Array
China’s system of crushing dissent internally through direct threats works pretty well. There’s a reason why there are almost never any public protests in China and it’s simple. If you protest, China will identify you and the police will come knocking no your door with some paper for you to sign. The paper will be an implied threat along the lines of if you agree not to stir up any further public conflicts and they won’t arrest you and torture you.
And of course the same goes for all speech online. All of it is monitored and anyone critical of the government is quickly silenced. In that case the police don’t have to come to your door because they can just delete whatever it was you said that they don’t like. But if they don’t like what you said or if it generates attention, the police will still come to your door.
Even the most powerful people in China, billionaires who have made huge fortunes in international trade, have learned the hard way how this works. If you say something critical of the government, there’s no subtle hint or deference to your status. You just disappear. The police come and suddenly your family and friends don’t know where you were taken or why exactly. And when you reappear weeks later, you have a brand new attitude about the wisdom of Xi Jinping and the communist party.
As totalitarian police states go, China has built a pretty solid one. No one gets away with anything for long because there are no alternate centers of power to appeal to, not the courts or public opinion. Both of those are controlled from the top down to reinforce the same message.
But there is one small problem with this system which really has created some problems for China. They can’t control you if you’re speaking from outside China. At least they can’t control you as directly. But they still try.
There’s an example of how that works that was just published today. It involves a Chinese businessman named H. (because he doesn’t want his real name released) who was living in France when China decided he needed to come home in order to participate in a legal case against a former rival of Xi Jinping. In an effort to force him home, China charged him with crimes and then issued a red notice for him using Interpol.
The Chinese government issued a red notice for H through Interpol, the international police watchdog.
