Commentary
Writing about China’s economy is engaging and ever-changing, as there are always new developments to talk about and investigate. But the common thread and direct link to all aspects of China’s economy is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the many ways in which it treats—and mistreats—the 1.4 billion people over which it rules.
Turning a Blind Eye to CCP Lies
It’s no secret that China has a major influence on the global economy, but for most Chinese citizens, life under the CCP is difficult and cruel. And yet the world seems all too willing to turn a blind eye to that reality, preferring to focus on bogus statistics and propaganda talking points while ignoring the brutality that’s the benchmark of CCP rule.The reported per capita income in China is around $17,000, but that statistic is misleading. The average income for at least 1 billion Chinese citizens is just a few dollars per day. What’s more, despite the Party’s claim to have eradicated extreme poverty in China, it hasn’t, nor is it anywhere close to doing so.
That bogus claim is based on the artificial lowering of the poverty level, below which 90 percent of Chinese people exist.
The ‘No Mercy’ Policy
But below even that poverty level are the 12 million Uyghurs in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, China, of which up to 2 million are, as you read this, living and working in slave labor camps run by the same people who are running the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.So-called re-education of the prisoners is a part of the camp agenda, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ethnic cleansing of the region, wherein the CCP has been replacing Uyghurs with Han Chinese over the course of the past several decades, is another feature of Beijing’s “No Mercy” policy.
It’s no exaggeration to say that China’s treatment of the Uyghurs goes well beyond hard labor under arduous conditions. Nor is it hyperbole to assert that CCP leadership is quite comfortable going much further in its monstrous treatment of its minorities.
The CCP’s Crimes Against Humanity With ‘Chinese Characteristics’
And make no mistake, the aggressive clampdown on minorities began after Xi Jinping became the leader of China in 2013. Xi, and no one else, owns that heavy-handed policy.In fact, under Xi’s direction, the CCP has ordered and sanctioned torture as a standard operating procedure in its Xinjiang concentration camps. Camp policy includes violent and life-threatening physical and mental torture, cruel and unusual medical experimentation on a Nazi scale, forced sterilization, and mass executions.
You read that right. The Chinese regime is now running the 21st-century version of Auschwitz, complete with its own versions of Dr. Josef Mengele, torture chambers, surgical mutilation clinics, killing fields, and more. Adding a wicked twist to its dark practices, the CCP is harvesting human organs from not only the Uyghurs, but from peaceful Falun Gong practitioners as well, selling the forcibly obtained organs in a very profitable market.
In short, China is committing massive human rights abuses and even genocide, and the United States, the “defender of freedom and human rights in the world,” is still happy to do business with Beijing. It’s a stark contrast to the world’s reaction when Nazi Germany’s death camps became known. In China’s case, somehow a diplomatic slap on the wrist is all the United States can muster.
Workers in PPE stand next to the Olympic rings inside the closed-loop area near the National Stadium, or the Bird's Nest, where the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will be held, in Beijing on Dec. 30, 2021. Thomas Peter/Reuters
The World Plays Games
How is it that 2 million human beings can be incarcerated and forced to work against their will, performing back-breaking labor and enduring innumerable abuses without any way to help themselves, and yet the United States and the rest of the world just want to play games?It’s quite apparent that the Biden administration has no problem with how the CCP is treating the Chinese people in general and the Uyghurs in particular. The United States seems more concerned with sending the U.S. Olympic team to China’s “genocide Games” than it is with confronting the massive human rights abuses committed by the CCP.
A Few Voices of Condemnation Speak Out
On the plus side, in 2020, 39 U.N. member states—including the United States, the UK, France, Japan, and other large democracies—condemned the “increasing number of reports of gross human rights violations” in Xinjiang in a letter to the U.N. and urged the international media to not broadcast the 2022 Winter Olympics.They were right to do so.
But despite the growing knowledge of the horrors that the CCP is committing in Xinjiang, most of the American public remains unaware of the situation. That’s partly because Beijing has kept a tight grip on the flow of information and muddied the waters with its own propaganda. But it’s also due to the lack of media coverage of the Chinese regime’s crimes.
America’s Shame
Why aren’t U.S. media talking about China’s human rights violations in the run-up to the Winter Olympic Games?Is it due to the media’s love of money and the many millions of dollars to be gained from broadcasting the Games? Their lack of honesty? Or is it simply blatant cowardice or even collaboration?
Perhaps it’s a combination of these factors, as well as others.
All of that notwithstanding, the leaders of the CCP don’t suffer any notable consequences for their actions, except for the fact that they grow richer and more powerful every day, of course.
As for the failure of the United States under the Biden administration to stand up to China and condemn its crimes against humanity with swift and severe economic punishment, what do we, as Americans, have to say for ourselves?
What can we say to the Uyghurs?
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
