You have been Deleted — How the Chinese Communist Party Erases its critics …
This article is a follow-up to my first article on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which covered the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and Thailand, as well as the visible criticisms of the CCP during the 2019 / 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and the general treatment of dissidents in China and also those living abroad. And it’s this last aspect of which I’ve been planning to expand upon over the past few months, collecting and collating sources of information as they become available online.
When the Beijing government enacted the now notorious national security law in the aftermath of the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, many observers outside of China watched with keen interest as the CCP used its new powers in previously democratic Hong Kong to detain, charge and imprison its critics. High profile dissidents jailed include Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow. These young, defiant pro-democracy activists survived the so called Umbrella Movement of 2014, but seemingly have felt the full weight of the security law in recent years. At the time of writing, Joshua Wong is still in prison, whereas Agnes Chow has now been released after serving six months in jail in Hong Kong.
In parallel large numbers of pro-democracy politicians have either been banned from running for local or national government, or imprisoned on charges of ‘secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign organisations’. In one interesting development in November, all of Hong Kong’s remaining pro-democracy politicians resigned en mass in protest against the removal of four of their colleagues by the Beijing government.
But this article isn’t so much about dissidents within China itself, although their treatment is very important. I want to look at how Beijing deals with criticism from outside of China, from outside of the so called ‘Great Firewall’. And the first example I want to highlight is the treatment of German international footballer Mesut Özil. In 2019 Özil, who is a Muslim, publicly criticised the CCP over the treatment of the Uyghur population in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. In response, Özil was removed from the Chinese versions of the popular Pro Evolution Soccer computer game series. Furthermore, Beijing was so angry that the subsequent Arsenal versus Manchester City match was not screened by Chinese state television broadcaster, CCTV. In a sense, Özil was effectively deleted in the eyes of an angered Chinese Communist Party.
More recently, multinational companies started to join the chorus of criticisms of the Uyghur ‘internment’ or ‘re-education’ camps in Xinjiang. In March 2021, the global fashion retailer H&M publically took a stance against the mistreatment, mass incarceration and forced labour of the Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang by boycotting Xinjiang cotton. In response, H&M products were removed from online retailers in China and even some physical stores were shuttered and closed.
And, of course, it is very difficult to talk about criticism of the Chinese Communist Party without including the systematic targeting of Hong Kong based newspaper Apple Daily. Apple Daily’s founder and CEO, Jimmy Lai, has been a fierce critic of the CCP and was re-arrested in December 2020 — he is currently serving a fourteen month prison sentence for his political activism. Whilst in prison, the Chinese Communist Party froze Apple Daily’s assets and effectively forced the business to close and cease publication in June 2021. This has certainly sent a message to those in Hong Kong that any kind of independent journalism, especially anything critical of the Beijing government, will not be tolerated.
So why publish this article now? Well, it seems like the CCP is happy to utilise its arsenal of censorship tools to silence not only Chinese dissidents, but also those who fall foul of popular culture in China. As recently as August, Canadian-Chinese pop-star Kris Wu had his music removed from streaming platforms and his social media accounts deleted after being exposed as a sexual predator. And Vice News have recently reported that the CCP is trying to permanently ban unsavoury social media accounts, requiring ID checks when opening new ones. As one anonymous Internet user said after his Weibo account was blocked, ‘I feel like one part of me was killed’. And that is the point here — as we spend more and more of our time online, access to online services is becoming a human rights issue. So once again we are seeing how a rising superpower, in the form of China, and under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, is continuing to usher in an Orwellian era of mass surveillance, censorship and a zero tolerance of dissent. As any scholar of leadership knows, great leaders listen to their critics and respect their input in political and philosophical debates, and we can only hope that Chinese leadership evolves over time as the CCP gains ever more influence around the world …
