Chinese Human Rights Propaganda Must Be Continually Exposed

Protesters recreate human rights abuses taking place in Chinese prisons. (Jarrod Hall/The Epoch Times)

Commentary

State-run Chinese media propaganda that brags about China’s “respect for human rights” is endless—and annoying.

The absurdity of their continuing patently false claims makes one wonder whether the editors at the likes of China Daily can keep a straight face when they publish such drivel: “China’s ideas, measures, and practices in respecting and protecting human rights can offer inspiration for the rest of the world.”

Are long-suffering Chinese ethnic and religious minorities “inspired” by decades of relentless Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecution?

A few reminders are in order, as countering communist Chinese propaganda with the facts is a critical element in the ongoing psychological warfare perpetrated by the CCP against the rest of the world.

Background

What are basic human rights? Here’s a short list from Human Rights World that is especially pertinent to communist China and consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the United Nations General Assembly drafted in 1948:

• The right to life and liberty.
• Freedom from slavery, torture, and inhumane treatment.
• Freedom of opinion and expression.
• The right to privacy (protections from excessive surveillance).
• The right to freedom of thought, religion, opinion, and expression.

The Chinese regime’s record on ensuring these basic human rights is criminal. There is no other way to say it—and that record has been atrocious from the beginning of the CCP’s control of China in 1949.

In the early 1950s, the CCP forcibly expropriated the property of tens of millions as they transitioned the country into a socialist system.

In the mid-1950s, CCP leader Mao Zedong launched the Anti-Rightist campaign, which resulted in the purging and forced reeducation of approximately 550,000 minor officials, intellectuals, academics, and others.

In the late-1950s, Mao instituted the Great Leap Forward (1958–61) aimed at “rapid industrialization and collectivization” of the Chinese economy. The resulting disruptions resulted in the Great Chinese Famine and an estimated death toll of between 18 million and 55 million people.

In the late-1960s, the last of Mao’s criminal initiatives perpetrated against the Chinese people was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–71). The paranoid Mao aimed the repression against internal enemies, which involved purging China and the CCP of capitalists, traditionalists (dynastic adherents, Buddhists, Confucians, etc.), and other so-called enemies of the state. The abuses included public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, seizure of property, and the displacement of 17 million young Chinese from urban to rural areas through the Down to the Countryside Movement.

A poster in late 1966 in Beijing features how to deal with so-called enemies of the people during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. (Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images)

In parallel to the above human rights abuses, the CCP implemented a policy to reeducate all ethnic minority groups in China as stereotypical Han Chinese, with their native languages and cultures brutally suppressed by the CCP.

The Tibetans were among the first minority groups to suffer from that campaign. Their travails are summarized by The Tibet Post: “According to the Central Tibetan Administration, ‘Tibetans were not only shot, but also were beaten to death, crucified, burned alive, drowned, mutilated, starved, strangled, hanged, boiled alive, buried alive, drawn and quartered, and beheaded.’”

The horrific actions by the CCP resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million Tibetans since 1950, the looting and destruction of 6,000 monasteries and temples, and historical structures in Tibet, and the colonization of Tibet by more than 8 million Chinese to ensure Han Chinese domination of Tibetan culture.

The cultural genocide in Tibet was extended to other minority groups in China, including Mongolian Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong adherents. One million of the 11 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been detained in so-called reeducation camps under the current CCP leader, Xi Jinping. In January 2021, the U.S. State Department designated the CCP’s persecution and abuse of Uyghurs as genocide.

Condemnation of the above continuing human rights abuses—and many other persecutions, unlawful detentions, and torturings—have been roundly condemned by governments and international organizations that monitor human rights abuses worldwide. A tiny sampling includes the following:

The nonprofit Human Rights Foundation published a 2021 report titled “100 Years of Suppression,“ which assessed the CCP’s suppression tactics in the Xinjiang region, Tibet, and Hong Kong.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned the Chinese regime’s persecution of Tibetan Buddhist monks in 2008.

The World Organisation Against Torture condemned China’s “failure to sign the optional protocols to the Convention Against Torture and to prevent arbitrary detention, torture, and the killing of prisoners.”

Thirty-nine countries condemned abuses of Uyghurs in 2020; the number grew to 50 in 2022.

In July 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce added 14 Chinese firms to the Entity List for being complicit in Beijing’s “campaign of repression, mass detention, and high technology surveillance against Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang,” according to a State Department report.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) continues to condemn Chinese oppression in its annual reports.

Chinese Reactions

Chinese sensitivity to the above condemnations of Chinese human rights abuses cannot be understated, as the international reports strike at the heart of the CCP’s decades-long attempts to establish the legitimacy of the Chinese communist regime. After all, such blatant human rights abuses are not the actions of legitimate governments.

Falun Gong practitioners raise awareness about organ harvesting and other human rights crimes in China, with residents and tourists in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 17. (Xu Touhui/The Epoch Times)

Chinese diplomats and state-run media have reflexively tried to deny, deflect, shift blame, and even redefine basic human rights “with Chinese characteristics.” Examples are provided here, here, here, and here. That last linked item is titled “China ensures protection of human rights.” Talk about a bald-faced lie in the face of the above reports of human rights abuses in China, not to mention the historically documented atrocities committed during the Mao Zedong era!

The China Daily article cited at the beginning of this essay is just the latest attempt to claim that communist China is a “beacon” for human rights development. Two items presented in that article are absurd. The first cites a joint report from the China Foundation for Human Rights Development and the New China Research under Xinhua News Agency (!) that claims that “China’s outlook on human rights has been continuously enriched and improved in practice, with its own perspectives and ideological connotations, based on the actual conditions of the country.”

This is typical communist gobbledygook without any specifics—certainly nothing that specifically addresses the basic human rights listed above. This circular argument from a communist-controlled entity implies that human rights are improving in China when Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other persecuted minorities know differently from first-hand experience.

The second item cites the U.N.’s Human Development Index, which “showed China had risen from a score of 0.499 in 1990 to 0.761 in 2019, lifting the nation into the tier of countries with high human development.”

That’s a typical communist sleight-of-hand maneuver, as the HDI has nothing to do with human rights. The U.N. defines the HDI as a measure of three factors: “a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and having a decent standard of living. … It does not reflect on inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment, etc.” Or on any measures that quantify and assess the basic human rights in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Concluding Thoughts

While China watchers are well aware of Chinese communist tricks, lies, and propaganda on wide-ranging subjects, including basic human rights and CCP-instigated cultural genocides, it is important to play “whack-a-mole” in countering all propaganda statements from state-run Chinese media whenever they are made.

The CCP is engaged in open psychological warfare against the world and must be countered at every turn to hearten the oppressed minorities and to inform the ordinary people of the truth about human rights abuses in China.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.