Communist China a ‘Common Component’ of Many Threats to International Stability: Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Minister

Chinese military personnel pass by a board displaying a photo of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on March 4, 2022, AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Communist China is a “common component” of many of the challenges facing the international community, Taiwan’s minister of foreign affairs said during a panel discussion in Ottawa coinciding with the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Minister Wu Jaushieh made the opening remarks at the webinar, titled The Challenge of China and hosted by the University of Ottawa’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre (HRREC) on June 2 and 3.

Wu spoke of the growing despotism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), noting that “human rights is anathema to authoritarianism” while free and open democracy is what nurtures humanitarianism.

“The authoritarian regime that wrote the bloody history of the Tiananmen massacre 33 years ago is no better today than it was back then,” he said via telecommunication.

“In fact, it is now stronger, smarter, more ruthless, and better equipped with economic power and high tech capabilities.”

The panel consisted of legal experts and social scientists from Taiwan, Canada, France, the United States, and the University of Ottawa. Among the topics covered were what the international community can learn from Taiwan about how to deal with the human rights challenges posed by the communist regime beyond China’s borders, as well as what is at stake for Canada and its partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

“Beijing is using its increased influence to undermine democracies around the world, Wu said.

“It exerts diplomatic, military, trade, and technological coercion. It exploits freedom of speech in democracies to flood us with propaganda and fake news and weaponizes economic power to target our free market systems.”

Wu said in recent years, China’s communist regime has “accelerated its authoritarian agenda both at home and abroad,” pointing to its human rights abuses of both ethnic and religious minorities, its crackdown on Hong Kong’s democracy, and its radical ‘zero-COVID’ lockdown policy that caused starvation in some parts of the country.

“We can all agree that we are in a time of rapid change,” he said. “Many of the emerging changes create challenges to stability, to the rules-based international order, and to our shared values of freedom, democracy, and human rights. And most of the new challenges that we face today have one common component—that is, China.”

The regime is also becoming increasingly hostile toward the self-ruled democracy of Taiwan, Wu noted.

“The people of Taiwan understand all too well what it’s like to be bullied by an authoritarian aggressor,” he said.

CCP’s History of Rights Abuses

According to the Black Book of Communism, the CCP is accountable for an estimated 65 million artificial deaths, through executions, man-made famine, war, deportations, and forced labour.

The regime also suppresses many human rights lawyers, including Gao Zhisheng, who spoke out against the CCP’s repression of Falun Gong.

Pitman Potter, emeritus law professor at the University of British Columbia, said Beijing is “responsible for many misdeeds, deaths, and destruction,” while noting that China’s legal system is far from implementing the rule of law.

“In terms of the rule of law, I really, frankly, get very tired of discussions of the Chinese legal system as if it bears any resemblance at all to the rule of law, because nothing could be farther from the truth,” he said.

“The Chinese legal system is an instrumentalist system that uses legal texts to rule the country. It is not a system that subjects the government to legal standards external to the government, and until that happens, in my opinion, it’s not a rule of law system.”