As protests against the Chinese Communist Party’s tyrannical rule continue to spread among those subjugated under Xi Jinping’s genocidal government, a sane person would expect the free world to support those bravely speaking out against the CCP, amplify the cries for freedom, and do what is possible to support the freedom fighters.
The left, however, is not sane. And so they’re not doing what those pleading for freedom in China might expect based on the reputation the free world previously built for itself as a beacon for oppressed peoples elsewhere. Especially after seeing the world’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Chinese dissidents likely expected more from the leaders of free nations. Yet, that hasn’t been the case.
By falling silent and failing to stand up for freedom against CCP tyranny, the left is demonstrating a staggering amount of hypocrisy, not just because of the disparity between their outcry against Russia and silence on freedom fighters in China, but because of their handling of other protests.
Let’s start with President Joe Biden. He has not officially addressed the uprising against China’s zero-COVID and other tyrannical policies but was palling around with Xi Jinping recently after routinely bragging about how much time the two have spent together.
In a press briefing earlier this week, the White House’s John Kirby was asked for Biden’s response to the protests erupting across China and whether the president had a message for those demanding freedom. Kirby’s response was tepid and sanitized, “Our message to peaceful protesters around the world is the same and consistent: People should be allowed the right to assemble and to peacefully protest policies or laws or dictates that they take issue with.”
The lukewarm statement from Kirby drew a follow-up question: Does the White House support the efforts of Chinese citizens to regain some personal freedoms? Kirby again failed in his response, saying, “The White House supports the right of peaceful protest.” Really?
Neither response cuts it, and both betray those crying out for freedom in China. They expect and deserve better from the country that is supposed to be the last hope for freedom on earth.
A review of White House statements shows that the Biden administration has not hesitated to issue strongly worded statements endorsing protesters and the causes they represent against totalitarian regimes. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have issued multiple statements supporting protests in Iran and Cuba during their nearly two years in office. So why not the same for freedom fighters in China?
And let’s not forget that it was Kamala Harris who helped raise money for a bail fund to get violent BLM rioters out of jail during the “summer of love.” Yet now she can’t be bothered to speak up or otherwise support the cause of peaceful protesters in China with her platform as supposedly the most powerful woman in the free world? It’s shameful.
On a different but equally damning level, Apple Inc., a company that rose to become one of the most successful in U.S. history as a result of the economic and personal freedom that exists in the United States, has turned around and used its power to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party as it works to squash the liberty of its citizens.
Earlier this week, I wrote about how the company surreptitiously included a change to the iOS operating system’s file-sharing tool — AirDrop — in a recent software update, but only for iPhones in China. The device-to-device ability provided by AirDrop was relied on by freedom fighters in China to pass along protest messages and videos of CCP oppression by circumventing the CCP’s stranglehold on the internet. Thanks to Apple, freedom fighters are now less able to communicate and spread their message in China, a massive win for Xi Jinping and his tyrant government.
One of Apple’s iPhone factories in China was even the site of a protest this week, but Apple — after handing another advantage to CCP censors — obviously hasn’t spoken out on the protest at its manufacturing plant or elsewhere in China in yet another staggering show of hypocrisy.
Following the death of George Floyd, Apple CEO Tim Cook published a lengthy essay in which he said his company’s “mission has been and always will be to create technology that empowers people to change the world for the better,” except apparently when Apple is stripping critical functionality from iPhones in China to limit the ability of dissidents to communicate.
The essay also claimed that “[i]ssues of human dignity will not abide standing on the sidelines,” even though Apple and Cook are now comfortably resting on the sidelines and remaining silent about the gross human rights violations — even genocide — being perpetrated by China’s communist thugs.
The United States, the businesses its freedom allowed to flourish, and the leaders who run the country and its biggest companies ought to be using their power to do whatever possible to shun and punish China’s despotic government while helping the people being crushed under it to speak up and achieve the very basic freedoms they’re being denied — not feigning ignorance of the problem and undermining their efforts.
Rather than speaking out as it has on other uprisings, the Biden administration is negotiating to allow TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. without changing its corporate structure and playing coy with Xi Jinping while refusing to endorse the freedom fighters on college campuses, city centers, and village squares in China. And Apple is actively undermining the peaceful protesters’ attempts to expose the CCP’s tyranny while comfortably profiting from sales in China from the cozy Democrat enclave in Palo Alto.