Western elites have willingly normalized the CCP’s concentration camps, secret police, religious persecution, censorship.
On 16 October 2022, Xi Jinping secured his status as Dictator for Life during the CCP’s 20th National Congress. In a two-hour speech, Xi firmly stated that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will “take all measures necessary against interference by outside forces” on the issue of Taiwan, and “in the face of turbulent developments in Hong Kong, the central government exercised its overall jurisdiction over the special administrative region as prescribed by China’s Constitution and the basic law of the Hong Kong special administrative region” and that Hong Kong is now governed by “patriots” after the “order” was restored in the region.
In 2019, the people of Hong Kong waged a heroic six-month battle against the CCP. This battle was crushed in 2020 when the CCP imposed a National Security Law that eviscerated the rule of law in the world’s third largest capital market, once a citadel of liberty and a sanctuary for refugees escaping the CCP’s totalitarian police state. Western media has conveniently buried the story of the CCP’s annihilation of Hong Kong, as Hong Kong democrats are thrown into prison and put on trial for defending the rule of law, freedom of speech and the right to assembly.
In May 2022, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, CCP stooge John Lee arrested protest leaders Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Claudia Mo, Denise Ho, Margaret Ng, Grandma Wong, and more than 10,000 Hong Kong citizens, for such crimes of “endangering state security”, “organizing and participating in an unauthorized assembly”, “conspiring to print, publish, sell, offer for sale, distribute, display and/or reproduce seditious publications.”
On 11 May 2022, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the 90-year-old bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, the most senior Chinese hierarch ever arrested by the CCP, was thrown in jail for “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.” In September 2022, Cardinal Zen was put on trial for managing the “612 Humanitarian Relief Fund”, a trust that paid legal and medical fees of protesters arrested during the 2019 pro-democracy, anti-CCP protests. Cardinal Zen pleaded not guilty, and on 17 October 2022, he was seen ushered into court, with his long walking stick.
What is most shocking about the arrest and trial of Cardinal Zen is the deafening silence from the Vatican. Pope Francis has refused to defend Cardinal Zen, stating that the cardinal “says what he feels” and freedom has “limitations.” Pope Francis has also been dead silent about the CCP’s Uyghur genocide and the CCP’s persecution of Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and Falun Gong adherents. Pope Francis has made clear which side he is on; in 2018, the Vatican heralded a “historic” agreement with the CCP, finalized in September 2022, which putatively allows the Vatican to collaborate with the CCP on the appointment of bishops. In 2018, CCP dictator Xi Jinping ushered in a new era of religious repression, termed “Sinicization”, wherein Chinese Catholics are forced to join the CCP’s “Patriotic Catholic Church” and submit to a pledge of “independence” from foreign powers. Chinese bishops are surveilled, subject to CCP indoctrination and required to include “Xi Jinping Thought” in their sermons. The Vatican has dismissed the CCP’s assault on people of faith, insisting that its goals in the agreement are “limited and achievable.”
In 2020, Cardinal Zen said that Pope Francis was not familiar with “communists in power…I try to explain, remembering that Pope Francis comes from South America, where the communists are the good guys defending the poor from the oppression of military regimes in collusion with the rich, so he may have sympathy for them. He doesn’t have direct experience of communists in power, oppressors of peoples.”
It is painfully apparent that the West’s strategy of “constructive engagement” with Communist China has not produced the promised outcome of political reform. Western elites have willingly normalized the CCP’s concentration camps, secret police, religious persecution, censorship, assured that Coca Cola and the Internet will eventually conjure democracy in the world’s largest totalitarian dictatorship. Doug Schoen, author of “The End of Democracy” notes: “In hindsight, this assumption was incredibly naïve.”
In June 2019, the US-China Committee of 100 sent an open letter to the White House and the US Congress with the headline, “China is not an enemy”, writing: “Although we are very troubled by Beijing’s recent behavior, which requires a strong response, we also believe that many US actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations.” That’s a novel spin, when US companies are pushing hard to invest $500 billion of US government pensions funds in Hikvision, a Chinese military company. It would not be incorrect to say that this is treasonous.
So, what do the signatories from the Committee of 100—many of them retired diplomats, senators, governors—have to say about the trial of Cardinal Zen and the death of Hong Kong? So far, nothing that’s made it to Twitter.
Do the holy men in the Vatican and the diplomats and titans of the Committee of 100 think that playing nice with the CCP will end well? Are they not concerned that the CCP has operational police stations in dozens of western cities—there’s a new one in New York City that is considerably larger than the local precinct. Xi Jinping’s coronation speech made clear his quest for global domination—these men of privilege and power in western capitals ignore the plight of Hong Kong at their own peril.
Maura Moynihan is a New York based journalist and author, specialising in the Chinese Communist occupation of Tibet. Her website is: mauramoynihan.net.