Tag: China

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education and schooling international affairs

Subsidizing Chinese Attacks on American Ideals

Should the federal government fund organizations working at the behest of China and the Chinese Communist Party?

Democrats on the House Education and Labor Committee have blocked an amendment sponsored by Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) that, in her words, would have banned funding of academic institutions “if they have a partnership with any entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the government of the People’s Republic of China or organized under the laws of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The entities being referred to are so-called Confucius Institutes, which, in addition to promoting innocuous educational goals, help spread the propaganda of the misnamed CCP. (The Chinese Communist Party should really now be called the Chinazi Party. Post-Mao, the Chinese have stopped trying to communize everything and now permit markets to function to a significant extent — but, as in the fascist Nazi version of totalitarianism, always subject to sweeping interference and oppression.)

The current number of active Confucius Institutes in the U.S. is uncertain, but the National Association of Scholars counts at least 55, including 48 at colleges and universities.

Meanwhile, as part of a freeze on regulations issued toward the end of the Trump administration, President Biden has withdrawn a proposed rule that would have required schools to reveal any ties to Confucius Institutes.

Is it a bad idea to find out which schools are facilitating Chinazi propaganda? 

Is it a good idea to directly or indirectly fund Chinazi propaganda? 

No and no.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Should Oppressors Host the Olympics?

Olympics, China

China is scheduled to host the Winter Olympics in 2022. Should it be allowed to? If allowed, should anybody go?

Cato scholar Ilya Somin argues, at Reason, for at least boycotting the event.

Why? To respond to the Chinese government’s “many egregious atrocities, including its detention of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in concentration camps, brutal repression in Hong Kong, and much else.”

China is one of the worst violators of human rights in the world. So why let the Olympics serve as a “propaganda showcase” for the regime?

The ideal of an Olympic Games unencumbered by politics is untenable. You can’t keep the games free of politics when tyrant-hosts routinely exploit the event for political purposes while appeasers turn a blind eye.

A globally publicized boycott would make the work of the appeasers much harder.

Somin goes further, however. He argues that the International Olympic Committee should permanently prohibit oppressive governments from hosting the Olympics.

If this policy were enacted, there would be heated debates about whether Country Y or Country Z belong to the same ban-worthy category as China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.

Maybe we could use Cato’s Human Freedom Index as a guide to oppression.

How brutal is too brutal? Let’s talk, because without open argument, any decision or policy will be arbitrary and useless.

And I welcome those debates about borderline cases, just as long as the most blatantly brutal regimes can never again host the Olympics and exploit them to advance their vicious agendas.

Until then: Boycott the 2022 games in China.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The China Syndrome

China, flag, blood, red

Is the Chinese government under Xi Jinping becoming as murderously totalitarian as it was in the time of Mao?

Since Mao was responsible for the slaughter of tens of millions, today’s China is not, at least yet, Maoist bad. But as Doug Bandow reports in a recent overview (“China’s Terrifying Return to Maoism”), it is indeed awful.

The scuttling of presidential term limits is the merest tip of a titanic iceberg of tyranny. 

Beneath the surface is China’s intensified repression of the Uyghurs, Tibet, and Hong Kong; prolific use of torture; a rise in coerced televised confessions; increased censorship and detaining of foreign journalists; massive expansion of the surveillance state with the help of technology firms like Huawei; and new crackdowns on practices of religion.

A few years ago, churches in many provinces of China could carry on without interference as long as they steered clear of politics. Hardly a minor restriction. But today, writes Bandow, “ministers are arrested, churches are closed or destroyed, members are barred from bringing their children and forced to display communist agitprop, and the [Chinese Communist Party] even wants to rewrite Scripture. Islam, Buddhism, and Daoism are also under sustained attack.”

Bandow bases his observations in part on a Human Rights Commission report just published by the UK Conservative Party.

Too often, journalists, politicians and others ignore or whitewash what the Chinese regime is doing at home and abroad. Whatever our policies toward China should be, they should be based on eyes-wide-open reality.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Continuity Against the Chinazis?

Taiwan, China

With Joe Biden now in the White House, will the U.S. continue former President Trump’s hardline toward China?

Especially regarding Taiwan, regularly threatened with invasion by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Or will President Joe Biden — dubbed “Beijing Biden” by some Trump supporters during the campaign — return to the softer approach of previous administrations toward the Chinazis?*

Mr. Trump “approved weapons sales to Taiwan totaling more than $15 billion,” reported The Washington Post last October, “including coveted F-16 jets that frustrated Taiwanese hawks say Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush withheld.”

In that same article, a Taiwanese foreign policy scholar voiced alarm that Biden’s advisors, including Antony Blinken, now Biden’s pick to be Secretary of State, “still view Taiwan as a problem that needs to be handled within the greater U.S.-China relationship. . . . The lack of deeper understanding on the issue of Taiwan . . . is something that causes a lot of concern here.”

When then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the removal of all “self-imposed restrictions” on contact between the U.S. and Taiwanese governments, weeks ago, a Washington Post headline declared: “Trump upsets decades of U.S. policy on Taiwan, leaving thorny questions for Biden.” 

Perhaps not so prickly, however: Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. was soon invited to Biden’s inauguration . . . the first official invitation since the 1979 severing of diplomatic ties.

Not only that, “President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China,” Secretary of State nominee Blinken told The Epoch Times. 

“Nuclear-capable Chinese bombers and fighter jets,” Reuters informed on Saturday, “entered the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s air defence identification zone.”

Unified, bi-partisan opposition to the genocidal ‘Butchers of Beijing’ remains more critical than ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The term “Chinazi” springs from 2019 Hong Kong protesters. It seems the most accurate label for the totalitarian state inflicted on the Chinese people for the last 70 years by the Chinese Communist Party, especially in more recent times.

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Slow on Subjugation

Hong Kong, China, flag

Latest: China opposes democracy!

When Great Britain turned Hong Kong over to China in 1997, the half-capitalist, ninety-nine-percent-totalitarian mainland government promised, scout’s honor, to preserve “one country, two systems” for 50 years. Hong Kong was to be mostly autonomous.

Almost immediately, China began interfering in Hong Kong’s democracy with the help of puppet officials on the island. 

In 2003, China tried to impose a “national security law” to squelch the Hong-Kong-system part of the two systems. Criticism of the Chinese government would be treated as sedition. Five hundred thousand Hong Kongers marched in protest. Not wanting to send bombs and tanks, China retreated.

Hong Kongers blunted other assaults in 2012, 2014, and 2016.

But this last year, with the help of pandemic-rationalized restrictions on civic life, China has been making great leaps forward with its agenda. Recently, it detained 53 Hong Kongers for the terrible crime oftrying to run candidates in local elections.

Observing this, Victoria Hui, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, has reached an insight. 

“This is a total sweep of all opposition leaders,” she says. Why, if it is judged “subversion” just to run for office in Hong Kong, then the true purpose of the new security law is “the total subjugation of Hong Kong people.”

This goal has been blatant at least since 2003; longer, to anyone who knows China’s history. Sounds like Ms. Hui is only now catching on. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs scandal

Two Conspiracies Unearthed

night, mystery

Two huge stories broke this week.

The first is that the “People’s Republic” of China guided American policy for decades using “old friends” who had “penetrated the highest levels of the U.S. government and financial institutions before the Trump administration.” 

Bill Gerz, writing in The Washington Times, reported that “Di Dongsheng, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, also suggested in a Nov. 28 speech that China’s Communist Party helped Hunter Biden, a son of presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden, obtain Chinese business deals.” 

These remarks were posted as a video on the professor’s Weibo account (think “Chinese Facebook”). Though quickly removed, copies went viral.

The second story? “Did Donald Trump Nearly Confirm Existence of Aliens? Israeli Ex-Space Chief Makes Bizarre Claim,” by Jeffrey Martin, writing at Newsweek. “Professor Haim Eshed, who served as the head of Israel’s space program from 1981 to 2010 spoke to the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Sunday. On Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post published some of Eshed’s quotes in English and they contained the most incredible claims made about Trump, who has long [been] the center of conspiracy theories—some of which he has actively encouraged.”

Eshed claims that both the U.S. and Israel have had contact with extraterrestrial civilizations (a “Galactic Federation,” no less) and that President Trump was about to go full-on Full Disclosure but — somehow — the aliens stopped him.

Quite a yarn, not unfamiliar to science fiction readers and moviegoers. But note: quite a few de-classified Pentagon, FBI and CIA documents suggest something very much like this. And in the last few years we’ve covered the U.S. Government’s trickling admissions that the UFO phenomenon is not all fakery, but real and odd.

Both stories hail from professors with close ties to foreign governments. Both point to actual conspiracies. Both present “epistemic” problems for us: they are neither easily proved or disproved.

Both, also, are too eerily plausible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Good Relations with Genocide?

Joe Biden, China, communism, human rights

“Beijing is trying to convince the incoming Biden administration that the U.S.-China relationship can be smooth and positive,” writes Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, “but only if Washington dumps the Trump administration’s policies, ignores China’s worst behaviors and pretends everything is fine.”

It is more than a little scary because “pretending” is one of the political establishment’s greatest skill-sets. Plus, the columnist reminds that “calls for the Biden administration to reverse course are coming not only from China but also from . . . former secretary of state Henry Kissinger” and a “range of interest groups.”  

But “yielding to China’s demands,” Rogin warns President-Elect Biden, “would be going against a majority of Americans in both parties and breaking Biden’s campaign promises to stand up to [Chinese leader] Xi.”

Consider “Beijing’s naked economic extortion of Australia,” argues Rogin. “If Biden intends to repair alliances, he should realize that allies like Australia want support for resistance to China’s bullying.”

So, what does China want?

“A Chinese official gave the Sydney Morning Herald a list of the conditions it expects in return for lifting harsh sanctions on Australia’s agricultural and mineral export industries,” Rogin explains. “. . . Australia must stop exposing Chinese Communist Party influence efforts on its soil; shut up about Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Uighurs; open its doors to Chinese tech companies; and quit calling for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Rogin notes “concern in Asia” about whether Mr. Biden will return to the Obama Administration’s weak stance on China, which “would allow serious problems to fester, raising the long-term risk of just the kind of serious conflict both countries would like to avoid.”

How “good” should our relations be with nations engaged in genocide, such as China?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

The NBA’s China Syndrome

Mark Cuban, China, NBA

“I’m against human rights violations around the world,” declared Mark Cuban, owner of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Dallas Mavericks, joining Megyn Kelly for her Apple podcast.

“Including the ones in China?” Kelly posed ever-so impolitely.

“China is not the only country with human rights violations,” Cuban prevaricated. Adding that, “Any human rights violations anywhere are wrong.”

Then Kelly dropped the bombshell: “Why would the NBA take $500 million dollars-plus from a country that is engaging in ethnic cleansing?”

“So basically,” the NBA owner fumed, “you’re saying nobody should do business with China ever?”

Perhaps not entertaining Chinazis is the right course — especially if doing so leads to kowtowing to Chinese government demands that their genocide be met with your well-compensated silence.

“They are a customer of ours . . .” he continued. “I’m okay with doing business with China. And so we have to pick our battles. I wish we could solve all the world’s problems. But we can’t.”

In addition to the PR problems brought by cuddling up to China, Kelly also asked whether prominently placing “Black Lives Matter” on the league’s courts had contributed to an “unprecedented viewership collapse” for the just-finished NBA Finals. 

“Each game has broken another all-time low,” wrote Bobby Burack for Outkick.com. “With a marquee match-up between the Lakers and the Heat and the league’s biggest draw in LeBron James, a drop of almost 60% is inexcusable.”

“Your audience is fleeing,” Kelly noted. “They object to the politicization of their game.”

Cuban demurred, but as Election Day approaches, I bet it has occurred to him more than once that Americans have already used their television remotes to cast some powerful votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Culture of Genocide

Stapleton Roy, former U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong,

“Let’s be careful with our language,” advises Stapleton Roy, former U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China. 

Very careful. Totally careful. Totalitarian-ly careful.

Speaking to students earlier this month in a Zoom meeting as part of Pomona University’s Model United Nations, Roy took issue with Hong Kong students and protesters for “provoking mainland intervention,” arguing the millions who marched for basic democracy “went too far” and should have used more “self-restraint.”

The U.S. foreign affairs veteran even decries the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which he also concludes “set back the cause of reform in China for decades.”

And here I was thinking that the massacre of an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 unarmed Chinese civilians by the People’s Liberation Army is what detoured that noble cause.

“China has come under criticism from U.S. officials following revelations of mass forced sterilization of Uyghur women, as well as the internment of over one million Uyghurs in camps where detainees are forced to learn Communist Party ideology. Reports of torture, rape, and other abuses have emerged from these camps,” writes National Review’s Zachary Evans.

“Genocide is generally used to refer to the extermination of a people or nation,” Ambassador Roy explains. “Genocide is not taking place in Xinjiang.” 

Yet according to the United Nations, the Chinese Communist Party’s manner of oppression does constitute “genocide.” 

“More accurately,” even Roy acknowledges, “there is what can be called ‘cultural genocide.’”*

That is merely the extermination of a people’s customs, religion, ethnicity and, imperatively, their freedom . . . but kindheartedly not murdering all of them. 

Okay, Mr. Ambassador, let’s choose our terms precisely. Protesters in Hong Kong have a word for the Beijing government: “ChiNazis.” 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* What a coincidence! “China seized control over Tibet in 1950 in what it describes as a ‘peaceful liberation’ that helped the remote Himalayan region throw off its ‘feudalist’ past,” notes a recent Al Jazeera report. “But critics, led by exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, say Beijing’s rule amounts to ‘cultural genocide.’”

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Disney’s Mickey Mouse Boycott Policies

Disney, China, Mulan, Uyghur Muslims

The state of Georgia and the country of China differ. The policies of one are much worse than those of the other.

Thus, the Walt Disney Company seriously mulled refusing to do business in Georgia but was eager to film in China, near internment camps used to imprison Uyghur Muslims.

Last year, Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger threatened to suspend Disney’s film work in Georgia if the state’s new restriction on abortion went into effect. The law would have prohibited abortion when a heartbeat could be detected in the fetus. Before the law was struck down, Iger said that Disney would likely leave Georgia if it survived challenge, because “many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes….”

Journalists and others have been excluded from the Xinjiang region. But satellite images and the accounts of victims and witnesses provide evidence that perhaps two million Uyghurs and others have been imprisoned in the camps there, where many have died. Others have been forcibly sterilized.

In addition to getting permission to film in Xinjiang for its new movie “Mulan,” a few years back Disney got the go-ahead to open a Disneyland in Shanghai.

In the film, Disney expressly thanks a propaganda arm of the CCP, the “publicity department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy Region Committee.” 

Disney’s conduct seems reprehensible. 

But let’s remember: the government of China is not exactly the government of Georgia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. In previous episodes of Common Sense with Paul Jacob, the people here identified as “Uyghur” — following the spelling used by Disney — were spelled as “Uighur.”

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