Keeping the memory alive|Joseph Long
In an address to a session of the Chinese Communist Party’s 25-member political bureau last week, Xi Jinping is reported to have told senior party officials that it was important to present an image of a “credible, loveable and respectable China,” and assert itself more effectively on the world stage to “strengthen its voice and status,” adding that China needed to “be open and confident, but also modest and humble.” The remarks came amid escalating rhetoric between China and the free world over issues such as the genocidal repression of the Uighur ethnic minority in Xinjiang, relentless obfuscation over the coronavirus, and the continual brutalizing and oppression of the people of Hong Kong. Over the past years, if anything, Chinese officials and diplomats have been encouraged to adopt an aggressive and, at times, confrontational strategy of conducting international affairs dubbed as “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy – Chinese diplomats are not merely allowed so much as exhorted to deploy sarcasm and aggression against those who challenge its positions. That Xi felt there was a need to address the issue of assertive messaging in a party session reflects that his wolf-warrior diplomats might have been spiraling out of control.
It is all very well for Xi to order a change in rhetoric to repair the damage that has been done by the CCP’s self-indulgent “Wolf Warrior” style diplomacy. What Xi does not realize is that the damage to China’s image on the world stage has not been merely caused by his party’s self-destructive strategy of conducting international affairs so much as the threats – ideological and physical alike – that his regime has posed to the world. In the past year, China has not only inflicted an unprecedented pandemic on the world through exporting a deadly virus which, thanks to its despicable cover-up efforts at the early stage of the outbreak, has to this date caused an estimated ten million excess deaths worldwide; it has also seen an opportunity in the disaster to export its model of autocratic governance as a preferred alternative to the Western liberal model. Vaccines and medical resources were hoarded and used as a political leverage over countries that are less endowed and unsympathetic towards Chinese expansionism. In Xinjiang and Hong Kong, China has availed itself of the havoc caused by the coronavirus pandemic in the west to intensify its persecution of those at home who oppose its autocratic rule. Millions of Uighur Muslims were incarcerated in concentration camps and subjected to tortures, forced labor, and sterilization; in Hong Kong, sweeping laws were promulgated to criminalize any act that the Chinese authorities deem to be subversive or pertaining to secession. The entire opposition was put to jail with a handful of pro-democracy activists being banished to living in forced exile. The thuggish and scoundrelly behavior of the Chinese state does not seem likely to entice any convert despite its wishful hope that a change in rhetoric would do the trick.
Over the years, the way in which the Chinese state has brutalized and slaughtered its people has hardly presented itself as anything close to “credible, loveable and respectable” either. Yesterday marked the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre – an incident that Peking is so desperate for it to escape human recollection that it has banned the annual candlelit vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park – the largest in the world – for a second year running, citing (conveniently) coronavirus concerns. More than 7000 policemen were mobilized to terrorize the citizenry into silence and mourners were warned in advance that they would face up to five years’ imprisonment for so much as wearing black or holding a candle on the day. Now that the Chinese state plots a propaganda campaign to seek a “lovable” image, our remembrance has become all the more important. “Defending the memory of Tiananmen is the first line of defence,” said Chow Hang Tung, the vice-chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. When forgetting is compulsory, remembering becomes a duty: in defiance of Peking’s systematic campaign to cover up its hideous crimes, we must persist in our efforts to keep the memory of them alive – not only of the Tiananmen Massacre which Peking so desperately wants us to forget, but also of those pro-democracy activists who are currently jailed in Hong Kong, of the millions of Uighurs who are persecuted in Xinjiang and, least of all, of its despicable cover-up at the early stage of the coronavirus outbreak and the eventual ten million excess deaths that it has caused throughout the world.
(Joseph Long is a London-based writer and linguist from Hong Kong.)
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