Communist China, With New Law, Asserts Right To Enforce ‘Ethnic Unity’ Worldwide

On Wednesday, Communist China is launching its Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law to enforce a “shared” national identity. With the legislation, Beijing is reaching beyond its borders to target people who threaten its monolithic, one-party state.Article 63 of the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law holds individuals and organizations accountable for anything Beijing judges to be “illegal acts.” These include anything that threatens “ethnic unity and progress” or that promotes “violent terrorist activities, ethnic separatist activities, or religious extremist activities.”Expect those definitions to be stretched to the limit. Advocates for the 55 minority groups recognized by Beijing — or for the human rights of the Han Chinese majority — will come under threat of prosecution for the kind of dissent that’s routine in free nations.In a statement last year, Human Rights Watch said Beijing’s law could “facilitate intensifying ideological controls.” They warned it could “target ethnic and religious minorities” through such methods as “erasing minority language rights” in favor of the mandated official tongue, Mandarin.Although rendered as a single country on most maps, Communist China has gobbled up neighboring territories since its modern founding. The most well-known of these is Tibet, which has fought to regain its independence since being devoured in 1950.Communist China consumed other territories including Yunnan, South Mongolia, Ladakh, and Manchuria. The self-governed island of Taiwan, base of the Republic of China, is next on the menu, with Beijing considering it a province although it was never ruled by the communist regime.Advocates for Tibet and Free China will now be subject to prosecution. East Turkestan, conquered in October 1949, is also proving hard to digest. Beijing calls it the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The name is “Orwellian Newspeak,” as this columnist wrote for The New York Sun in March 2023 of the genocide there.At that time, two of the 11.3 million Uyghurs under Beijing’s occupation, Gulbahar Haitwaji and Qelbinur Sidik, testified to the House Select Committee on China. The women described physical torture, constant surveillance, and mental indoctrination aimed at erasing their Muslim faith.The police, Ms. Haitwaji said, “told me that whatever I have witnessed in the concentration camp, I should not talk about; if I do, they said they would retaliate against my family members back home.” Now Beijing’s regime is claiming jurisdiction over dissidents like her anywhere on the planet.Communist China has been aggressive in extending its tentacles into other nations. Its secret police stations, bringing the apparatus of repression to people who thought they’d escaped it, have been exposed across North America from New York City to San Francisco and Houston.“It is simply outrageous,” an assistant director of the FBI counterintelligence division, Kurt Ronnow, said in April 2023, “that China’s Ministry of Public Security thinks it can get away with establishing a secret, illegal police station on U.S. soil to aid its efforts to export repression and subvert our rule of law.”The Australian government objected to Communist China’s new law with Beijing and the United Nations Human Rights Council. All Australians, the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement, are “protected by Australian law and enjoy Australian political freedoms.”The Australia Tibet Council called the new law “a significant escalation of policies that seek to erase Tibetan identity.” They warned it could “target people and organizations outside China, raising serious concerns about transnational repression and the safety of Tibetan-Australians.”Beijing’s vice justice minister, Hu Weilie, called the legislation “legitimate,” “lawful,” and “necessary.” He asserted that Article 63 had been “distorted and misinterpreted,” saying it “is based on China’s national conditions, conforms to legal principles, and is consistent with international practice.”Countries, Mr. Weilie said, “all have the right to prevent separatist and destructive activities, and to maintain social solidarity and normal order, through domestic legislation.” The blizzard of words didn’t obscure the attempt to criminalize dissent far beyond Communist China itself.The Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law aims to saddle every human on earth with Beijing’s speech and thought controls. Free nations have an obligation to oppose it, making clear to the Chinese Communist Party that their police state’s powers end at their borders.

Communist China, With New Law, Asserts Right To Enforce ‘Ethnic Unity’ Worldwide

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