By Benjamin Moore
Recently leaked documents 1, known as the “China Cables”, that detail the People’s Republic of China (PRC) inhumane treatment of the Uighurs and other Chinese Muslims have appalled and astonished the international community. Not only has the benign narrative of ‘re-education camps’ been dispelled, but the sinister motives of the ruling party and its highest officials fully exposed.
The documents themselves make for harrowing reading. They shed light on the reality hidden behind the wall of those “re-education camps”, prisoners forced to learn and speak Mandarin, to apostatize their religious practices, and to demonstrate reverence for the Beijing government. All in all, such systematic program serves the sole purpose of eradicating prisoner’s culture through coercive education and persecution.
With the publication of these documents, the West has reached an unavoidable juncture in its relationship with the PRC where it has become morally untenable to turn a blind eye to China’s continued malfeasance. Modern-day equivalent to Nazi Germany has become a tiresome meme in our age of permanent exasperation, but what the “China Cables” makes clear is that ethno-minorities in the Communist state are experiencing nothing short of internment on a massive scale, akin to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Indeed, the appeasement of China bears a stark contrast to the events of the 1930s and the rise of fascism, something that the world swore it would never allow to happen again. In spite of those promises, the West once again finds itself confronted with incomprehensible barbarity, yet willfully ignorant to the reality of the atrocities and reluctant to act as it continues to bury our heads in the sand.
Certainly, the West’s appeasement of China has been blatant for a number of years as China has risen to become a regional hegemon and diplomatic bully. After all, why shouldn’t China be allowed to flex its geopolitical muscles? As the sole superpower in the region, surely it has an inherent right to rearrange the geopolitical framework as it saw fit, just as others had done before. Besides, a dominant China would behoove the West economically, offering up a multitude of trade opportunities, exposure to an enormous market, and an unmatched wealth of foreign direct investment. The West has been happy to disregard the whispers, now shouts, of corruption from China, so long as the wheels of China’s state-directed capitalist economy keep spinning and providing us with the cheap goods that we crave.
Our moderate approach to China has allowed it to become so inextricably intertwined with the global market given that admonishment of the PRC’s political and social practices have been viewed as taboo, never earnestly confronted by those with the power to affect change beyond ineffectual statements of denunciation. The overly optimistic Western modernization theory that access to the international markets would somehow convert China into a liberal society has proved an utter falsehood, and the consequences of our misjudgements are now staring us in the face as millions suffer in these ‘Vocational Education and Training Centres’.
How to confront an increasingly immoral PRC in the face of such brazen abuses of its own people will prove to be one of the biggest strategic challenges of our age. On a bilateral basis, the PRC has immense power in threatening individual countries, who are impotent in the face of such overwhelming economic might and a severance of financial ties.
Initially, Western nations should seek to form a coalition of sanctions, wounding the already faltering Chinese economy through collective action. Countries with strong economic clout such as the United States should continue to blacklist 2 Chinese companies guilty of human rights violations. Observers from international bodies such as the United Nations should also be given “immediate and unfettered access” to the camps, as called for by countries like the United Kingdom and Germany, to apply the full political leverage of the international community at a time when the ruthless motives of Beijing against its own people are already in the media’s spotlight.
While there is no silver bullet solution to this state-sanctioned amorality, what should be clear is that it has proven insufficient for the West to simply rebuke. The time for deliberations over whether the world should adapt to a rising China or confront its abuses has reached a conscientious tipping point, with the “China Cables” representing a further testament to the abuse of power that the ruling party in Beijing continues to wield in pursuit of its Orwellian dystopia.
The very identity of modern Western society was forged in the fires of the Second World War, and it is crucial that we once again coalesce as allies in restraining the tyrannical elements of Beijing’s jurisdiction if it wishes to retain access to the international community. A solemn promise emerged from the rubble and ashes of that global struggle that no power would ever be appeased to such an extent as the Nazis were in light of their horrific crimes against humanity. Yet what we are witnessing with the revelation of these Chinese internment camps should be viewed as equally repulsive to our sensibilities, and correspondingly deserving of both condemnation and retribution, whether economically, politically, or both.
Benjamin Moore is a master's graduate of International Relations from Dublin City University. Ben is currently working in the Taipei Representative Office in Ireland.
(2) https://www.businessinsider.com/us-blacklists-china-ai-startups-2019-10?r=US&IR=T
