China thuggish regime

Swedish media calls for action against attacks from Chinese officials
Journalists are denied visas and editors receive threatening emails
By Richard Orange in Malmö

Swedish media was moved to make the statement after a cartoon in the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten came under similar pressure from Chinese officials. 

Sweden’s leading newspapers and broadcasters have together called on their government to take stronger action against China for its “unacceptable” repeated attacks on the country’s media, which have included visa bans and threats.
In a strongly worded statement, Utgivarna, which represents Sweden’s private and public sector media, complained that journalists had been put under intense pressure by Chinese government representatives.
“Time and again, China’s ambassador Gui Congyou has tried to undermine the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression under the Swedish constitution with false statements and threats,” the statement read.
It said journalists had been denied visas, while editors received a near-constant stream of threatening and critical emails and phone calls.
“It is unacceptable that the world’s largest dictatorship is trying to prevent free and independent journalism in a democracy like Sweden. These repeated attacks must cease immediately,” the statement said.
It said the government should raise the issue at EU level and together with other member states “strongly protest” over the attacks on press freedom.
Tensions between Sweden and China have been rising since 2015, when Chinese agents seized the dissident Chinese publisher Gui Minhai while he was on holiday in Thailand. 

Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen, is still being held by Chinese authorities and his case has been heavily covered by the Swedish media.
The friction has increased since Gui Congyou (no relation) was appointed China’s ambassador in November 2017.
In November last year he threatened that China would “surely take counter-measures” after Sweden’s culture minister, Amanda Lind, attended a ceremony to award Gui Minhai the Tucholsky prize for writers facing persecution.
This month he was summoned to see Sweden’s foreign minister, Ann Linde, after he described the relationship between the Swedish media and the Chinese state using an analogy that many interpreted as threatening.
“It is like when a lightweight boxer is trying to provoke a fight with a heavyweight boxer, and said heavyweight boxer is kindly encouraging the lightweight to mind his own business, out of goodwill,” he told Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT.
On Tuesday the Chinese embassy to Denmark demanded an apology for a cartoon published in Jyllands-Posten.
The latest cartoon, which altered the Chinese flag to stars with viruses, was “an insult to China” and “hurts the feelings of the sick Chinese people”, the embassy said.
Patrik Hadenius, the chief executive of Utgivarna, said his members had felt moved to act after they saw Danish media coming under similar pressure.
“It’s not just a problem for Sweden but a problem for all democratic countries. Just the other day it happened in Denmark,” he said. 

“We felt we needed to lift this to higher levels.”

China’s Thug Diplomacy

Calls for China’s thug ambassador to be thrown out of Sweden 

• Gui Congyou lashed out at local media in an interview on the weekend, saying they ‘have a habit of criticising, accusing and smearing China’
• He has been summoned for a meeting at the foreign ministry on Tuesday, and three Swedish parties have called for him to be expelled.

Bloomberg

China's thug diplomat Gui Congyou has repeatedly angered Swedish lawmakers with his remarks since he became China’s ambassador to the country in 2017. 

Sweden’s government has demanded a meeting with the ambassador for China after he lambasted Swedish media.
Thug ambassador Gui Congyou caused a diplomatic furore over the weekend after giving an interview to Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT, in which he said that some local media representatives “have a habit of criticising, accusing and smearing China”.
He went on to compare the relationship between Swedish media and China to one in which “a 48kg weight boxer keeps challenging an 86kg weight boxer to a fight”.
Three parties in Sweden’s parliament have now called for Gui to be thrown out of the Nordic country, adding to tensions ahead of a meeting scheduled to take place with the ambassador at the foreign ministry in Stockholm on Tuesday.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde has already ruled out the option of expelling Gui.

But she also made clear Sweden would not accept veiled threats from China.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde has ruled out expelling China’s ambassador. 

Relations between the two countries have soured recently over jailed Chinese-born Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, who was honoured last year by the Swedish chapter of PEN International with its annual Tucholsky Prize.
Gui Minhai, who has written several books that are critical of China’s leadership, has been detained since late 2015 by Chinese authorities, who accuse him of crimes including “operating an illegal business”.

Gui Congyou says Minhai is a “lie-fabricator” who “committed serious offences in both China and Sweden”. 

He also said Swedish media “is full of lies” about the case and that the Tucholsky Prize, which was handed out by Sweden’s minister of culture, would result in Chinese “countermeasures”.

Gui Minhai has been detained since late 2015 by Chinese authorities. 

The spat comes amid a more assertive diplomatic stance from China, which dominates global export markets and is one of Sweden’s most important trade partners. 

In neighbouring Norway, the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 to Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo led to a deep-freeze of diplomatic relations that lasted more than half a decade and hurt trade. 

In 2018, Sweden exported goods and services to China worth 67 billion kronor (US$7 billion), making it the Nordic country’s eighth-largest export market.
Gui Congyou, who was appointed ambassador to Sweden in 2017, has repeatedly angered lawmakers in the country with his remarks over the years. 

Commenting on Swedish media’s coverage of Gui Minhai, Gui Congyou in December cited a Chinese proverb: “We treat our friends with fine wine, but we have shotguns for our enemies.”
The ambassador’s latest remarks prompted the Sweden Democrats as well as the Christian Democrats and the Left Party to demand that he be thrown out.

Swedish Quisling

Sweden Charges Ex-Ambassador to China Over Secret Meetings
The diplomat, Anna Lindstedt, arranged unauthorized talks between the daughter of a detained bookseller and two men representing Chinese interests.
By Iliana Magra and Chris Buckley

Sweden’s former ambassador to China has been charged with “arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power,” after she held what Swedish prosecutors said on Monday were unauthorized meetings with two men representing Chinese state interests.
The announcement of the charges was the latest twist in a four-year-old case, in which a Swedish citizen was spirited to China from Thailand, the ambassador held what the authorities say were secret meetings in a Stockholm hotel, and ties between China and Sweden have been strained.
The former ambassador, Anna Lindstedt, was accused earlier this year of arranging the talks between Angela Gui, the daughter of Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller detained in China, and two Chinese men who had offered to help free Mr. Gui in January.

Instead of talks about freeing her father, Ms. Gui was pressured to keep silent.
After the talks at a Stockholm hotel, Ms. Gui accused Lindstedt, the ambassador at the time, of arranging the talks without authorization from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. 

The ministry opened an internal investigation into Lindstedt in mid-February.

Swedish Quisling Anna Lindstedt

“In this specific consular matter, she has exceeded her mandate and has therefore rendered herself criminally liable,” Hans Ihrman, the deputy chief public prosecutor for Sweden’s National Security Unit, said in a statement on Monday. 

Mr. Ihrman said the charge of arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power was “unprecedented.”
“We have looked way back to find any kind of indictment for this, but in modern times we have no trail of an investigation,” he said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Ihrman described the meeting as an attempt by Chinese officials to stop Ms. Gui’s criticism of the Chinese government because of the treatment of her father.
“It’s about this daughter’s right to freedom of speech, which they have tried to act upon,” he said.
Nevertheless, he said, Lindstedt acted on her own without the necessary support or permission from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The charge can bring a maximum prison sentence of two years under the Swedish Penal Code. 

A trial date for Lindstedt has not been set, Mr. Ihrman said. 

The Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported Monday that prosecutors chose a milder charge than what the government’s security service had sought, “disloyalty when negotiating with a foreign power,” which carries up to a 10-year sentence.

Mr. Gui was one of five Hong Kong-based publishers who were abducted and taken to China in 2015 after publishing books that were critical of the Communist Party elite, setting off international condemnation.
After being taken from Thailand to China in 2015, he was formally released two years later but was not allowed to leave the country.
Mr. Gui was again detained early last year, when two Swedish diplomats tried to accompany him on a train from Shanghai to Beijing, where they planned to take him into the Swedish Embassy. 

But Chinese police officers boarded the train and took him into custody.
They said later that Mr. Gui was suspected of illegally providing state secrets, but gave no details or evidence. 

Soon after, the Chinese authorities brought Mr. Gui before a group of reporters, and he told them that the Swedish diplomats had wanted to spirit him back to Sweden.
Mr. Ihrman, the Swedish prosecutor, said on Monday that Mr. Gui was in a Chinese prison.
Relations between Sweden and China have been strained since Gui Minhai was kidnapped in 2015, and tensions increased last month when the Swedish office of the writers’ group PEN said that it was awarding a literary prize to Mr. Gui. 

The prize is given annually to an author or publisher who is persecuted, threatened or living in exile.
Three days later, the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm called the prize a “farce” and threatened consequences if members of the Swedish government were to attend the award ceremony.
A week later, Amanda Lind, Sweden’s minister of culture, not only attended the ceremony but also awarded the prize, despite warnings from the Chinese ambassador that Ms. Lind and other government officials working in the area of culture would no longer be welcome in China.
Late last month, China appeared to follow through on its warning, with SVT reporting that two Swedish films had been banned from screenings in China.
Last week, after a seminar in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Swedish-Chinese relations, the Chinese ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyou, told the newspaper Goteborgs-Posten that China would limit trade with Sweden because of its handling of the Gui Minhai case.

Jesper Bengtsson, the chairman of Swedish PEN, said the organization was surprised by the “amazingly” strong response from China to this year’s award.

“Governments and regimes have often reacted but never with threats, and threatening to block ministers from visiting China, Mr. Bengtsson said in a telephone interview, adding that the Swedish culture minister always attends the award ceremony.
Previous prize recipients include Nasrin Sotoudeh, the Iranian human rights lawyer who is serving a 38-year prison sentence after being convicted of crimes against national security, and Dawit Isaak, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist who was arrested in Eritrea in 2001 on security charges and has been imprisoned without a trial ever since.

Freedom Fighter

Sweden honors detained political writer Gui Minhai

AFP-JIJI

Sweden's Culture Minister Amanda Lind awarded the prize. 

Sweden's culture minister Amanda Lind on Friday defied a Chinese threat of "counter-measures" by awarding a Swedish rights prize to detained Chinese-Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai.
Known for publishing titles about Chinese political leaders out of a Hong Kong book shop, Gui disappeared while on holiday in Thailand in 2015 before resurfacing in mainland China several months later.The Swedish section of free speech organisation PEN International gave its Tucholsky Prize to the 55-year-old Gui, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen currently in detention at an unknown location in China.

"China resolutely opposes Swedish PEN awarding a criminal and lie-fabricator," China's ambassador to Sweden said in remarks published in English on the embassy website.

Swedish PEN's Tucholsky Prize is for a writer or publisher being persecuted, threatened or in exile from his or her country.

In spite of China's threats, Swedish Culture and Democracy Minister Amanda Lind attended the ceremony.
"Those in power should never take the liberty to attack free artistic expression or free speech," Lind said while presenting the award in Stockholm. 

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven stressed earlier in the day that the Scandinavian country would not back down.
"We are not going to give in to this type of threat. Never. We have freedom of expression in Sweden and that's how it is, period," Lofven told Swedish Television.

Strained ties
Lind had earlier called Beijing's threat "serious".
"We have made it clear to China's representatives that we stand by our position that Gui Minhai must be released and that we have freedom of expression in Sweden," Lind told TT.
"This means that Swedish PEN must, of course, be allowed to award this prize to whoever they want, free of any influence. And as culture and democracy minister it is natural for me to attend the award ceremony," she said.
Relations between Sweden and China have been strained for several years over Gui Minhai's detention. 

He has appeared on Chinese state television confessing to a fatal drink-driving accident from more than a decade earlier.
He served two years in prison, but three months after his October 2017 release he was again arrested while on a train to Beijing, travelling with Swedish diplomats.
His supporters and family have claimed his detention is part of a political repression campaign orchestrated by Chinese authorities.

The Tucholsky Prize, named after German writer Kurt Tucholsky, who came to Sweden in the early 1930s as a refugee from Nazi Germany, is worth 150,000 kronor (14,000 euros, $15,500).
The prize, established in 1984, has been previously won by Adam Zagajevski, Nuruddin Farah, Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin and Svetlana Alexievich, among others.

Chinese Propaganda Machine

Chinese broadcaster CGTN’s Hong Kong protests coverage probed by UK watchdog

• British regulator Ofcom investigating four broadcasts by CGTN aired in August and September
• Watchdog looking at whether Chinese programmes broke rules requiring news to be presented with due impartiality

By Simone McCarthy

Coverage of the Hong Kong protests by CGTN, the overseas arm of China’s state broadcaster, is being investigated by Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulator. 

Britain’s communications regulator has launched an investigation into coverage of the Hong Kong protests by the overseas arm of Chinese state broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN).
“We are investigating whether these programmes broke our rules requiring news to be presented with due impartiality,” said an Ofcom spokesperson, referring to four separate broadcasts on Hong Kong’s anti-government protests that aired in Britain on three dates in August and one in September.
The investigation brings the total number of programmes from CGTN and its Beijing-based parent company China Central Television (CCTV) under investigation to eight, according to Ofcom documents.
Media reports have linked earlier investigations, launched in May, to complaints about the network’s airing of forced confessions made by detained Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai and British private investigator Peter Humphrey. 

The programmes under investigation range in date from August 2013 to February 2018, according to Ofcom.
The latest investigation into the Hong Kong coverage comes as CGTN is set to open its London headquarters and is expanding its European footprint, part of China’s decade-long coordinated push to grow its overseas propaganda influence.
Overseas arms of China’s state propaganda have drawn criticism for coverage of the anti-government mass protests which have gripped Hong Kong and drawn global attention since the start of June, with most scrutiny focused around the networks’ social media presence.

Social media giant Twitter moved to ban advertisements from state media on its platform last month, as reports emerged that China state propaganda used the paid promotions to call into question human rights abuses in East Turkestan and promote the central government’s view on the Hong Kong protests.
Broadcast media expert and lecturer in media and communication at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University Yik Chan Chin said that compliance with overseas media regulations was a burden for many of China’s outwardly mobile media companies.
“Impartiality is not part of the requirements for domestic media in China,” Chin said, noting there would likely exist a certain amount of autonomy for the overseas branches balanced with a need to follow central guidance “to an extent”.
“But if they take global expansion seriously, they need to be aware of the local regulations and comply with them,” she said, noting that Ofcom appeared to be increasing its scrutiny of the network, which had been broadcast as CCTV in Britain before being launched as a separate international arm in 2016.

A screengrab of some of CGTN’s coverage of the Hong Kong protests. 

“It could be because the Hong Kong issue has been very prominent [in the news] and CGTN’s presence is becoming more prominent than before, so those are a couple of reasons that could have triggered the investigation,” she said.
CGTN is “shortly opening up” its London-based news office in Chiswick, originally slated for a 2018 opening, according to CGTN materials.
The London-based office is part of the CGTN mission to “provide 'objective', 'balanced', and 'impartial' news and current affairs content” while “reporting the news from a Chinese perspective”, according to CGTN Europe’s LinkedIn page.
CGTN and its British broadcasting licence-holder did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In Hong Kong, the Freedom to Publish Is Under Attack

If the extradition law is eventually forced through the Hong Kong legislature, censorship of books will become commonplace in what has long been a bastion of publishing freedom.
BY JAMES TAGER
A general view shows Harcourt Road after it was cleared in Hong Kong early on June 22 after protests on June 21. 

For most of the world’s publishers, it would be very unusual for editors to take into account a country’s extradition laws before greenlighting a book. 

And yet, publishers and booksellers based in Hong Kong may well have to do so, due to a proposed new extradition policy that would have painful and chilling effects on the climate for free expression, press freedom, and the freedom to publish in the city.
Today, the future of the policy, which would allow those arrested in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China, stands on a knife’s edge: The bill has been so unpopular that it has been the target of a series of historically massive demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets. 

On June 15, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that the bill was indefinitely suspended, but she has so far refused to withdraw it entirely. 

The next few days may determine whether this bill lurches forward or dies entirely as protesters gear up for another round of demonstrations.
Publishers across the globe should be paying very close attention, as their rights are among those at stake. 

If passed, such a law could force publishers with a presence in Hong Kong to choose between risking the safety of their staff or submitting to China’s harsh political censorship system under which criminal charges can lead to prison.
If passed, such a law could force publishers with a presence in Hong Kong to choose between risking the safety of their staff or submitting to China’s harsh political censorship system under which criminal charges can lead to prison.
Although Hong Kong is Chinese territory, it has a separate legal system from the rest of China, as a consequence of the 1997 handover from British control. 

This legal distinction means Hong Kong cannot at the moment turn over criminal suspects to China without a formalized extradition agreement between the two—which, to this day, China and Hong Kong do not have.
This may sound insignificant, but it is actually critical to guaranteeing the rights of Hong Kong’s people. 

In Hong Kong, the judiciary is independent from authorities, and fair trial rights are generally guaranteed. 

In mainland China—whose courts have a conviction rate of over 99 percent—the picture is dramatically different: Torture and coerced confessions are systemic, closed-door show trials are not uncommon, and the courts follow the mandate of Chinese Communist Party officials. 

The Chinese wield the courts as a weapon against political dissidents, criminalizing vast categories of political expression.
This is why large segments of Hong Kong society have reacted with such alarm to the news that Hong Kong’s legislature was attempting to ram through a sweeping legal change—one that would grant broad new powers to Hong Kong’s chief executive to authorize the extradition of any person in Hong Kong on the so-called request of mainland authorities.
Over the past couple weeks, Hong Kongers have protested in massive numbers: Organizers have estimated that a demonstration on June 16 saw almost 2 million demonstrators taking to the streets— in a city of less than 8 million people. 

The artistic community has also responded, with art galleries closing their doors in an act of protest. 

Business leaders have also expressed concerns, causing a dip in the Hong Kong stock market, and earlier this month 3,000 lawyers participated in a rare silent protestthrough the city streets.
International publishers should similarly be deeply concerned: If the extradition bill passes, no publisher in Hong Kong will be free from the threat of criminal charges.

The amendments apply to foreigners as well as citizens, meaning that anyone within—or even passing through—Hong Kong’s borders would be a potential target for extradition to the mainland. International publishers and booksellers with a presence in Hong Kong are able to produce and sell books there that would never be published in the mainland for reasons of censorship, and some Hong Kong-sold books eventually end up back in mainland China through individuals who buy them while traveling for work or on vacation. 

This is certainly enough for mainland authorities to view this entire sector with a prosecutorial—and persecutory—eye.
Hong Kong would rubber-stamp any extradition request from the mainland. 

Beijing handpicks nominees for the position of Hong Kong’s chief executive. 

It’s naive to think that the chief executive, Lam, would reject an extradition request from the same authorities who picked her for the job. 

And the decision to extradite would essentially be hers alone. 

The Hong Kong legislature—with a large majority of pro-Beijing stalwarts sitting alongside a nonetheless sizable minority of pro-democracy delegates—would have no authority to scrutinize extradition requests.
Similarly, Hong Kong courts would have little say in the matter: A Hong Kong judge would be required to approve extradition as long as there was sufficient prima-facie evidence to result in an indictment. 

This is a low standard of proof, compared to the standard for a criminal conviction. 

And while the courts can reject an extradition request if they find it is politically motivated, the burden is on suspects to prove they are being politically targeted. 

In other words, Hong Kong courts would essentially be taking mainland authorities at their word that they filed an actionable extradition request in good faith.
But authorities in mainland China have a history of bad faith in this regard, and several of the most troubling examples involve the publishing world. 

In the past few years alone, Chinese state agents have abducted several Hong Kong-based booksellers or publishers, putting them through a Kafkaesque legal process. 

In 2014, a Shenzhen court sentenced the Hong Kong publisher Yiu Man-tin to 10 years in prison for “smuggling ordinary goods,” after he planned to publish a book critical of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
The following year, Chinese agents abducted five Hong Kong booksellers, forcing them to appear on state television to give coerced confessions regarding running an “illegal business” by selling books to mainland China. 

This case, known as the Causeway Bay Books disappearances, is still not resolved: More than three years later, one of the booksellers—the Swedish citizen Gui Minhai — is still detained incommunicado in China as his health worsens.
In fact, mainland authorities have no problem making up spurious legal claims to punish independent voices in the Hong Kong publishing world. 

After Gui was kidnapped from his vacation home in Thailand in October 2015 by Chinese agents, mainland authorities claimed that he had voluntarily returned to China to resolve a decade-old hit-and-run charge against him.
While Hong Kong’s government has claimed that the proposed bill would not enable extradition for political crimes or for various types of commercial crimes, experts have pointed out that this would not stop mainland authorities from using elastically defined charges—like fraud—as a pretext for political censorship. 

After all, if Chinese state agents are willing to egregiously break international law through kidnapping publishers, it is hard to believe they will act with restraint after given this powerful new legal tool.
Protesters have begun demanding that the Hong Kong government withdraw the bill entirely, that Lam resign, and that the government drop charges against those who have been arrested. 

Additional demonstrations are already planned, meaning that the future of this bill could be decided within the next few weeks.
Given the incredible outpouring of protest against this bill, it would be easy to conclude that the threat has already passed. 

After all, Lam has already announced the bill’s suspension. 

But a suspended bill can always arise again. 

Lam has pointedly refused to commit to scrapping the bill entirely, saying she would only proceed with it if the “fears and anxieties” of Hong Kongers could be “adequately addressed.” 

That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the government to propose a new version of this bill down the road, once Lam or top officials in Beijing decide that the people are no longer so anxious.
Publishers and booksellers with staff in Hong Kong (or visiting the city) should be very worried. Hong Kong has traditionally been a bastion of media freedom and uncensored publishing in Asia—accessible to the Chinese market but removed from China’s censorship strictures and its criminal penalties for those who speak truth to power.
The extradition bill and future legislation like it would threaten this freedom, and publishers around the world would need to begin asking themselves, “If I publish this book in Hong Kong, is there a chance that I or a colleague could face criminal charges in a Chinese court?” 

The result will be self-censorship driven by fear as Hong Kong is further stripped of the protections that make it a safe harbor for readers and booksellers alike.

Aggressive Outbursts Mar Xi's Plan to Raise China on the World Stage

Beijing rewards diplomats that are aggressive advocates of China’s views and scorns those that it perceives as overly timid

Bloomberg News

China’s diplomats aren’t being very diplomatic.
In the past few months, its envoy to Canada publicly accused his hosts of “white supremacy,” its ambassador in Sweden labeled the Swedish police “inhumane” and blasted the country’s “so-called freedom of expression,” and its chief emissary in South Africa said President Donald Trump’s policies were making the U.S. “the enemy of the whole world.”
“I don’t think we are witnessing a pattern of misstatements and slips of the tongue," said Ryan Hass, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who previously oversaw China affairs at the U.S. National Security Council. 

“We seem to be watching China’s diplomats matching the mood of the moment in Beijing. Beijing rewards diplomats that are aggressive advocates of China’s views and scorns those that it perceives as overly timid.”
That may be damaging Xi Jinping’s efforts to win friends abroad and capitalize on Donald Trump’s international unpopularity. 

While China has seized on the trade war and U.S. disengagement abroad to pitch itself as a champion of globalization, 63 percent of respondents to a 2018 Pew poll in 25 countries said they preferred the U.S. as a world leader, compared with 19 percent for China.

Backlash Builds
At stake is China’s avowed goal of establishing itself as a global superpower with influence over a network of allies to balance U.S. influence. 

China is pouring billions into global efforts such as Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative to forge stronger links with countries around the world.
But China’s increasingly strident diplomatic approach could do more harm than good. 

Anti-China sentiment has played a pivotal role in election surprises across Asia, and more countries around the world are becoming skeptical of Chinese investment -- particularly in telecommunications, with fears growing about using its equipment in 5G networks due to concerns about espionage.
China’s foreign ministry didn’t respond to faxed questions about the more aggressive language from diplomats. 

After Trump took office, China has sought to portray itself as a supporter of the international order, with Xi himself defending globalization at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 

His charm offensive stood in contrast to Trump, who has reshaped public discourse with regular insults of other world leaders on Twitter.
Even so, foreign diplomats in Beijing say that the behavior of Chinese officials has become far more aggressive and assertive in private meetings in recent years. 

Their discussions have become more ideological, according to one senior foreign envoy, who described the behavior as a strong sense of grievance combined with increasing entitlement about China’s international role and rights.
China’s reported behavior at the APEC summit in November highlighted the shift. 

Papua New Guinea police were called after Chinese officials attempted to “barge” into the office of the country’s foreign minister to influence the summit’s communique, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency. 

Chinese officials later denied the report, calling it “a rumor spread by some people with a hidden agenda.”

Huawei Advocacy
Chinese diplomats’ advocacy for the country’s embattled tech giant, Huawei Technologies Co., has even riled heads of government. 

After the Chinese ambassador to the Czech Republic, Zhang Jianmin, announced in November that the Czech cyber security body’s decision to ban Huawei did not represent the view of the Czech government, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said, “I do not know what the ambassador is talking about," according to Czech Radio. 

One European ambassador in Beijing said China’s aggressive advocacy for the company has been prevalent across the 28-nation bloc.

Zhang Jianmin

In some regions, China’s overseas rhetoric has been hardening for years. 

Foreign officials noticed an increasingly strident tone from Beijing following the global financial crisis. 

At a 2010 meeting hosted by Southeast Asian nations in Hanoi, then foreign minister Yang Jiechi famously dismissed some of China’s neighbors as “small countries” when challenged over Beijing’s stance in the South China Sea.
Foreign diplomats said the outbursts have increased in both frequency and intensity since Xi took power in 2012. 

In the last few years, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and now Canada have all incurred Beijing’s wrath, with diplomatic barbs often accompanied by economic pressure through import restrictions, store inspections and safety warnings to Chinese tour groups.
In a speech at the 2017 Communist Party conclave that saw Xi appointed for a second term as party chief without an apparent successor, Xi described China as “standing tall and firm in the East” and pledged to make the country a global leader in innovation, influence and military might. 

At a conference for Chinese ambassadors at the end of that year, Xi urged diplomats to play a more proactive part in an increasingly multipolar world -- a speech China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom described as a “mobilization order,” or “bugle call.”

‘Crags and Torrents’
China’s diplomatic corps has been quick to show its loyalty to Xi. 

In a 2017 essay in the party’s theoretical magazine Qiushi, top diplomat Yang Jiechi pledged to study and implement Xi’s thought on diplomacy in a “deep-going way.” 

And Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently praised Xi for “taking the front line of history” and “braving 10,000 crags and torrents.”
“Chinese ambassadors always feel they have to speak to the leaders in Beijing more than to the local public. Their promotions depend on it,” said Susan Shirk, a former U.S. deputy assistant Secretary of State for East Asia. 

“If today what they say is more overtly anti-American or anti-Western then that reflects the changing foreign policy line.”
In line with national “party-building” campaigns, Chinese diplomats regularly engage in “self-criticism” sessions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to people familiar with the meetings. Last month, the former deputy head of the party’s powerful Organization Department, Qi Yu, was appointed as the foreign ministry’s Party Secretary despite a lack of diplomatic experience. 

One foreign ambassador said Chinese diplomats are increasingly “scared.”
China has seen this kind of ideology-driven diplomacy before. 

During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese diplomats in London videotaped themselves fighting protesters on the streets of London, according to the book China’s Quest by historian John Garver. 

In Beijing, British and Soviet diplomatic missions were besieged or invaded and other diplomats were threatened on the streets.
The new wave of truculence is also affecting how foreign envoys are treated in China. 

Detained Canadian citizen and former diplomat Michael Kovrig has been questioned about his work as a diplomat, according to people familiar with the discussions. 

The move is a violation of Article 39 of the Vienna Convention, which explicitly covers the past work of former diplomats. 

China is a signatory.
Foreign diplomats visiting China’s far western colony of East Turkestan have been followed, temporarily detained and forced to delete photographs from their phones, while Swedish citizen Gui Minhai was grabbed by Chinese authorities in front of Swedish diplomats.
The shift in mood, and tensions with the U.S., have altered the tone of discussions inside China’s bureaucracy. 

One Chinese trade diplomat said that while it’s never been easy to be a dove in China, all but the most senior officials now refrain from publicly voicing moderate positions toward the U.S.
“Beijing has established a pattern of making examples of middle powers in hopes that doing so deters others from challenging China’s interests,” said Hass at the Brookings Institution. 

“Some in Beijing also seem to be growing frustrated that China’s rising national power is not yet translating into the types of deference from others that it seeks.”

Sweden Recalls Ambassador to China in Twist in Bookseller’s Detention

Ambassador arranged meeting where Chinese demanded media silence in exchange for Gui Minhai’s release
By Eva Dou
Anna Lindstedt, Sweden’s ambassador to China, is the second Western ambassador to China recalled in a month.

BEIJING—Sweden has recalled its ambassador to China and opened an internal investigation into her role in arranging a meeting where Chinese businessmen threatened the daughter of a detained Swedish bookseller, Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
Anna Lindstedt is the second Western ambassador to China recalled in a month, stoking concerns about China’s potential growing leverage over foreign diplomats.
It was also another bizarre twist in the case of the bookseller Gui Minhai—whose detention has drawn widespread attention from Western governments, angering Beijing. 

Mr. Gui is a Chinese-born Swedish citizen and had been based in Hong Kong, where he specialized in selling political titles banned in mainland China. 

He first disappeared from his Thailand home in 2015 into Chinese custody, then was snatched again by Chinese agents last year while on a train with Swedish diplomats. 

He remains in custody, facing unspecified state-secret charges.
Mr. Gui’s daughter, Angela Gui, alleged on Wednesday in a widely circulated essay on the website Medium that Ms. Lindstedt had contacted her in mid-January, inviting her to meet some Chinese businessmen in Stockholm who offered to help with Mr. Gui’s case. 

The meetings turned strange, with the men requesting she not leave the hotel during the day, plying her with wine and asking her to go work with them in China.

Angela Gui, whose father is in Chinese custody facing unspecified state-secret charges. 

The men demanded she stop making public statements, in exchange for her father’s release with a reduced penalty. 

Ms. Lindstedt attended the meetings and agreed with the plan, Ms. Gui wrote.
“I was taken aback and said I didn’t trust him,” she wrote of one of the unnamed businessmen. 

“He then said, ‘You have to trust me, or you will never see your father again.’ ”
Ms. Lindstedt told her China might punish Sweden if she continued her activism and that officials at Sweden’s Foreign Ministry were unaware that Ms. Lindstedt had arranged the meeting.
An email to Ms. Lindstedt’s email address returned an auto reply: “I have finished my mission in Beijing to move back to Sweden.”
Ms. Gui didn’t respond to emails from the Journal on Thursday.
Rasmus Eljanskog, a press officer for Sweden’s Foreign Ministry, said in an emailed statement that an internal investigation has been initiated “due to information concerning incorrect action in connection with events at the end of January.” 

He declined to comment on details of the allegations.
Sweden takes cases involving restrictions on freedom of expression seriously, Mr. Eljanskog said.
Karl-Olof Andersson, deputy head of the Swedish Embassy in Beijing, said by telephone that he is acting head of the mission and referred further questions to Stockholm.
The case came weeks after Canada’s ambassador to China was fired for saying a senior Huawei Technologies Co. executive arrested at U.S. request had a good case to fight extradition.

China's human rights record to be examined in UN review

Treatment of minorities, detentions and suppression of freedoms to be scrutinised
By Lily Kuo in Beijing

A protest against the Chinese government’s detention of Muslim minorities in September in India. 

China’s human rights record will be examined on Tuesday at a UN event expected to focus on Beijing’s treatment of ethnic minorities, detention of activists and suppression of religious and civil freedoms.
The process, known as a universal periodic review (UPR), takes place every five years for each UN member state. 

The country under review is meant to demonstrate how it has followed previous recommendations as well as answer questions from states, NGOs and others.
Advance questions from member states have focused on China’s treatment of ethnic minorities in East Turkestan, where an estimated 1 million ethnic Uighurs and others are detained in a network of internment camps.
Others raised questions about press freedoms in Hong Kong, where a journalist with the Financial Times was in effect expelled; the detention of Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai; and the detention of human rights defenders such as the lawyer Wang Quanzhang, the Uighur activist Ilham Tohti, and the dissident Huang Qi, who is believed to be suffering from chronic kidney disease, an accumulation of fluid in the brain, and heart disease.
On Monday, a group of 14 NGOs called on China to release Huang on the basis that there was an immediate threat to his life. 

According to the statement, authorities have repeatedly rejected applications for release on medical bail, allowing his health to deteriorate.
Critics say this year’s review highlights how China’s human rights record has deteriorated under the leadership of Xi Jinping. 

“What is most telling is that we are asking the same questions as we head into China’s third review. That some of the same issues are still coming up is a powerful statement of how little progress China has made,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch.
Rights activists say China has sought to suppress the voices of dissidents at events on the global stage such as this. 

Fewer Chinese activists and NGOs are participating in the review process than in years past, in what some call the “Cao Shunli effect”, after the activist who was detained for participating in China’s UPR in 2009 and 2013. 

Cao died in a military hospital in 2014 after being denied treatment.
“All UN member states have an equal opportunity to press China on its egregious human rights record, and they shouldn’t waste it,” said John Fisher, the Geneva director at Human Rights Watch.
“Chinese activists have been imprisoned, tortured, and fatally mistreated for the chance to challenge Beijing over its human rights record.”

Chinese aggressions in Europe have a name: broken porcelain

Beijing’s message to Sweden and beyond – criticise us, and we’ll topple your agenda – won’t win it any hearts and minds

By David Bandurski

Screengrab from the ‘video that purported to show the ‘brutal treatment’ of three Chinese tourists at a hotel in Stockholm’. 

Two days after Sweden’s election in September, a bizarre statement appeared in English on the website of the Chinese embassy in Stockholm. 

A “small handful of Swedish forces, media and individuals”, it said, had made “unwarranted claims” of Chinese interference in the Swedish vote. 

These were “groundless accusations”, and a “malicious attack and smear against China”. 

The strangest thing of all: no one in Sweden  had the slightest inkling what the statement referred to.

Beijing protests Swedish TV satire about barbaric Chinese tourists
As an expert on China’s official discourse who also studies its influence in Europe, I too struggled to make sense of this storm in a teapot – until a few days later, when a new tempest whirled into view. This time, Sweden noticed. 

The source of the fresh controversy was an online video that purported to show the “brutal treatment” of three Chinese tourists at a hotel in Stockholm. 

As I read the "angry" comments from China’s foreign ministry, it suddenly all made perfect sense. 

The expressions of "outrage" were part of a concerted diplomatic strategy of hyperbole and distraction.
In the video, the tourists – identified as Zeng and his two parents – are carried from the hotel by police officers, and deposited on the pavement outside as the son screams in English: “This is killing! This is killing!” 

The mother sits on the pavement and wails: “Save me!” 

According to a local newspaper, Aftonbladet, the tourists had arrived at the hotel the night before their scheduled booking and asked to remain in the lobby through the night. 

They disregarded repeated requests to leave, remaining instead on the lobby sofas. 

One eyewitness said the police remained calm as the Chinese family grew agitated. 

The son, this source said, acted particularly oddly, “throwing himself flat on the ground”. 

Quoted by local media, a Swedish prosecutor later said: “We made the assessment that no crime on the part of the police had been committed.”
The Chinese embassy, in a statement on 15 September, insisted that the tourists had been “brutally abused by the Swedish police”, which had “severely endangered the life and violated the basic human rights of Chinese citizens”.
Many Chinese people who viewed the video clips on domestic social media platforms were furious about what they saw as mistreatment. 

But others saw something different: a familiar pattern of using over-dramatisation as a means of recourse for imagined injustice. 

Called “porcelain bumping”, or pengci, this pattern became a focus of attention as the hubbub over the Stockholm incident continued in China. 

Pengci refers to the practice of manufacturing drama to obtain a desired outcome. 

The term was coined to describe a technique used by fraudsters who would wait with delicate porcelain vessels outside busy markets and demand payment when these shattered, ostensibly due to the carelessness of others. 

Now, pengci often refers to the act of throwing oneself into oncoming traffic in order to claim compensation – a practice so common in China that related compilations of clips online are now nearly as ubiquitous as cat videos.
Still, the Chinese embassy in Sweden continued to depict the incident as a grave case of human rights abuse. 

The foreign ministry’s position was parroted by state-run media. 

One article shared by a social media account of the People’s Daily alleged that talk of “porcelain bumping”, and other attempts to minimise the Stockholm incident, had been cooked up overseas by Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that the Chinese government has labelled an enemy.
At this point official Chinese outrage had moved on to a skit aired on 21 September on a satirical show by the Swedish national broadcaster, SVT, that made light of the incident. 

A statement from the Chinese embassy said the skit had “breached the basic moral bottom line of humankind”. 

Moreover, it had “seriously infringed on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity” by projecting a map behind the host that did not show Taiwan and Tibet as an integral part of China.
This came at an already tense time in the bilateral relationship. 

The Dalai Lama had visited Sweden just days before the video of the tourists appeared. 

Another sore point was China’s continued imprisonment of a Hong Kong-based bookseller, Gui Minhai, who is a Swedish citizen. 

Oscar Almén, a researcher at Uppsala University, told Radio Sweden: “The Chinese embassy is now actively trying to deliver a message to the Swedish media and the public.”
That message is a solemn promise to government and society in Europe and beyond: wherever you seek to criticise our policies or forestall our ambitions, we will topple your agenda. We will shatter the porcelain of diplomatic composure and fan the anger of our population with debased facts until every issue you raise is about just one issue – China’s national "dignity".
Earlier this month “broken porcelain” diplomacy moved on to the British Conservative party’s annual conference in Birmingham, as a journalist from state-owned China Central Television shouted down a panellist at an event on Hong Kong organised by the party’s human rights committee, which was attended by prominent members of the pro-democracy community in Hong Kong. 

As the woman was confronted and asked to leave, she apparently slapped a student volunteer. 

She shouted, “How democratic [is the] UK!” as she was being escorted out.
The Chinese embassy in London demanded an apology. 

And while it made a fuss about the reporter’s rights, it also pointed out, in a statement, that “any plot or action conspiring to divide China is contrary to the current of history”. 

Discussion of Hong Kong’s future, in other words, was to be avoided.
The pattern is clear. 

When it comes to foreign criticism of the Chinese government, or to the strategic issues it cares about, we’re all tiptoeing through a china shop now. 

The danger is that such histrionics could make European governments, universities, scholars and journalists, to remain silent, retreat from issues likely to prompt an outburst. 

Europe must send a message that it welcomes free, open and calm discussion of all issues, and that it will not suspend its values or the rights of its citizens to appease China’s official bouts of staged anger. 

If we refuse to indulge such tactics, China’s government will eventually come to understand what many of its citizens already know – that you don’t win hearts or minds through intimidation.

China's "Barbarian" Tourists

Swedish Comedy Show Reminds Chinese ‘Not To Poo Outside Of Historic Buildings’
By Austin Ramzy

The satirical Swedish show, Svenska Nyheter, aired a skit about "barbarian" tourists from China

HONG KONG — Tension between China and Sweden over the treatment of a group of tourists in Stockholm has escalated after a satirical skit depicted Chinese travelers as people who eat dogs and need to be told not to defecate in public.
The incident has led to repeated complaints from Chinese, and calls on Chinese social media for boycotts of Swedish products and travel to the country.
The tensions began earlier this month when a Chinese man and his parents arrived at a hostel in Stockholm after midnight, hours before they could check in for a reservation beginning the next afternoon. 

The Generator hostel told the three they could not stay overnight in the lobby, and called the police when they refused to leave.
Video of the police removing the family, who were protesting their treatment, was posted online. 

At one point the son, surnamed Zeng, shouted, “This is killing!”
The incident has been given extensive coverage by Chinese media outlets. 

The ire from the Chinese increased after the skit was aired last week by the Swedish national broadcaster SVT.
The skit, which ran on the Svenska Nyheter program, was billed as a guide for Chinese tourists to avoid causing problems while abroad. 

It said that pet dogs should not be seen as potential meals, and warned against defecating outside historical monuments. 

The show uploaded a portion of the skit on Youku, a Chinese online video service.
Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called the program “a gross insult to the Chinese” in a statement Monday. 

Thomas Hall, the entertainment director for SVT, said in a statement Monday that the intention of the skit was to mock racism and highlight how “sinophobia” was not considered as much of a concern as other forms of discrimination in Sweden.
SVT’s program director, Jan Helin, said the network would not apologize for the satire, the network’s news division reported.
The tension between China and Sweden over the tourist incident and the skit follows long-running concerns about the fate of a Chinese-born Swedish publisher who was imprisoned in China. 

The publisher, Gui Minhai, had published books from Hong Kong about the Chinese leadership.
He was secretly taken from Thailand to China in 2015 and was later shown on Chinese television admitting to violating publishing rules. 

Such televised confessions by subjects who have been incommunicado with no legal protections are often used by the Chinese authorities to respond to outside criticism over politically sensitive cases.
Mr. Gui spent two years in prison for an alleged drunken-driving fatality in China more than a decade earlier. 

The Chinese authorities said he had been released last year, but his whereabouts were unclear.
Then in January he was snatched from a Chinese train while traveling with Swedish diplomats. Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, called it a “brutal intervention” that contravened “basic international rules on consular support.”
The diplomatic strains over the tourist incident have reverberated on Chinese social media. 

While some people said the family traveling in Sweden acted inappropriately, the strongest sentiment seemed to be anger at Svenska Nyheter’s depiction of Chinese tourists.
It is unclear whether calls to punish Sweden economically will have any lasting effect. 

Chinese nationals are a small but rapidly growing part of tourism to Sweden. 

Ikea, the Swedish furniture giant, has eight outlets in mainland China, and they are often packed with shoppers.
Previous boycott efforts have had mixed results. 

While Norway’s salmon exports to China plunged after the Nobel Peace Prize was given to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010, bilateral trade hit a peak in 2015. 

The two countries normalized relations in 2016.
Trade also rose between China and South Korea even after the Chinese government stirred up anger over the installation of a missile defense system by the United States in South Korea. 

But some prominent South Korean companies did take a hit, and the supermarket chain Lotte was forced to close dozens of stores in the mainland.
The controversial television skit is likely to fuel lingering resentment in China over the treatment of the family of tourists in Stockholm.
The video of the tourists being removed from the hotel did not show the police using violence against the family. 

Some aspects of Chinese state media reports on the incident were contested by Swedish journalists. The family was not taken to a cemetery, as the Communist Party-owned Global Times reported, but to a metro station called Woodland Cemetery.
Chinese diplomats nevertheless complained about the family’s treatment. 

The Chinese Embassy in Sweden said they had been “brutally abused by the Swedish police.”
The Swedish Prosecution Authority said the Public Prosecution Office determined that the police had not committed a criminal offense and would not open an investigation.

Rogue Travelers

Swedish Police Ejects Chinese Tourists Trying To Check In A Day Early and Refusing To Leave

By Mike Ives

HONG KONG — The latest diplomatic incident between China and Sweden was born in, of all places, the lobby of a hostel.
Earlier this month, a Chinese man named Zeng and his parents arrived at the Generator hostel in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, the state-run media in China reported. 

t was just after midnight, and he asked if his parents could wait in the lobby until check-in opened later that day.
But Zeng said the hostel staff members called police officers, who forcibly removed the family and dropped them near a cemetery outside town, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.
“I could not imagine this happening in any modern country, especially Sweden, the hometown of the Nobel Prize,” he was quoted as saying by Global Times.
Over the weekend, nearly two weeks after the tourists’ removal, the Chinese Embassy said in a statement that the three had been “brutally abused by the Swedish police.” 

The statement came a day after the embassy issued a safety alert for Chinese travelers in Sweden — one of the safest countries on earth.
The incident, which comes eight months after the Chinese authorities detained Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong book publisher with Swedish citizenship, may further strain relations between the two countries.
In 2015, Mr. Gui became a symbol of the Chinese government’s determination to smother criticism from abroad when he and four other Hong Kong booksellers disappeared and later resurfaced in China in police custody. 

Mr. Gui, whose business sold books critical of China’s leaders, was formally freed in 2017, but ordered to remain in China.
In February, more than two weeks after he was snatched from a Beijing-bound train, Mr. Gui resurfaced to say in a police-arranged interview that he wanted no help from the outside world. 

But Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, said that taking him from the train had been a “brutal intervention” and that China had contravened “basic international rules on consular support.”
In 2012, Chinese tourists spent $102 billion abroad, making them the world’s biggest source market for international tourism. 

They are an increasingly dominant spending force in Sweden and beyond, if also among the world’s most resented travelers.
Out of about 4.7 million guest nights by international visitors in Stockholm County in 2016, Chinese nationals accounted for 117,476, a 74 percent rise from 2011, according to data published by the Stockholm Business Region, a company owned by the city of Stockholm. 

Most stayed in hotels, but 7,392 stayed in hostels.
Given all that, the Chinese Embassy’s charge of “brutal abuse” leveled against the Swedish police was clearly a diplomatic shot across the bow. 

The embassy also said it was “deeply appalled and angered by what happened and strongly condemns” the behavior of the Swedish police.
“We urged the Swedish government to conduct thorough and immediate investigation, and respond to the Chinese citizens’ requests for punishment, apology and compensation in time,” it added. 

“We cannot understand why the Swedish side has not given us any feedback.”
Linn Duvhammar, a spokeswoman for Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, acknowledged the request by the Chinese Embassy but said the case had been handled by “the responsible authority,” referring to the police.
A spokesman for the police in Stockholm, Lars Bystrom, said Monday, “We have nothing more to say in this case.”
Karl Jigland, a press officer for the Swedish Prosecution Authority, said on Monday that the Public Prosecution Office determined that the police had not committed a criminal offense during the incident at the Generator hostel, and decided on Sept. 7 not to open a preliminary investigation.
The prosecutor’s office did not consider whether the police officers’ actions were “the best way to handle a situation,” he said, adding that such questions were handled by the police themselves. 

But Mr. Bystrom, the police spokesman, said no such investigation was being conducted in this case.
A receptionist who answered the phone at the Generator in Stockholm on Monday said she had no comment. 

The hostel is one of several Generator locations around Europe, and the company’s website describes the hostels as “unique, stylish, experience and design-led spaces at affordable rates.”
The Generator’s rules say that customers who disturb guests or fail to “conduct themselves in a reasonable and responsible manner” may be asked to leave.
Global Times reported that Zeng’s father was dragged out first by the police, and his wife fed him medicine as he lay on the ground. 

Zeng said it was at that point that he “lost his mind” and began yelling at police officers. 

He recalled saying: “Help, the Swedish police is killing us!”
After being dropped by the police near a cemetery outside the city, he said, the family waited for a half-hour until a passer-by stopped and gave them a ride back to Stockholm. 

He called the whole ordeal a “nightmare.”
On Chinese social media, some users expressed anger over the family’s ordeal, saying that the Swedish police’s apparent behavior was particularly insulting to older people. 

But many others described the family’s emotional reaction to their experience as a national disgrace for China.
One user wrote that Zeng’s outburst was a stunt that might work in China, but not Sweden, “a society ruled by law.”
“I condemn this kind of unruly behavior,” another wrote. 

“It is shameful for the whole family and the whole country.”
Still other users speculated that Global Times was publicizing Zeng’s story as retaliation against Sweden for recently hosting the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, who has been accused by China of secretly advocating Tibetan independence.

China is trying to muzzle Gui Minhai. These poems tell his story.

By Fred Hiatt

Gui Minhai in an undated photo. 

Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen, was riding a train from Shanghai to Beijing in the company of two Swedish diplomats in January when 10 Chinese plainclothesmen stormed aboard, lifted him up and carried him off the train and out of sight.
Three weeks later, Gui was paraded before Chinese media to recite a bizarre and apparently coerced confession. 

He hasn’t been heard from since.
This is what passes for the rule of law in China today.
I think of Gui sometimes when I hear Chinese dictator Xi Jinping boasting about a country that “has stood up, grown rich and is becoming strong.”
Would a truly strong and self-confident nation behave this way? 

Why would it feel the need to kidnap — for the second time, no less — a peaceable 54-year-old gentleman such as Gui and keep him, in poor health, locked up for, now, more than a thousand days?
Gui left China as a young man to study in Sweden and got marooned there when the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre rendered his home country inhospitable to anyone inclined toward democracy. 

He earned a Phd, married, had a daughter, Angela, who is now, at 24, beginning her own PhD studies at the University of Cambridge in England.
Eventually, as the political climate in China eased, Gui moved back. 

He established a book business in Hong Kong, where he published insider accounts from China’s Communist Party — books that were banned in China itself.
In October 2015, he disappeared from his small vacation home in Thailand. 

That was the first abduction, followed by the first bizarre confession: Gui showed up on television in January 2016 claiming he had voluntarily returned to China to take responsibility for a long-ago hit-and-run car accident.
Angela could never find out where he was being held, but last fall he was released into a kind of house arrest in Ningbo, a coastal city south of Shanghai, where he was allowed to resume a careful communication with his daughter.
He told her that, while in prison, he had been composing poems. 

His captors had not permitted him pen and paper, but he had committed them to memory — and last fall he began writing them down and sending them to his daughter.
In one, he compares himself to a Père David’s deer — a species that, by the time a French missionary became in the 19th century the first Westerner to see it, existed only in captivity, in the Chinese emperor’s hunting preserve.
“When I was caught I started to evolve/When I started to evolve, I was tamed,” Gui wrote. 

“But while I am shamed in the swamp/I still yearn to run through the Swedish woods.”
Also last fall, Gui began to notice alarming signs of neurological deterioration — perhaps a result of maltreatment in captivity; perhaps, as a Ningbo doctor believed, early signs of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“He was very shaken by this,” Angela recalled. 

“He told me, ‘I’m not afraid to die, I’m just not ready yet. There’s so much more to be done.’”
The Ningbo doctor said he should see a specialist; the Swedish government agreed to send one to Beijing; China’s ambassador to Sweden said Gui would be permitted to travel to the capital for the exam. 

It was on the way to that appointment that he was, again, abducted. 

And at his next “confession,” he was being charged, even more absurdly, with stealing “state secrets.”
What kind of state secrets could Gui possess after nearly three years in captivity?
Angela wonders, sadly, if the secret is not the case itself — a story that has become such an embarrassment of injustice atop injustice that the Communist Party can’t bring itself to turn her father loose.
All of this is happening while, given America’s forfeiture of global standing, China is, understandably, trying to present itself as an alternative model. 

Yet how can its leaders convince the world that they are “an unstoppable and invincible force” (that’s Xi, again) if they fear a man such as Gui Minhai? 

Who wants to imitate a regime that behaves like gangsters?
Angela hopes the Chinese will let her father see a doctor. 

She hopes his health is not deteriorating. 

Sometimes she even lets herself dream that her father — who was not there to see her graduate at the top of her class this spring — will be with her when she earns her next degree.
Today, The Post is proud to publish two of Gui Minhai’s poems for the first time. 

Like Angela, I hope he will be free and publishing a full volume of his verse before too long.
“There is so much more he wanted to do,” she says. 

“There was so much he wanted to tell people.”

Père David’s Deer
By Gui Minhai, translated by Anne Henochowicz

Under the harsh light day and night
I quickly turned into a Père David’s deer
it took only seven hundred days or so
for my graying hair to evolve into antlers

These strange creatures don’t live here
they say my name is “Neither Fish Nor Fowl”
When I was caught I started to evolve
When I started to evolve, I was tamed

As soon as my clothes were peeled away
I became a tamed David’s deer
I sobbed in front of the cameras
admitting I was a deer that had strayed away

In the secret garden, my swift devolution
turned speech into furry groans
turned a hat into a black hood
turned nationality and citizenship into diplomatic dispute

In every Chinese encyclopedia, it is written
that Père David’s deer is a rare beast unique to China
thus one such deer, at ease in the Swedish forest
began a new life in an Asian swamp

I am a devolved David’s deer
unable to choke down poems or prose
but while I am shamed in the swamp
I still yearn to run through the Swedish woods.

first written in prison
rewritten Dec. 10, 2017

Heroism
By Gui Minhai, translated by Anne Henochowicz

When I was young, I cared for a cute little chicken
in the time of my childhood it laid an egg
an egg that shone toward the sun’s light
with a round, round yolk inside its shell

I took this egg with me everywhere
and made many yolk-yellow drawings
when even the moon was curved with exhaustion
I dreamed dreams as round as a yolk

Only when a pair of boots trampled my egg
did I know how frail an eggshell is
the forlorn, helpless yolk on the ground
the egg white flowing out like tears

A bare chicken egg is so weak
after the yolk had been ravaged
I curled into a ball, surrendered the egg’s genetic code
and admitted I really was a duck egg

I burn to my end in the red-hot pan
only because I have this humble notion:
once I’m fried into a fat omelette
a hero’s death will be wrapped inside me

written Dec. 27, 2017

Beijing Is Holding Sino-Americans Hostage in China

Exit bans are a new tool in China’s global coercion campaign.

By BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN

In its ongoing campaign to extend its reach beyond its borders, the Chinese government has found a new form of leverage: Sino-Americans in China.
Last year, Beijing prevented several Sino-Americans from leaving China, including a pregnant woman, according to email correspondence obtained by The Daily Beast. 

The total number of so-called exit bans placed on Sino-Americans in China is unknown, but at least two dozen cases have occurred within the past two years, according to one analyst’s estimate.
Chinese authorities typically target U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage for exit bans, usually in connection with an investigation. 

Sometimes, Beijing uses Sino-Americans to try to coerce family members residing in the United States to return to China or to cooperate with Chinese authorities in investigations.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has championed a sweeping anti-corruption campaign with an international element, known as “Operation Fox Hunt,” aimed at pursuing Chinese citizens who have fled abroad after allegedly committing economic crimes. 

The United States does not have an extradition treaty with China and in the past has rarely cooperated with Chinese demands to repatriate Chinese citizens whom Beijing considers to be fugitives. 

Beijing has previously deployed undercover agents to the United States to coerce targets into returning to China, violating U.S. visa laws and prompting U.S. government indignation.
Now the People’s Republic seems to have found another lever of pressure. 

If one of Beijing’s targets living in the United States has relatives in China, Chinese authorities aren’t shy about applying pressure to those relatives, even if they are U.S. citizens. 

Exit bans are a “pretty new tool in the Chinese toolbox” for exerting such pressure, said John Kamm, founder of the U.S. nonprofit Dui Hua Foundation, which works on sensitive human rights cases in China.
“That individual might be treated as a material witness,” said Kamm. 

“Or that individual might be in effect being held as a hostage in an effort to get the people back.”
The Trump administration has pushed back quietly but firmly against exit bans. 

For example, in the lead-up to the first U.S.-China Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Dialogue, held in Washington, D.C., in October 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed for China to allow the free travel of three Sino-Americans who had been prevented from leaving China, including a pregnant woman, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast.
“Both sides will continue to cooperate to prevent each country from becoming a safe haven for fugitives and will identify viable fugitive cases for cooperation,” reads the U.S.-China joint statement released on Oct. 6, after the dialogue concluded. 

“Both sides commit to take actions involving fugitives only on the basis of respect for each other’s sovereignty and laws.”
It’s a delicate balancing act for an administration that also wishes to deport Chinese citizens who are in the United States illegally. 

In the past, China has often refused to accept deportations, leaving the United States with a large number of Chinese asylum seekers with final deportation orders. 

In 2015, Beijing’s refusal to accept deportees began to coincide with its push to repatriate fugitives it claimed were guilty of corruption. 

The Obama administration signed a memorandum of understanding with China to help expedite the deportation process, but remained reluctant to agree to Chinese demands to extradite fugitives.
Human rights groups have warned that fugitives may face torture or death back in China, also expressing concerns that Beijing might use trumped-up corruption charges to get their hands on troublesome political dissidents abroad.
The Department of Justice did not respond to emailed questions. 

The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
The State Department declined to comment regarding the fate of those three U.S. citizens, citing privacy concerns, but a State Department spokesperson said that the U.S. government had not agreed to repatriate any Chinese citizen due to pressure from exit bans.
However, in January, the State Department warned Sino-Americans that going to China could be risky.

“Exit bans have been imposed to compel Sino-Americans to resolve business disputes, force settlement of court orders, or facilitate government investigations,” states the travel advisory for U.S. citizens traveling to China, particularly U.S.-China dual nationals. 

“Individuals not involved in legal proceedings or suspected of wrongdoing have also be subjected to lengthy exit bans in order to compel their family members or colleagues to cooperate with Chinese courts or investigators.”
It’s difficult to know exactly how many Sino-Americans have been affected. 

The State Department declined to confirm the number of cases, citing privacy concerns, but Kamm said he knows of about two dozen cases over the past year and half alone.
“One of the problems with exit bans is that you don’t know that there is an exit ban on you until you actually get to the airport,” said Kamm. 

“There may be people in the country who have exit bans on them and they don’t know it.”
Exit bans have also been applied to ethnic Chinese of other nationalities. 

Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai was subject to an exit ban after he was kidnapped from Thailand and taken into custody in mainland China. 

The Swedish government has objected to his treatment there. 

Australian academic Feng Chongyi was interrogated by security officials while visiting China in 2017 then prevented from leaving the country. 

He was permitted to return to Australia a week later amid international media attention.
China has frequently used exit bans on its own citizens, most notably in 2010, when it prevented Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and others from traveling to Norway for Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. 

Chinese authorities have also revoked the passports of many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority in China’s northwest, as part of a massive repression campaign.
Exit bans violate United Nations human rights precepts. 

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” 

The State Department declined to say whether or not China’s actions violated U.S. or international law; the Justice Department did not respond to request for comment.
“A lot of people simply don’t know that they can be stopped for leaving China,” said Kamm.
It’s well-known that China blacklists people from entering, denying visas to academics and journalists who are critical of Beijing.
But, Kamm said, “even worse is if you get into the country and they won’t let you out.”