancellor and began rounding up political opponents.
The camps were a way to indefinitely incarcerate those the regime considered a security threat, as well as eliminate individuals or groups away from public or judicial purview or exploit them as forced labor.
The CCP has followed the Nazi playbook since the founding of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC), much as the Soviet Union did with its gulag system.
To stay silent is to be complicit, as Beijing well knows. That is why it reacts so aggressively to those who criticize the CCP’s policies and what it views as its national mandate.
However, the protests in Hong Kong can no longer be discounted as the work of a minority, as people from all walks of life, all ages and professions have made it clear that they will not go quietly into the darkness: not now and not in 2047.
Beijing’s demand for silence is also why it has begun to target Taiwanese who have promoted human rights or supported Hong Kong activists, while continuing its efforts to destroy Taiwan’s democracy.
China is trying to make people, companies and governments who criticize it pay for their words and actions. It is time that the CCP and the PRC pay the price as well.
It can be done. This week the Prague City Council canceled a sister-city pact with Beijing, while the US imposed sanctions on government agencies and high-tech businesses involved in running or supporting the concentration camps in Xinjiang.
Criticizing Beijing can be costly, but staying mum is even more expensive.
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
Since leaving office last year, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been journeying across continents. Her ability to connect with international audiences and foster goodwill toward her country continues to enhance understanding of Taiwan. It is possible because she can now walk through doors in Europe that are closed to President William Lai (賴清德). Tsai last week gave a speech at the Berlin Freedom Conference, where, standing in front of civil society leaders, human rights advocates and political and business figures, she highlighted Taiwan’s indispensable global role and shared its experience as a model for democratic resilience against cognitive warfare and
The diplomatic spat between China and Japan over comments Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made on Nov. 7 continues to worsen. Beijing is angry about Takaichi’s remarks that military force used against Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” necessitating the involvement of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Rather than trying to reduce tensions, Beijing is looking to leverage the situation to its advantage in action and rhetoric. On Saturday last week, four armed China Coast Guard vessels sailed around the Japanese-controlled Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known to Japan as the Senkakus. On Friday, in what
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