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China’s NGO Law: Countering Western Soft Power and Subversion, by Eric Draitser
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by Vineyard of the Saker and New Eastern outlook.
China has recently taken an important
step in more tightly regulating foreign non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) inside the country. Despite condemnation from so called human
rights groups in the West, China’s move should be understood as a
critical decision to assert sovereignty over its own political space.
Naturally, the shrill cries of “repression” and “hostility toward civil
society” from western NGOs have done little to shake the resolve of
Beijing as the government has recognized the critical importance of
cutting off all avenues for political and social destabilization.
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The predictable argument, once again being made against China’sOverseas NGO Management Law,
is that it is a restriction on freedom of association and expression,
and a means of stifling the burgeoning civil society sector in China.
The NGO advocates portray this proposed legislation as another example
of the violation of human rights in China, and further evidence of
Beijing’s lack of commitment to them. They posit that China is moving to
further entrench an authoritarian government by closing off the
democratic space which has emerged in recent years.
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However, amid all the hand-wringing
about human rights and democracy, what is conveniently left out of the
narrative is the simple fact that foreign NGOs, and domestic ones funded
by foreign money, are, to a large extent, agents of foreign interests,
and are quite used as soft power weapons for destabilization.
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And this
is no mere conspiracy theory as the documented record of the role of
NGOs in recent political unrest in China is voluminous. It would not be a
stretch to say that Beijing has finally recognized, just as Russia has
before it, that in order to maintain political stability and true
sovereignty, it must be able to control the civil society space
otherwise manipulated by the US and its allies.
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‘Soft Power’ and the Destabilization of China.
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Joseph Nye famously defined ‘soft power’
as the ability of a country to persuade others and/or manipulate events
without force or coercion in order to achieve politically desirable
outcomes. And one of the main tools of modern soft power is civil
society and the NGOs that dominate it. With financial backing from some
of the most powerful individuals and institutions in the world, these
NGOs use the cover of “democracy promotion” and human rights to further
the agenda of their patrons. And China has been particularly victimized
by precisely this sort of strategy.
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Human Rights Watch, and the NGO complex at large, has condemned
China’s Overseas NGO Management Law because they quite rightly believe
that it will severely hamper their efforts to act independently of
Beijing. However, contrary to the irreproachable expression of innocence
that such organizations masquerade behind, the reality is that they act
as a de facto arm of western intelligence agencies and governments, and
they have played a central role in the destabilization of China in
recent years.
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Undoubtedly the most highly publicized
example of just such political meddling took place in 2014 with the much
hyped “Occupy Central” movement in Hong Kong, also known as the
Umbrella Movement. The Western media fed uninformed news consumers story
after story about a “pro-democracy” movement seeking to give voice to,
as White House spokesman Josh Earnest cynically articulated, “…the aspirations of the Hong Kong people.” But such vacuous rhetoric was only part of the story.
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What the corporate media in the West
failed to mention were the deeply rooted connections between the Occupy
Central movement and key organs of US soft power. The oft touted leader
of Occupy Central was a pro-Western academic named Benny Tai, a law
professor at the University of Hong Kong. Though he presented himself as
the leader of a grassroots mass movement, Mr. Tai has for years been
partnered with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nominal NGO
which is actually directly funded by the US State Department via the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In fact, the NDI has been one of
the leading advocates
(and financial backers presumably) of the Center for Comparative and
Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, a program with which Benny
Tai has been intimately connected, including as a board member
since 2006. So, far from being merely an emerging leader, Tai was a
carefully selected point person for a US-sponsored color
revolution-style movement.
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Two other high profile figures involved
with Occupy Central were Audrey Eu, founder of the Civic Party in Hong
Kong, and Martin Lee, founding chairman of the Democrat Party of Hong
Kong. Both Eu and Lee have long-standing ties to the US government
through the NED and NDI, with Eu having been a frequent contributor to
NDI sponsored panels and programs, and Lee having the glorious
distinction of having both been a recipient of awards from NED and NDI,
as well as meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden in 2014 along with anti-Beijing advocate Anson Chan.
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It does not take exceptional powers of
deduction to see that, to varying degrees, Tai, Eu, Lee, and Chan each
act as the public face of a US Government-sponsored initiative to
destabilize the political situation in Hong Kong, one of China’s most
economically and politically important regions. Through the intermediary
of the NGO, Washington is able to promote an anti-Beijing line under
the auspices of “democracy promotion,” just as it has done everywhere
from Ukraine to Venezuela. Luckily for China, the movement was not
supported by either the bulk of the working class in Hong Kong and
China, or even by many of the middle class who saw it as little more
than an inconvenience at best. However, it required swift government
action to contain the public relations and media fiasco that could have
resulted from the movement, a fact of which Beijing, no doubt, took
note.
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As a spokesperson for the National People’s Congress explained
in April, the NGO law is necessary for “safeguarding national security
and maintaining social stability.” Indeed, in late 2014, in the wake of
the Occupy Central protests, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to
Macau and spoke
of the need to ensure that Macau walked on the “right path.” In a
thinly veiled reference to Hong Kong, Xi praised Macau for continuing to
follow the “one country, two systems” policy under which the special
administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong have greater autonomy but
are still subject to Chinese law. Essentially, Xi made it quite clear
that, despite the foreign NGO-manufactured movement in Hong Kong,
Beijing remained firmly in control. And this is precisely the issue:
control.
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NGOs, Soft Power, and Terror in Xinjiang
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The NGO ‘soft power’ weapon is not
relegated solely to Hong Kong however. In fact, the western Chinese
province of Xinjiang, one of the most volatile regions in the country,
has seen active destabilization and subversion by soft power elements
consistently over recent years. Home to the majority Muslim Uighur
ethnic group, Xinjiang has been repeatedly attacked both with terrorism
and vile propaganda that has sought to paint to China as the oppressor
and enemy of Uighurs, and Muslims generally.
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Xinjiang has been victim to a number of deadly terrorist attacks in recent years, including the heinous drive-by bombings that killed dozens and injured over 100 people in May 2014, the mass stabbings and bombings of November 2014, and the deadlyattack
by Uighur terrorists on a traffic checkpoint just last month which left
18 people dead. Were such attacks, which claimed the lives of scores of
innocent Chinese citizens, to have been carried out against, say,
Americans, the western media would be all but declaring holy jihad
against the entire world. However, since they’ve happened in China,
these are merely isolated incidents that are due to the
“marginalization” and “oppression” of the Uighur people by the big bad
Chinese authorities.
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Such a sickeningly biased narrative is
in no small part due to the NGO penetration of the Uighur community and a
vast public relations network funded directly by the US Government. The
same National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which has disbursed funds
to the NDI and other organizations involved in the Hong Kong
destabilization of “Occupy Central,” has been a primary funder of the
Uighur NGO complex.
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The following organizations have each
received significant financial support from the NED through the years:
World Uighur Congress, Uighur American Association, International Uighur
Human rights and Democracy Foundation, and the International Uighur PEN
Club, among others. These NGOs are quite often the sources cited by
western media for comments on anything related to Xinjiang and are
almost always quick to demonize Beijing for all problems in the region,
including terrorism.
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Perhaps the best example of just such
propaganda and dishonesty came in the last few weeks as western media
was flooded with stories making the spurious allegation that China had
banned the observance of Ramadan in Xinjiang. Indeed, there were
literally hundreds of articles condemning China for this “restriction of
religious freedom,” portraying the Chinese government as repressive and
a violator of human rights. Interestingly, the primary source for the
claim was none other than the NED-fundedWorld Uighur Congress.
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Moreover, in mid July, on the day of Eid al-Fitr (the final day of Ramadan), the Wall Street Journal
ran a story covering the media pushback from China which has sought in
recent weeks to publicize the fact that Xinjiang, and all of China, has
celebrated openly for Ramadan. And, as one should come to expect, the
anti-China source cited is, as usual, a representative of the World
Uighur Congress. It seems that this organization, far from being merely a
human rights advocate, is in fact a mouthpiece for US propaganda
against China. And when the propaganda is challenged and discredited by
China, well that just invites new and more blistering propaganda.
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The Geopolitical Footprints
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All of this demonization has taken on a
clear geopolitical and strategic significance as Turkey has stepped into
the fray condemning China for its alleged “persecution” of Uighur
Muslims, whom Ankara sees as Turks from its neo-Ottoman revanchist
perspective. The Turkish Foreign ministry said in a statement
that “Our people have been saddened over the news that Uighur Turks
have been banned from fasting or carrying out other religious duties in
the Xinjiang region…Our deep concern over these reports have been
conveyed to China’s ambassador in Ankara.”
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China responded to what it deemed to be
inappropriate comments from Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, especially in
light of Turkey’s absurd characterization of the Uighurs (who are
Chinese citizens) as “Turks.” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua
Chunying stated,
“China has already demanded that Turkey clarify these reports and we
have expressed concern about the statement from the Turkish foreign
ministry…You should know that all the people of Xinjiang enjoy the
freedom of religious belief accorded to them by the Chinese
constitution.”
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While the Chinese government, as it
almost always does, used decidedly muted language to express its
displeasure, the implications of the statement were not lost on keen
political observers with some understanding of the China-Turkey
relationship. Although the two countries have many aligned interests, as
evidenced by Turkey’s repeatedly expressed desire to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the little known fact is that Turkey is one of the major facilitators of terrorism in China.
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Though it received almost no fanfare from international media, in January 2015 Chinese authorities arrested at least ten Turkish suspects
alleged to have organized and facilitated the illegal border crossings
of a number of Uighur extremists. It has further been revealed that
these extremists were planning to travel to Syria, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan to train and fight with fellow jihadis.
The story is still further evidence of a
well-funded, well-organized international terror network operated
and/or facilitated by Turkish intelligence. According to the Turkish
Foreign Ministry, the ten Turkish citizens were arrested in Shanghai on
November 17, 2014 for facilitating illegal immigration. While the formal
charges against them range from forging documents to actually aiding
illegal migration, it is the larger question of international terrorism
that lurks beneath the surface. Because of course, as the evidence seems
to indicate, these Uighur immigrants were not merely traveling to see
loved ones in another country. On the contrary, they were likely part of
a previously documented trend of Uighur extremists traveling to the
Middle East to train and fight with the Islamic State or other terror
groups.
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It is these same extremist networks that
carried out the aforementioned deadly bombing in Urumqi, capital of
Xinjiang. In fact, precisely this trend was exposed two months earlier
in September 2014 when Reuters reported
that Beijing formally accused militant Uighurs from Xinjiang of having
traveled to Islamic State-controlled territory to receive training.
Further corroborating these accusations, the Jakarta Post of Indonesia reported that
four Chinese Uighur jihadists had been arrested in Indonesia after
having travelled from Xinjiang through Malaysia. Other, similar reports
have also surfaced in recent months, painting a picture of a concerted
campaign to help Uighur extremists travel throughout Asia, communicating
and collaborating with transnational terror groups such as the Islamic
State.
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So, Uighur terrorists with forged
documents provided by sources inside Turkey are implicated as being part
of the same terror networks that carried out a series of deadly attacks
on Chinese citizens and police. No wonder China is not exactly bending
over backwards to dry Erdogan’s and the Turkish government’s crocodile
tears. And yet, despite the terror war, the US-funded Uighur NGOs
continue to portray China as responsible for the terrorism.
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The destabilization of China takes many
forms. From a manufactured protest movement in Hong Kong sponsored by
NGOs connected to the US government, to a fabricated propaganda war
peddled by other NGOs sponsored by the US government, to a terror war
fomented by a NATO member (TURKEY?????), China is a nation under assault by soft and
hard power. That Beijing is finally taking steps to curb the pernicious
influence of such NGOs, and the forces they represent, is not only a
positive step, it’s an absolutely necessary one. The national security
and national sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China requires
nothing less.
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Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is the editor of StopImperialism.org, host of CounterPunch Radio, OP-ed columnist for RT and writes for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com
