It is encouraging news that, after years of silence, the European Union finally came to its senses and decided to join other democratic nations in taking a tougher stance on China’s appalling human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. Last week, the European Union, along with the United States, Britain and Canada, announced asset freezes and travel bans on four officials and a security organization implicated in the persecution and enslavement of Uyghurs. The significance of such action should not be overlooked: it was the first time that the EU – known as the European Community before 1993 – had sanctioned China since the arms embargo after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989.

In retaliation, China named five EU parliamentarians, several academics, analysts, and think tanks based in European countries. It also targeted all the 27 EU member countries’ ambassadors to the EU who oversee foreign and security policy, as well as their family members. All those who are named are banned from entering or doing business with China. By unleashing its wrath on academics, diplomats, parliamentarians and arbitrary individuals, Peking has demonstrated both its totalitarian mindset and the fact of being at its wits’ end. Without the geopolitical and monetary dominance comparable to that of the United States or the EU and their currencies, it is apparent that Peking’s hands are tied in regards to imposing repercussions that are able to hold a candle to that of the west in strength and effectiveness. The inconvenient truth about Chinese sanctions is that they are about as intimidating and pestiferous as Lord Uxbridge threatening to take his custom away from the Right Shoe Company after Waterloo. While western sanctions would effectively mean a complete banishment from the outside world which affects almost all aspects of one’s life, Chinese sanctions, in comparison, could only be as effective as to the extent of one’s predisposition for China.

In fact, the Chinese authorities are so desperate to gain the upper hand over the west that they had to resort to taking hostages. In apparent retaliation for the arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, both Canadian citizens, stood trial behind closed doors on espionage charges last week after having spent three years behind bars in Peking. Following the opaque trials, Marc Garneau, the Canadian foreign minister, warned of the price of doing business with China: “My advice to all other countries around the world is, if you are doing business with China and you have citizens of your country in China, and you have disagreements with them, there is the possibility that your citizens could be detained.”

What the world must recognize is that China is, to all intents and purposes, a rogue state whose complete disregard for the rules-based international order has left the world with no choice but to adopt a more assertive attitude towards its unruly, if abominable, behaviors. One cannot reason with a tiger when one’s head is in its mouth. As it turns out, an all-out confrontation with China is inevitable in that a policy of socio-economic appeasement which was adopted by the west in the past twenty years had only embolden China’s assertiveness in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong as well as its presumptuous behavior on international stages. With the mass incarceration, sterilisation, and enslavement of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the world can no longer afford to turn a blind eye. China’s genocidal campaign against the Uyghur minority demanded unambiguous repudiation by western nations and must be stopped at all costs. Now that the EU has taken its first step towards tackling an increasingly assertive China, the free world must unite and coordinate in pursuing further actions against the Chinese state. Only with a focused and concerted effort can the free world ensure that the liberal international order is maintained in face of the challenges posed by an increasingly assertive China which has become more explicit about its desire to revise international rules and redefine its role on the international stage.

(Joseph Long is a London-based writer and linguist from Hong Kong.)

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