China’s human rights abuses threaten the state of our union

By Josh Rogin

President Trump delivers his first State of the Union address on Jan. 30, 2018, in Washington. 
The wife of a Taiwanese human rights activist imprisoned in China will attend President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, hoping to raise awareness of her husband’s plight and Beijing’s growing persecution of non-Chinese citizens. 

She is calling on Trump and all Americans to help confront China’s exporting of its authoritarianism around the world.
Chinese authorities arrested Taiwanese democracy activist Li Ming-che in March 2017 in the Chinese territory of Macau. 

He was put under investigation for “pursuing activities harmful to national security.” 

That September, he was sentenced to five years in prison for “subverting state power,” based on what his family and supporters say was a forced confession.
His wife, Li Ching-yu, has led a public campaign for his release, raising the ire of the Chinese authorities. 

On Tuesday, she will sit in the House gallery while Trump addresses the nation and the world. 

She told me she wants to serve as a reminder that human rights are universal and that the Chinese Communist Party is now exporting its repression.
“Human rights abuses in China are not only to Chinese citizens,” she said. 

“When they start persecuting Taiwanese citizens like my husband, the persecution of human rights by the Chinese Communist Party has already extended beyond China’s borders, all over the world. So the whole world should really be concerned about China.”
Li will be a guest of Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), who serves as the co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. 

The commission has been investigating Beijing’s persecution of minority groups inside China, including the Chinese government’s forced internment of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim Uighurs.
As part of Beijing’s clampdown on criticism of its human rights policies, the Chinese authorities have imprisoned dozens of family members of American journalists and others who speak out. 

Smith told me that he invited Li to the State of the Union to draw attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s relentless efforts to harass Taiwan, including her husband’s case.
But the larger issue is Xi Jinping’s broad campaign to round up hundreds of lawyers and activists inside China while also exporting repression, which represents a threat to the integrity and security of free and open societies, said Smith.
“If we want democratic values to survive in the 21st century, the international community cannot be passive in the face of massive human rights abuses in China or the threats to a democratic Taiwan, particularly as Xi Jinping seeks to export neo-Stalinist ideas about censorship, politics, and social control globally,” he said.
Li is in Washington as part of a delegation organized by Bob Fu, the founder and president of China Aid, a nongovernmental organization that advocates for human rights activists and Christians being persecuted in China. 

Fu and some members of the delegation will attend the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.
Li knows her public advocacy is risky. 

After visiting her husband in prison in December, she held a news conference decrying the conditions of his detention. 

In retaliation, the Chinese government banned her from seeing him again until April. 

But she believes Trump and the United States have an important role to play.
“China is a rising economic giant, but it uses its power to expand its authoritarianism globally. So this is a threat not only Taiwan is facing, but the entire world is facing, including the United States,” she said. 

“I hope and call on America, in accordance with the spirit of the founding fathers, to help.”
Last year, Trump highlighted human rights by inviting North Korean defector Ji Seong-ho to the State of the Union and talking about the “depraved character” of the Kim Jong Un regime. 

This year, with his North Korea diplomacy in full swing, his tone may be different.
Trump will likely call out the regimes in Iran and Venezuela for their repression — and rightfully so — but he may tread lightly when talking about China at a sensitive time in economic negotiations. But Vice President Pence stated the problem clearly in his October speech at the Hudson Institute.
“For a time, Beijing inched toward greater liberty and respect for human rights, but in recent years, it has taken a sharp U-turn toward control and oppression,” Pence said. 

“As history attests, a country that oppresses its own people rarely stops there. Beijing also aims to extend its reach across the wider world."
The State of the Union is a chance not just for the president but also for Congress to highlight important issues we as a country must address in the year ahead. 

Confronting the Chinese government’s atrocious human rights policies inside China and abroad must be on that list.

Taiwan burnishes its freedom credentials even as China closes diplomatic doors

By Kirsty Needham 

Beijing -- For Taiwan, it has been the best of weeks and the worst of weeks.
First it suffered its biggest diplomatic humiliation in a decade, shut out of the world's peak health summit in Geneva, at China's demand.
Yet just two days later, the island was exalted by the international community for breaking new ground in Asia as Taiwan's high court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage.
Both events came as Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen marked a year since her inauguration, and a seismic shift in Taiwan's politics.

First year in office: Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. 

For nine years under her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou, the Kuomintang (KMT) had built an economic bridge to China, allowing direct flights, tourism, and trade, but overreached and alienated young voters facing high unemployment.
In her inauguration speech as president, Ms Tsai -- leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has traditionally leaned towards independence -- had refused to acknowledge Beijing's core policy on cross-strait relations, the so-called 1992 Consensus that there is one China.
China froze official communication. 

The consequences are still flowing. 

Chinese tourist numbers to Taiwan fell 42 per cent in the first three months of 2017.
On Friday a former DPP employee, human rights activist Li Ming-che, became the first Taiwanese to be arrested in China on subversion charges. 

His wife, Li Ching-yu, said on Monday she is yet to be notified by the Chinese government, despite previous agreements between China and Taiwan that notification of a detention occur within 24 hours.
Taiwan's annual sky lantern festival is among its major attractions for tourists.

China has racheted up efforts to isolate Taiwan internationally.
After meeting Xi Jinping at the Belt and Road forum in Beijing on May 18, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama shut down his country's representative office in Taipei the next day. 

Only 21 small nations offer diplomatic recognition to Taiwan.

The tourism industry in Taiwan, seen here during a protest in September, is feeling the pinch as relations with mainland China go sour. 

Australia, which abides by the One China policy, was among the four major countries to risk China's ire and speak in Taiwan's support at the opening of the World Health Assembly on May 22.
Australia's Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, told the meeting it was "Australia's strong view" that the World Health Organisation was unique and needed to be as inclusive as possible.
Same-sex marriage supporters cheer after Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage. 

"The practice over the last eight years of inviting Taiwan as an observer to the WHA was a valuable signal of the WHO's engagement with Taiwan and Australia supports this practice continuing," Mr Murphy said in Australia's opening statement, according to a transcript.
But China's view that Taiwan couldn't attend because Ms Tsai refused to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus prevailed.
December 2016: Tsai Ing-wen (centre) speaks on the phone with US President-elect Donald Trump, prompting an angry backlash from Beijing. 

Sheryn Lee, a Macquarie University associate lecturer in security studies, says China's moves to cut off Taiwan's voice in the international area have "taken a step up" since Ms Tsai's inauguration, and have a long-term objective of reunification.
"Taiwan receives less and less recognition for its de facto sovereignty," she says.
"I think the election of Trump and his phone call [with] Tsai definitely did not help. Taiwan-China relations must also consider the US and its security guarantee for Taiwan. If the US's 'strategic ambiguity' approach becomes dismantled because of Trump's erratic [behaviour], then Taiwan-China relations will worsen."
Ms Lee says Ms Tsai was voted in to address domestic socio-economic problems, so both political parties in Taiwan are invested in maintaining the status quo in cross-strait relations.
But she says clearly acknowledging the 1992 Consensus would be a "political nightmare" for Ms Tsai, as 42 per cent of voters in Taiwan are swing voters.
Jerome Cohen, an NYU law professor and senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations think tank, says the same-sex marriage ruling was "a shot in the arm for Taiwan's standing in the world".
His former students famously include the last president, Mr Ma.
Professor Cohen wrote that Taiwan's constitutional court ruling "reminds people of the immense progress [Taiwan] has made, although a Chinese civilisation, in instituting legal protection for human rights, judicial independence, separation of powers and all the other 'Western values' openly condemned on the [Chinese] mainland at present."
News of Taiwan's same-sex marriage ruling ricocheted through Australian social media, where politicians, same-sex marriage advocates and opponents alike were reminded that Taiwan is different to China.
Professor Cohen points out Taiwan's national security and survival depend on the willingness of the US, Japan and other democratic countries to guarantee its protection against the threat of military action by mainland China.
"That willingness will turn in large part on the extent to which those countries are aware of Taiwan's accomplishments in achieving political freedoms," he wrote.