February 1, 2022

China, Human Rights, and the Olympics


KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • China is set to host the Winter Olympics beginning February 4, while millions of people in the country suffer persecution, genocide, and lack of basic freedoms under the Chinese Communist Party.
  • The CCP uses invasive state surveillance and police powers to track citizens and foreigners throughout the country and ensures that no one can hide from the repression of the party. 
  • The U.S. and some other countries are refusing to send government representatives to the Games as a protest of these conditions, but the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee have turned a blind eye. 

China is set to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games for the second time in the 21st century, running from February 4 to March 13. The Games serve as a way for host countries to show off their culture and achievements on a global stage. But the Chinese Communist Party is using the Games to present a positive image of its rule at home and influence abroad, while distracting from its human rights abuses and its denial of basic freedoms.

For China, a Symbol of Repression

For China, a Symbol of Repression

Because of China’s human rights abuses, the United States and some other countries are refusing to send government officials to the Games as a form of political boycott. The United Nations and the International Olympic Committee have taken the opposite approach, turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Chinese people. It is possible to support the American athletes who are competing in the Games while also criticizing the abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government.

targeting minorities and the disabled

Since 2009, the CCP has been targeting Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang Autonomous Region due to their religion, ethnicity, and the perception that they pose a threat to the rule of the party. The United States formally declared Chinese government actions against Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang to be a genocide in 2021. The campaign has led to more than a million Uyghurs being placed into “re-education camps” where they are forced to denounce their religion, culture, and language. Prisoners in these camps are routinely beaten, tortured, and raped. International observers have reported that the CCP is promoting marriages between Uyghurs and members of the Chinese Han ethnic majority, along with forced sterilizations, to lower the Uyghur birth rate and slowly eliminate the Uyghur population. The Chinese government claims that the genocide is “the lie of the century.” Despite these denials, there are reports that horrific abuses continue to take place within the camps and that many goods produced in China are made by Uyghur forced labor.

Uyghur Muslims are not the only minorities being repressed and abused by the Chinese government. The CCP also regularly targets the Buddhist Tibetan people, Catholics and other Christians, and the Mongolian ethnic minority. In the case of Tibet, local authorities routinely arrest and harass Tibetans who they believe are followers of the Dalai Lama. The CCP has attempted to replace the role of the lamas in Tibetan society and forced the Dalai Lama into exile in the 1950s. The CCP also has launched a campaign to force Tibetan assimilation, mainly by targeting their way of life, forcing them from the countryside into cities where they are trained to work in factories, and shutting down Tibetan schools.

Though Beijing is also hosting the Paralympic Games from March 4 to March 17, the disabled are routinely discriminated against in China, often with the approval of the state. The CCP will not let people with certain disabilities marry unless they agree to sterilization or other means of birth control. According to the State Department, “officials continued to require couples to abort pregnancies when doctors discovered possible disabilities during prenatal examinations.” Disabled people in China also struggle to receive proper state registration papers that would allow them to go to school, work, or own property.

Religious represssion

The CCP claims that the constitution of the People’s Republic of China protects basic human rights and freedoms, but in practice it does no such thing. The country’s “sinicization” policy, launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2016, dictates that religious and cultural traditions counter to those of the Han ethnic majority threaten CCP political values.  

China had already been repressing religious minorities for generations. The CCP maintains strict control over Christian clergy, requiring them to be politically loyal to the party, and controls Christian education and services. Media reports in 2018 said that the party had removed crosses from churches, set fire to churches, and detained and beaten clergy.

The government also targets Falun Gong, a religious movement that the CCP has determined to be counter to the socialist nature of the country. Members of the group have reported that mass detentions and disappearances are common among its followers in China and alleged that Falun Gong prisoners in China have had their organs harvested against their will.

lack of basic freedoms and Enforcement

Beyond suppression of religious freedom, the CCP also prohibits free press, speech, and assembly. In 2021, the group Reporters Without Borders ranked China 177 out of 180 in its annual World Press Freedom Index, behind Syria and Iran. There is no independent media in China, and foreign journalists who are critical of the CCP are often harassed and banned from the country. In 2021, another group, Freedom House, gave China a 10 out of 100 score for “Freedom on the Net,” based on the Chinese government’s deep surveillance and control over the internet in China. The government bans many western websites and social media services such as Facebook and Twitter. The CCP also censors words and topics it deems politically dangerous, such as “Tiananmen Square” “human rights,” or “genocide.”

The party is able to continue these abuses through an advanced surveillance network, strict control over information, politically motivated arrests, unlawful killings, torture, and state-sanctioned “disappearances.” China’s vast surveillance networks can track people throughout the country and applies a “social credit score” based on data collected by the state to judge citizen’s loyalty and restrict their freedoms accordingly. Even the Olympics will be tracked. The official health app and translation app to be used at the Games has come under scrutiny for its ability to track conversations and store all participants’ data on Chinese servers.

China is also cracking down on all types of assembly. In 1997, when Britain transferred Hong Kong to China, the Chinese government agreed that Hong Kong would remain autonomous and enjoy constitutionally guaranteed freedoms under the “one country, two systems” principle. The CCP has frequently broken this promise. In 2020, it enacted a law, under the guise of national security, to use the party’s surveillance and control mechanisms to crack down on pro-democracy protestors. The party has used this authority to arrest political activists, deny them legal counsel, and shut down all free media in the city. To ensure this repression continues, in 2022 the CCP installed the former chief of paramilitary forces in Xinjiang, who helped carry out the genocide against the Uyghurs, as the commander of the People’s Armed Police Hong Kong garrison.

Issue Tag: National Security