- Resisting China’s Campaign of Transnational Repression-3
In Western Europe, Beijing has tried to use diplomatic backchannels to silence critics. In 2019, Chinese agents met with Angela Gui to warn her to stop advocating for her father, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, himself a victim of transnational repression who had been kidnapped from Thailand, brought to China, and eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison on politically motivated charges.
The agents were able to arrange the meeting with Angela Gui through Anna Lindstedt, then the Swedish ambassador to China. Where official channels of cooperation are less susceptible to manipulation, the Chinese government has nonetheless found the means to target individuals.
For example, it has pursued thousands of people in at least 90 countries since 2014 through its “anti-corruption” Fox Hunt campaign, which tries to pressure individuals to either return to China to face criminal accusations or else take their own lives. Fox Hunt, and its partner campaign, SkyNet, are effectively attempts to export the Chinese legal system beyond the country’s physical borders.
In the United States, the Chinese government has targeted former student activists from the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement, including a candidate running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Agents of China’s Ministry of State Security plotted to collect or fabricate damaging information on this individual or even to physically assault him, evidently fearing the impact of his critical stance on the CCP if he were elected to office. Other schemes have entailed shriveling artists, activists, and members of the Tibetan, Uyghur, Falun Gong, Hong Kong, and other diaspora communities in the United States.
In these efforts, the Chinese agents hired Americans as private investigators, including current Department of Homeland Security and New York City Police Department officers. Chinese government actors have also attempted to bribe an agent of the Internal Revenue Service. Such tactics not only threaten the integrity of government agencies but also degrade trust between the affected diasporas and U.S. authorities.
