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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
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83 Global Brands Tied to Forced Labor in China—Benedict Rogers | American Thought Leaders
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In China, we're seeing forced televised confessions, a mass surveillance state, the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, and what many are calling a genocide of the Uyghur people.
83 global brands, including major U.S. companies, are tied to Uyghur forced labor in China.
We've had our heads in the sand for too long.
Over in Hong Kong, 53 pro-democracy activists, lawmakers and lawyers were arrested on January 6th under the draconian national security law.
Today there is no freedom in Hong Kong.
Despite all this, the EU recently announced a major trade deal with China.
Today we sit down with human rights activist and writer Benedict Rogers, founder of Hong Kong Watch and deputy chair of the UK Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission.
We discuss the Commission's new report, The Darkness Deepens.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Benedict Rogers, it's so great to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you.
It's a great privilege to be with you again.
Ben, you've put out this incredible report, The Darkness Deepens.
Frankly, it's one of the most comprehensive reports on human rights in China that I've come across.
This is a follow-up from your report four years ago that the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission put out, The Darkest Moment.
Incredible work.
For starters, I have to say that.
Why don't you tell me briefly what were the key most important findings in your mind?
I think the key findings are that in the last four years since that previous inquiry and report, firstly, the situation across the board has deteriorated dramatically further.
And I almost didn't think that was possible because, as you've just said, the report four years ago was called the darkest moment.
In other words, the situation was pretty terrible then.
But across the board, things have worsened significantly.
We've seen the dismantling of democracy and freedoms in Hong Kong.
We see what people are increasingly recognizing as a genocide of the Uyghurs.
But those two issues have had quite a lot of attention and deservedly so.
But what we found is that the situation for Christians, for Falun Gong practitioners, for the situation in Tibet, For human rights defenders, bloggers, lawyers, across the board, the situation has worsened significantly.
That's the main finding.
But also, I think the Chinese Communist Party regime is Finding new and increasingly brutal forms of repression.
So the growth of surveillance technology is one example.
The use of forced labor, which we call modern-day slavery, probably was going on before, but is certainly much more extensive now.
And the use of forced televised confessions, And the increasing number of arrests of foreign nationals.
So it shows that no one is safe from the long arm of the CCP. It's not just nationals of the PRC, but foreign nationals that have been arrested and jailed, disappeared, forced to confess on national television.
It seems to me like the Chinese Communist Party is taking advantage of this chaotic situation around the U.S. election to do some bad stuff, so to speak.
One of these things is this mass arrest of pro-democracy politicians on the 6th.
Actually, four guests from this show were among those that were arrested that day.
Why don't you tell me what you think about this, what the realities are, and how things have come since the 6th?
Well, yes.
The mass arrests of 53 pro-democracy activists were the single largest swoop by the Hong Kong police of activists in Hong Kong in recent memory.
Obviously, there have been quite a number of other arrests in previous months, but there's been nowhere near as large a number in one In one morning.
And essentially what they're charged with is nothing more than the crime in inverted commas of having dared to carry out A democratic exercise.
They either were candidates or organizers or pollsters in a primary election, something that in the United States is an absolute norm, but a primary election to choose the candidates for the pro-democracy camp in what should have been the elections to the legislature in Hong Kong.
The elections to the legislature were, of course, subsequently postponed using The excuse of the pandemic.
But now these individuals have been arrested, charged with subversion under the national security law, for having carried out that exercise last summer to choose their candidates.
I want to just briefly recap.
This national security law seems to give the Hong Kong government, with the Chinese Communist Party standing behind it, Absolutely.
It is probably the most draconian and vaguely worded and extensive It's the most repressive law that I've really ever seen.
Some of the concepts that it criminalizes, things like collusion with foreign political forces, that basically means it's now a crime for a person in Hong Kong to talk to.
A foreign politician, foreign media, someone like me, a foreign activist.
Acts of subversion are interpreted as, for example, carrying out a primary election to choose candidates, or really any form of criticism of the regime in Beijing.
And crucially, this law also has an extraterritorial clause in it, which in principle essentially says that It doesn't matter if you're a Hong Konger or not, and it doesn't matter where you are in the world.
Anyone, anywhere in the world can breach the national security law.
Now, obviously, enforcing that for foreigners outside Hong Kong is probably not very practical, at least in the Western world.
But it does make Hong Kongers who are in other parts of the world much more vulnerable if they want to go back to Hong Kong.
So bottom line, let's look at the difference from four years ago.
How has Hong Kong changed?
Bottom line?
Bottom line is, it's changed massively.
Four years ago, freedom was under pressure.
There were signs of erosion, and worrying signs of erosion.
Today, there is no freedom in Hong Kong.
Let's jump to the second issue that we discussed.
You mentioned this modern-day slavery, forced labor.
You know, I recently produced a film, a Holocaust documentary, which involved us going to Europe.
And one of the things I discovered, which I hadn't realized, actually, I think we're good to go.
I think we're good to go.
Well, I think that a lot more evidence has come to light, and I think the use of slave labour has been much more extensive over the last few years.
And crucially, it's featuring a very significant role in the supply chains Of at least 83 or more international brand companies, companies that consumers will all be familiar with throughout the Western world.
And you're right to make the connection with the Holocaust, because what's very significant about this situation is that actually among religious communities speaking out on the Uyghur situation, it's actually been the Jewish community That has been taking a lead.
The former chief rabbi in my country, the United Kingdom, the current chief rabbi, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish news newspaper, and other Jewish groups have really been courageous in making the comparison with the Holocaust, which is a very rare and sensitive thing for the Jewish community to do, but they've been doing it.
Why don't you tell me briefly why that is?
Of course, we know some of this, but why is that apt in your mind?
I think it's very apt because Many of the hallmarks of the Holocaust are there, not only the slave labor, but evidence of a campaign of forced sterilization,
scenes of people with their heads shaved being loaded onto trains, and of course, the extensive We've
seen, sadly, other genocides over the years, And plenty of other mass atrocities in different parts of the world.
But I don't think we've seen anything quite as extensive as this for a long time.
A Canadian parliamentary committee came up with a genocide designation for what is happening there in Xinjiang to the Uyghur people.
And I think the State Department in the U.S. is also considering that as we speak.
Something that comes to mind when it comes to Xinjiang is, I guess, the importance or the use of surveillance technology.
This is something that also figures prominently in your report.
And again, this is something that I would love to compare today to four years ago, if you could actually do that, because it seems to be such a Well, I guess a central issue that might not necessarily be obvious to people in playing a key role in this repression that we just discussed.
Absolutely.
I think that it was beginning to develop a few years ago, but you're correct that it didn't really feature in our previous report.
And that shows that it has rapidly developed in the last few years.
Key to the development of this have been the Chinese tech companies, well-known brands like Huawei and Hikvision that are directly complicit with creating this Orwellian surveillance state.
And the extent of the technology is terrifying.
The use of of facial recognition technology, of drones, and artificial intelligence.
But that's also combined with more traditional forms of surveillance that also continue the use of informants, the pattern of the CCP sending CCP officials, Han Chinese officials, To live in the houses of Uyghurs, those Uyghurs that aren't in the prison camps, to monitor them 24 hours a day.
So these sort of crude traditional forms of personal surveillance mixed with the use and development of technology and the fact that companies that are well known globally now, thankfully many Western democracies are waking up to the dangers of of Huawei and the others.
But there's many countries that haven't woken up to that.
And we should not forget that these companies are directly at the heart of this surveillance state.
Presumably, this technology, whether it's Hikvision or Huawei, it's not just deployed in China and presumably can be used exactly the same way elsewhere.
That's exactly right.
I mean, firstly, the regime is, of course, transferring this technology to other brutal dictatorships.
So that poses a danger in other repressive states.
But of course, it can use that technology in Western free societies, and that poses a direct threat to our freedoms.
Ben, this is one of the things, and I asked this question of Secretary Pompeo in a recent interview, and he was more bullish on this than I am personally.
But we have this EU-China trade deal that's As far as I can tell, moving full steam ahead, unless there's some kind of block in the European Council or something like that that occurs, I don't know if that's going to happen.
And with the knowledge that all of these realities are happening, that has me kind of scratching my head.
How does this work, given even just the few realities that you laid out to me?
Yeah, it has me scratching my head as well, particularly as the announcement came just a few days after the European Parliament passed a resolution that called for access to Xinjiang to inspect the camps.
It called for sanctions, targeted sanctions on those Responsible for the atrocities against the Uyghurs.
And it called crucially for any further investment deal to have protections for labor rights and labor standards.
And just a few days later, the EU went ahead with this deal with none of those things.
And then, of course, the other thing that happened just, I forget the exact timeframe, but just a matter of And also,
it was a decision made when the US is in transition, and you would have thought the EU as an ally of the United States would not undermine either the relationship with the existing administration in its final days or undercut the new administration before it's had a chance to make its position clear.
And so, for all those reasons, it was an extraordinary decision For the EU to rush into.
And it's been roundly condemned, including by people like Chris Patton, the last governor of Hong Kong, who is a former EU commissioner, as well as being the last governor of Hong Kong.
He's usually not a critic of the EU. He's one of the people in British politics who's very much a supporter of the EU. But he made comments that were quite rightly extremely critical.
Ben, you mentioned the U.S. policy implications or how this kind of decision might impact EU's relationship with the U.S. But let's talk a little bit about U.S. policy, broadly speaking.
Right now, roughly, the approach of the U.S. to the Chinese Communist Party is distrust and verify.
That's the kind of three-word summary.
How has U.S. policy changed in these last four years or perhaps even further back?
Oh, I think it's changed significantly.
And whatever other observations or criticisms of the outgoing president and administration people may have, I think the one policy area that I would really give him and the administration great credit for is having the courage to see The danger of the Chinese regime,
the repressiveness of that regime, and not just the courage to see that and to say so, but to change policy as a result.
And I really applaud many of the things that the administration has done to move away from this Naive idea that you can just engage with such a repressive regime behind closed doors only with words, that actually what you need to get the message across is punitive measures, the kind of sanctions that the US has introduced.
And so I hope very much that The new administration will continue that approach.
My impression from people I talked to in recent months in the United States Is that broadly that will be the case, that perhaps one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus is on the China question.
Perhaps the one difference in the Biden administration, and I'm a foreigner, so I speak with all humility on this, but my understanding is that perhaps the only change will be That the new administration may try to take a more multilateral approach to try to build alliances with other democracies to stand together on this.
And I think that's a good thing.
I think the free world needs to stand together and form a united front to confront China's united front, as long as that isn't a lowest common denominator approach, as long as it's a robust approach.
But yeah, I think policy has changed significantly in recent years in the United States, and it's starting to in other parts of the free world.
Well, so then this goes back to the previous question a little bit.
How can the U.S., with its, like you said, sort of multiple direct approaches, sanctions, and so forth, say collaborate with the EU, which at least on the surface, in my reading, appears to be making a major, major trade deal with no actual Absolutely.
I mean, I think the deal— Certainly is a setback.
On the other hand, and it's a slightly confusing situation because around the same time as this deal just slightly before, the European Parliament voted on legislation for targeted sanctions, what we might call Magnitsky-style sanctions, not in application to China, but as a A piece of legislation in general that they can deploy against any human rights abusing regime that meets the criteria.
And so that's a very welcome step.
And some of the statements that have come from some European leaders have been much more robust in the last year than was the case previously.
So I think there is common ground.
We need to find that common ground, recognize our common values of democracy and human rights, and try to find a way to work together to defend those values.
And, you know, on this sort of realm of multilateralism, I just came across a report today that reminded me that it appears that New Zealand is embracing the Belt and Road, China's Belt and Road Initiative.
And sort of, you know, I guess through that stepping away from, I mean, I don't know how else this would work, but traditional alliances even.
Yes, I mean, that's certainly very concerning, particularly at a time when its near neighbour and close friend Australia is, A, taking a much more robust position and B, coming under unprecedented pressure from China for that.
And I think one of the things we ought to be doing much more of is standing with each other when And particularly with countries that are not as wealthy and influential as the United States, standing with our allies when they come under pressure.
So we ought to be walking absolutely in lockstep with Australia.
And it's unfortunate that New Zealand appears to be taking that alternative position.
So, well, and something that's really important to both you and I, and this is something actually that has been a centerpiece of the U.S. policy over the last four years, is this question of freedom of belief, freedom of religion.
I think you described it in the report as freedom of religion and belief.
I'm not sure the exact distinction, but okay.
You describe this having basically Gotten much, much worse over the last four years.
You've described the Uyghur situation.
Can you expand on this a little bit?
This is very important to me personally.
Absolutely.
I mean, there's no doubt that the situation across the board for freedom of religion has deteriorated and continues to deteriorate very significantly.
I would say it's probably the worst time for religious freedom since the Cultural Revolution.
And that's the case for Christians.
We see growing numbers of Churches over the last few years being destroyed, crosses torn down, in some cases even churches blown up, dynamited.
And even the state-approved, state-controlled churches in some cases have been closed or destroyed, in other cases are coming under intense surveillance, surveillance cameras at the altar recording every worshipper that's there,
the imposition of CCP propaganda and portraits of Xi Jinping and other leaders Alongside, or in some cases even instead of, religious imagery, prohibition on people under the age of 18 from going to places of worship, and the list goes on.
And that's all in the context or with the backdrop of the Vatican having reached an agreement with the Chinese regime in 2018, which it renewed last year.
And that agreement was presumably Designed with the intention of improving the situation, but the situation has absolutely worsened.
And then on top of that, the continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, intense repression in Tibet, of Tibetan Buddhism.
And even Taoists and other Buddhists throughout the country, some of their temples and places of worship have also been restricted or targeted.
So it is across the board.
And the other thing that also is important to say is that I think in the past, certainly before Xi Jinping, whilst the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners was certainly I think in the case of Christians, for example, a lot of it was left to a provincial or local level.
So you did see variations depending on the attitude of the local authorities.
There were national regulations, but they were implemented sometimes leniently, sometimes more harshly.
So you could see in some parts of China at that time that gatherings of Christians could take place as long as they weren't in huge numbers and as long as they weren't regarded as a threat to the authorities, if the authorities were a bit more Today, policy across the board is very much directed from the center.
Xi Jinping's taken part in a number of conferences and meetings on religion policy, issued a number of directives and speeches.
So that hardline, centralized approach has occurred under his leadership.
It's very interesting.
At the Epoch Times, we've kind of charted over those last 21 years of the Falun Gong persecution, for example, how the technology has changed and using Falun Gong practitioners effectively as a kind of crucible for developing these technologies.
Which they then, you know, applied full bore in Xinjiang, and as I understand it, Tibet as well, to basically persecute these discrete geographical populations.
That's right.
But I think there's also signs that they're rolling that out throughout the country.
One of the people who gave evidence to us for this inquiry described Xinjiang as the laboratory for repressive surveillance.
So yes, it's absolutely most repressively deployed in Xinjiang and in Tibet.
But I think that's with a view to rolling it out throughout the country.
The person who gave that evidence, he actually titled his submission to our inquiry, Virtual Gulag.
The meaning is clear in both those words.
It's interesting.
I recently took it upon myself to reread the Gulag Archipelago.
It's such an important work to understand the reality of communist regimes.
This is now a little bit of my commentary, but as I'm reading it, I'm just seeing analogies, not even just in authoritarian regimes, but where things could be going the wrong way, even in democracies.
Absolutely.
Technology brings so many benefits to it.
The ability to communicate ideas, good ideas on social media, the ability to use technology to try to track and constrain the virus during this pandemic.
But equally, it can be hugely misused to silence dissent or to You know, stir debate in unhelpful ways.
So it is a worrying time in that regard.
One of the areas that you focus on in the report is the forced organ harvesting, this murder for organs business in China for the uninitiated.
We've talked about this before.
It's something I've reported on since 2006, when we first realized that it was real and not the crazy idea that it sounds like it should be.
How has our understanding of the reality of this murder for organs business in China changed over the last four years?
I think it's changed quite significantly.
When we carried out our inquiry in 2016, that was, I think, the first time that I was presented with detailed evidence.
Obviously, the evidence was there prior to that, but it was the first time I'd really I would admit that I was probably myself—I didn't dismiss it, but I was certainly a bit skeptical because the claims were so shocking.
But the more I talked to people who've done expert research in this, the more credible I found them to be.
And so we, in our inquiry in 2016, after hearing it in our first inquiry, we then held a second inquiry Specifically on forced organ harvesting.
We were, as a commission, convinced by what we heard and came out with a short report and started raising this with the British government and others.
And then, of course, there was the China Tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a man who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic.
He knows atrocity crimes when he sees them and is not someone who's going to be easily persuaded by unconvincing evidence.
Plus, I would say about that tribunal that the panel members were all very distinguished leaders and experts in their field, but none of them were people who had a prior I think it's a very important agenda on human rights in China.
In fact, most of them had no prior involvement in China, and certainly not with the issue of organ harvesting or with Falun Gong.
And they came out with this incredibly strong judgment, convinced that forced organ harvesting I think that tribunal, although it hasn't resulted yet in the kind of policy change at a government level that I would hope still to see, I think it has changed the debate, and I think it's made it much harder for For sceptics to dismiss the claims.
And we summarized the tribunal judgment in this latest report, and will continue to call for international action.
And I would say also the growing evidence of forced organ harvesting, not only from Falun Gong practitioners, but from Uyghurs and others.
And I think all of that strengthens the case and makes it really irrefutable or certainly very difficult to refuse for someone who's particularly skeptical.
From reading in the report, and I didn't realize this earlier, I understand that Sir Geoffrey Nice, because of the successful work of the China Tribunal, is now going to be convening a similar tribunal on the Uyghur question.
Is that right?
That's correct.
He's been asked by the Uyghur community to carry that out, to address specifically the question of whether what's happening amounts to genocide, because increasingly people are saying that it is.
But again, as with the forced organ harvesting issue, there are skeptics.
And in a way, that's understandable, because genocide is an extremely strong and a very specific legal term.
And so although I think the indicators of genocide are pretty substantial, it's very welcome that a group of legal experts are going to look at it and answer the question from a legal point of view.
Well, I'm just remembering from reading the China Tribunal report, they were looking at the question of whether this forced organ harvesting constitutes a genocide against Falun Gong practitioners.
They concluded, well, not necessarily because there's this huge profit motive, right?
Because The scale of the harvesting makes it a billion-dollar industry.
Just this juxtaposition, I quite didn't know what I should think at this moment.
What do you say to that?
Well, it's almost genocide, but because of the profit motive, it's not just pure wholesale destruction.
I can understand that.
I think it's important to hold If you like, two positions in tandem.
The first is that if something is a genocide, we should call it by its name.
And that's why I think we should demand of the international community that it answer the question, is what's happening to the Uyghurs a genocide?
But on the other hand, any legal judgment that says, well, perhaps it's not quite a genocide in legal terms, certainly doesn't excuse us from recognizing it as a set of extremely egregious, grave atrocity crimes. certainly doesn't excuse us from recognizing it as a set And crimes against humanity is probably the other term that one should use in international law.
So if a genocide determination in legal terms isn't made, they certainly shouldn't let anyone off the hook.
These are the worst possible crimes, whatever name you give to them.
But if they do meet the criteria of genocide, then we should name it as such.
I have to talk about this.
I have avoided doing this for years.
I have a father-in-law that's a Holocaust survivor.
As I said, we've made this film, actually filmed the film about him, and I'm aware of the sensitivities of the issue of the Holocaust.
But the more I think about The Chinese Communist regime, there's just so many parallels to the realities of the Nazi regime, including all these Western companies working with that regime back in the 30s and 40s, and frankly, through the war even.
This is a touchy area.
I don't know if you want to comment on this.
I think I'd make two comments.
I think there are certainly parallels with the Nazi period, but there are equally parallels, of course, with the Soviet era, especially Stalin and Stalin's Gulag.
So I think we should be careful about aligning it to one particular It's a horrific, repressive dictatorship in time, when it has parallels with a number of them.
But where I think the analogy is particularly strong, and you've said this, is the The complicity of Western companies, which you didn't have with the Soviet Union.
In fact, there was a debate about a year ago that was introduced in the British Parliament by Ian Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party, who, in fact, has endorsed our report and has been very outspoken on these issues.
He made the point that actually, would we have If we knew that at the time in the Holocaust that German corporations were providing the The cameras or the fencing or the other equipment in Auschwitz, would we be doing business with them?
Well, we probably were, but I'm not sure we would have been if we'd been more conscious at the time.
And certainly, we weren't doing that with Soviet companies that were building Stalin's Gulag.
So I think that there is a parallel there, and that's where We need more pressure on Western corporations either to stop doing business with this regime or, at a minimum, to make sure that their supply chains, as far as possible, are not built on slave labor and that we're not using technology from these Chinese tech companies that are at the heart of the Orwellian surveillance system.
Ben, you mentioned you're an advocate for multilateralism, basically working with some of these international institutions and multiple countries working together to form this united front.
One of the things that's actually mentioned in your report, and I think is incredibly important, Is the Chinese Communist Party's subversion of multilateral institutions, like multiple agencies of the UN? Right now,
China sitting on top of the UN Human Rights Council Which a lot of human rights activists see as a complete affront to the organization.
Not the only human rights abuser.
I think there's many, many of them there.
Tell me about this.
How has China subverted the multilateral organizations?
And I think you describe it as the rules-based order in the world.
And then we can talk a bit more about what to do.
Well, the subversion is certainly extensive.
I don't have the figures to hand, but a significant number of Chinese Communist Party officials have taken up key positions in the UN bureaucracy as well as the things you've already mentioned of their seats on the Human Rights Council and their influence over the World Health Organization.
We've seen that in the course of the pandemic and a number of other, you know, even having within the period that we were carrying out this inquiry or the period that we were looking at, China had the head of Interpol and then managed to disappear the head of Interpol, which was quite an extraordinary thing.
So it's definitely extensive.
We've seen at the UN, for example, China's influence in being able to veto NGOs that it doesn't like, human rights organizations that it doesn't like from having representative status at the UN. We've seen multiple times Chinese delegates at the Human Rights Council trying to cut off or silence human rights critics during the various dialogues that take place between NGOs and member
states.
We even see intimidation at the Human Rights Council of of China-focused human rights groups.
The Chinese delegation comes and photographs them or harasses them.
So these things have been going on for some time.
And my own view is two things, really.
First, that we should, however flawed and bad the system is, it's in the interests of the free and democratic world To try to get back in there and take it back, take influence back, rather than just cede that influence to China, where they can continue to wreak havoc.
That's not going to be easy, but I think it's worth trying.
But the second thing I would say is that multilateralism shouldn't be at the expense of Unilateral action where that's necessary and justified and the only option.
So in other words, I think I said earlier, it shouldn't be the lowest common denominator.
We should try to work together with allies across free countries as much as possible, but that shouldn't excuse countries from taking their own action where that's necessary.
I have to mention this.
We published a report today looking at various FARA filings, the Foreign Agent Registration Act filings here in the U.S. Since 2009, there were 120 journalists across 50 news organizations, our journalists found, that basically were wined and dined by the China United States Exchange Foundation, which is run by a Chinese Communist Party agent.
And basically part of the united front that you described operation to, well, make the Western—in this case, journalists and media—as friendly as possible to the regime.
This isn't just happening in the US, I'm sure.
I'm sure there are other reports of a similar nature.
And frankly, you know, we're seeing this kind of thing.
This is just today.
This is, you know, the journalism profession.
This is, you know, across the board in academia, in local government, in national government.
You know, there's these You've heard about Christine Fong and infiltrating congressional offices.
It kind of goes on and on.
And so how does the West, the UK, Canada, the US deal with this ever-present infiltration and subversion?
Well, absolutely.
It's particularly well documented in a book I'm sure you're very familiar with called Hidden Hand, which really details the extent of this across the democratic world.
I should say I've had my own very small experience of this in that I've had at least four different British members of parliament on four different occasions Telling me that they have been directly lobbied by the Chinese embassy to tell me to stop doing what I'm doing, to tell me to stop speaking.
And to their credit, all four members of parliament made it clear to me they were not telling me to stop doing what I'm doing.
They were just alerting me to the fact that they had been lobbied.
So if that's going on just with me, I wonder what the full extent of it is.
In terms of what to do, I think it's not an easy balance to achieve, because on the one hand, I think we've been naive, we've had our heads in the sand for too long, and that's how we're in this situation.
On the other hand, we can't Well, we could, but I don't think it would be the right path to say we're going to exclude all Chinese students or we're going to cut off all ties with China or we're going to expel any Chinese person.
The danger with that is it plays into The Chinese regime's own narrative about the West, which is that this is an anti-China or anti-Synophobic attitude.
And I think we need to be very clear that far from being anti the people of China, I'm deeply pro-China as a country, Chinese people, Chinese culture.
I've spent most of my adult life in and around China, have many Chinese friends.
Speak a few words of Chinese and write a few Chinese characters, but not much more than that.
But the point is, we must be pro, and we must send the message to the people of China that we are pro them.
We're anti the Chinese Communist Party regime.
And so to get that message across and to get that balance, I think we need to navigate this quite carefully.
I think that we should have We should look into more stringent background checks, security checks.
We should look at possibly whether we have Chinese students studying in our universities who are studying certain disciplines that could be advantageous to the Chinese state in terms of technology and so on.
And crucially, we should look at institutions like the Confucius Institutes and other bodies that are part of the regime's propaganda apparatus.
And we should stand up for our values in our Academic institutions and other bodies to say, okay, we'll talk to the Chinese, but we should not allow ourselves to be compromised by whether it's funding or entertainment.
I know one or two individuals who on other issues have taken a very, in other parts of the world, taken a very Good and strong line on human rights, but who happen to have been given an honorary professorship at Beijing University, and the moment they're given that, their ego is flattered and they lose all sense of defending their values.
So we need to be much more robust at resisting those temptations and defend our values.
But there's a lot of thought and Detail that needs to go into how to navigate that balance and how to communicate that message that we're for the people of China, but we need to defend our freedoms and national security and stand up for theirs against the Chinese regime.
Right, and I agree with you.
I think this is an incredibly difficult question, and I look forward to seeing policy with teeth, so to speak, being developed further in the U.K., in Canada, I hope, in the U.S., ongoing.
Now, so you mentioned the hidden hand.
The publisher of The Hidden Hand is organizing a panel along with one of the think tanks that I often look to in Canada, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
You're going to be on it tomorrow.
Tell me about this panel.
What are we going to see there?
Well, it's a very extensive panel looking at the whole question of human rights in China.
It follows a panel that we had last September that looked specifically at Hong Kong And it's a panel that brings together a number of activists from China.
There's a Uyghur speaker, there's a very prominent Chinese dissident lawyer, but also politicians from across the world and academics and experts.
And crucially, I think one of the things that's very interesting about it is that it includes a very bipartisan range of speakers.
I'm a human rights activist, and I work in a very bipartisan way, but obviously I'm also in the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, and this panel is taking place tomorrow, the day after.
Us having launched this report.
But on the same panel are the leader of the German Green Party in the European Parliament, Reinhard Butikoffer, who is a tremendously vocal and strong advocate for human rights in China.
And the British Labour Party's shadow minister for Asia, Stephen Kinnock, who equally has been very courageous in speaking out on these issues.
Carolyn Bartholomew, who's Nancy Pelosi's former chief of staff and holds a key position in a congressional commission.
She's the chair of one of the commissions on China.
So it really is a bipartisan mix.
And I think the bipartisan message and the international or multilateral message are the two messages that need to be heard in Beijing.
But Beijing is not going to divide us or shouldn't be able to divide us by country or by political preference.
We all stand on the side of freedom and human rights.
And if we can get that message across and Use that platform to strengthen an alliance across the free world to confront the growing danger of the CCP, then it will be a very valuable two-hour panel.
Ben, we're going to finish up shortly.
Any final thoughts before we do?
And once again, give me the bottom line on China under the Chinese Communist Party right now and what people should know.
Well, I think the bottom line is that China has gone significantly backwards under Xi Jinping in respect to human rights.
No one is safe in China now.
We see that with even Jack Ma.
We're not sure where he is and what's happened to him.
And so, whereas 10 years ago, The Chinese Communist Party has always been, of course, very repressive.
Ten, twenty years ago, there was a degree of space.
There were human rights lawyers who could take up human rights cases.
Of course, they were under pressure, but they had a certain space to do what they did.
Christians had a certain space if they didn't step over the line.
That space is gone now.
The red lines that used to exist are no longer there.
I think the free world needs to wake up to that.
And I hope that this report that we've published will serve not just as a wake-up call and a set of recommendations for the British government and politicians here, but actually for other governments as well.
Show that the repression is so comprehensive, so pervasive, affecting everybody in China, and not just affecting people in China, but affecting people beyond China's borders as well.
And the sooner we wake up to that, I think people are waking up to it, but we need to act fast before it's too late.
Final question.
Why does it matter to the fellow sitting watching in the UK, sitting watching in the US, sitting watching in Canada, that doesn't interact with China very much in any way?
I think it matters in a number of ways.
First of all, do you really want to be buying Clothes or cars that have parts in them or computers or telephones that have been made by not just slave labor, but as we've talked in this program, people who are in a situation that has parallels with the Holocaust.
Do we really, if we know that's happening, do we want to be doing that?
And I think most An ordinary person anywhere in the free world would answer that question, no.
Of course we want our clothes and our computers and so on, but we want them to be made ethically and not by such horrific and extensive slave labour.
Secondly, do we want to defend our freedoms?
Do we believe in our liberties?
And if we do, then we need to recognise that they're threatened By this regime.
They're threatened by the regime most immediately by infiltration, by the use of technology and surveillance.
But further down the line, if we don't stand up to what this regime is doing to the Uyghurs, its dismantling of freedom in Hong Kong, its total breach of an international treaty in Hong Kong, if we allow them to get away with breaking international treaties with no consequences, Then not only is Taiwan going to be next, but after Taiwan, they're not going to stop there.
For that reason, it's in our interest to stand up.
Again, to draw a parallel with the period of history that we've touched on a number of times, we see what happens, what the consequences are, when we don't respond early on.
You know, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and then we found ourselves in a world war.
Now, I'm neither advocating nor predicting a world war, but I think that history shows the trajectory Is there if we allow such a regime to continue on with impunity, and not just with impunity, but with our own complicity.
Sooner or later, the consequences are clear, and that's why we need to act.
Benedict Rogers, such a pleasure to have you on again.
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