“It looks to me as if these are the most significant protests since 1989, and they are, I think, a boiling over of not just frustration at the very draconian COVID lockdowns, but actually rebellion against the very severe repression, the surveillance state that has developed under Xi Jinping over the last decade,” says Benedict Rogers, chief executive of Hong Kong Watch and co-founder of the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.
He’s the author of “China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny.”
As protests flare up across China, what’s really going on? Will the Chinese regime crack down harder? And how should the West respond?
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/most-significant-protests-since-1989-benedict-rogers-is-china-at-a-turning-point_4896419.html
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Benedict Rogers, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Benedict Rogers:
Thank you very much. It’s a privilege to be with you again.
Mr. Jekielek:
Ben, you’ve written a very, very important book and it’s almost bizarre that we’re having this interview today as multiple protests have manifested all across China, related to all sorts of things that you’ve actually written about extensively in China Nexus.
Mr. Rogers:
Yes. You’re absolutely right that my book, The China Nexus, couldn’t have been better timed. Of course, I had no idea when we decided that it would be published around this time what would be happening. And of course, it’s not only the protests that are taking place, but we also saw the very dramatic rejection of Hu Jintao, the previous leader of China, from the National People’s Congress.
We’ve seen violence carried out by Chinese diplomats at the Chinese consulate in Manchester, UK, a month or so ago against peaceful protests. We’ve seen the encounter between Xi Jinping and the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and now most significantly of course, these extraordinary scenes across China of the protests, which started with protests at the Foxconn Apple iPhone factory.
Then of course, protests in response to the tragic fire in Urumqi. But they’ve now seemed to have turned into much more than that. Protestors are calling on Xi Jinping to step down, calling on the CCP to step down, and calling for democracy and freedom. It looks to me as if these are the most significant protests since 1989, and they are a boiling over of not just frustration at the very draconian COVID lockdowns, but actually a rebellion against the very severe repression and the surveillance state that has developed under Xi Jinping over the last decade.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s very interesting, these lockdowns. They’re an extreme form of social control, and so they’re emblematic of a lot of what the different groups that you describe at length in China Nexus have been subjected to, of course, much worse in most cases than these lockdowns. But somehow it just struck me that the broader part of the Chinese population has experienced this now.
Mr. Rogers:
Yes, that’s right. We’ve seen, as I describe in The China Nexus, the horrific persecution of the Uyghurs, which I believe is increasingly recognized not only by the United States government, but by many other parliaments and other entities as a genocide. We see the continuing atrocities in Tibet, the persecution of Falun Gong and forced organ harvesting, which certainly has been declared by an independent tribunal as crimes against humanity, the persecution of Christians, and of course the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy in flagrant violation of an international treaty.
All of those things have been happening over recent years. In mainland China itself, we’ve seen increasing repression, crackdowns on lawyers, on bloggers, on dissidents and on civil society. But now we see ordinary Chinese people themselves who are not politically active, who are now speaking up against the repression that they’re experiencing as a result of the lockdowns.
Mr. Jekielek:
There are people in China who are sending out information, including some of our underground correspondents, sending out videos and photos and information through the great firewall of China, this amazing barrier to free information. One of the things that came out was that these protesters have the QR codes. They’re supposed to have their COVID tests green. All these protestors suddenly have their QR codes turn red. Now that’s interesting.
Mr. Rogers:
Very interesting. Absolutely. It seems to me the most blatant illustration of the CCPs weaponization of COVID restrictions.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why don’t you lay out for me how you think we got to this point? You laid out a few things that have happened, but I want to understand the significance of them. There was one of them that you didn’t mention. I had on Fengsuo Zhou as part of the America’s Future Series. I did an interview with him on a livestream and we were talking about the Bridge Man.
He saw that as a very significant moment, because somehow in this draconian, totalitarian police state, this guy figured out a way to protest for a while and get attention without being cleared away. One guy. I’m wondering if the people that are protesting now maybe didn’t get some inspiration from that, or maybe some lessons.
Mr. Rogers:
I think they may well have done so. That was an extraordinary courageous act right at the start of the 20th National People’s Congress, which was going to and indeed did give Xi Jinping an unprecedented third term. And everything looked good for Xi Jinping at that moment. He seemed destined to be in power potentially for the rest of his life if he chooses to. But now suddenly we’re seeing protests against that, starting with Bridge Man, and now the protesters against COVID.
I’ve just written a piece for the Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom about the protests, what I see as a breaking of the unspoken pact that had existed or appeared to exist between the people of China and the CCP in the past, where the unspoken deal was that the CCP would preside over an economic boom, living standards would rise dramatically, and that there would be, and we saw this in the 1990s and 2000s, and I describe this in the book, there would be a degree of limited space for some level of freedom of expression, some level of civil society, and some degree of religious practice, very restricted, and there were red lines and persecution.
It hasn’t just been happening under Xi Jinping. It’s always happened under the CCP. But nevertheless, there was that deal where there was economic growth, there was a little bit of space for people, and in exchange the CCP were able to claim some degree of legitimacy. It appears that the people of China are increasingly recognizing that Xi Jinping has broken that pact, because he’s no longer pursuing economic policies that support private enterprise. He’s reverting to a much more ideological rule. The people are now beginning to realize that and to stand up.
Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned earlier the obvious forced removal of Hu Jintao, the previous leader before Xi, from the room, and very publicly, I might add. Why did that happen, in your mind?
Mr. Rogers:
I’ve spoken to a number of people who know the CCP in greater depth than I do, and who observed that incident. Without exception, everyone agrees that it was not simply because Hu Jintao was unwell, as the CCP claims. It appears that either there was a lack of consultation between Xi Jinping and other factions in the party, including Hu Jintao, or there was a consultation in which Xi Jinping either lied or broke his word.
But either way, it appears that there was a clear disagreement over the choice of candidates for the Central Committee of the party. The document that Hu Jintao was trying to get his hands on, and you see that in that footage, apparently was a list of those who had been decided to be members of the Central Committee, and they were not members of Hu’s faction. Xi Jinping therefore had him removed before he had a chance to say anything.
Mr. Jekielek:
I suppose cementing Xi’s rule publicly in front of all the cameras.
Mr. Rogers:
That’s right. And it really very visually shows Xi Jinping’s ruthless, one-man authoritarian rule that extends not only to dissent in the country, but even within his own party. It’s clear that he wants 100 per cent control of everything.
Mr. Jekielek:
I can’t help but thinking that this pivotal moment in these protests that are coming out was the fire that happened in a building in the capital city of Xinjiang. And of course, the city had been locked down for a long time already. People were extremely unhappy, as lockdown people tend to be, and at the same time there’s a genocide happening. You never know what the spark will be that will light things up.
But somehow, and this is the question I have, how is it in this totalitarian society that all these people all over the country suddenly realized that this had happened? Because there was a protest originally there, but then these protests somehow spread. You also outlined in the book, by the way, how the Chinese Communist Party has sewn this racism against the Uyghur people among the Han population. It’s really remarkable that these protests are in 50 cities or more right now.
Mr. Rogers:
Yes, that is what’s most significant about it, despite the prejudice against the Uyghurs that has indeed been sown throughout society, Han Chinese saw the tragedy in Urumqi that certainly affected, in the apartment building there were both Uyghurs and Han Chinese, but certainly Uyghurs were affected by this appalling fire. How the news spread, I don’t know. I know that obviously the internet and WeChat are highly censored, so exactly how the news was disseminated and caught on, I’m not sure. But it obviously did and it is extremely significant.
Mr. Jekielek:
There are two explanations that I’ve heard. The first one is the amount of information overwhelmed the censors, and we have seen stuff like that before when there’s just too much for them to deal with it, especially because they know how to use coded language and so forth that doesn’t trigger the automated responses. But the second one which was interesting was people saying, “We only know about this because the Chinese Communist Party wants us to.” I’ve seen that from a few people.
Mr. Rogers:
Yes, both those explanations may have some truth. With regard to the second, I was talking to somebody just before coming to meet you who is a Chinese dissident. We were talking about how so far, thankfully, the police response to the protests has been surprisingly restrained. There have been some arrests, but there hasn’t yet been the kind of brutality that one might have expected. He was saying that is because the police have been affected by these very draconian lockdowns as well.
Their families, just like other families, are having to abide by the lockdown rules. And so, they have some sense of this, and perhaps even share some of the frustration. It may well be that there are elements in the party that are dissatisfied with Xi Jinping, that see the impact the zero-COVID policy is having on the economy, and perhaps on their own wealth. It’s only speculation on my part, but perhaps that’s why they allowed the news to spread.
Mr. Jekielek:
The other thing that struck me, and I’m very curious what you think about it. Here is a little background. In Asia, the idea of wearing these surgical masks is much more accepted in general than it is here traditionally. For example, people wear them to not infect others if they have the flu or something like that. That was something very common to see in Hong Kong and other places. Something that was stark in a lot of photos and a lot of video footage from these protests is that these people aren’t wearing masks. That is amazing. What do you think?
Mr. Rogers:
Yes. That’s also an expression of protest and an expression of dissent, along with holding up blank pieces of paper. Somebody has described it to me as the blank paper revolution. We had the color revolutions in the past, and now we have the blank paper, and perhaps the rejection of masks revolution
Mr. Jekielek:
I saw one that the sign said, “You know what I want to say.” You probably saw that one.
Mr. Rogers:
Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s dig into your book and into your 30 years of experience of looking at China. There’s been quite an evolution, actually. I’ve always found you to be a very thoughtful person. You’re a bit modest about your level of knowledge about China and the Chinese Communist Party. You’re a very compassionate person. It wasn’t necessarily something that you wanted to learn. That’s the sense I get from reading your book. But what would you say is the biggest lesson about China, and specifically the Chinese Communist Party the regime, that you learned through this time?
Mr. Rogers:
The biggest lesson is that the Chinese Communist Party cannot be trusted. I first went to China when I was 18 in 1992, and then I traveled very frequently throughout China through the ’90s and the first decade of the 2000s. I lived in Hong Kong the first five years after the handover, and I was never a fan of the Chinese Communist Party. Far from it.
I always knew that dictatorships and especially communist dictatorships are always repressive and are always untruthful. But I did have a sense in those years, in the late ’90s, early 2000s, that perhaps China was opening up. Certainly opening up economically, but perhaps alongside the economic opening, there was a degree, as I said earlier, of some limited space. I wasn’t under any illusions that it was freedom, but some limited space for civil society. I met Chinese human rights lawyers who were able to defend cases within certain red lines, and independent media bloggers. That space was there.
And so, I had this cautious optimism that as China continued to open up economically, it would continue to open up politically and socially. Xi Jinping clearly has reversed all of that. But it’s not just about Xi Jinping. It was a clear conscious decision by the party as a whole, probably around the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
One of the reasons they chose Xi Jinping was they thought he would follow the line they clearly wanted to take. They had become alarmed by how much space had opened up, and they felt threatened by that, and they wanted to shut it down. Now, Xi Jinping probably has gone further than the party as a whole at that time imagined. He’s by far the most ideological leader since Mao. He has the biggest cult of personality and one-man leadership than any of his predecessors since Mao.
The clear lesson that I have learned is that the Chinese Communist Party cannot be trusted. We’ve seen that over the International Treaty, the signing of the British Joint Declaration over Hong Kong, which they’ve completely broken, and they’ve destroyed Hong Kong’s promised freedoms and autonomy. We’ve seen it over the agreement that Beijing and the Vatican made.
Even just this week, the Vatican has finally admitted that Beijing is not keeping its word, and they sound surprised by that. They ought to look at what’s happened in Hong Kong. That’s the main lesson. You can trust it in one thing, and that is to be repressive and to defend its interests, rather than the country’s interests.
Mr. Jekielek:
It makes me think of Secretary Mike Pompeo’s maxim, “Distrust, but verify,” when it comes to the Chinese regime. Yet so many countries right now think of China as a competitor. That, to me, suggests someone that’s playing by the same rules.
Mr. Rogers:
Yes, I agree. I was very pleased when the rather short-lived British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who was prime minister for just 44 days. One of the things that she did that I really welcomed, and she did other things that were not so good, but was to designate China as a strategic threat to the United Kingdom. It’s early days yet, and we’ll have to see how he develops his foreign policy, but it appears that her successor Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is reverting to the language of strategic competitor.
Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned three scenarios in China that at least approached genocide. Genocide is the worst thing that humans can do to other humans, the eradication of an identifiable group of people. The leaders of the G20 countries are pretty aware of these realities. It baffles me that we could think of a country that does this, and then talk about normalized relations, and then talk about how to work together and how to cooperate. It seems to me like a very different value system.
Mr. Rogers:
That’s absolutely correct. The problem for world leaders is that we have over the years allowed China, when I say China, I don’t mean the people of China, but the regime and the economy of China, to be so integrated into the world economy. We have become so dependent on different aspects of China’s supply chains. Think of the extraordinary position that COVID-19 began in China. They still refuse an investigation into how it began, and yet we are reliant on China for supplies of PPE.
The more we refuse to hold China accountable for its crimes, the worse the situation will be and the greater threat to our own freedoms the Chinese Communist Party will be. So, it is double standards. I hope it will change, and the debate is shifting. A few years ago, it was challenging even to have the debate. I remember in 2016, 2017 when I published reports and articles in the UK, I was very much almost a lone voice, and certainly regarded as a fringe nuisance. Now, what I say is pretty much mainstream. The question is, what do we do about it? And that is progress, but we’ve got a lot more to do.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why don’t we lay out briefly what we know in these cases? We can start with the best known, most agreed upon genocide that’s being perpetrated by the Chinese regime, which is against the Uyghur people. Can you lay out what is happening there?
Mr. Rogers:
In the case of the Uyghurs, we know that there are hundreds of prison camps, concentration camps, labor camps, where at least a million, and that may well be an underestimate, it could be as high as three million, Uyghurs have been detained in recent years, subjected to horrific forms of torture, slave labor, and sexual violence against Uyghur women. And all of this is documented not only by human rights organizations, but most especially by the independent tribunal, the Uyghur Tribunal, chaired by the very distinguished British lawyer Geoffrey Nice, who had been the prosecutor of Slobodan Milosevic.
He’s someone who knows genocide and knows atrocity crimes when he sees them. There is severe religious persecution, the destruction of mosques, Uyghurs being incarcerated simply for having a beard of a certain length or abstaining from alcohol, abstaining from pork, fasting during Ramadan—all perfectly normal mainstream Muslim religious practices. There is the practice of the Chinese Communist Party dispatching officials to actually live in Uyghur homes with Uyghur families and in many cases abusing the women under the very nose of her Uyghur husband.
Perhaps most significantly in terms of genocide, there is the campaign of forced abortions and forced sterilization. And it was on that charge that the Uyghur Tribunal found, beyond doubt, the case of genocide. A few years ago not many people were talking about it. It wasn’t so well known. I think the general public is now becoming aware of it.
And crucially, in terms of forced labor, there’s been a real issue of products in our supply chains that are being made by Uyghur slave labor. I’m pleased that the United States has taken significant action to try to stop that. I hope other countries, including my own, will do more on that as well.
Mr. Jekielek:
Now, let’s look at Tibet. And Tibet was something that was generally talked about and thought about some years ago. Go back to 2008. In fact, you mentioned the Olympics. That was the time. I remember a huge protest banner being unfurled in China, much to the chagrin of the CCP. So, tell me about that.
Mr. Rogers:
When I was researching my book, The China Nexus, one Tibetan described to me that Tibet was, even before the Xinjiang region, the laboratory for China’s surveillance state. Another Tibetan described the whole of Tibet as a prison. What is also significant is the party secretary a few years ago in Tibet was the architect of the real crackdown. Tibet for 70 years or so since the Chinese invasion of Tibet has endured terrible repression and atrocities, but it has intensified in recent years. That’s partly because the party secretary a few years ago, Chen Quanguo, was the architect of this surveillance state, and he went on to be the party secretary in Xinjiang.
You can see that what happens in Tibet is then translated to other parts of China and other places of the Chinese regime’s repression. And Tibet has suffered in recent years, falling out of the spotlight, partly because we’ve been paying more attention to the Uyghurs and to Hong Kong, and understandably so. Also, partly because the public figures who gave Tibet a lot of spotlight, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and some Hollywood stars who campaigned for Tibet and made films about Tibet, are somewhat less on the agenda today.
That’s in part because the Dalai Lama no longer is able to travel because of his age and his health. So, he’s not on the international stage in the same way that he used to be. And Hollywood, of course, has been so taken over by the Chinese Communist Party that no Hollywood star today would take up the cause of Tibet.
We must make sure that Tibet remains on the agenda. We’re seeing severe religious persecution of Tibetan Buddhists and the destruction of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, total surveillance of day-to-day life. Anyone who has an image of the Dalai Lama or any expression of their loyalty to the Dalai Lama, if they’re found, they end up in prison immediately. I don’t think we’re seeing the same, or at least not on the same scale, prison camps in Tibet as we are in Xinjiang, but many of the same elements are there. Definitely.
Mr. Jekielek:
You just reminded me of something. You mentioned how Tibet was seen as a laboratory for some of these repressive methodologies. I remember years ago, and I should look up what happened with this, but there was a court case with Cisco Systems, where a centerpiece of this court case was a PowerPoint deck that was basically selling the idea of how this new technological system that Cisco was designing would help the Chinese Communist Party capture Falun Gong practitioners and basically pursue repression. The question was, “Is this something that’s okay to do?” Because it’s something that’s happening outside the borders of the country. So, there’s another laboratory of repression. Please tell me a bit about the Falun Gong situation now.
Mr. Rogers:
I first became aware of the persecution of Falun Gong, and at the same time the specific issue of forced organ harvesting, probably about eight or nine years ago. I was probably aware of it before then, but I first became engaged with it eight or nine years ago. And of course it began not under Xi Jinping, but under Jiang Zemin’s leadership. But there’s no sign that it has in any way eased or stopped.
It’s extraordinary to me that the Chinese Communist Party is so full of hate and fear towards a practice. I’ve come to know many practitioners in recent years. It is entirely peaceful, spiritual, meditative, and is built on good values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. We’ve seen many Falun Gong practitioners arrested. Indeed, if you are known to be a practitioner, you are almost certain to be arrested, and forced to denounce or renounce your beliefs.
When I first became aware of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience, and other prisoners of conscience as well, but it seems to be especially targeted at Falun Gong, I was initially, of course, shocked. Like many people, I found it difficult to believe. And it is a difficult human rights violation to prove because, unlike most other human rights violations, by definition there are no survivors. The perpetrators of the crime are the doctors and nurses who carry out the operation or the officials that order it.
Nevertheless, there has been extensive research, starting with the amazing work of David Kilgour, who was a good friend of mine, David Matas and Ethan Gutmann, but then leading to, and I played a part in helping to secure this, the independent China Tribunal chaired again by Sir Geoffrey Nice, who went on to chair the Uyghur Tribunal.
That came about in part because I said to Sir Geoffrey, “This is the body of evidence. Would you, as a respected lawyer, but someone who has no association with Falun Gong, no agenda on this issue, so in other words, can’t be accused of being biased, would you give a legal opinion on what this means?” And he said, “Why don’t we do more than a legal opinion? Why don’t we have an independent tribunal?”
And so that took place. It was a panel of very distinguished lawyers, medical experts, academics, none of whom had any prior agenda on either China or specifically Falun Gong, so were completely independent. And they assessed the evidence that was presented to them in testimony, in written submissions, and they concluded that this certainly has been happening, continues to happen, is widespread and systematic, and amounts to a crime against humanity.
Mr. Jekielek:
One of the things that just struck me as incredibly bizarre and emblematic of our times is, they assessed the question of genocide. But they said, “Well, because it’s big business,” I’m paraphrasing here, “because of the profit motive, for the genocide assertion to be met there has to be a specific demonstrated interest in destruction of the group for the purpose of destruction. But here we have the purpose of business. So, maybe it’s not genocide.” But to me, just the idea that you’re having that conversation is mind blowing.
Mr. Rogers:
Absolutely. There are two things at play here. One is clearly an inhumane, completely cold, calculated commercial interest of the value of human organs. And they see the lifestyle of Falun Gong practitioners. They know that Falun Gong practitioners don’t drink, don’t smoke, lead healthy lifestyles and therefore have particularly healthy organs. So, that interest is there.
But at the same time the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, has proven that it has an agenda to eliminate Falun Gong, certainly as a belief and as a practice, if not the physical elimination of practitioners. So, I wouldn’t say definitively it is genocide, and I think there’s work to be done on that. It took us a long time to get there with the Uyghurs. So, I wouldn’t use the term lightly, but nor would I dismiss the possibility. Without a doubt, it is crimes against humanity.
Mr. Jekielek:
I want to move to the hopeful side here. Because, again, these are some of the darkest things that I’m aware human beings can do to each other. There’s this whole element of dehumanization that allows for these doctors to kill people for organs. In the book you’ve talked to quite a few amazing heroic people who, in many cases, have risked everything to get these stories out. Some of them have been on this show. Maybe if you can share a few anecdotes. Because I think that one of the things that’s wonderful about your book is all these discussions with people that are in the thick of this.
Mr. Rogers:
Yes. I did over 80 interviews for the book with Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Chinese Christians, Chinese dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners, Taiwanese, but I also talked with various policy experts, legislators, and scholars from around the world. The thing that stands out from all the people among the different communities that are suffering under the Chinese regime is their extraordinary courage, determination, and just the contrast between their humanity and the regime’s inhumanity.
For example, I remembered having an amazing interview with the Hong Kong activist, Alex Chow, who had been one of the leaders of the Umbrella Movement in 2014. He describes his first experience of prison. Because although now there are hundreds of political prisoners in jail in Hong Kong, when he, Nathan Law and Joshua Wong were first imprisoned in August 2017, they were probably the first or among the first political prisoners in Hong Kong. He described going to prison.
He described this dilemma that he felt between, on the one hand, knowing that he had done what’s right in speaking up for democracy and freedom, and he didn’t have any regrets about that. But on the other hand, he was conscious of the real pain that he had put his mother through, in particular. He described to me being in prison and his mother coming to visit him and they couldn’t touch each other. They had to speak through a screen, and they were both in tears. But then he went on in prison to actually advocate within the prison for the rights of prisoners and actually made some small gains in terms of demanding that they could have the newspaper to read in the morning.
Originally, the newspaper didn’t come until towards the end of the day, and he set about advocating that they should receive the newspaper in prison at the start of the day, and he won that battle. There were various other things he advocated for, tiny things, but things that by advocating for them and seeing that those things could be achieved gave him a sense of, “I’m actually doing something even in prison for the cause.” And I found that very moving and inspiring.
Mr. Jekielek:
This is one of the things that makes it most difficult when dealing with one of these regimes, and the Communist Party is so expert at this. I know so many stories where essentially they use the family as blackmail to shut you up and people have to make the most horrible decisions. “Do I stand up for what I know is right and potentially help my family and my country and my people, but my family may be harmed as a result?” These are impossible decisions that people are forced to make. The CCP specializes in creating those situations and crushing dissent in this way.
Mr. Rogers:
That’s exactly right. One of the people that I talk to for the Uyghur chapter of the book was the amazing Uyghur singer and activist who lives in London, Rahima Mahmut. She’s a very good friend of mine. And she described to me how some years ago she called some of her family members. Up to that point she had been able to call them fairly regularly, and of course was careful in what was said over the phone, but nevertheless could speak to them. Then, she couldn’t get through to a number of people in her family. And finally, she got through to her brother, and she said, “What’s happened? I can’t get through to anyone.”
And her brother said, “The other family members have done the right thing,” i.e., by not taking your call. “Just leave us in God’s hands.” And that was the last exchange she had with him. The idea that you then have many, many years, an unknown number of years potentially, of no contact with your family members, and you don’t know whether your family members have ended up in a prison camp. The pain that people like Rahima, and she’s not alone, there are thousands like her, carry is enormous.
Mr. Jekielek:
Tell me about some of the people that you encountered who against all odds have stuck with this. Or pick one.
Mr. Rogers:
Perhaps someone like another Uyghur, Dolkun Isa. He has had to cut off contact with his family. His father died fairly recently and he hadn’t been able to have contact with him at all. He’s been described by the Chinese regime as a terrorist. If there’s anyone less like a terrorist, it’s Dolkun Isa. He’s a remarkable, entirely peaceful, very moderate, delightful person. But he’s been tirelessly speaking up for his people. He’s now the president of the World Uyghur Congress. He had a potentially flourishing career, but because of his activism for his people he was forced to go into exile.
Even in exile, he described to me many times being denied entry to the United Nations because China had described him as a terrorist and had blocked him. Even on one occasion he was with a U.S. diplomat, and he’d been invited by the United States to the UN in New York, and still China tried to block him. So, the level of obstacles that China puts in the way of its critics, not only within China, but outside, is huge. And yet people like Dolkun continue.
Mr. Jekielek:
In this kind of situation, there’s a lot of people aware now as we’re doing this interview that there’s something happening in China. There’s something brewing that’s beyond the specifically targeted groups, and there’s many others that we didn’t discuss here that I think you outline through some of these amazing interviews in the book. I’d recommend it to anyone to take a look at those. But how can people here support the Chinese people?
Mr. Rogers:
What’s happening in China right now is potentially extremely significant and none of the other situations that we’ve spoken about, the Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong can really change without change in China. So, it is in everybody’s interests to support the people of China. With the free world, first of all, and I say this in a recent article in the Daily Telegraph, we need to get across the message to the people of China, to the protestors in China, that we stand with them and that we’re behind them.
Because too often the Chinese regime will play the nationalist card, particularly in times like this where they’re facing protests. They’ll try to stir up nationalist sentiment and they’ll try to portray people like me as being anti-China. Far from being anti-China, I love China and the people of China. I’ve spent most of my adult life in and around China.
It’s because I’m pro the country and the people of China that I advocate for their human rights, and I want them to have the freedoms they deserve. So, getting across that message that we are behind you and it’s the Chinese Communist Party that we oppose, not China, is a really important thing to do. But at the same time, if I could just quickly add, we also need to be careful that we are supporting the protestors, but that we don’t fall into what will inevitably be the CCPs narrative, which is that this is some Western protest movement stirred up by, or created by, or instigated by Western intelligence agencies. We must be clear that this is led by the people of China, but we support them.
Mr. Jekielek:
The CCP is obviously expert at information warfare and one of the narratives that you described is that the CCP and China and the Chinese people are equivalent. That’s probably been one of the biggest, sadly successful information operations over decades. Or that any protests have to be a product of western nations seeking to hurt China. Of course, these narratives will be used. We know that. We’ve seen it every time. What are you here in DC advocating for specifically? What would you like to see happen?
Mr. Rogers:
I would like to see, as I’ve just suggested, clear messaging in support of the people who are protesting. I also think we should be preparing. We don’t know how the regime is going to respond to the protests. So far, the police have shown surprising restraint. But if there is, and I hope that there isn’t, but if there is a brutal crackdown on the protests, we need to be signaling to Beijing that that will carry very heavy consequences for them.
Of our failures in the past, we didn’t have sufficient consequences for the Tiananmen massacre. We haven’t had hardly any consequences for dismantling Hong Kong’s freedoms. There’ve been some sanctions in response by the U.S. in response to the Uyghur genocide, but not by other countries.
We should be preparing for there to be consequences in the event of any crackdown, and we should be making that clear. Beyond that, we should be finding ways to circumvent the great firewall of China. Because the more we can get information into China to counter the CCPs propaganda, the better.
But also, the more that we can do to support diaspora communities from outside to play their part, the better. In relation to Hong Kong, there’s more to be done in terms of providing lifelines for people to get out. There’s a lot that has been done, but there’s a lot more that can and should be done.
Mr. Jekielek:
Benedict Rogers, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Rogers:
Thank you very much.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Benedict Rogers and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.
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