Published on January 20, 2020.
This article introduces a commentary by Yoshihisa Komori published in the Sankei Shimbun. Drawing on reports issued by U.S. congressional-government bodies, Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch, it examines the Chinese Communist Party’s human-rights policies in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet, as well as international propaganda efforts aimed at concealing those realities. It also considers how Japan’s plan to host President Xi Jinping as a state guest may be viewed amid growing international concern over human-rights issues.
January 20, 2020
The report addressed human-rights repression in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet, describing the Xi administration’s efforts to conceal such repression and the campaigns by state-controlled media portraying critics of China as villains.
The following is from yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun.
This column also demonstrates that the Sankei Shimbun remains the most sensible newspaper in Japan today.
Yoshihisa Komori
How Will Inviting a Repressor as a State Guest Be Viewed?
“In China during 2019, under the direct orders of President Xi Jinping, systematic repression against citizens seeking freedom, democracy activists, religious believers, and ethnic minorities was carried out with unprecedented severity.” (Annual Report of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)
At the beginning of the new year in Washington, three major reports concerning the Chinese Communist regime’s human-rights repression were released in succession.
The first organization, a joint commission of the U.S. Congress and government, has for two decades continuously investigated human-rights conditions and social developments in China and reflected its findings in U.S. policy toward China.
Freedom House, a semi-public, semi-private organization headquartered in Washington, also published a report on January 15 entitled “Beijing’s Global Megaphone,” detailing the Chinese government’s human-rights abuses.
The report described in detail the Xi administration’s efforts to conceal repression and its international propaganda campaign aimed at suppressing criticism of China.
Freedom House is a human-rights organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy.
Its latest report examined human-rights repression in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, and elsewhere, while describing both the Xi administration’s concealment efforts and the campaigns by state-run media to portray critics of China as villains.
According to the report, the Chinese government has expanded worldwide propaganda praising Xi Jinping through state-run outlets such as Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network (CGTN), and the English-language newspaper China Watch.
The report emphasized Xi Jinping’s own statement that “the tentacles of political propaganda must reach readers and viewers throughout the world,” noting that overseas political propaganda intended to conceal human-rights abuses has expanded dramatically under his administration.
Human Rights Watch, another major international human-rights organization active in Washington, also released a new report in mid-January regarding repression in China.
“Under Xi Jinping’s dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party has in recent years intensified the crushing of political opposition, strengthened control over academia, religion, and society, and significantly expanded influence operations targeting overseas Chinese communities, foreign politicians, and media organizations.”
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth, after being denied entry into Hong Kong, stated that “no government in recent years has sought as systematically as the Xi Jinping administration to dismantle international human-rights standards and institutions.”
The tendency to place criticism of the Chinese Communist regime’s systematic human-rights abuses at the center of policy toward China is no longer limited to human-rights organizations; it has also become a major component of the Trump administration’s China policy.
A typical example is the administration’s policy of imposing individual sanctions on officials responsible for repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian ideology and his praise for Taiwan’s democracy reflect the same trend.
A notable characteristic of these criticisms from the U.S. government and international organizations is that they focus responsibility squarely on Xi Jinping himself.
The quotation at the beginning is a clear example.
How will the Japanese government’s plan to invite Xi Jinping—a figure whose actions are condemned by much of the democratic world—as a state guest appear from a global perspective?
One hardly needs much imagination to answer that question.
(Visiting Correspondent in Washington)
Even if state-guest treatment is the product of political considerations, it is difficult for people outside mainland China and outside countries that are financially and culturally dependent on Chinese money—many of them authoritarian states—to express genuine respect for Xi Jinping, particularly regarding freedom and democracy.
Prime Minister Abe must surely have wrestled with this issue.
While searching for confirmation of Lu Xun’s famous remark that “the Chinese will remain slaves forever,” I came across the following post by Sekihei.
The writer Lu Xun once criticized what he called the “slave mentality” of the Chinese people.
He argued that the truest slaves are those who take pleasure in obeying their masters.
Hearing author Jiro Asada argue that the Prime Minister’s seventieth-anniversary statement should include the word “aggression” because “China is waiting,” I realized that such a slave mentality is not confined to Chinese people alone.