In halting televised confessions and emotional courtroom testimony, Chinese lawyers and activists held in a government crackdown have voiced the same ominous message: Shadowy foreign forces are funding, directing and encouraging activities bent on destabilizing China’s government and smearing its reputation.
The familiar narrative of a country besieged by foreign enemies — with the US implied as ringleader — is a key element of China’s year-long campaign to stamp out the country’s burgeoning legal activism movement. That effort drew new attention this week with the carefully scripted trials of a lawyer and three activists on subversion charges.
Although the tactic is far from new, political observers said the trials are a reminder of how the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has wielded the specter of foreign threats with far greater frequency and force, a reflection of the leadership’s deeply-seated belief that China is locked in a pitched, strategic and ideological battle against the West.
The four facing trial this week were associated with the Fengrui law firm in Beijing, one of the country’s best-known advocates of human rights. Its director, Zhou Shifeng (周世鋒), was on Thursday sentenced to seven years in prison, while two received suspended sentences and one a term of seven years, three months.
All were accused of organizing protests outside courthouses, hyping cases via social and foreign media, and receiving training and funding from foreign nonprofit organizations.
Even if Fengrui’s activist tactics crossed ethical or even legal lines, as some Chinese legal professionals say, the government had scant evidence to level subversion charges, said Tong Zhiwei (童之偉), a professor of political science and law at East China University in Shanghai.
Rather, the involvement of foreign actors served as the legal and political fulcrum in the cases, Tong said.
“If there were no foreign elements, it would have completely changed the complexion of the cases,” Tong said, adding that while the prosecutors pointed to conversations the defendants had in a restaurant about ending Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule, they offered little evidence of an actual plot to topple the government.
“China has had legal education exchanges for decades with the West,” Tong said. “Where do you draw the line of unacceptable interaction? Is being a visiting scholar at Harvard considered subversive?”
The crackdown on the legal profession, launched in July last year with a sweeping roundup of about 300 activists and lawyers, is part of a far-reaching effort to stamp out suspected foreign influence since Xi took power in 2012. Most have been released, although more than a dozen remain in detention.
Also in 2012, the CCP issued an internal communique, known as “Document No. 9,” aimed at limiting the penetration of Western-style “universal values,” such as multiparty democracy and media freedoms, into Chinese society, especially its classrooms.
The government followed that up this year by passing a law to strictly regulate the work of thousands of international nonprofits working in China and place them under direct police supervision.
The government’s message was vividly reinforced in statements from those accused this week.
In her televised interview, Fengrui lawyer Wang Yu (王宇) said she intended to refuse all international recognition, referring to an award from the American Bar Association and other Western groups she had received while in jail.
“I am Chinese,” she said. “I can only accept awards from the Chinese government.”
Four years into Xi’s administration, the trials reflect how the party is leaning on nationalism as a pillar of legitimacy at a time of faltering economic growth, said Willy Lam (林和立), a history professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Jerome Cohen, a Chinese law expert at New York University, said that in Wang’s supposed confession, the Fengrui lawyer said she would not “accept, recognize or acknowledge” international awards — the same language used by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in rejecting a June verdict by The Hague, Netherlands-based Permanent Court of Arbitration against China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea.
That verdict prompted Chinese state media to denounce the arbitration process as a US-led ploy to deny China its historical territory.
“Increasingly, law is at the core of both the domestic and international challenges,” said Cohen, who has previously consulted for provincial officials. “Xi is ill-equipped to deal with foreign legal claims, whether they concern international human rights, the law of the sea or economics, but he can slap down domestic purveyors of the rule of law.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese