A new Chinese law asserts that Beijing can prosecute Chinese freedom advocates around the world for undermining “ethnic unity and progress.”
This form of transnational repression went into effect July 1 and subjects organizations and people located outside China’s borders to greater bullying from Beijing authorities. The new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress represents an emboldened declaration by the Chinese Communist Party that it will push back on international criticism of its human rights record while it also codifies systemic repression against ethnic and religious minorities in China.
The United States and the international community shouldn’t allow this move to go unchecked. The world’s democracies must actively resist pressure from China’s leadership to pursue, censor, and silence individuals outside of China who advocate and speak on the fundamental freedoms and human rights of those within the country. Such attempts at transnational repression by the Chinese Communist Party threaten the sovereignty, freedoms, and rule of law in democracies everywhere.
Much like the Hong Kong National Security Law has been used to pursue and pressure Hong Kong democracy advocates living in exile – including in the United States and United Kingdom – China’s Ethnic Unity and Progress law indicates Beijing will prosecute individuals and organizations who criticize China while outside the country’s borders.
The State Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom are critical tools to expose and highlight the Chinese Communist Party’s repression of fundamental human freedoms both within China and through transnational actions.
U.S. policymakers responded to the Ethnic Unity and Progress law’s implementation with a strong bipartisan statement denouncing China’s repression of ethnic and minority groups. They can also continue to platform diverse Chinese human rights advocates and researchers through meetings and public hearings on Capitol Hill.
U.S. federal law enforcement must also continue to investigate allegations and prosecute individuals who covertly surveil and intimidate U.S.-based individuals on behalf of Chinese state actors.
Adopted in March during the annual two sessions of China’s legislature, the new law purportedly aims to “forge a strong sense of the community of the Chinese people.” A closer look reveals the formal imposition of a narrow Chinese Communist Party-backed definition of Chinese cultural markers, practices, and ideology on China’s society.
Although the law declares all ethnicities equal and prohibits discrimination, it requires the state “in matters of ethnic unity” to “uphold the comprehensive leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” and provide education “to firmly establish the correct perspectives on the nation, history, ethnicity, culture, and religion.”
The legislation assigns responsibility to every level of the state, the education system, public institutions, social groups, enterprises, media outlets, and even parents and guardians for advancing the party’s conceptualization of a unified Chinese people.
More than 90% of China’s population identifies as Han Chinese, but the government officially recognizes 56 different ethnic groups who have constitutional rights to use and develop their own languages and self-govern in designated autonomous regions. Yet under the guise of establishing and promoting a national Chinese culture and identity, the Chinese Communist Party has long used the autonomous regions within China where ethnic minorities are concentrated – such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia – as laboratories for testing and strengthening totalitarian features of the state’s repressive apparatus.
In Tibet and Xinjiang, more than 800,000 Tibetan and nearly 900,000 Uyghur children have been forcibly removed from their families and sent to state-run boarding schools that emphasize Mandarin instruction and Communist Party ideology. These facilities range from preschool through high school, and children are discouraged and even punished for speaking their native language. Separated from their local communities, they lose native language fluency and are denied opportunities to participate in heritage cultural traditions and practices. Instead, they are taught party-approved history and propaganda.
Protests erupted in Inner Mongolia in 2020 when Beijing announced that Mandarin would replace Mongolian as the primary instructional language in schools. Since that time, history books and other publications written in Mongolian have been banned, and Mongolian-language websites and social media apps have also been blocked.
China’s authorities seek to co-opt, control, and expunge visible markers of religions commonly practiced by ethnic minorities. Since 2017 in Xinjiang, the government has overseen architectural modifications and the outright destruction of more than two-thirds of the region’s Islamic mosques – a practice that has since been extended across the country.
The Chinese Communist Party also preemptively tried to claim sole authority to identify the next Dalai Lama, the head of Tibetan Buddhism, after the current exiled 91-year old spiritual leader inevitably passes and believes he will be reincarnated.
Survivors of Beijing’s ethnic repression and advocates who speak out against China’s wholesale human rights violations against ethnic minorities are often targeted by the long arm of party pressure campaigns designed to intimidate them – even outside China’s borders.
Surveilling, harassing, and detaining family members inside China is a common tactic. For example, Uyghur human rights advocate Rushan Abbas saw her sister Gulshan Abbas disappeared in China after publicly criticizing Beijing’s policies towards Xinjiang in the United States.
Beijing’s new law represents the latest salvo in its attempts to coercively suppress discussions about human rights violations in China through intimidation and censorship. The United States and other democracies must remain resolute in guarding against efforts by the Chinese Communist Party and other authoritarian regimes to conduct such transnational repression.