The subsidiary laws include designating premises linked to the Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), Beijing’s national security office in Hong Kong, as “prohibited places” and drawing up related offences, as well as setting up a mechanism allowing mainland China to exercise jurisdiction over national security cases.

[…] According to the legislation gazetted on Tuesday, anyone who discloses any information related to the measures and investigation by the OSNS can face a fine of up to HK$500,000 and imprisonment for up to seven years.

Anyone who provides false or misleading information to the OSNS is also liable to conviction and can be punished with a maximum fine of HK$500,000 and a jail sentence of up to seven years.

[…] The subsidiary legislation stated that any government department or public servant must provide “necessary and reasonable assistance” to the OSNS. [Source]

Chinese jurisdiction over Hong Kong in certain national security cases is based in part on Article 55 of the National Security Law imposed by Beijing, but the new legislation calls for establishing “a mechanism at the local law level” to allow the OSNS to perform the Article 55 mandate “effectively” and further solidify Beijing’s authority. Under Article 55, the OSNS has jurisdiction in circumstances when a case is determined to be a “serious situation” which renders the city government unable to enforce the law effectively or counter a “major and imminent threat to national security,” or if the case is complex due to the involvement of a foreign country. The OSNS can also take over a case at the request of the Hong Kong government. Secretary for Justice Paul Lam claimed, “Human rights and freedom provisions will not be affected in any way by subsidiary legislation.” Six sites used by the OSNS have already been declared as “prohibited places.”

In addition to the Hong Kong government, some citizens are showing their own zeal for national security. A BBC investigation published over the weekend described the story of a 60-year-old Hong Kong pro-China informer named Innes Tang, a prominent self-described patriot who assists the police with surveillance work:

He and his volunteers have taken screen grabs from social media of any activities or comments they believe could be in breach of the [National Security Law].

He also established a hotline for tip-offs from the public and encouraged his online followers to share information on the people around them.

Nearly 100 individuals and organisations have been reported to the authorities by him and his followers, he says.

"Does reporting work? We wouldn’t do it if it didn’t," Mr Tang says. "Many had cases opened by the police… with some resulting in jail terms."

Mr Tang says he hasn’t investigated alleged law breakers himself, but simply reported incidents he thinks warrant scrutiny – describing it as "proper community-police co-operation".

[…] Hong Kong’s authorities have set up their own national security hotline, receiving 890,000 tip-offs from November 2020 to February this year – the city’s security bureau told the BBC. [Source]

The recent national security legislation is just the latest step in an ongoing entrenchment of authoritarian rule in Hong Kong. Last month, the Hong Kong Center for Human Rights published its annual human rights report for 2024, which documented patterns of repression across a variety of domains and the government’s efforts to restrict civil liberties. Here are two key insights from the report’s executive summary:

1. Expansion of the National Security Regime
The enactment of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO) in 2024 has significantly expanded Hong Kong’s national security apparatus. Building on the 2020 National Security Law (NSL), the SNSO empowers the executive to override judicial processes, curtail fair trial guarantees, and assert extraterritorial jurisdiction. The decisions made by the Committee for Safeguarding National Security of the HKSAR are explicitly binding and beyond judicial review, and the Chief Executive may issue binding national security certificates at any time.

2. Erosion of Judicial Independence and Access to Justice
The judiciary has been sidelined in national security matters, with executive authorities exerting direct influence over legal outcomes. Restrictions on legal representation, declining approval rates for legal aid, scrutiny of crowdfunding, and the imposition of punitive cost orders have fostered a hostile environment for public interest litigation. High-profile legal reprisals against civil society actors have created a chilling effect on access to justice. [Source]

In other news related to national security in Hong Kong, earlier this month the city’s national security police arrested the father and brother of Anna Kwok, executive director of the U.S.-based Hong Kong Democracy Council and one of 19 overseas activists targeted with a HK$1 million ($127,656) bounty for her arrest. The police allege her family members dealt with her finances, and they could face up to seven years in prison. Elsewhere, four members of the “Hong Kong 47” group of pro-democracy activists jailed for national security offences were released last month. They include Claudia Mo, Kwok Ka-ki, Jeremy Tam, and Gary Fan, who had served sentences of over four years. Most of the rest of the group members are still in prison serving sentences of up to ten years.

Over the past 100 years, the most important achievement of theoretical innovation and practical development of the Party’s labour movement cause has been the formation of the trade union development path with Chinese socialist characteristics. This path adheres to the Party’s comprehensive leadership over the labour movement cause and trade union work, ensuring that the labour movement always advances in the correct direction.

[…] Trade unions at all levels must fully implement the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee, promote the high-quality development of trade union work, and write a more magnificent chapter of our country’s labour movement cause in the new era.

We must adhere to the correct political direction and unite the broad masses of workers and labourers closely around the Party. We must resolutely uphold the authority and centralised unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, and implement the Party’s leadership throughout the process and in all aspects of trade union work. Persist in using the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era to arm minds, guide practice, and promote work; resolutely shoulder the political responsibility of leading the workers and labourers to listen to the Party and obey the Party… [Source]

Some Chinese state-media reports unintentionally revealed the tension between the government and the people over what constitutes fair labor practices. One example, described by China Media Project (CMP), involved the aftermath of a heroic rescue of a child stuck in a narrow well by Bupatam Abdukader, a 24-year-old female auxiliary police officer in Xinjiang. As the story went viral online, many netizens wondered why she had been working in an informal role with pay and benefits that lagged behind her formally employed counterparts. This public pressure led Xinjiang authorities to give her a promotion, but only within the confines of her auxiliary status. This in turn led to more public pressure and forced the authorities to make an announcement—praised by CCTV and a Xinhua-run official journal—advocating the importance of following strict procedures of career advancement. CMP summarized the situation as such:

At its core, Bupatam’s story is about a gap in visions of what heroism means, and how it should be rewarded. While public sentiment called for the officer’s brave human acts to be rewarded with real and tangible benefits, and the dignity that comes with truly equal status, the authorities managed to contain her within the Party’s limited vision of heroism. In that vision, the hero’s extraordinary sacrifice works only to serve and preserve the system — even if that system is premised on the most ordinary perpetuation of inequalities. [Source]

In other cases of divergent visions of ideal labor conditions, netizens directed their criticism directly at the media. This was seen in reactions to a viral Weibo topic, covered favorably by state-aligned media, about a construction worker who had ostensibly saved two million yuan over nine years by carrying bricks on his back. In one WeChat article commenting on the story last week, author Song Qingren wrote skeptically about state media’s propagandistic glorification of such low-paid and physically gruelling work, and noted that only a few carefully selected comments with scant likes appeared under the high-engagement post: “Propaganda is very inspiring, sure, but will people actually buy into it? No, not only will people disbelieve such content, they will sigh in frustration and proceed to ridicule and mock it. And the more the media publishes such content, the lower they will fall in the public’s estimation, the more they will be despised.” Another WeChat article, by Unyielding Bamboo, excoriated media coverage that purports to be encouraging but in fact treats workers as little more than beasts of burden to be exploited:

The media, rather than doing what they ought to be doing—that is, exposing and reporting on serious issues—are instead encouraging people to sacrifice their health and well-being in pursuit of profit. Rather than tell the truth, they fritter away their time penning fictitious scripts; rather than bring problems to light, they focus on manufacturing delusions. I simply cannot comprehend such misplaced priorities. [Chinese]

Avenues for successfully pushing back against poor labor conditions are limited. As China Labor Watch has argued, workers in China “are routinely denied their fundamental right to strike and to both form and join unions of their choice and take part in relevant activities.” Those that attempt to strike are often met with violence. In April, police reportedly beat some of the hundreds of female workers at Hubei’s Chenlong Electronics who went on strike to protest six months of unpaid wages and two years of missing social security contributions. Nonetheless, China Labour Bulletin has documented at least 573 strikes across the country since the start of 2025, almost identical to the number of strikes in the same period from last year.

Perhaps in reaction to public pressure, some companies have enacted policies encouraging employees to work less, such as mandatory clock-off times and bans on after-hours meetings, according to Reuters. A Beijing law firm was also given a rare fine in March for failing to take corrective measures after illegally extending staff working hours. But as The Economist reported last month, this new phenomenon of limiting working hours might also be motivated more by the state’s economic self-interest than by a concern for labor rights:

These new policies align with two of the Chinese state’s current priorities. One is to try to curb a phenomenon known as neijuan—often translated as “involution”. People use the term to describe a situation in which extra input no longer yields more output, like running to stand still. The government wants to prevent this intense, self-harming competition. Perhaps not surprisingly, the new policy has met plenty of cynicism from involuted workers. One newspaper summarised their online snark with the question: “Are the companies that long enforced brutal overtime now going to lead the fight against involution?” Some point to Europe’s new ban on products made with forced labour, including “excessive overtime”, as the motivation for export companies to take action.

The second priority is to give people more time off in order to help bring about the much-needed switch in the economy away from exports and infrastructure towards consumption. In March the government presented a new “special action plan” to increase domestic demand, vowing to deal with “prominent pain points such as the prevalence of overtime culture”, and to protect “rest and vacation rights and interests”. It increased the number of public holidays this year by two days. Getting people to eat out and spend money is difficult if they are stuck at their desk. [Source]

Translations by Cindy Carter.

1. There can be no “national rejuvenation” without systemic political reform
2. The People do not want a political party with unchecked power.
3. China does not need someone to “point the way forward.” Democracy is the way forward. [Chinese]

The three banners hanging from a pedestrian overpass near Chengdu’s Chadianzi Bus Station. Local netizens confirmed the location of the photo, which is close to Chengdu’s Third Ring Road, based on the street layout and the illuminated signs visible in the background.

The date of the protest is significant because it was the anniversary of the April 15, 1989 death of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang—who for many symbolizes a more progressive, possibly even more democratic “path not taken.” (In the spring of 1989, mourning for Hu’s death coalesced into the massive protests that would later be crushed in the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown.) The language used in the slogans is quite measured, and references the CCP’s oft-lauded goal of “national rejuvenation.” Although Xi Jinping is not mentioned by name, the third slogan is a clear reference to the standard Party formulation of Xi Jinping “pointing the way forward” on various policy issues (at least 240, by one recent count).

Although such offline expressions of political dissent are rare in China, they are not without precedent. CDT Chinese editors have documented three other solitary protests that have occurred over the past three years. The Chengdu protest called to mind antecedents such as the January 2022 “Luohu Warrior” protest in Shenzhen. It also echoed the October 2022 Sitong Bridge banner protest in Beijing, in which solitary protester Peng Lifa displayed banners calling for more freedom, an end to pandemic lockdowns, and for work and academic strikes to topple Xi Jinping. The Chengdu protest also recalled the banner and loudspeaker slogans of Fang Yirong’s one-man protest on a pedestrian overpass in Xinhua county, Hunan province in July 2024.

The protester in Chengdu contacted several well-known whistleblower accounts on X—including Teacher Li (@whyyoutouzhele) and Yesterday (@YesterdayBigcat)—to amplify his message. He sent them his protest slogans, photos of the scene, and even a photo of his ID card, which revealed his identity as Mei Shilin, age 27, from Muchuan county in Sichuan province. Mei soon fell out of contact and his whereabouts are unknown; it is likely that he has been detained by public security officers. (Mei’s name and photo were only shared on social media after he had disappeared and after his identity had been revealed on YouTube.)

Content related to Mei’s protest has been thoroughly scrubbed from the Chinese internet, and CDT editors have noted that his name is now a sensitive word on numerous Chinese platforms and social media sites. Some Chinese netizens who learned of the protest via overseas sites voiced admiration for Mei’s bravery and expressed concern for his safety. A selection of Chinese-language comments from X about Mei’s bold protest have been translated below:

DEMAXIYA159: He’s a hero. It takes a lot of courage for an individual to do something this big. If every city had such a hero, the government would have to face up to its problems. If everyone had such courage, then dictatorship wouldn’t dare raise its head. Democracy means that everyone has the courage to raise their own voice.

President_JC23: Respect to that lone warrior. I hope he can stay safe.

wulijin11: Brave warrior, you did what I lacked the courage to do.

Running_Program: It takes a lot of courage to do this “within the wall.”

leaf_sen: It’s impossible to see this [news] in China because the internet is so completely controlled.

Mrdoorvpn: That brave warrior will definitely go down in history, whether you agree with him or not.

geleilaoshi: You are not alone!

rt_cou66416: Whoa, Peng Lifa has returned!

Fulefull: All of society is stagnant, but now and then, there’s a little spark.

wudiniu7764: The security guards in Chengdu are screwed. They’ll have to guard the bridges again. [Chinese]

Many observers and human rights groups are justifiably concerned for Mei Shilin’s safety. In a recent article titled “Another ‘Bridge Man’ in China Forcibly Disappeared,” Human Rights Watch China Researcher Yalkun Uluyol called on the Chinese authorities to immediately disclose Mei Shilin’s whereabouts. It remains unclear when and where Mei was detained, where he is currently being held, and whether he has access to legal representation. An update this week from Qian Lang, reporting for RFA Mandarin, discussed what steps the authorities might take next in a case that they almost certainly wish to suppress:

One of the two sources [familiar with the case], Qin from Chengdu, said if Mei was found by investigators to have overseas ties, he would be handed over to the State Security Bureau and transferred to the Municipal State Security Bureau Detention Center.

“If no substantial evidence of collusion with foreign forces is found, he will be handled by the Chengdu police,” added Qin, who wanted to be identified by a single name for safety reasons.

Legal experts believe authorities may charge Mei with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a common criminal accusation in China that authorities level against political, civil, and human rights advocates.

“They (the prosecution) may file a case for the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble because they don’t want to give him a more glorious charge, such as inciting subversion of state power or subverting state power,” Lu Chenyuan, a legal expert in China, told RFA.

“They are now more inclined to depoliticize (the Mei Shilin case) and want to reduce its political significance,” added Lu. [Source]

The safety and whereabouts of many previous protesters remain unknown. In the case of the “Luohu Warrior,” even his real name is unknown to the public, and for over three years, there has been no official information about where he is being held or whether he has been or will be tried. The most widely known of the protesters is Peng Lifa, dubbed “Bridge Man” after the famous “Tank Man” of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Peng Lifa disappeared soon after his Sitong Bridge protest and has not been heard from since. Peng’s courageous lone protest—which in turn inspired the late 2022 “White Paper Protests” that led to the end of China’s pandemic lockdowns—continues to resonate with a new generation of Chinese citizens. Fang Yirong, the young man in Hunan who used a banner and a loudspeaker to make his political demands heard, has likewise not been heard from since his protest in July of 2024.

As part of the investigation, ICIJ coordinated reporters across five continents to interview targets and analyze their cases. ICIJ also reviewed a 2004 Chinese police textbook and confidential guidelines for domestic security officers dating to 2013. The reporters then compared the tactics described in the internal documents with the experiences of the 105 targets, as well as with secretly recorded police interrogations, and phone calls and text messages between 11 security officers in China and nine targets overseas. The comparison shows the tactics recently deployed against the subjects mirrored the guidelines on how to control individuals labeled as domestic security threats.

Half of the targets interviewed by ICIJ and its media partners said the harassment extended to family members back home, who suffered intimidation and were interrogated by police or state security officials one or more times. Several victims told ICIJ that their family members in China or Hong Kong were harassed by police shortly after they had participated in protests or public events overseas. Sixty said they believed they had been followed or were targets of surveillance or spying by Chinese officials or their proxies; 27 said they were victims of an online smear campaign, and 19 said they had received suspicious messages or experienced hacking attempts, including by state actors. Some said their bank accounts in China and Hong Kong had been frozen. Officers from both the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security — two of the Chinese agencies with intelligence capacity — were responsible for intimidating some of the targets and their families, the testimonies show. Twenty-two people said they received physical threats or had been assaulted by civilian CCP supporters.

Most of those interviewed by ICIJ and its partners said they had not reported state-sponsored threats to the authorities in their adopted countries, explaining that they feared retaliation from China or didn’t have faith in authorities’ ability to help. Of those who had filed a report, several said police did not follow up on their case or told them that they couldn’t do anything because there was no evidence of a crime. [Source]

The ICIJ investigation described the phenomenon of Beijing-backed “GONGOs” (government-organized non-governmental organizations) that monitor and intimidate human rights activists critical of the Chinese government. During China’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session at the U.N. Human Rights Council last year, CDT reported that the number of China-based “civil society” organizations listed in China’s UPR summary report nearly tripled over the course of two UPR cycles from 2013 to 2024, which may have dampened criticism of China’s human rights record. At The Washington Post, reporting in partnership with ICIJ, Greg Miller, Jelena Ćosić, and Tamsin Lee-Smith described the scale of Chinese NGOs at the U.N. that have hidden ties to the CCP:

The ICIJ investigation identified 106 NGOs that have received U.N. accreditation and are registered in or affiliated with China. At least 59 appear to violate U.N. rules meant to ensure that NGOs testifying in Geneva aren’t doing so under government influence or pressure.

More than 50 of the 106 NGOs included language in charter documents pledging loyalty to the CCP, with some acknowledging that they defer to the party on decisions of hiring and funding, the investigation found. Forty-six listed directors or others in leadership roles who simultaneously held positions in Chinese state agencies or the CCP. Records show that at least 10 received the bulk of their funding from Chinese government sources.

[…] The number of Chinese organizations with U.N. credentials has nearly doubled since 2018, the year of the initial U.N. report on Xinjiang. Many of these organizations were formed at least a decade ago but only sought NGO accreditation after 2018. The surge reflects an effort that has been backed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and involves nearly every level of government in China.

[…] Last year, 33 Chinese NGOs made nearly 300 appearances at Human Rights Council sessions, according to data gathered by the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), an independent nonprofit group. An examination of their statements and testimony found not a single instance in which any had uttered words that could be construed as critical of China. [Source]

Ethnic minority groups are often targets of Beijing’s transnational repression, as the ICIJ highlighted. Alongside the investigation is a report by Citizen Lab detailing how Uyghur-language software was hijacked to deliver malware that was extremely well customized to reach the target population of Uyghurs in exile. The report states that the cyberattack replicates a pattern of Chinese-government-aligned threat actors digitally targeting marginalized communities. Earlier this month, CDT documented other reports on the expansion of China’s digital repression of Tibetans, including those in diaspora, via a Chinese state-owned digital forensics firm that provides offensive cyber-operations training for Lhasa’s Tibet Police College. The Guardian, another ICIJ partner, recently uncovered an online campaign of transnational repression against Hongkongers in the U.K. The campaign included 29 accounts that published over 150 posts last August doxxing Hongkongers and exhibiting similarities to other online influence operations by a Chinese security agency. ICIJ partners provided other local case studies, as well.

Another focus of the ICIJ investigation was the Chinese Party-state’s attempts to instrumentalize Interpol. The Chinese government has increasingly used Interpol red notices to target a wide range of its citizens abroad, and China “does not appear to be among the countries currently subject to Interpol corrected measures for alleged misuse of the organization’s system,” the ICIJ wrote. Along with other ICIJ partners, Simon Leplâtre at Le Monde described how Interpol is used as a tool in China’s arsenal of transnational repression, using the story of Huang Youlong (referred to as "H."), a close confidant of Jack Ma:

Like H., hundreds of individuals whom China considers to be persons of interest have been targeted by abusive red notices. In collaboration with 42 media outlets and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Le Monde investigated several cases that illustrate China’s use of Interpol and the lack of safeguards within the institution. Despite attempts to reform it, Interpol, based in the French city of Lyon, still lacks transparency in its procedures and never publicly holds countries that abuse it accountable – a boon for authoritarian regimes.

Our investigation shows that Interpol is one of the components of China’s arsenal of repressive measures used against its targets abroad, whether they are political dissidents, members of minorities that are oppressed in China – such as Uyghurs or Tibetans – businesspeople and political leaders, either corrupt or the victims of purges.

[…] Ted Bromund, a researcher and expert witness in legal cases involving Interpol procedures, explained that "Interpol is a tool. So is sending text messages to people. So is stalking them physically. So is revoking their passports. (…) By itself, it’s not generally particularly effective with China. But the way I like to put it with the Chinese is that Interpol is like a pin through a butterfly in an insect collection. It holds someone down, locks them in place so they can’t get away. And then it’s much easier to apply all of these other tools because you’ve got someone located." [Source]

Responding to the ICIJ investigation on Bluesky, Jeremy Daum at China Law Translate shared a thread urging caution with the terminology and framing of the term “transnational repression” when contemplating appropriate responses to the phenomenon:

🧵Happy to see continued attention on the ways that China harasses and surveils abroad– hard to find the bandwidth today, but it remains a real issue that impacts people's lives.A few thoughts that I've raised elsewhere on how best to think about it and address it: www.icij.org/investigatio…

— China Law Translate / Jeremy Daum (@chinalawtranslate.bsky.social) 2025-04-29T14:53:30.795Z

Recent procurement documents reveal that Meiya Pico, a Chinese state-owned digital forensics firm, will provide an offensive cyber operations training environment and digital forensic laboratory to the Tibet Police College in Lhasa. This development underscores the Chinese government’s strategic investment in advanced Public Security Bureau (PSB) training infrastructure in Tibet and highlights Meiya Pico’s integral role in meeting these specialized requirements.

[...] Over the past decade, Meiya Pico has become a cornerstone of China’s digital surveillance complex. From developing covert phone spyware apps and forensic hacking devices for police, to building big-data platforms that mine email communications, Meiya Pico’s technology has been deployed at the front lines of repression in Xinjiang and Tibet. The company was identified as presenting a significant risk to the national security of the U.S. in 2019 and placed on its Entity List alongside companies like iFlytek and SenseTime – citing involvement in human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

[...] Meiya Pico is typical of this ecosystem in that it serves a dual role: enabling police surveillance on the home front in the PRC’s frontier regions, and the export of China’s digital repression model abroad. Whether through equipping PRC police in Tibet’s historic and cultural capital, Lhasa, with remote intrusion techniques or training foreign police forces, Meiya Pico exemplifies the global ambitions of China’s surveillance and security industry. [Source]

The digital realm has long been a target and instrument of state surveillance in Tibet. In CDT’s 2023 Cloud Cover report, we found that local and provincial Tibetan governments have spent over 55 million yuan on Police Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) technology over the past two decades. Other reports have covered how the Chinese government has expanded digital surveillance and DNA collection in Tibet. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch published a report about the increasing number of arrests of Tibetans for their internet and phone use. It described how this phenomenon has grown in tandem with police offering cash rewards for informing on fellow citizens, expanding manual phone searches on a mass scale, forcing Tibetans to download a government “anti-fraud” app that allows for backdoor government surveillance, and imposing restrictions on religious practice:

The full scale of such arrests and prosecutions is unknown, as Chinese authorities do not disclose official data for political offenses. The more than 60 reported cases appear related to an increase in government surveillance during this period, including through mass phone searches and the use of mandatory phone apps with built-in government surveillance, as well as a tightened regulatory regime on data and religion.

“For Tibetans, simply using a cellphone has become dangerous, and everyday activities like posting a humorous video or contacting loved ones abroad can bring arrest, detention, and torture,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “Tibetans, particularly those living in remote areas, once celebrated the arrival of cellphones so they could stay in touch with friends and family, but their phones have effectively become government tracking devices.”

[...] In many cases, those arrested were accused of keeping “banned content” on their phones or sharing it online. Such “banned content” typically includes references to Tibetan religious figures, particularly the exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and expressions of pro-Tibetan sentiment. Chinese authorities have applied the ambiguous language of the law broadly: in one case, a man was arrested for setting up a WeChat group celebrating the birthdays of 80-year-old Buddhist monks. The police said it was “illegal” to form such a chat group “without permission.” [Source]

A prime example of this sort of government repression took place earlier this month following the death of influential Tibetan Buddhist leader Tulku Hungkar Dorje. After Chinese authorities announced his death on April 2, they interrogated and detained local Tibetans who posted photos and messages online mourning his death, placed his monastery in Golog prefecture of Qinghai Province under round-the-clock police surveillance, and conducted random inspections of locals’ phones. Tulku Hungkar Dorje went missing in August 2024 after being harassed by Chinese authorities for his work on the preservation of Tibetan language and culture, and for allegedly snubbing the Chinese government-installed 11th Panchen Lama during the latter’s visit to his monastery. He was detained in Vietnam last month and reportedly died the day he was handed over to a visiting Chinese police squad. Five Tibetan monks, accompanied by Chinese embassy officials, were shown his face for two minutes but not allowed to see other parts of his body.

The Chinese government’s efforts to suppress Tibetan language and culture, particularly via Chinese schooling, have attracted growing media attention. Harold Thibault from Le Monde recently traveled to Golog prefecture, the location of Tulku Hungkar Dorje’s monastery, and reported how state boarding schools “sever [the] roots” of Tibetan children. He described the story of a 14-year-old girl named Dolma, who at age seven was sent to one such boarding school located more than 12 hours from her home in Sichuan:

[E]verything suggests that the project is at least as political as it is educational. It aims to integrate these students into Chinese society to assimilate them further, to the detriment of their mother tongue and local culture. In these high schools, located in cities with a predominantly Han Chinese population, most classes are taught in Chinese, and patriotic education permeates everyday life.

[...] Given Dolma’s young age, her mother had asked an older girl sent to the same boarding school to look after her before her departure. But they were not placed in the same dormitory and rarely saw each other. Dolma felt very lonely. At such a distance, it was unthinkable to return home on weekends, so she spent eight months a year away from her family. She could only make the journey for the nearly two months of winter vacation (between the Gregorian New Year and the Tibetan New Year) and the two months of summer vacation. "When I returned, the first weeks, I no longer understood the dialect spoken by my family; I had to re-learn it in a way. A distance was created, and we lost our closeness," she recounted from another country where she now lived.

At school, Chinese was the main language. There was indeed a Tibetan class, but the teacher seemed to come from a region so far from hers that she could not understand him. Political education, however, was central. "We were taught to love China, that China protects the Tibetans, that China is the best country," the teenager recounted.

[...] The subject is a sensitive one for China. Upon leaving the regional airport, Le Monde’s reporter was followed by at least three cars and five individuals, plainclothes agents sharing the same hotel in the evening, the same breakfast, and then ensuring at the terminal that he took a return flight. [Source]

Five senior members of the Democratic Party had earlier told Reuters that Chinese officials or middlemen had warned it in recent months to disband or face serious consequences, including possible arrests.

The party, founded three years before Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule from Britain in 1997, has been the Asian financial hub’s flagship opposition, uniting democratic forces to push Beijing on democratic reforms, and to uphold freedoms.

Party head Lo Kin-hei told reporters that 90 percent of 110 members had voted at Sunday’s meeting for a three-person committee to start making arrangements for disbandment, including resolving legal and accounting matters.

[…] If the party disbands, it would mark the end of nearly 30 years of opposition party politics in Hong Kong. [Source]

The party’s manifesto maintained that Hong Kong is an indivisible part of China, but its “relatively moderate position didn’t really effectively improve the relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing over the past decade,” said Ma Ngok, an associate professor of government at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. New measures in 2021 limiting legislative elections to only "patriots” effectively barred the Democratic Party from fielding candidates, and at least five Democratic Party members are currently behind bars, including two former chairpersons, Albert Ho and Wu Chi-wai. Nonetheless, the party continued to provide pro-bono legal services and voice criticism of some government policies. The Civic Party, the second-largest opposition group, officially disbanded in March 2020. Yeung Sum, co-founder of the Democratic Party, said, “I’m not very happy about it, but I can see if we refuse the call to disband, we may pay a very huge price for it.” While acknowledging that disbandment would be a “very huge setback” that would challenge the “one country, two systems” principle, Yeung also said, “But I think people’s hearts for democracy, they will not fade out. They still keep it, maybe in different form.”

Hong Kong opposition forces are re-organizing outside of the city. On Tuesday, Amnesty International announced the launch of its new Hong Kong office based overseas, following the closure of its local office in 2021. Officially registered in Switzerland, the new office will be led by diaspora activists operating in Australia, Canada, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S., and it will “focus on advocating for human rights of Hongkongers, within Hong Kong and abroad, amplifying their voices and fostering a strong diaspora community globally.” Among its board members are ex-lawmaker Fernando Cheung and former student activist Joey Siu, one of the 19 activists for which the Hong Kong government has placed a HK$1 million bounty. The press release from Amnesty International provided more details about the initiative, in the words of its leaders:

“The opening of Amnesty International Hong Kong Overseas [AIHKO] marks a new chapter in the organization’s strengthened commitment to human rights in Hong Kong and its support for the Hong Kong diaspora around the world,” said Chi-man Luk, the new AIHKO Executive Director.

“The gutting of Hong Kong’s civil society has been a tragedy for the city with more than 100 non-profits and media outlets shut down or forced to flee. But since the closing of Amnesty International Hong Kong three years ago, our dedication has only grown. We are now ready to intensify our efforts by building new communities of support driven by the Hong Kong diaspora.”

[…] AIHKO is Amnesty International’s first-ever section founded and operated entirely “in exile”, and follows the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers who have gone abroad in search of safety and freedom.

“Being overseas provides us with a degree of protection, allowing us to speak more freely and engage in advocacy work. We have a responsibility to do more to support those who remain in Hong Kong and continue their vital efforts,” said Fernando Cheung, AIHKO board member and former Hong Kong legislator. [Source]

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government held its 10th National Security Education Day on Tuesday, during which Education Secretary Christine Choi warned of the “dangerous aspect” of “soft resistance,” which could “easily penetrate the heart and mind.” In other news, the government attracted criticism last week by refusing entry to British lawmaker Wera Hobhouse. After landing at Hong Kong airport, she was questioned and put on a flight back to the U.K. hours later. Caroline Davies from The Guardian provided more detail on the ordeal and possible justifications, which may relate to Hobhouse’s criticism of Hong Kong:

The UK government is “greatly concerned” and wants an account of why the Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse was denied entry to Hong Kong on a family visit to meet her three-month-old grandson for the first time.

[…] Hobhouse told the Sunday Times her passport was confiscated, she was asked about her job and the purpose of her trip, her luggage was searched and swabbed, then she was escorted to the boarding gate by four immigration officers.

Her son, a university academic living in Hong Kong since 2019, was waiting in the arrivals hall. Her husband, William, a businessman, was allowed entry but chose also to return to the UK. She is believed to be the first MP refused entry since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong.

Hobhouse, who has never visited Hong Kong, said she was given no explanation but believes it was because she is an MP. She is a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), an international group of politicians that scrutinises Beijing’s approach to human rights and has criticised the crackdown on free speech in Hong Kong. [Source]

The sale of CK Hutchison’s two ports at each end of the Panama Canal was part of a US$23 billion deal to sell 43 ports spread over 23 countries to a consortium led by United States investment firm BlackRock. CK Hutchison will pocket US$19 billion.

[…] “We have noticed this transaction, and will review it in accordance with the law to ensure fair competition in the market and safeguard the public interest,” a spokesman from the anti-monopoly department under [China’s State Administration for Market Regulation] said in a written reply.

The watchdog did not reveal when the investigation would be launched but its response was later reposted on the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office website.

[…] Earlier on Friday, a source close to CK Hutchison said the conglomerate would not go ahead with the expected signing of the deal [this] Wednesday.

“There will not be an official signing of the two Panama ports deal next week,” a source close to CK Hutchison told the Post [last Friday].

April 2 was a deadline set for CK Hutchison and the BlackRock consortium to sign a definitive agreement over the deal for the two ports, according to an announcement of the sale on March 4. [Source]

The Chinese government signaled its opposition to the deal through the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office’s reposting of over half a dozen articles published by pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao that criticized the deal. The articles described the deal as being “in concert with US hegemony” and said it would lead to “historic mistakes”. On Saturday, the CCTV-linked Weibo account Yuyuantantian posted that the deal was “tantamount to handing a knife to an opponent,” but the post was deleted just minutes later. (See our recent explanation of “handing someone a knife” for more details on the phrase.) On Monday, Oiwan Lam at Global Voices described the criticism of CK Hutchison’s deal in these articles:

Hong Kong-based Chinese propaganda slammed CK Hutchison’s deal as a betrayal of the “motherland” through a series of commentaries which were republished on the website of Beijing’s top office on Hong Kong and Macau Affairs.

The patriotic opinion pieces were first published in China’s state-funded Ta Kung Pao on March 14. The first piece rejects CK Hutchison’s explanation that the deal was a purely commercial decision. It describes Blackrock’s role as an expanding US port operator that would repress China’s international trade upon taking over CK Hutchison’s port and concludes the deal was an act of betrayal:

[…] The second commentary praises other Hong Kong business leaders, including Henry Fok Ying-tung and Yue-kong Pao, for staying loyal to the party and, in particular, highlights Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei’s role in safeguarding the technological sovereignty of the Chinese telecommunication industry. It urges Chinese businessmen to safeguard China’s national interest. The third and fourth pieces were written in a similar manner, stressing the need for the business sector to serve national interest and demanding that CK Hutchison suspend the deal.

Pro-Beijing influencers also relay China’s discontent. @Hnbhger17, for example, argued on X that CK Hutchison should prioritize selling its port to Chinese corporations, or the deal would negatively impact China’s national security. [Source]

The issue of Li Ka-shing’s patriotism, or alleged lack thereof, has been the subject of heated debate by Chinese netizens, and many online articles and comments supportive of Li have been deleted by platform censors. CDT Chinese editors have archived ten recent essays and articles on the subject, at least three of which have since been censored. A now-deleted satirical essay from WeChat public account 捉刀漫谈max (Zhuōdāo màntán max, "Ghostwriter Chat max") posed the facetious question “How About If Li Ka-Shing Just Sells the Ports to Russia?” and mocked the blind nationalism of those urging Li to ignore business fundamentals and bend the knee to Beijing. An article by WeChat blogger Xu Peng noted the irony of those who would criticize Li for not being “patriotic” enough—despite his decades of generous donations to charitable causes in China—while conveniently overlooking nationalist pundit Sima Nan’s rather unpatriotic record of tax evasion. A now-censored article by science and current-affairs blogger Xiang Dongliang pointed out that CK Hutchison’s proposal only involves the sale of usage rights to the ports—because the ports themselves are under the sovereignty of the nations in which they are located—and that the company does not plan to sell the usage rights to any ports located in China or Hong Kong. Xiang argued that the proposed sale is motivated by CK Hutchison’s need to hedge economic and geopolitical risk, and that absent other Chinese buyers (who would be subject to the same challenges), it is only rational for the company to offload usage rights to the ports to American consortium BlackRock. If the Chinese government and online nationalists are genuinely concerned about port control falling into American hands, Xiang wrote, they should encourage so-called “patriotic” Chinese companies such as Huawei or Hongxing Erke to bid for the ports instead.

A selection of Weibo comments compiled by CDT Chinese editors gives some sense of the heated nationalist rhetoric on Chinese social media in response to Li Ka-shing and CK Hutchison’s plan. “Li Ka-shing’s ‘selling out the country for his own benefit’ deserves the contempt of every Chinese person,” fumed one Weibo user. "Those who insist on ‘short-selling’ their own motherland will disappear in the end!" wrote another. Some of the critical comments brushed aside arguments that the proposed sale was simply a sound business decision: “The interests of the nation and the people should always outrank individual benefit,” one Weibo user opined. “Businesspeople must not be solely profit-driven.”

While Beijing announced it was investigating CK Hutchison’s deal, legal experts said it could be difficult to prove a real risk of breaching China’s anti-monopoly laws. Alonso Illueca at the China-Global South Project described how the Chinese government might also resort to Hong Kong’s National Security Law in order to stop the deal:

In this case, articles 31 and 37 of the national security law allow for its application to companies. Although CK Hutchison is registered in the Cayman Islands and its owner, Li Kai-Shing, has moved most of its assets to Canada, both China and Hong Kong still retain some leverage.

There are reports of ongoing talks to find “a reasonable way out” of the current situation, accompanied by a pause in new collaborations between Chinese state-owned companies and CK Hutchison. Given the broad interpretation of “safeguarding national security,” the principle that guides the Hong Kong national security law, Beijing and Hong Kong could argue that the CK Hutchison-BlackRock deal threatens China’s national security and warrants intervention from the State to safeguard it.

Moreover, Ta Kung Pao called for applying China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law against CK Hutchison, which allows Beijing to impose countermeasures on foreign entities that enforce sanctions or harm China’s interests and has advocated for punitive measures if the deal goes forward. The newspaper also invoked Hong Kong’s National Security Ordinance, further signaling potential legal challenges. [Source]

#Panama: Why did #China pressure Hutchison Port Holdings to delay the @BlackRock deal?

Hutchison was the single largest Chinese company in the business. A deal for 43 ports in 23 countries–199 berths–would have meant one-third of #PRC's global port network wiped out instantly. pic.twitter.com/fYxyAqV8R1

— Ryan Berg, PhD (@RyanBergPhD) March 28, 2025

Many commentators highlighted the consequences should Beijing succeed in blocking CK Hutchison’s deal. Bryan Mercurio, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said “it would be an unprecedented move that could reinforce the claims of President Trump and others asserting that Hong Kong’s trade, finance and policies are not entirely independent from China.” Josh Lipsky, senior director at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, said, “Torpedoing the deal . . . would send shockwaves all around the financial world.” Commentator Xiang Dongliang noted the potentially chilling effects: “Global investors would conclude that there is no real difference between the government oversight of Hong Kong companies and mainland Chinese companies.” Sinocism’s Bill Bishop predicted, “Now that the PRC has made clear the national security concerns about [the] ports deal, all of their ports globally may be suspect. So they may block this deal, but expect pressure on PRC port holdings in other parts of the world now.”

In an article for Al Jazeera, Erin Hale described Li’s evolution from having close relations to Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, to his waning political influence under Xi Jinping, along with his gradual divestment away from China. The article references Kevin Yam as saying that “Beijing could use the deal to make an example of the Li family, much as it did to Alibaba founder Jack Ma.” (In 2020, Xi took the dramatic move to suspend the initial public offering of Ma’s Ant Group after Ma openly challenged government regulators.) A now-deleted article from Sina Finance highlighted the precarity of Li’s situation—and indeed that of all Chinese entrepreneurs—where national interests are at stake: “When capital collides with the contest between great powers, even the smartest entrepreneurs discover that they are just ordinary people—buffeted by the tides of history, or trapped between a rock and a hard place, and utterly unable to control their own destiny.”

This is not the first time Guo has been targeted by Chinese authorities: in 2023, as reported by VOA Chinese and Variety, he was prevented from renewing his passport and was subject to a travel ban, likely in retaliation for his support of the White Paper Movement and attention to the plight of Xiaohuamei (a woman who was trafficked, abused, and kept chained in a shed). What distinguishes this latest episode of law-enforcement harassment is the sheer distance at which it occurred: the authorities who levied the fine are located 2,000 miles from Hunan province, where Guo once filmed; and 2,500 miles from Dali, Yunnan province, where Guo currently lives.

CDT Chinese editors have archived a March 27 essay by WeChat blogger Li Yuchen, titled “The Film Was Shot in Hunan, but Xinjiang Confiscated Cameras and Imposed a 75,000 Yuan Fine.” In it, the author discusses the harsh penalties imposed by Xinjiang authorities on Guo Zhenming, and argues that this will have a chilling effect not only on filmmakers and other creative artists, but on China’s entire creative ecosystem, and on anyone who has ever picked up a camera:

I just read an announcement about an administrative fine levied by the Urumqi Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism.

The announcement said that the individual involved, Guo Zhenming, shot a documentary called "Tedious Days and Nights" in Hunan. Although the director did not obtain official permission to release the film, he submitted the documentary to be screened at the Berlin Film Festival in Germany. Afterwards, Guo traveled to Xinjiang where he shot some footage that was stored on a hard drive but not yet incorporated into a film.

The relevant authorities in Xinjiang reasoned that since Guo had already submitted the film he shot in Hunan to screen at a German film festival, there was reason to believe that the footage he shot in Xinjiang and stored on a hard drive would also be made into a film.

As such, they confiscated his camera and hard drive and slapped him with a fine of 75,000 yuan.

Is this some type of cross-provincial manhunt for filmmakers?

Xinjiang’s Bureau of Radio, Film and Television was of the firm opinion that even though the footage hadn’t been made into a film, let alone been released to the public, the simple fact that the director had previously flouted the rules by allowing a similar film to be screened overseas meant that the footage in this case could be treated as a film.

The sternly worded administrative penalty notice employed the following astonishing logic:

> Although the work filmed by the party concerned is not yet complete, the actors have already been hired and paid, the estimated running time is 60-80 minutes, the finished product will have a 16:9 aspect ratio, and there are plans to submit or screen it at film festivals. This meets the definition of ‘a film.’ Furthermore, said party has submitted similar works to foreign film festivals in the past, which further confirms that his actions were taken with the intent to make a film. Therefore, the work produced by Guo Zhenming should be classified as a film.

If they know the work is incomplete, how can they be so sure it’s actually a film?

Anyone will be able to discern the logical flaw here—that a film shot by Guo Zhenming in Hunan was judged to have violated regulations in Xinjiang.

Reasoning by Extrapolation

In other words, if a director has ever filmed in other provinces, authorities in Xinjiang think they have reasonable cause for suspicion, reasonable grounds to impose a fine.

By that logic, Chinese directors and cinematographers would seem to be caught in an inescapable dilemma: if they have ever participated in any overseas screening, exhibition, or competition, then no matter where they travel or what equipment they use, any footage they shoot will automatically be considered a film, putting them at constant risk of punishment.

Can it really be that for someone holding a film camera, all of China is enemy territory?

Urumqi also issued a harsh and detailed list of the penalties: a fine of 75,000 yuan, and confiscation of the equipment he used for filming—one hard drive, two cameras, one recorder pen, two filters, and a set of lights.

The administrative penalty notice was harshly worded, making it clear that there would be no leniency—as if they had actually nabbed some dangerous fugitive after a nationwide manhunt.

The “Crime” of Filmmaking

Upon closer examination, the legal basis for the punishment can only be described as "specious.” After all, if something is to be considered “a film,” it must be a completed work and be approved for public screening, or at the very least, there must be a clear intention to screen it as a film. But apparently now, simply by filming something in Hunan and screening it in Germany, you can be slapped with a fine by authorities located thousands of miles away, in Xinjiang. The laxity of such “supervision” is appalling—even if someone were to commit some heinous offense in Hunan, or in Germany, what on earth would it have to do with the authorities in Xinjiang?

On a slightly deeper level, we might ask: where exactly do the boundaries of filmmaking lie? What are directors allowed to film, and what are they not allowed to film? If authorities in Xinjiang can punish a director simply because they suspect him of making a film, who else is in danger of being added to the “punishment list”? Today it might be those filming natural scenery; tomorrow, bloggers shooting travel videos; and the day after that, independent content creators documenting their hometown customs.

Underlying this superficially serious (but patently absurd) law-enforcement logic is a deliberate blurring of boundaries, a hyper-vigilant stance against creative freedom, and above all, a self-imposed and never-ending expansion of administrative authority.

Administrative Overreach

Ultimately, once the boundaries of authority become blurred, the "comfort zone" of authority will continue to expand, while individuals and creators subject to the authority of the law will find their freedom increasingly restricted.

Lurking behind such absurd punishment is the phenomenon of dwindling creative freedom. Punishing creators with law-enforcement methods based on "cross-provincial suspicion" not only harms specific individuals, but also damages the entire cultural ecosystem. Because now, when creators raise their cameras, they will hesitate and wonder, "Will doing this cause me to be fined by some faraway province?"

Artistic creation requires an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance. But if authority expands to such a point that it becomes completely arbitrary, how—in such an environment—can we even talk about cultural development or outstanding works of art? Even more ironically, given the current emphasis on "cultural confidence," by punishing filmmakers in this way, authorities are actively stunting artistic creativity. This has prompted many to lament, "Xinjiang didn’t just punish a director; it punished artistic creation itself."

Film a movie in Hunan, and get fined by Xinjiang. It may sound utterly ridiculous, but it belies a serious problem: our ever-shrinking space for artistic freedom. If this nonsense continues, I fear that the next people punished for "illegal filmmaking" will be you, and me, and everyone we know who has ever used a camera or a mobile phone. [Chinese]

The investigation was launched earlier this month, and Belgian authorities last week arrested four people on charges of corruption and being a member of a criminal organisation. A fifth person was charged with money laundering but released after questioning.

Among the arrested suspects is a lobbyist for Huawei who used to work as an assistant in the European parliament. He is suspected of orchestrating the payment of bribes to parliament workers — notably to secure support for a letter several MEPs signed defending the Chinese company’s interests.

[…] The letter, signed by eight EU lawmakers and sent to the European Commission in January 2021, warns about the “politicisation of the deployment of 5G technology” and criticises the ban of foreign 5G devices based out of an “unsubstantiated fear of national security risks”.

[…] Two people familiar with the investigation said the alleged bribes also included offers of Huawei smartphones and tickets to see a match of the local Anderlecht football team. [Source]

According to the investigative judge in charge of the Belgian probe, “A sum of €15,000 [over $16,000 U.S. dollars] was offered to the writer of the 5G letter, while each co-signatory was offered €1,500,” and “suspicious payments” worth tens of thousands of euros were allegedly arranged in exchange for the related services. Huawei said it takes the allegations “seriously” and has a “zero tolerance policy towards corruption or other wrongdoing.” After the corruption case was announced, E.U. institutions expelled Huawei lobbyists from their premises, but some lawmakers expressed concern about loopholes that the lobbyists could use to circumvent the ban, including using a visitor pass or lobbying through umbrella trade associations that continue to represent Huawei. Last week, Politico described Huawei’s extensive record of lobbying within the E.U.:

The company threw lavish parties in glamorous venues featuring fancy buffets and dance performances — like its reception celebrating the Chinese new year at the Concert Noble in Brussels — and was known for thanking contacts with generous gift bags, some including a Huawei phone.

[…] To navigate the geopolitical storm [over security and espionage concerns that spiked after 2019], the firm offered six-figure salaries to former Western journalists and politicians with direct lines to places of power like the Elysée and Westminster.

[…] According to EU transparency register data, Huawei Technologies spent between €2 million and €2.25 million on EU lobbying in 2021, 2022 and 2023 — a lot, but still below its lobbying costs in preceding years, which were estimated at around €3 million in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Huawei in October declared it had 11 full-time EU lobbyists, nine of whom were accredited to access the European Parliament. At its peak it declared 21. [Source]

On Monday, Alexander Fanta and Simon van Dorpe at Dutch investigative news outlet Follow the Money published an article about the scandal, underlining the alleged, long-running role of top Huawei executives:

The bribery allegations, including the amounts allegedly paid to the signatories, correspond to a complaint that the NGO Transparency International EU received in 2022 and forwarded to the EU anti-fraud office OLAF. However, OLAF decided not to open an investigation, stating there was “no sufficient suspicion”.

[…] According to the arrest warrant, the money transfers intended to disguise the bribes “would have been endorsed by the Chinese executives of Huawei, in particular Abraham Liu”, who at the time was the company’s vice-president for the European region and its chief EU representative. The warrant does not state why investigators believe Chinese executives were involved.

[Valerio] Ottati, Huawei’s Belgian-Italian head of public affairs [who is accused of orchestrating the bribery operation], allegedly told a Polish Huawei employee that Brussels lobbyists “often cross the line and even pay for amendments”, according to a wiretap in his Volkswagen Tiguan, referred to in the arrest warrant.

Former Huawei staff members in Brussels told Follow the Money, Knack and Le Soir that Ottati’s problematic behaviour was widely known within the company, but tolerated by higher-ups. Several employees said they had raised concerns about Ottati, including warnings about possible corruption, but that these were never seriously followed up on. [Source]

The current Huawei corruption scandal evokes the 2022 Qatargate corruption scandal, in which European authorities seized 1.5 million euros in cash and arrested four MEPs on corruption charges related to illicit influence by Qatar, Morocco, and Mauritania. (The full investigation is still ongoing.) Politico noted that one of the offices sealed in the Huawei probe belonged to Adam Mouchtar, co-founder of a group that had as its president Eva Kaili, who was arrested in the Qatargate probe. In reaction to the Huawei probe, Nicholas Aiossa, Director at Transparency International EU, said “These new allegations are as sweeping and serious as Qatargate and make a mockery of democracy at the European Parliament. For too long, MEPs have taken a carefree approach to ethics and continue to exist in a culture of impunity. If MEPs want to protect the integrity of the Parliament, they need to bring about swift, wide-ranging, and substantial ethics reform.”

Against the backdrop of the Huawei scandal is a shifting and at times contradictory E.U. policy landscape vis-a-vis China. Last week, The Financial Times reported that the European Commission had begun an investigation into whether China provided unfair subsidies for a BYD electric car plant in Hungary, underscoring the E.U.’s concern with Chinese economic and security threats. But recent data also shows that 17 E.U. member states have not fully implemented the Commission’s 5G cybersecurity toolbox from 2020 that mandates a ban on Huawei and ZTE from their networks. The nationalist tabloid Global Times pounced on these divergences in three recent editorials, arguing that “Europe should dismantle the barriers of suspicion” when it comes to Chinese telecom suppliers and make “a rational choice to turn further toward China.” However, the Global Times has so far made no mention of the Huawei corruption probe. Acknowledging the growing fractures in the transatlantic relationship, a recent article in The Economist suggested that “Europe will have to zip its lips over China’s abuses” in order to safeguard its broader trade goals.

The [China Daily] report cited prosecutors as saying Wu had accepted bribes worth more than 343 million yuan ($47.37 million) between Jun 2006 and Feb 2021 during his years of working in senior positions in TAR, including as the regional party secretary, vice-chairman of the regional government and head of the regional publicity department.

Prosecutors have told the court that Wu had used his positions to secure benefits for others in project contracting and business operations.

[…] China’s party and government anti-corruption watchdogs have said Wu had violated Party disciplines and national laws, harming the region’s development. They have also accused him of failing to implement the Party’s strategy for governing Xizang and interfering with engineering projects for personal gain, the report said, using China’s Sinicized name for Tibet (or TAR).

Wu, who worked as the Party Secretary of TAR from 2016 to 2021, maintained a hardline approach toward Tibetan affairs, aligning closely with Beijing’s policies. His tenure was marked by a strong emphasis on Sinicization, ideological control, and stringent security measures. He prioritized political stability and Sinicization over Tibetan autonomy and cultural preservation. While occasionally speaking of respecting Tibetan customs, his actions were directed at the erosion of Tibetan identity under the guise of integration. [Source]

The U.S. government had imposed sanctions on Wu in 2022 for his policies that “involved serious human rights abuse, including extrajudicial killings, physical abuse, arbitrary arrests, and mass detentions in the TAR. Additional abuses … include forced sterilization, coerced abortion, restrictions on religious and political freedoms, and the torture of prisoners.” Pelbar from RFA Tibetan described how Tibetans reacted to the news of the investigation against Wu when it was announced last June:

The move was praised by Tibetans on Chinese social media in a rare display of public opinion about such measures in China.

“It is very good that this man has been arrested,” said one person. “This is good news for Tibetans,” said another.

“This enemy of the Tibetans has been captured and it will eliminate harm from the Tibetan people,” said a third.

[…] More than 760 comments appeared on a WeChat channel in response to a story about Wu’s investigation, all expressing support for the probe.

But at least one activist predicted the investigation would do nothing to change the plight of Tibetans.

“Despite Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s investigation of Wu Yingjie and other officials as part of the nation’s anti-corruption campaign, there will be no positive impact on Tibet and its related issues,” said Sangay Kyap, a Tibetan rights analyst. [Source]

Other Tibetan officials have also been targeted by anti-corruption probes. In January, the South China Morning Post reported that the the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) placed former Tibet chairman Che Dalha (Qizhala) under investigation for “severe violations of law and Communist Party discipline.” In February, the CCDI announced that it had expelled two Tibetan officials—Qi Jianxin, a former governor, and Jangchup (Jiang Chu), former vice governor, of Dechen (Diqing) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan—for having “seriously violated the Party’s political discipline,” being “disloyal and dishonest to the Party,” and making “illegal gains.”

Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has extended to a wide swath of government and society. In November, Admiral Miao Hua was suspended and placed under investigation, and recently General He Weidong of the Central Military Commission was reportedly detained for unspecified crimes. In February, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong was removed from office in what many believe was a graft-related probe. On Tuesday, the Chinese government announced the launch of “Sky Net 2025,” an operation to “hunt down fugitives, recover illegal proceeds and combat cross-border corruption.” Beyond high-level officials and overseas criminals, petty corruption is another massive target of Xi’s campaign, as Chun Han Wong reported last week for The Wall Street Journal:

Communist Party enforcers are targeting grassroots graft from kickbacks for public contracts to bribes for medical treatment in a renewal of Xi’s popular assault on corrupt “flies” and “ants”—low-level bureaucrats and state workers—whose misconduct affects ordinary citizens.

[…] Party inspectors proceeded to root out what they call “unhealthy tendencies and corruption issues that occur close to the masses.” Authorities punished 530,000 people and sent 16,000 of them to prosecutors for criminal proceedings in 2024. These probes drove up overall disciplinary cases to record levels last year, when the party penalized 889,000 people.

The offenses have included bribery, abuse of power and the misuse of public funds meant for school meals, pensions, medical insurance and rural development. The party also ramped up pressure on bribe-givers, opening investigations against 26,000 people last year for offering payoffs and inducing graft, a 53% increase from the year before. [Source]

Last week at the U.N. Human Rights Council, 28 European states expressed concern about the “dire” human rights situation in Tibet and Xinjiang. Regarding Tibet, this includes “obligatory boarding schooling and the suppression of protests against hydropower projects. We are deeply concerned over reports that Tibetan schools teaching Tibetan language and culture have been shut down and that Chinese authorities have insisted that all students attend state schools where Tibetan is only taught as a stand-alone subject.” The research network Turquoise Roof recently published a report outlining the Chinese government’s strategic plans for Tibet from 2025 to 2049, which reveals a switch in approach from a framework of nominal autonomy to complete assimilation. The following is an excerpt from the report’s executive summary:

• Dismantling cultural transmission to the next generation through boarding schools that split families, centralised to require family separation.
• Economic integration into China’s national infrastructure networks, as [an] essential supplier of industrial raw materials from lithium to water.
• Policies grounded in the Party state narrative that traditional Tibetan lifestyles are ‘backward’ and ‘unproductive’.
• Systematic disempowerment, surveillance, relocation, and control. [Source]

The post translated below—which currently remains online, but is archived at CDT Chinese—argues that the workers’ humiliation was disproportionate to their breach of workplace rules, and that the episode highlights how the powerful and powerless are treated differently when they do something wrong. From WeChat public account Unyielding Bamboo:

I never thought something this crazy could be widely accepted.

The picture above isn’t AI-generated, it’s real—three workers on a construction site, hanging up in a gateway as a “cautionary lesson.” Can you believe it? They’ve actually been hung up there for their own good.

Because they hadn’t been wearing safety harnesses.

As you can see, the camera angle happened to perfectly capture the slogan, at left: “Put people first.” It’s such perfect satire, like some meticulously choreographed performance art, worthy of first place in the end-of-year rankings.

But more than a few people in the comments below it think there’s nothing out of order in hoisting these three up, because this humiliation doesn’t amount to much compared with the risk they’d taken.

This kind of logic is common. I can say with confidence that a fair lot of you readers probably feel similarly. But my point is, this isn’t just a matter of “life and limb,” “safety,” or “dignity”—it’s also about another word, one too often overlooked: “power.”

Who has the right to hang people up—ordinary citizens who’ve broken no law—in a gateway on public display?

In theory, no individual should have this power in a society ruled by law—only the law has that right. Forget hanging them up in harnesses—if they broke the law, they could hang by their necks.

So this gives rise to a basic contradiction: did these three break the law?

No! So no person, entity, or power—the law included—can hang them up on public display. This kind of behavior is an assault not just on their dignity, but on justice itself.

To put it more plainly: hanging people up like this is a form of punishment. Only guilty people should be subject to punishment. What are these three guilty of? They were simply being careless—knowing it was dangerous, but doing it anyway. They didn’t put their own safety first, and for this you’re punishing them.

Are you holding yourself up as a Bodhisattva or saint?

By this reasoning, no one who’s climbed onto a rooftop could ever be talked down again, because as soon as they came down they’d be hung up as a punishment, or fined as a warning not to do it again.

Don’t question it—they’ll just tell you, "It’s for your own good." After all, what’s a little fine compared to the risk of a loss of life?

I wonder whether so many people would be in favor if the workers had been fined 1000 yuan instead of being hung up on display.

> [In the original post, the following comments appear as highlighted screenshots.]
>
> "Personally, I support this. Without safety harnesses, they could have died. This will teach them to take their own safety more seriously."
>
> "Sometimes I think that compared with matters of life and death, all that stuff about ‘personal dignity’ isn’t worth a fart!!!"
>
> "I think this is a great way to handle it. Anyone who’s spent time on a construction site will understand the value of this solution."

I know some people will disagree with what I’ve said here, and will insist that hanging them up as a warning was the best way to handle it.

For those who feel this way, I have one final question: if the cause of the danger was a manager, and not a worker, would you hang that person up?

If there’s a safety-averse worker dangling in a gateway, what about the managers who failed to provide adequate safety oversight? Should we hang them up, too?

We all know there’s “tofu-dregs” construction out there in highways, homes, etc. But no one should forget that these big projects will have involved government "supervisors" from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, safety supervision offices, quality inspection stations, and so on. Even so, even after a building is finished and passes inspection, quality issues emerge, posing hazards to the public. Are you going to hang those leaders up for a bit as a warning?

We all know that could never happen—at most, they’d be removed from office. That’s all they think the risk to your safety is worth.

There are labor contractors who are perfectly aware of safety hazards but look the other way to save money, and managers whose first thought after an accident is about how they can shirk responsibility. The problems with these people are often far more severe than those three workers’, because the lives they put at risk are other people’s, not their own. How often have you seen them hung up as warnings?

Not that they should be, of course. It’s just an example to show that that kind of behavior is about displaying power, not emphasizing safety.

Those three workers found themselves in that predicament purely because they lacked power. So don’t try to tell me it’s for their own good. That supposed logic reminds me of the old expression, "Officials are too high for punishment; commoners are too low for civility." When the powerless do something wrong, it’s their fault. When the powerful do something wrong, it’s generally a "misunderstanding."

Safety shouldn’t be predicated on humiliation, and power shouldn’t become a weapon of humiliation. It was rope that kept them hanging in the gateway—what is it that made them hang their heads? [Chinese]

Zhenhao Zou, 28, was convicted of the attacks between 2019 and 2023 following a monthlong trial at the Inner London Crown Court. He was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offenses relating to one victim.

After more than 19 hours of deliberations, jurors concluded Zou raped three of the women in London and seven in China.

Police have only been able to identify two of the victims and said after the verdict that more than 50 other women may have fallen victim to Zou, which would make him one of the worst sex offenders in U.K. history.

Using hidden or handheld cameras to record the attacks, Zou filmed nine of the attacks as “souvenirs” and often kept a trophy box of women’s belongings.

[…] Zou, who also used the name Pakho online, befriended fellow students of Chinese heritage on WeChat and dating apps, before inviting them for drinks and drugging them at his apartments in London or an unknown location in China. [Source]

The London Metropolitan Police stated that after a woman came forward to report Zou, authorities searched his London flat and found evidence of the crimes on “hundreds of videos stored on his devices.” While British police said that China’s Ministry of Public Security “helped to facilitate one of the brave victim-survivors giving evidence against Zou,” Mary O’Connor and Kris Cheng at the Daily Mail reported that no charges have been brought in China, even though the court determined Zou had raped seven women there. O’Connor and Cheng also wrote that Zou’s father is a wealthy CCP member and director of a state-owned business who owns several homes.

A WeChat public account posted an article about Zou’s conviction just before International Women’s Day, but the article was later censored. On Weibo, users also noted that the news was censored on that platform, as well as to some extent on Xiaohongshu. (By contrast, as another WeChat article highlighted last week, platforms such as Tieba and Weibo appear relatively tolerant of content idolizing Dong Zhimin, the man who was sentenced to nine years in prison for torturing and imprisoning the shackled woman known as Xiaohuamei. Even the Douyin and Bilibili accounts of the All-China Women’s Federation have been targeted with verbal abuse and attacks from extreme misogynists.) One commenter lamented: “I still don’t get how this kind of TV news involved sensitive content. After reading the comments, it looks like his family shelled out big bucks to have it deleted. […] But I like the reporting style in the U.K. The criminal is shown in HD on the big screen, while the victims’ information is extremely protected. Let’s hope they do the same in China one day.”

Censorship surrounding Zou’s conviction echoed the case of Liu Qiangdong, the billionaire founder of JD.com who was accused by Liu Jingyao of raping her when she was a college student in the U.S. in 2018. The civil trial in the American court system ended in 2022 with a settlement, which many viewed as a major step forward in the history of Chinese #MeToo cases. Liu Jingyao’s supporters reported that many of her Chinese social media accounts and posts linked to her case were deleted by censors, while JD.com mounted powerful PR campaigns against her.

Toxic environments both on- and offline underscore the lack of safety for Chinese women in China and the U.K. Some have come together in response, such as the London-based Chinese feminist activist group with the Instagram handle @weareallchainedwomen, which organized a special exhibition for International Women’s Day aimed at fostering transnational solidarity in the face of patriarchal violence. Regarding Zou’s sexual crimes, Aamna Mohdin from The Guardian also described how societal neglect has made it harder for Chinese victims to find justice in the U.K. and elsewhere:

“There is a huge enormous cost to study as a student from China, it’s such an investment. Lots of Chinese families and Asian families put so much into it, so if that is tainted, I can imagine that there’s a lot of shame, not just for yourself but to your wider family and community.”

Sarah Yeh, the chair of SEEAWA, said: “Rape is stigmatised in all east and south-east Asian cultures. It’s often a case of victim-blaming, as it is in the wider UK community as well. Often women don’t really know their rights, especially if they’re coming to a foreign country. So it’s about building awareness and a greater understanding that there is help out there that they can tap into.”

[…] Yeh described this as a wider problem of societal neglect. “I understand that one of the women reported to the police and she didn’t have a good experience because the translator wasn’t good so they brushed off her initial complaint,” she said. “It’s stuff like this we really need to work on at a societal level to make sure that people are included, especially people that are coming into our country that haven’t got the experience and culture and understanding of how our legal system works or what protective systems there are in place for us.” [Source]

A much more popular proposal—to abolish the widely despised 30-day “cooling-off period” for those wishing to divorce—was raised for the fifth straight year by writer and CPPCC National Committee member Jiang Shengnan. Although her idea attracted many supportive comments and articles online, microblogging platform Weibo blocked the hashtag #Jiang Shengnan Proposes Abolishing Divorce “Cooling-off” Period (#蒋胜男建议删除离婚冷静期条款#) soon after it appeared on Weibo’s “hot search” list. Ever since the “cooling-off period” was added to China’s Civil Code in 2020—it went into effect on January 1, 2021—the measure has been criticized by legal experts and laypeople alike for being unnecessary and overly paternalistic, for increasing litigious divorces that overburden the judicial system, for dragging out divorces by allowing either party to unilaterally halt proceedings during the period, and for providing more opportunities for spouses to spar over child custody or manipulate the division of property by fabricating debts or transferring assets. Most chilling of all is the danger it poses to victims of domestic abuse: there have been numerous reports of women killed by their estranged spouses during the mandated waiting period.

Left: The cover of a marriage certificate. Right: The cover of a divorce certificate. (source: WeChat account 法学圈 “Legal Circles”)

A recent WeChat article from legal-affairs blog “Legal Circles” discusses the pitfalls of the divorce cooling-off period, the rising levels of public support for its abolition, and the likelihood that "someday people will look back on it as a terrible joke, a dark blot on China’s legal history":

On May 28, 2020, when the Civil Code was voted into law [by the 13th NPC Standing Committee] by a margin of 99.8%, the divorce “cooling-off” period [stipulated in Article 1077 of the Civil Code] was touted as a "warm-hearted plan to safeguard family stability." A mere five years later, however, the measure is at the eye of a public opinion storm: divorces by mutual consent have fallen by 14.16%, while contested divorces involving litigation have surged by 101%; there are frequent news reports about victims of domestic violence essentially being “trapped in a cage” with their abusers during the cooling-off period; and one local court has a backlog of contested-divorce paperwork that fills three warehouses. How did this institutional experiment, which began with such good intentions, go from being a legislative “bright spot” to a universally reviled abomination?

[…] The case records of a lower-court judge reveal a crueler truth: during the cooling-off period, the number of husbands transferring property [to avoid it being included in the divorce settlement] increased by 57%, and malicious “child snatching” incidents in custody battles increased by 34%. Data from a Beijing law firm show that since the cooling-off period went into effect, the remarriage rate has increased only slightly (by 0.2%), but the demand for prenuptial agreements has soared by 300%. "This isn’t saving marriages, but it’s clearly fueling a ‘divorce arms race,’" said a lawyer who has handled 218 divorce cases.

[…] In July 2023, a shelter for victims of domestic violence in one county received an urgent plea for help: on the 27th day of their divorce cooling-off period, a Mrs. Li had been attacked by her estranged husband with a knife and forced to withdraw her petition for divorce. When she fled her abuser and arrived at the shelter, Mrs. Li carried with her not only a doctor’s certificate describing her wounds, but also the notice of her divorce cooling-off period. “The system has devolved into a kind of ‘countdown timer’ for abusers." Such cases are by no means isolated incidents: statistics from domestic-violence prevention organizations show that since the cooling-off period was introduced, the average length of time that victims of domestic violence are forced to live with their abusers has increased by 22 days, and the rate of resulting injuries has increased by 41%.

[…] But there are signs of a dawning public awakening. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ “2024 Public Opinion Survey on the Institution of Marriage" shows that 68.7% of respondents believe that the cooling-off period "makes divorce more painful,” and 82.4% support giving special exemptions to victims of domestic violence. In an online poll, more than 3.7 million people agreed with the following statement: "The ones who most need a ‘cooling-down period’ to calm down are the lawmakers.” Even scholars who initially supported the legislation have begun to rethink their stance: “Applying a rose-tinted view of a bygone farming era to force reforms to marriage in this internet age is an approach that is doomed to failure.” [Chinese]

CDT Chinese editors have compiled some comments, translated below, from Weibo users overwhelmingly supportive of Jiang’s proposal to abolish the divorce cooling-off period once and for all:

日出深山_10237: Whoever initially suggested the cooling-off period deserves the worst kind of death. I can’t even imagine what kind of logical justifications were made for writing it into law.

爆漿魷魚: Too many people have been irreparably harmed by the divorce cooling-off period.

Fun_YXG: I absolutely support [abolishing it]. Haven’t there already been enough murders during the cooling-off period?

无花果8424: There was so much public opposition to it at the time, but they still enacted it. No sweat, I just won’t get married.

lyastark: The original purpose wasn’t to cut down on rash divorces, but to reduce the divorce rate.

康乃馨的妈妈: On any given day during that 30-day cooling-off period, a lot of women die.

你说我像乌龟电车到处乱飞: I remember this NPC delegate raising the same proposal a few times over the years.

火龙蛰起: Since the cooling-off period took effect, the number of divorces by consent has fallen, but the number of divorces by litigation has skyrocketed, causing no end of hassle.

死于此树下: Everyone thinks it’s totally odious. Both men and women hate it. I wonder what brain-dead idiot came up with it.

做一只肌肉蛙蛙: Without the freedom to divorce, marriage is a trap!

屁事没有本事多: A cooling-off period for divorce violates the principle of freedom of marital choice.

读书无用开卷有益: If a couple regrets divorcing, they can always get remarried, but there’s no bringing back a woman who has been killed.

行者老孙的地盘: Why is it that so many aspects of our daily lives are restricted by overly simplistic methods of governance that force the vast majority of people to pay the price for problems that only apply to a tiny fraction of the population?!

Maryeatinganapple: The divorce cooling-off period has proven to be hugely successful—successful in scaring off even more single people from getting married or having kids.

陆士庭: It needs to be abolished. The divorce cooling-off period hasn’t resulted in a decrease in the divorce rate, but it has brought about three negative consequences:
1. Distrust of marriage has risen among vulnerable groups, which exacerbates the rising divorce rate.
2. Divorces by mutual consent now frequently escalate to contested divorces, which increases the burden on the courts.
3. Violent “crimes of passion” are more likely to occur during the divorce cooling-off period, which undermines social stability.

遇见吴杰臻: [NPC] delegate Jiang Shengnan has proposed abolishing the divorce cooling-off period. I strongly agree with one of her arguments—that it punishes the vast majority of people just because a very small minority of people may decide to divorce rashly. Besides, even if a couple does divorce rashly, there’s still a chance to salvage the relationship, because they can always apply for a new marriage certificate free of charge. So there’s no need to solve the "problem" by imposing a divorce cooling-off period.

指尖上的冬眠: In addition, if a couple who decide to divorce both change their minds during the cooling-off period, they can always withdraw their petition for divorce. But we can’t ignore the wishes of the partner who wants the divorce just because the other partner doesn’t agree. [Chinese]

Muhammed said she and her then husband, Polat, 39, left Korla, the second-largest city in Xinjiang after she was arrested and forced by police to remove her hijab and Polat was banned from attending prayers at a mosque.

While Muhammed, who was pregnant with their second child, and their son made it to Turkey, Polat was arrested and has been detained in Thailand ever since.

“We just wanted a peaceful life where we could raise our children and not be seen as a criminal,” said Muhammed, who shared one of the final exchanges of messages between her now 10-year-old daughter and Polat. Her daughter has never met her father.

[…] “There is no way Polat or his family still living in China would have wanted him to return there. He just wanted to see his children again,” said Muhammed.

[…] “It’s shameful for Thailand to send these people to China, even though the family and whole world knows it is an unsafe place for Uyghurs,” she said. [Source]

The 40 Uyghurs who were deported were among a larger group of hundreds of Uyghurs detained in Thailand in the early 2010s while attempting to flee persecution in Xinjiang. The Thai government deported 109 of them to China in 2015, but 48 remained in Bangkok. This January, the Thai government attempted to deport them to China but appeared to have paused the operation after the asylum seekers went on a hunger strike and drew widespread international concern.

Regarding the timing of last week’s deportation, Eric Olander argued in Monday’s newsletter of the China-Global South Project that “with Washington consumed by Russia, Ukraine, and the situation in the Mideast, [Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn] Shinawatra might have calculated that this was the perfect moment to get rid of a long-running problem in its relationship with China, with only minimal blowback. And if it helps score some easy points with Beijing — now a more important partner than ever, given mounting concerns about U.S. dependability — then that’s even better.” Shinawatra also pledged to deepen ties with China during a meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing in early February, and the Thai government has recently increased cooperation with China in its crackdown on scam centers near the Thailand-Myanmar border. Many comments under a Weibo video showing the Uyghurs escorted off the plane in handcuffs upon their arrival in Kashgar falsely suggested that the Uyghurs had participated in the illegal scam-center operations.

Domestic and global criticism of Thailand was swift. Al Jazeera reported that the Thai human rights group Cross Cultural Foundation said it would pursue legal action to compel officials to testify on the status of the Uyghurs. Phil Robertson, director of the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA) group, said that the deportations “totally destroyed” the “charade” that the current Thai government was different to the previous one “when it comes to transnational repression and cooperating with authoritarian neighbours.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the deportation “in the strongest possible terms” and issued a security alert for American citizens in Thailand. Amnesty International’s China Director Sarah Brooks called the deportation “unimaginably cruel” and added, “The Thai government should have protected these men, but instead it has wilfully exposed them to these grave risks.” Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Thailand blatantly disregarded domestic law and its international obligations by forcibly sending these Uyghurs to China to face persecution. After 11 years of inhumane detention in Thailand’s immigration lockup, these men are now at grave risk of being tortured, forcibly disappeared, and detained for long periods by the Chinese government.” Lee Chung Lun at the International Service for Human Rights described how the move “raised concerns over Thailand’s credibility as a UN Human Rights Council member”:

The latest deportation followed the same troubling pattern and demonstrated Thailand’s continued disregard for its obligations under international law, particularly the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning individuals to countries where they face a credible risk of persecution, torture, or enforced disappearance. As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), Thailand is legally bound to prevent such returns. The deportation also contradicts Thailand’s own Act on Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearances, which codifies non-refoulement into national law, and reflects a worsening trend of transnational repression against dissidents and diaspora communities in Southeast Asia.

[…] It is ludicrous that on the heels of taking its seat as a Human Rights Council member, Thailand chose to ignore compelling UN evidence and instead pointed to Beijing ‘reassurances’ that no harm would be done to the deported Uyghurs. This casts serious doubt at Thailand’s own commitments as a Council member to uphold the ‘highest human rights standards, and its credibility to serve on the Council. [Source]

The U.N.’s role in the affair has been controversial. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk stated on Thursday, “This violates the principle of non-refoulement for which there is a complete prohibition in cases where there is a real risk of torture, ill-treatment, or other irreparable harm upon their return.” The U.N. Refugee Agency claimed after the deportation that it had “repeatedly sought access to the group and assurances from Thai authorities that these individuals, who had expressed a fear of return, would not be deported. No such access was granted, and when contacted for clarification, the Royal Thai Government authorities stated that no decision had been made to deport the group.” However, several activists and researchers criticized the U.N. response, saying that the Refugee Agency acted too late and refused to engage with their concerns. Last year, The New Humanitarian reported on internal documents from the U.N. Refugee Agency which revealed that it rebuffed requests from the Thai government to assist 48 Uyghur asylum seekers held in Thai detention centers. Nyrola Elimä was one of the first researchers to publicly draw attention to this threat of deportation, and she criticized the lack of response to her warnings.

In other news related to Chinese transnational repression, Simon Leplâtre at Le Monde reported that UNESCO, under pressure from its Chinese sponsors, censored Uyghur linguist Abduweli Ayup, who was invited to talk at an event titled “Language Technologies for All” in Paris last week:

[T]he day before his scheduled speech on Tuesday the 24th on the sidelines of the event, the linguist received an email informing him that it had been cancelled. “I asked for an explanation, but they didn’t give me any,” the researcher said. The next day, UNESCO officials claimed there was a “misunderstanding.” According to information from Le Monde, UNESCO officials pressured the organisers to cancel Mr. Ayup’s speech.

[…] According to sources within the organizing committee, the order did indeed come from UNESCO officials, apparently under pressure from China. “They told us that the Chinese were unhappy, especially the private donors, and that as a result it was not possible to hold the presentation that was planned for the next day," said a researcher who was a member of the committee. This was confirmed by a second source within the committee.

Two Chinese companies were among the event’s sponsors, including iFlytek, which specializes in voice recognition. The company, a jewel of artificial intelligence, offers both transcription services to the general public and voice identification to police forces, including in Xinjiang. “I’ve been working on this presentation for two months. [Its cancellation by the organizers] is a deep lack of respect. I don’t understand why China can control an event like this, in France,” said Mr. Ayup. [French]

“China is actively carrying out bilateral and multilateral cooperation with Thailand, Myanmar and other countries to severely crack down on cross-border online gambling and fraud crimes,” the spokesperson’s office of the Chinese foreign ministry told The New York Times in a statement Thursday. “At present, many online gambling and fraud dens have been eradicated overseas, and a large number of suspects have been arrested.”

But such self-congratulation is premature, according to interviews with about two dozen people, some who have worked or are currently working in the scam centers and others who serve in national and militia bureaucracies that aid or profit from the cyberfraud industry.

Thousands of individuals who were supposedly rescued from the scam warehouses this month are still stranded between the hell of forced labor in Myanmar and the promise of freedom in Thailand. Tens of thousands more remain imprisoned in the fraud factories.

[…] And none of the major players orchestrating this international criminal network, which spans dozens of countries and operates with a Chinese nerve center, have been taken down in the current campaign. The arrest in 2022 of a Chinese-born kingpin, who is now in a Thai prison fighting extradition to China, did not slow construction in the scam towns he is accused of having run. [Source]

The Chinese government has scheduled over a dozen airlifts to ferry home over 1,000 Chinese citizens who worked in Burmese scam centers. These expedited repatriation efforts have created friction with Thailand, as China’s assistant minister for public security Liu Zhongyi “apologised for causing any misunderstanding among Thais that he might seem like he has intruded on Thai sovereignty.” However, overall rescue and repatriation efforts have been slow. The Thai government fears that without more resources to properly differentiate victims from criminals, it may be forced to house thousands of scam workers from Myanmar indefinitely. Some African countries also refuse to fly their citizens home unless someone else pays. And coordination between various government agencies has proven difficult, particularly since some senior police and immigration officers have allegedly been involved in the scam operations, as the BBC reported. Some Chinese officials are also alleged to have played a significant role in secretly supporting the criminal networks that run scam operations in Myanmar.

The recent crackdown may signal a change in China’s approach to these regional security issues. Earlier this month, Liu Zhongyi traveled to Myawaddy to meet with rescued scam workers ahead of their repatriation. Jason Tower, the Myanmar country director at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said last week, “I think we are seeing some pretty big shifts. For a Chinese police official to be down in the Thai-Myanmar border area, actually walking across the border and going in to assess the scam centers is something that’s unprecedented. […] This high-level of action is quite new.” CGTN quoted Liu Ningning from China’s Ministry of Public Security asserting that the Chinese-led multilateral mechanism will “spare no effort to rescue trapped people, arrest the financial backbone of the telecom fraud group, and resolutely eliminate the Myawaddy scam centers." Laura Zhou from the South China Morning Post framed these efforts as part of China’s growing focus on “police diplomacy” to protect its citizens overseas and expand its influence:

Li Zhiyong, an international relations professor with the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said: “As China’s overseas economic influence expands around the world, there is a stronger need to project China’s overseas interest, as well as the safety of Chinese nationals abroad.

“In cases such as the telecoms scams, it usually involves not just technical cooperation between the police forces but also coordination at foreign policy levels because of the complexity and the huge interest behind [it], so I think this is a trend.”

Considered a niche area of traditional foreign policy, policing diplomacy empowers law enforcement representatives with diplomatic functions. They work to share intelligence, resolve conflicts and foster security and stability.

[…] Meanwhile, Chinese police officers have been deployed to [Chinese] embassies in at least 48 countries, where they work with local law enforcement authorities in tackling crimes involving or targeted at Chinese nationals “to better protect the personal safety and rightful interest of the Chinese citizens and companies”, according to China’s public security ministry in 2023.

[…] Chinese police forces have also carried out joint patrols with their counterparts from Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. [Source]

The Chinese government’s evolving stance can also be gleaned from its judicial treatment of repatriated scam workers. Their arrival in China appeared choreographed dramatically for state media: each returnee was handcuffed, dressed in numbered jumpsuits, flanked by two police officers, and lined up for a photo op. AFP noted that the Chinese government and state media described them all as “suspects,” even though many workers say they were tricked into traveling to Thailand or Myanmar and later forced to work against their will. One report from Beijing Youth Daily profiled a now-repatriated middle-aged Chinese man who was tortured in the scam centers and said he is collecting evidence online in order to sue those responsible for imprisoning and torturing him. Last week, a court in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province concluded a six-day trial against 23 members of a Chinese crime family accused of colluding with scammers in Myanmar and charged with murder, fraud, and extortion. Ding Rui from Sixth Tone reported that on Monday China’s top court highlighted several cases in which it chose severe punishments for leaders of cross-border scam operations:

One of the most significant cases the court highlighted involved three defendants, surnamed Huang, Li, and Zhou, who ran a telecom fraud ring in Cambodia. Between September 2020 and late 2021, they swindled over 100 people out of more than 100 million yuan ($14 million).

t[…] Given the significant financial and emotional harm caused, a local court sentenced the three key defendants to life in prison, confiscated their assets, and stripped them of all political rights.

[…] In a far larger operation, the court detailed a transnational case involving a defendant surnamed Yu, who led a fraud network of over 300 people operating in Cambodia and the Philippines since 2018. His group ran online lottery scams that defrauded 111 individuals of nearly 60 million yuan by March 2020.

The scheme also relied on deceptive job postings and other methods to recruit 106 Chinese nationals into conducting fraud. Given Yu’s central role in the crimes, as well as his targeting of vulnerable groups such as the elderly and students, he was sentenced to life in prison. [Source]

Earlier this month, Sue-Lin Wong released a new podcast series for The Economist called “Scam Inc,” which investigates the global scam industry. Episode Four focuses on the role of Chinese syndicates in Asia’s scam centers. Expanding on this topic in a recent interview with The Wire China, Wong described how political-economic dynamics in China played an important role in the evolution of the global scam industry:

I guess there’s always been a lot of scams in China. But there are a couple of important factors in why China became such fertile ground. One was that online payments took off much more quickly in China than they did in the rest of the world.

There was also a class of criminals who originally were mostly focused on helping wealthy Chinese people launder their money through Macau’s casinos, the so-called junket business. Macau, which is five times the size of Las Vegas in terms of its gambling industry, was a hotbed of all kinds of criminal activity — until Xi Jinping came to power and launched his signature anti-corruption campaign across the country, including in Macau.

At that point these criminals had to pivot. They first went to the Philippines, and then to Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, and other parts of Southeast Asia. There they set up online casinos to target the mainland Chinese market. But they realized that the backend technology for running an online casino isn’t that different from what’s needed for committing online fraud. And so they diversified. Groups that would previously have been in businesses such as drugs, prostitution, and gambling realized there was a fourth potential business line, and that they could pivot to online fraud.

That business was mostly focused on Chinese victims until Covid. That was really a turning point because it became harder for Chinese low-level scammers, or mid-level bosses, to get to places in Southeast Asia once China shut its borders. And so the criminal syndicates started kidnapping English speakers and trying to scam people around the world. That period was also when the Chinese Communist Party had really begun its crackdown on online scams inside China — there’s a whole genre of movies and TV shows and songs that became part of this anti-fraud push in China. It became harder to scam mainland Chinese, and it became harder for the criminal syndicates to lure Chinese workers to Southeast Asia. [Source]