China’s human rights abuses have been well documented as the Communist Party has sought to cement its rule and stamp out dissent.
It has worked to repress ethnic minorities in border regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, lawyers, artists, journalists, the rainbow community, and ordinary people voicing their opinions about things like the extended Covid lockdowns.
But even as the world has become increasingly aware of this repression, countries including New Zealand have become increasingly reluctant to criticise Beijing – and are usually very tentative when they do.
They’re worried about the Chinese government using its economic clout to punish political statements.
This week on The Detail, Sophie Richardson, a renowned advocate for human rights in China, talks about what New Zealand could – and should – be doing.
“I don’t think any democratic government is doing enough to try to improve the human rights situation inside the country,” says Richardson, who’s the co-executive director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. She’s been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, and served as China Director at Human Rights Watch for 17 years. She’s also been sanctioned by Beijing for her advocacy.
China’s repression directly affects people outside the country, Richardson said, citing the case of the doctors in Wuhan who were silenced when they tried to raise the alarm of a strange respiratory disease they were beginning to see at the end of 2019.
“What happens inside China has global implications. Think about climate change,” she says. “This is the country that is now the leading emitter, and what it chooses to do on those issues is going to have implications for people all over the world, regardless of whether they ever set foot inside China.”
New Zealand is “terribly economically exposed” to China and that, she says, is one reason successive governments have been reluctant to speak plainly about human rights abuses.
“On human rights in China, its performance is perfunctory,” she said.
New Zealand has joined multi-country statements on the crackdown against Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, and last week joined nine other countries in a bland statement after Joshua Wong, one of the student leaders in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, was given another 10 years in jail.
“It’s the kind of response that, frankly, Beijing has come to expect and manage and shrug off,” she says.
Successive Prime Ministers, including Jacinda Ardern and Christopher Luxon, have said they privately have raised concerns about China’s human rights when meeting that country’s leaders.
“I am not surprised if, for example, someone tells me that Prime Minister Luxon raised human rights issues; that he brought the issue up behind closed doors in his recent interactions with senior Chinese government officials,” she says.
“Beijing is now used to that. That’s what they expect… So I think it’s incumbent on governments to stop and think whether what they’re doing is adequate or whether it is in any way a deterrent.”
But China is New Zealand’s largest trading partner – we sold it $20 billion worth of goods last year – and we have seen other countries punished economically for making political statements.
After the Nobel committee awarded Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Peace Prize, Beijing banned Norwegian salmon for six years. When Australia called for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, Beijing slapped restrictions on sales of Australian beef, wine, barley and lobsters.
But Richardson says people need to consider the economic relationship in a different way.
“We have to stop and think about not just the kind of economic activity that has helped make the Chinese government so affluent that it can commit crimes against humanity and get away with it, because it uses that kind of leverage over other governments or companies or sectors,” she says.
New Zealand can’t take on this issue alone, she says, but like-minded governments that say they’re concerned could work together and to try to recognise that human rights are foundational to predictable, healthy economic interactions over time.
This Saturday episode is made with funding from the Peter M Acland Foundation
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