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Published on Mar 03, 2023

The challenge for policymakers is to identify the means necessary to tackle the threat China poses to security while also addressing threats to human rights

The need for a strategy to counter China’s Human Rights violations

This article is part of the series—Raisina Edit 2023


The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is among the world’s worst perpetrators of human rights violations. Over the last several years, the world has witnessed the CCP carry out ongoing genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the undermining of freedom in Hong Kong, and the rise of the CCP’s transnational repression. Each of these trends in isolation are concerning, but when coupled with the security and economic threats perpetrated by the CCP, the need for a strong international response to their violations of global norms becomes all the more pressing. Crafting effective policies to respond to human rights violations in China poses a unique challenge to the world, in no small part due to the premium the CCP places on carrying out human rights violations as a means of maintaining power. According to Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell in their book China’s Search for Security, the CCP has two core foreign policy priorities: The first is maintaining China’s internal stability and the second is safeguarding China’s sovereignty. And the Chinese government typically justifies its human rights violations by claiming that they are responding to perceived threats to these two core objectives.

< style="color: #0069a6;">Crafting effective policies to respond to human rights violations in China poses a unique challenge to the world, in no small part due to the premium the CCP places on carrying out human rights violations as a means of maintaining power.

For example, the CCP falsely labels Uyghur Muslims (as it does persons of all faiths) as an extremist group that threatens China’s sovereignty and stability. In response to this perceived threat, the CCP deployed surveillance technology as a weapon of authoritarianism to undertake rapid and mass collectivisation of Uyghurs. There are between one million and three million Uyghurs currently held in Beijing’s vast web of political prison camps throughout Xinjiang, China. People in the camps are subject to forced indoctrination, torture, and even death. Women are subject to rape and various forms of sexual violence. The CCP has taken persecution of Uyghur women to the next level, with one report from a renowned scholar of China, Adrian Zenz, documenting the CCP’s stated goal of forcibly sterilising 80 percent of Uyghur women of child-bearing age in certain parts of Xinjiang. Persecution of Uyghurs is so severe that it was deemed by the United States (US) government to constitute ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity. Uyghurs are not the only ones. The CCP left Hong Kong largely to its own devices until millions took to the streets in protest to defend their autonomy and freedom in 2019. The crackdown and subsequent institution of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020 was justified by the CCP because the Hong Kong people were viewed by the Party as a threat to China’s stability and sovereignty. The NSL has had a crippling effect the on civil and political liberties in the city-state and resulted in severe and ongoing deteriorations in the rule of law. Hong Kong’s once pristine legal apparatus is now deployed by Beijing to target political prisoners, including well-known individuals like Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai. Once-free press outfits like Apple Daily and Stand News have been shuttered, and the city-state’s business environment is now being compromised by Hong Kong-government supported sanctions evasion, money laundering, and other illicit financial activities.

< style="color: #0069a6;">Hong Kong’s once pristine legal apparatus is now deployed by Beijing to target political prisoners, including well-known individuals like Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai.

The plight of Uyghurs and Hong Kongers are illustrative of the CCP’s typical playbook: Identify a threat to the Party’s reign, quash it no matter the human toll, and undermine rights and freedoms in China. But the buck doesn’t stop at China’s own borders. Transnational repression is the CCP’s modus operandi. One especially pernicious example is the CCP’s exportation of surveillance technology. The CCP doesn’t just export the technology, it also provides technical training in the means and methods it uses to surveil its own population to countries all across the globe. Other examples of the CCP’s transnational repression include the forced repatriation of Uyghurs back to China from abroad, the rise of CCP-run overseas police stations, the propagandising of Confucius Institutes in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, and even the targeting of Chinese diaspora that criticise the CCP. The CCP engages in all of this behaviour because it believes it is to the Party’s advantage and because to not do so, in the CCP’s mind, risks destabilising China domestically. Given the premium that the regime places on perpetrating human rights violations, it is concerning that global leaders place so little emphasis on countering the CCP’s abuses in their own strategies to ameliorate the threat posed by China. Especially, when many of the threats affect countries within their own borders. In the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, for example, the US identifies “outcompeting” China as a top foreign policy priority. But the strategy gives short shrift to countering the CCP’s human rights violations. Capitals across Europe and Asia place even less of an emphasis on addressing human rights concerns in China; many, in fact, are only just waking up to the threat posed by the CCP.

< style="color: #0069a6;">The US, in concert with allies and friends, should apply tools in its foreign policy toolkit that seek to shift the balance of power within China so that it gives greater power to the Chinese people while decreasing the power of the government.

The challenge for policymakers then, is to identify the means necessary to tackle the threat China poses to security while also addressing threats to human rights. To do so, the US, in concert with allies and friends, should apply tools in its foreign policy toolkit that seek to shift the balance of power within China so that it gives greater power to the Chinese people while decreasing the power of the government. A comprehensive strategy to tackle China’s human rights violations should include mechanisms of accountability like targeted financial sanctions, visa bans, and broader-based tools that tackle illegal behaviour like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act or tools to tackle money laundering and illicit finance. These strategies should be coupled with efforts to preserve what limited spaces for freedom exist in China by safeguarding internet freedom, press freedom, and religious freedom, among others. There should also be active efforts to press for the release of political prisoners and seek the closure of camps in Xinjiang through diplomatic channels. Finally, the international community should be generous in extending refugee safe haven to those who have no choice but to flee China. One major takeaway from the CCP’s repression under Xi Jinping is that there are few things the Party fears more than its own people. It views them as agents of destabilising change with the potential to undermine the regime’s resilience and power. If this is the case, then there are few more powerful actions the international community can undertake to respond than to equip the Chinese people in their quest for freedom.

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Contributor

Olivia Enos

Olivia Enos

Olivia Enos is the Washington Director for The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK). Prior to joining CFHK she spent nearly a decade ...

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