You can run but you can’t hide : China´s transnational repression
In 2014 the President
of the People´s Republic of China (PRC), Mr. Xi Jinping, delivered a speech to commemorate the 60th
anniversary of the five principles. He accentuated the importance of
cooperation with all countries “to achieve common development and prosperity.”,
and the engagement in “win-win strategies of opening up” that include programs
like The Belt and Road Initiative. A significant
initiative to increase the joining states reliability with China, boosting
China’s influence and power.
Projects like these are
vital for China’s plan to expand their notoriety and show that their system functions.
It helps to export their political system and undermine democratic ones.
A key factor for
promoting their authoritarian regime is to be the ones to manage its narrative,
and how it is portrayed around the world. So, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
strives to control its citizens, both inside and outside its borders. To
accomplish this control, they employ one of the most well-oiled operations of transnational repression.
Their focus is to
silence, scare and suppress a vast group of people, that includes, diasporas,
political dissidents, minorities groups, both ethnical and religious, journalists,
and many others. Voices that could go against the regime and tarnish its image.
The CCP’s biggest interest is to make sure individual voices don´t damage the nation’s
hard work to cultivate its influence in developing countries and contemporary
democracies.
The PRC has built a modern witch hunt, where
no one is safe even outside its borders, their citizens feel monitored and know
that their liberties are confined. Even when they are living in distant
democracies. This creates a self-censorship nature, among Chinese citizens frightened
of possible repercussions from the PRC.
To accomplish this
level of repression the PRC uses several tactics like unlawful deportation,
assassination, spyware, digital threats, and abuse of Interpol’s power. Freedom House report declares that these
tactics include millions of people in at least 36 host countries in the
world.
These repressive
transnational procedures have increased since 2014. With the CCP´s heightened preoccupation
to have a more powerful foreign policy. Several laws were approved like the National
Intelligence Law, the Hong Kong National Security Law, and the draft Data
Security Law, that codified the regime’s extraterritorial capacity. These laws have a bigger reach than Chinese
criminal law. The Chinese extradition laws can even be enforced on people with
Chinese lineage.
Likewise, the draft Data Security Law entails all data
activities that occur in PCR’s territory. Furthermore, it includes entities and
individuals’ activities, outside the PCR if it harms any national security or
China’s public interest. This widens
China´s extraterritorial reach remarkably.
The Hong Kong National Security Law incorporates everyone
in Honk Kong and any transgression perpetrated against it even if practiced
outside it. Article 38 claims extraterritorial jurisdiction over almost
everyone. Implies that anyone could break the law and face prosecution. This
law cultivates uncertainty, surrounding especially political outspoken voices;
that now avoid visiting Honk Kong with fear of being scrutinized under this new
law. That has yet to be applicated.
These laws arise in a
new era, where technology opens new outlets for freedom of speech. This means
the CCP has become more aware of exiles’ growing effect with these new
platforms. So has the regime aptitude so repress and survey them.
China adopted WeChat a
platform that merges everything, like social media, money transfers, messages,
calls; everything we use in our daily lives in one application. WeChat is
global in China because the Great
Firewall blocks rivals from penetrating the system. This means the WeChat
is the sole means of communication between the Chinese inhabitants and the ones
that live abroad. This is used to
control data, conversations, boost censorship, and make threats against users.
China adopts all these strategies
and many more to control every citizen. One of the world’s most repressive systems
that aims to reproduce its model all over the world. The only way to do that is
to have an incredibly strict foreign
policy, that establishes censorship and thwarts any form of rebellion or
protest from inside and outside its territory.
Because of China’s tremendous
power, laws, sophisticated methods, and distance from victims, it’s not easy to
demonstrate they are violating citizens’ fundamental rights. So, they manage to
install fear and repress millions of people while still upholding plausible deniability.
Diana Soares/ nº227708/ 18 de março
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