A Backstory of Beijing’s Repression: Three Quick Takes on Recent News

Who is Wang Xiaohong, what the ICIJ investigation missed, and what tariff wars might mean for forced labor in China

Today’s issue is an experiment with a tighter format so I can write more frequently, sharing comments on emerging news stories. I highlight essential dimensions of the U.S.-China tariff negotiations, a recent transnational repression investigation, and forced labor in China. I hope these offer unique insights into recent international headlines.

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A Backstory of Beijing’s Repression

Is China’s Transnational Repression Czar Joining Tariff Negotiations?

Over my morning coffee, I stumbled upon this tweet from the Wall Street Journal’s Lingling Wei, stating that “Both He Lifeng, Xi’s economic czar, and Wang Xiaohong, the security czar responsible for fentanyl, are in Switzerland now,” presumably to meet U.S. officials for talks over tariffs. The name Wang Xiaohong caught my eye immediately. Wang is the current Minister of Public Security, the man sitting atop the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) massive repressive apparatus. His mandate extends far beyond fentanyl. In fact, he is arguably one of the leading drivers not only of rights abuses within China, but also of transnational repression—including against Chinese and other Americans in the United States.

Wang rose to his position in June 2022. Since then, the Department of Justice has exposed, arrested, and prosecuted numerous CCP agents engaging in activities like trying to influence a local elected official in California, operating illegal “overseas police stations,” attempting to bribe a purported IRS official to revoke the tax exempt status of Shen Yun Performing Arts, and a host of espionage and large-scale hacking cases.

All of these agents operate within China’s public security bureaucracy. Even if Wang’s direct personal involvement is unclear (given the secrecy surrounding Chinese intelligence agencies), he is still the one essentially calling the shots. So, even as they seek to mitigate the horrors of the fentanyl crisis, U.S. officials who sit across the table from Wang would do well to recall who he is, take his promises with a grain of salt, and turn a favorite CCP catch-phrase back on him, telling him to cease “interfering in our internal affairs.”

U.S. officials sitting across the table from Wang Xiaohong would do well to remember his role in transnational repression schemes targeting Americans and turn a favorite CCP catch-phrase back on him, telling him to cease “interfering in our internal affairs.”

Vital Context to ICIJ Investigation

On April 29, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published an impressive array of articles about the CCP’s tactics of transnational repression, ranging from abuse of Interpol notices to preemptive arrests of protesters before foreign visits by party chief Xi Jinping. Three elements stand out from their detailed case studies on these protest prevention efforts: the vital role local police played in collaborating with the regime to silence peaceful critics, how people were detained in some cases just until Xi left town, and that those targeted were not only members of China-related diasporas but also local nationals from Nepal and Serbia. Yet, two dimensions of this phenomenon were missing from the reporting.

First, this dynamic long precedes Xi Jinping. In 2002 when then-CCP chief Jiang Zemin visited Iceland, local authorities detained Falun Gong practitioners who had gathered to quietly protest and urge an end to the still relatively new yet brutal persecution he had unleashed. The Icelandic government issued a secret blacklist and local airlines restricted Falun Gong practitioners’ ability to board flights, leaving people stranded at airports across Europe. Scholar Herman Salton wrote an entire book on the incident—Artic Host, Icy Visit—that was published in 2010. Salton tries to make sense of how the protection of civil liberties in one of the world’s most democratic countries had crumbled so dramatically in the face of a visiting PRC leader. In a prescient comment a decade before the term “transnational repression” became commonplace, he notes:

For Beijing, the world has become a stage on which its battle against internal dissent is mercilessly waged.

Fast forward to June 2011 and then-Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Hungary. Not only did local police confiscate banners from pro-Tibetan demonstrators (while leaving pro-China ones untouched), but as the country’s ombudsman later determined, “too many …Tibetans living in Hungary were forced to go to the immigration office for ‘data checking’ on the day of the visit of the Chinese Prime Minister,” thereby effectively curbing their freedom of expression.

Second, the recurrence of these attempts to silence protesters during high-profile Chinese visits is not accidental, but rather based on internal CCP incentives and instructions from top security officials. A set of leaked internal speeches published in 2017 by the Association for the Defense of Human Rights and Religious Freedom included specific remarks from then top PRC security officials referencing the regime’s efforts to stop human rights protests during foreign officials’ visits. In fact, in a 2015 speech, Meng Jianzhu, then head of the security apparatus, bragged that “especially during the more than 40 days of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s [international] visits, there were no close nuisance incidents,” citing that as an example of “new breakthroughs in the overseas struggle.” Given both the ICIJ’s reporting and these supplementary details, any democratic government welcoming Xi should expect these pressures and, ideally, be ready to resist.

The U.S.-China Tariff War’s Implications for Forced Labor in China

I was honored that fellow Substacker Edi Obiakpani-Reid at SinoBabble included me in a new initiative asking China experts with varied backgrounds to comment on current news. Her questions were thought-provoking. For one asking about an angle on tariffs that people aren’t talking about, I reflected on the forced labor dimensions and what reduced trade between the two countries could mean for the many prisoners swept up in this abusive system:

On the one hand, higher tariffs and reduced bilateral trade could lower the amount of goods coming from regions like Xinjiang—where ethnic minorities are forced into labor and transfer programs—into the United States, making enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act (which prohibits the entry of such goods) easier.

On the other hand, if Chinese factories close or face tighter margins due to reduced export demand, those remaining may be more tempted to use forced labor to cut costs. Also, the tariffs could increase schemes that obscure the actual origin of goods being from China, while trying to get them into U.S. supply chains, serving at the same time to hide whether items are coming from a known factory or from a murkier source like a prison.

One underappreciated dimension of forced labor in China is the extent to which workers and prisoners in parts of China other than Xinjiang have been used for this purpose. This includes Uyghurs forcibly relocated to other provinces, foreigners, and political or religious prisoners like practitioners of the Falun Gong meditation practice. Even after the closure of the re-education through labor system in 2013, this has continued, though it is not as well-documented as the forced labor schemes within Xinjiang. Reduced levels of U.S.-China trade could have the effect of lowering how many of these goods reach U.S. shores.

Nevertheless, if Chinese exporters simply shift to other foreign markets, it wouldn’t necessarily provide respite to the prisoners.

You can read the full post and three other thoughtful answers to that question here.

Thank you for reading and I hope to be back with a full-length post and featured prisoner later this month.