Just Like U.S. Democrats, Chinese Communists Are Compiling Dissident Lists
Just Like U.S. Democrats, Chinese Communists Are Compiling Dissident Lists
I never thought that my adopted home, the land of the free, would so soon start sounding like the one-party dictatorial state I left behind.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is reportedly in the process of creating a global blacklist of critics who have supported or funded the freedom and democracy movement in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The list specifically targets those who reside outside mainland China. The scale of the project might be massive because, in Taiwan alone, at least 6 million people support Taiwan’s independence, which is a punishable crime in the eyes of the CCP.
The Global Times, one of the CCP’s mouthpieces, promises such a blacklist is no “empty threat” but “a sword of Damocles” hanging over these critics’ heads “for a long time to come.” Anyone on this list “will no longer be able to set foot in Hong Kong, Macao, and the Chinese mainland, and it will also be very dangerous for them to travel to other countries and regions.” In fact, the blacklist will serve as a life sentence for CCP critics because they “will be held accountable for the rest of their lives under the laws, which means they cannot find a permanent shield for their crime, with the nightmare of being punished chasing them their whole life.”
No one should be surprised by this ruthless language, the existence of such a blacklist, and the CCP’s determination to crush every dissenting voice no matter where it is. After all, the CCP’s very own history, since its founding in 1921, has been written in blood by numerous purges of opposition. What is new today is that China’s economic and military power have so emboldened the CCP that the regime is willing to interfere with other nations’ legal and political systems to hunt down critics outside its borders.
Just over the weekend, Uyghur religious scholar Hemdullah Abduweli, who traveled from Turkey to Saudi Arabia, was arrested by Saudi police at Beijing’s request. He will now likely be deported back to China.
China’s Aggression Reaches the United States
Here in the United States, Chinese dissidents face constant harassment by Chinese agents. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese government has been sending undercover security agents to the United States to station outside the homes of those it deems “criminal,” ready to “escort” them back to China. Both the FBI and the Department of Justice have publicly warned Beijing to stop these aggressive tactics.
In October, the U.S. government charged eight people, including Chinese and U.S. citizens, for helping the CCP illegally target so-called Chinese fugitives. The news of the CCP’s global blacklist is the latest proof that the CCP has no intention of backing down and will only intensify its effort to crush dissent worldwide.
People like me who criticize the CCP and call out its human rights violations understand that doing so might endanger us and our families. Yet we continue to speak out because it is the right thing to do, and we firmly believe the Chinese people have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness like all other people do.
It should surprise no one that critics of the CCP support President Donald Trump. His administration is the first in the United States since the 1970s to confront the CCP head-on, whether about the South China Sea, human rights violations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the trade imbalance, years of technology theft, or covert political influence campaigns planted by the CCP within the United States.
According to Vox, “Trump’s seeming willingness to confront China resonated with some Vietnamese American voters who recall the country’s imperialist efforts in Vietnam. For a segment of Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans, this same message also struck a chord.” Exit polls show Trump won 34 percent of the Asian-American vote, more than Mitt Romney’s 29 percent in 2012 and John McCain’s 26 percent in 2008.
While we are prepared to put ourselves in harm’s way for standing up to the CCP, what we didn’t expect is that our support for Trump would bring us post-election retribution from the totalitarian left in the United States.
The Left Wants to ‘Deprogram’ Trump Supporters
Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., former presidential candidate Evan McMullin, and other leftists all called for blacklisting anyone who supported Trump. Former staffers for President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg answered this call to action by creating the so-called Trump Accountability Project, which blacklists anyone who worked for, donated to, or endorsed Trump and his administration.
The purpose of such a list, explained by the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin in a tweet and interview with MSNBC, is to make sure Trump supporters will “never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society.” The Republican Party must be “collectively burned down” with “no survivors,” she said. Otherwise, anyone who survived the purge will “do it again,” meaning we will vote for people and policies with which Rubin and the totalitarian left disagree. Does any of this coldblooded language and the vow to crush any dissent sound as if they came straight out of the CCP’s playbook?
Apparently, creating a blacklist doesn’t go far enough for some Democrats. David Atkins, a California Democrat and an “elected DNC member,” calls for “deprogramming” all 75 million Trump voters because he thinks all of us belong to a “conspiracy theory-fueled belligerent death cult.”
“No seriously…how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook?” Atkins asked. “We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South.” With crazy talk like this and no social consequences for it, is it only a matter of time before Democrats propose to build communist-style re-education camps to deradicalize 75 million Trump supporters, similar to the CCP’s internment camps for Uyghur Muslims?
Today’s Radical Left Mirrors Communist China
It is very clear that there’s less and less ideological difference between the totalitarian left in this country and the CCP. When both groups were in the process of obtaining power, they shouted slogans of “democracy,” “equality,” “freedom,” and “tolerance.” Once they are in a position of power, however, they reveal their true colors.
Both have little tolerance for different ideas and people who hold them. Freedom to them means having a free hand to reprimand those with whom they disagree by whatever means necessary. Democracy to them means if they all agree to punish dissenters, the punishment is thus legitimate and justified. Whether in China or the United States, totalitarianism is always about power, the power to force people to think and behave a certain way, the power to brand those who disagree as enemies of the state and deprive them of their rights and property.
I never thought that my adopted home, the land of the free, a place Abraham Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth,” would so soon start sounding like the one-party dictatorial state I left behind. My name is probably on both the CCP’s blacklist and the American totalitarian left’s. I consider that a badge of honor. It means I must have done something right, and I know I’m in good company.
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