Editorial
1. Beijing Continues to Provoke New U.S. Administration
Wang Dan – Radio Free Asia Opinion – January 29, 2021
Well-known Chinese dissident Guo Feixiong* wanted to go to the United States to take care of his wife who had just undergone cancer surgery. On January 28, 2021 he was detained by the Chinese Communist authorities at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport. He was denied permission to leave the country on the grounds of “endangering national security.” Guo Feixiong is a free Chinese citizen, and the Communist Party has no good reason to stop him leaving the country to visit his family, whether on legal, human rights or humanitarian grounds. The Communist Party’s inhumane action is more proof that the regime is becoming increasingly fascist. Guo Feixiong has announced he has begun an indefinite hunger strike. We call on the outside world to follow this development closely, and on Western countries through diplomatic means to help Guo Feixiong fulfill his wish to visit his family in the United States.
* Guo Feixiong is the pen name of Yang Maodong, a Chinese human rights legal activist from Guangdong province. Guo is known as a dissident writer and “barefoot lawyer” who has worked on many controversial cases defending the rights of marginalized groups. Prior to his 2006 imprisonment, Guo worked as a legal advisor to the Shanghai Shengzhi Law Firm.
We need to see that this drama of blocking Guo Feixiong from leaving the country has the marks of Beijing’s smug calculation behind it. Why do I say so? We know that two weeks ago Guo Feixiong published an open letter to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, asking for permission to travel abroad to visit his family. According to people who know the situation, the Guangdong Public Security Bureau did not express strong opposition to Guo Feixiong’s departure from China at first, and even gave him a passport, which seemed to indicate that they were going to let him leave. However, the day before Guo Feixiong was set to depart, the Guangdong Public Security Department suddenly made a 180-degree turn and required Guo Feixiong to write a letter confessing to his crimes before he could leave the country. After Guo Feixiong refused, they said it was an order from the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. Obviously, this time, the local government did not block Guo Feixiong from leaving the country, but the change of policy came from the relevant departments in Beijing.
Another rather strange thing is that if the authorities did not intend to let Guo Feixiong leave the country, they could have stopped him at Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou. Instead, the authorities let Guo fly from Guangzhou to Shanghai, and only formally stopped him when he was about to change planes to the United States. This is very unusual and seems to show a desire to make a show of their action. If this is the case, we have to ask: What are the Chinese Communist authorities trying to show by staging this drama around Guo Feixiong’s desire to leave the country?
In my view, Beijing’s direct involvement in the Guo Feixiong case, its order to block his departure from China, and its high-profile efforts to do so are all designed to show the new U.S. administration that the actual purpose is to test and challenge the bottom line of the Biden administration’s China policy. As we all know, the Democratic administration has always attached great importance to human rights issues in its past policies towards China. Beijing certainly has reason to worry that the Biden government will attack the Chinese Communist regime on human rights issues in the future. Therefore, the first step is to show that China will not make concessions to the U.S. on human rights issues and to warn the U.S. not to try to challenge China’s so-called “internal affairs.” Beijing wants to see how the Biden administration will handle the human rights controversy arising from the Guo Feixiong case, so as to prepare for future Sino-U.S. battles on human rights issues.
For some time now the Chinese government has been testing the new U.S. administration’s bottom line on issues such as the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and Hong Kong, including the passage of the new Maritime Police Law, which allows the use of force by the Coast Guard, the sending of more military aircraft to harass Taiwan, hinting it intends to install Hong Kong’s Chief Executive and completely cancel all elections in Hong Kong, etc. Now it is using the Guo Feixiong case to test the U.S. in the area of human rights. This series of probes, taking advantage of the transition between the old and new U.S. administrations and the complexity of the issues, constitutes a provocation to the United States. I believe that the U.S. government should take such provocative behavior seriously and take a strong stance at the beginning of the “reset” of U.S.-China relations.
Before he was taken away by the police, Guo Feixiong’s final appeal was for the U.S. government to help him get to the United States. In the face of such an appeal, the U.S. government should respond appropriately and demonstrate the U.S.’s firm position on universal values and the global human rights situation so as to counter the salami-slicing tactics of the Chinese Communist authorities.
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