WASHINGTON, DC - Curry Kenworthy believes that democracy is the Chinese people’s essential right, and that Chinese communism should be toppled to make this possible. The organization he was newly chosen to run, human rights group China Support Network, constantly sends out news releases detailing the Chinese government’s violations of human rights and freedom of press and speech.

Yet Kenworthy sees a silent accomplice in the continuation of Chinese rights abuses: Western businesses and media.

Western businesses, in Kenworthy’s opinion, are assisting rights abusers in China by setting up shop there: “The conditions that flourish without human rights and democracy are a big part of the reason that businesses are flocking there”, says Kenworthy, who implies that Western businesses investing in China are, with their money, “helping the Communists to dominate the region and pursue a totalitarian agenda”.

Kenworthy also notices that due to economic interests some Western businesses directly assist the Chinese government to persecute its own people: “We also see companies providing technology which China abuses,” he notes, “helping China to censor information and target dissidents, aiding China in capabilities that threaten democratic nations, and engaging in self-censorship according to the Communist Party’s desires. These companies are little better than the tyrants they are serving, and they are working directly against human rights and democracy.”

The solution? Stay out of China. “Set up shop in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, or Thailand,” says Kenworthy, “and support Asian democracies”.

Curry Kenworthy, new head of the China Support Network human rights group. Kenworthy believes that Western businesses and media have a greater responsibility to aid democracy in China. (The Epoch Times)

Unlike many politicians and rights groups that see economic engagement with China as a way to bring it out of poverty and into democracy, the Washington, DC-based China Support Network is staunchly against trading with Beijing. The organization has even initiated a call for boycotting all Chinese products, claiming that they are made in unhealthy and sometimes brutal conditions.

Yet Kenworthy believes that Western businesses have not been the only obstacles in the way of Chinese democracy; Western media have also played a role: “The media bears much of the responsibility for China’s continuing lack of democracy and human rights,” he says, “Through lack of reporting persecution and atrocities, news companies keep the international public in the dark and help Beijing’s leaders maintain their hold on tyranny.”

Kenworthy sees the problem as somewhat ideological, as many Western media organizations seem to think that China has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union: “Paradoxically, after pronouncing the end of the Cold War, Communism was also declared dead, despite the largest Communist country and several others still being very much alive and well.”

“The reality is that China has been winning (yes, winning!) in terms of propaganda and influence, both internally and internationally, with very few exceptions”, says Kenworthy, striking a fairly pessimistic note in his critique on Communist China and Western acceptance of it. “We have to change this, and it's going to take the very best efforts of news organizations and the passionate involvement of those who live in freedom and believe in democracy.”