#188 The Nexus of China’s Repression | Benedict Rogers
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On this episode of China Unscripted, all the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party are coming together in the China next. Welcome to China Unscripted. I'm Chris Chappell. I'm Shelley John. And Matt Gnaizda will not be joining us today. What with the whole Twitter files thing and all the talk of the Hunter Biden laptop story, he's been re-traumatized remembering when we forced him to watch all of the Hunter Biden. That's not why he's not here.

But, okay, it's a better story. It's a better story. Anyways, joining us today once again is Benedict Rogers. He's a human rights activist and the co-founder and CEO of Hong Kong Watch. And he's got a new book out called The China Nexus, 30 Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party's Tyranny. Ben, it's great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you very much. Great to be with you, as always. Yeah. So, I mean, you've been talking about China for so many years now. Why did you feel...

This was the time to write this book. What did you want to accomplish? Well, when I thought about writing the book, I realized that actually, although there are thousands of books on China out there, there are actually almost none that put together the

sort of litany of human rights horrors committed by the Chinese Communist Party in one volume. You know, there are some excellent books on Hong Kong, some excellent books on the Uyghurs, on other aspects of China, but there are none that I could think of that put the Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, the persecution of Christians, the persecution of Falun Gong,

forced organ harvesting, the crackdown on lawyers and civil, you know, the list is really long. And on top of that, Taiwan and the Chinese regime's

complicity with atrocities in the two neighboring dictatorships of Burma or Myanmar and North Korea. And as I thought about it, I thought there's a need and this is a time to write the book. I don't think when I started writing the book that I could have predicted just how timely it would be.

it would be. And over the last few weeks, obviously, as the book has been launched in different places, the CCP has helpfully given regular new news hooks coinciding with the book. But those are the reasons I wrote it.

Does that mean you're one of these hostile foreign forces that had sparked these protests? It was all just to promote your book? Well, no, but certainly it was very convenient that the CCP decided to continue its COVID, its really draconian COVID restrictions that led to those protests. So it was good timing.

I was wondering why there was that one protester who kept shouting, step down CCP, step down Xi Jinping, buy China Nexus on Amazon. It all makes sense now. So why call it the China Nexus? Well, of course, more accurately, I should have probably called it the Chinese Communist Party Nexus, but that would be rather a long title.

I do make very clear in the book that I make a distinction between China and the CCP. And, you know, I love China as a country, as a people. It's the CCP that I oppose and critique. But the choice of the word nexus is basically because the CCP is the common factor in all the issues that I explore in the book, both within China, but also internationally.

the threats externally to Taiwan, to our own freedoms, and the complicity with atrocities in Burma and North Korea. So yeah, the word nexus is the important word in terms of highlighting the fact that the regime in China is a connecting point for all these issues. Well, it is interesting, like,

I realize we like we always kind of compartmentalize how we talk about the Chinese Communist Party like not just us but like broadly speaking it's like you have the you know the people who focus on like the national security issues and you have people focusing on like Taiwan or the South China Sea human rights is its own separate compartment

But it is kind of interesting to sort of bring all this together. This is gonna make it hard to find like the punchy YouTube title that sums everything up. Well, I mean, I'm kind of amazed that you managed to fit all this in a book. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it was, yes, I mean, certainly was a lot of work. I did over 80 interviews with Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Chinese dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners, and policy experts, China watchers, and did a lot of background reading as well, and then drew quite a lot on my own experiences over the years.

Well, I know you start your book off with some of your personal experiences. Like you were, were you the first person who was banned from entering Hong Kong or one of the first?

I believe so. I'm pretty sure that I was the first Westerner and the first foreigner to be so overtly and publicly turned away. There may have been others, perhaps. I'm not sure whether there were others from the region in the past, Tibetans or Taiwanese or others. But I believe I'm certainly the first Westerner. How do you feel about that whole situation looking back now?

five years later because I had kind of forgotten exactly how that all went down. And reading your book, it seems that you had some forewarning that you might get banned, but it seemed like nobody was actually taking it seriously that the CCP would actually go that far.

That's right. So I had had a telephone call a few days before I was planning to fly into Hong Kong from a British member of parliament who is a friend of mine, is someone who's certainly supportive of what I do, but had some channels of communication with the Chinese embassy. And he had received a call

from the Chinese embassy saying they'd found out I was planning to go. They wanted him to tell me not to go and that I might be denied entry if I did go. And he certainly wasn't telling me not to go, but he was giving me this forewarning. And I took advice from, I won't name them, but from some very

prominent pro-democracy people in Hong Kong, and also some key political figures in the UK. And all of them said, you know, based on their own experience and their own expectations of Hong Kong, that they thought this was the Chinese embassy trying to sort of bluff and intimidate me into not going. But actually, you know, if I arrived in Hong Kong, it would still be

Hong Kong immigration's decision and that most likely they would let me in and it would be fine. But they also did say if in the unlikely event Beijing directly intervened in Hong Kong's immigration, the world should know because there's

Obviously, everything that's happened in Hong Kong since then puts that episode, you know, pales into insignificance by comparison. But at the time, people said this would be a really worrying sign of threats to Hong Kong's autonomy. But the only way to find out is to go and see what happens. And sure enough, it turned out Beijing were more serious than any of us realized. This was 2017, correct? That's correct.

Yeah, I remember when we went to Hong Kong in 2019 for the protests, you know, as we were going through immigration. Like, I was definitely thinking about what happened to you. And, you know, fortunately, we made it through. But I remember being just somewhat disappointed. Oh, really? No. What has been done to you?

We happen like why do they not care what we're doing? I didn't want to get denied and then have to take a 16-hour flight right back to the US Oh, yeah, I know. I mean I was I was I was happy about that It was good to be there for the protest, especially the two million person protest, but there was like a little bit like huh? Why enjoy flying under the radar? Chris apparently just wants to get arrested by Hong Kong immigration. I just like hearing my name

Actually, around the time we went, Zhou Feng Suo got denied. That's right. It was like a week after we made it in. And I was texting with him because he had just gotten denied entering Hong Kong. He managed to get them to send him on a plane to Taiwan instead of having to turn around and go right back to the U.S. But a number of people started to get denied in 2019. But I guess, Ben, you're so special that you were just like...

the special person who got denied like two years before that. Well, as you say, quite a lot of people have followed

including people like Ken Roth, at the time the head of Human Rights Watch. And of course, there was the case of the Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet. Exactly a year after, almost to the day after my being denied entry, his journalist visa in Hong Kong was revoked and he was kicked out. So there have been a few since me, but I guess I was the guinea pig that they started with.

Well, definitely now after the national security law, I think we are all effectively kicked out of Hong Kong. Yes. I imagine you won't be trying that again. I certainly won't be. Not just because I was denied entry five years ago, but also because earlier this year, I was directly threatened by the Hong Kong police and the National Security Bureau under the national security law with a potential prison sentence. So I wouldn't even transit in Hong Kong. Yeah.

I think word is right now, as of when we're recording it, there's some talk that Apple Daily found Jimmy Lai might be tried in China. Oh, a Chinese official suggested it. Yeah. It's not clear how much of a threat that is, I guess. Yeah. So definitely, I think there is a possibility that if like people like us tried to go to Hong Kong, we could find ourselves in a Chinese court. We'd probably be fine, Chris. Why? Why don't they care about us?

Okay, just because you haven't gotten threatening letters sent to your neighbors telling them to watch you like Benedict has doesn't mean you're not special. I think, no, I think that does. I think that does mean exactly that. Now in your book, it's interesting how like you travel a lot and you've been to like East Timor and the Maldives, Maldives, Maldives.

Maldives, I would say. Thank you. But wherever you go, you said that China is still an issue in those countries. Tell us about that. Well, I think we've seen over the last decade or two, China really exerts its economic influence, its economic coercion. And what it has done in particular is to essentially

To put it simply, to buy votes at the UN, because through economic investment in places like East Timor and the Maldives and plenty of other places in Asia, Africa, Latin America, we've just seen Xi Jinping in Saudi Arabia these last few days. It has...

won over to its side countries that might otherwise have spoken out. You would expect Muslim majority countries, for example, to be concerned about the genocide of the Uyghurs, but almost all of them are either silent or worse. I mean, they actually back Beijing when it comes to votes at the UN. So it's achieved that through its extensive economic investments, the Belt and Road Initiative and so on.

Since you mentioned the UN, you had interviewed a former U.S. representative to the UN who talked about China's infiltration in the UN, and I had no idea it was quite as bad as she described. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Yes. So I was really shocked because I knew about the extent of China's influence in terms of positions it holds within different UN bodies and the ability to defeat resolutions. But what I also didn't know was that it basically has penetrated China.

right into the office of the Secretary General. I had always wondered why Antonio Guterres had been so quiet, silent on the Uyghur genocide, on Hong Kong, and pretty quiet also on the issues in Burma and North Korea. And I wasn't sure if it was just, you know, he was in a sort of permanent siesta or what was going on. But I learned from the former US ambassador to

the Economic, Social and Cultural Affairs Council, Kelly Currie, who told me that essentially there is a Chinese slush fund that contributes millions of dollars

through the Secretary General's office. And the only there's no accountability for this fund. It's it's for the Secretary General to use for development projects. And the only people who have oversight of the fund are the Secretary General and some Chinese appointees. That's insane. How is that okay? Well, it's it's not okay. And it shouldn't be okay. And I

I mean, Kelly Curry is very open to talking about this. She talked to me on the record. I double checked what she had said with me before publication. And she's offered to talk to other journalists. She actually says that I'm the first person to report what she's claiming and she hasn't been able to get other journalists to report on it yet. But yeah, it's clearly not okay.

Do we know any journalists who would want to talk to her? Wait, us! Yes, absolutely. Yeah, please, please pass the contact over. Yeah, absolutely. I look forward to becoming even more shocked about the state of the UN. Yeah, it's amazing just how...

How horribly corrupt the UN is. Well, I mean, I think there had been a bunch of scandals involving China a number of years ago, too. I can't remember the particulars now, but they had definitely gotten in trouble with bribing some officials and things like that. Yeah. You know, this is kind of on the top of my mind because we talked about it on an episode recently, but...

Just sort of how, like, back in 1999, there was this agreement between the U.S. and China to, you know, if China gives access to the Chinese market to U.S. companies, the U.S. would help push China's entry into the WTO. And that kind of sparked, like, this whole new era of competition.

globalization, globalization was happening, but a new era of in globalization where it seemed like people were like, hey, we can find a way to work with dictators and authoritarian regimes and this will help make those countries, particularly China, it'll help them reform. And now it just seems like looking back on that, the complete opposite happened. It just spread corruption to every corner of the world.

Absolutely, that's exactly right. I think looking back, the West was incredibly naive. Although having said that, at the time I could understand why they thought this might actually help open China up because as I describe in the book, in the last decade of the 90s and the first decade of the 2000s, I could see some limited potential

uh, relaxation that, you know, there was some, uh, of course within restrictions, obviously the CCP has always been repressive, but, um, and corrupt. Uh, but you could see in those years, some limited space for civil society, uh, some limited, uh, uh, space for some religious practice, although of course, um, the persecution of Falun Gong also began during those years. Um, but, uh,

I met Chinese human rights lawyers during those years who had some space to actually try to defend human rights cases. But in the last decade or a bit more,

all of that has disappeared and the CCP has really intensified its repression and launched a total crackdown on all of those small openings that we did see during those years. So it does seem now that actually China's economic growth and its access to the WTO has

done the opposite of what we all hoped it would achieve. And it's actually led to a corruption of the multinational institutions and a real threat to our own freedoms rather than a liberalization of China. Yeah, I think a lot of things

And I feel like 2008 stands out in my mind when it comes to things like human rights lawyers and things like that, because it seemed that until China kind of cinched the hosting of the Olympics and managed to pull that off, they were a little bit more... I mean, I think that people were able to try to push the envelope a little bit in terms of some of the civil society issues, but...

there were obviously still red lines. Like maybe you could defend somebody against a local government who had, you know, you'd torn somebody's house down and maybe you could win a case against that. But as soon as you did something like Gao Zhishen had gone from being a lawyer that was like praised by the CCP for taking on some of these like medical malpractice cases and like going against some like corrupt local governments. And then when he started to talk about Falun Gong, like that was,

He became a Christian and started talking about following going like that was like the absolute line and then he was disappeared Mm-hmm torture disappeared But it seemed like around 2008 like and after that a lot more human rights lawyers started to be disappeared and that space started to shrink because they had already gotten what they wanted which was You know the fanfare and triumph of the Olympics. Yeah well, I think really like you see how China used the money coming in from the West as well as the technology and

Once they had that, they were able to build the system they wanted. You know, the systems they put in place to persecute Falun Gong had then just been expanded to Uyghurs. They built the Great Firewall, thanks to the West, again. Like, I don't think zero COVID could have happened if China didn't get the money and the technology from the West that it was getting in that period of time.

I think that's exactly right. And I totally agree about 2008 being the turning point. And I, again, describe this in the book, where partly because of China, the CCP,

getting what it wanted. But also, I think, at the same time, it saw, you know, within China, the Charter 08 movement, Liu Xiaobo, who was, of course, arrested that same year, 2008. And they saw in subsequent years, you know, the various, what we call the colour revolutions around the world. And I think it probably felt that they had

allowed that space to go too far and they felt threatened by it and didn't want an equivalent of a colour revolution. And so I think that combination of it having achieved what it wanted to achieve with the Olympics and being fearful of space allowing dissent that could challenge the party caused it to crack down.

So I guess to zoom out again, like you talk about all of these different issues. What do you think, like, what do you think the advantages to like looking at China sort of from this macroscopic viewpoint instead of like focusing on like these individual things? Does that help? Do you think that helps create like a better way to like approach and strategize against the Chinese Communist Party? Do you see some kind of through line in like how...

China's actions in the South China Sea ties to Uyghur persecution, ties to internet censorship.

Yes, I mean, I think it's helpful to see the common thread between all these different issues of repression, persecution, atrocity crimes, and the aggression beyond China's borders. And I think both for the Western reader who wants to understand what's going on in China today,

seeing these different pieces of the same picture together is helpful. But I also hope that it will encourage greater unity and collaboration, which we are starting to see between these different groups, between Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Falun Gong,

Chinese dissidents and Chinese Christians and Taiwanese. And I mean, I've often said that I both among them and among Western democracies as well, I would really like to see us build a united front to counter their united front. It sounds like what you're talking about is actually the CCP's worst nightmare. Yes.

Well, communism always, every communist society tries to divide people, make them afraid or mistrustful or hate other people because they understand that once, you know, people actually get together, they'll realize that the real enemy is the communist party.

I think we were talking to Anna Kwok about this. Like we had Anna Kwok from the Hong Kong Democracy Council on a couple of weeks ago on the podcast. And she was mentioning some of the challenges of building kind of a this this movement in exile for Hong Kongers. And she said one of the things is that when they were protesting in Hong Kong, there was this sense of like absolute trust.

among all the protesters and the people supporting the protesters but that since the protests have ended the CCP has done their best to kind of sow distrust and Overcoming that is quite a challenge Yeah that you know, they were largely anonymous to each other for security reasons and you know, then the party, you know finds one person and gets them to reveal information and then everyone's like Oh who ratted me out?

And it just destroyed the trust of a group that was incredibly close. Absolutely. And that's what the CCP is incredibly good at doing. And that's why we need to strengthen our efforts to try to prevent that. But I can totally see that building trust is the big challenge in this. We've talked about how there was this sort of sense that we could work with China, it'll help reform China.

globalization, that obviously, well, we're seeing that fall apart with China, especially with zero COVID and their economy no longer functioning. We're seeing that with Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. You can't really work with dictators and authoritarian regimes. So based on what you've seen in the book, how can we reshape the global policy towards China? Mm-hmm.

Well, that's absolutely what we should be doing, is completely recalibrating the approach. I've never been someone who says that we shouldn't engage with China because I'm, I

I think with a country that size and with that influence, um, you can't really not, um, communicate. And even at the height of the cold war with the Soviet union, you know, we, we had, uh, points of contact, uh, with them. For me, the question is not should we engage, but how to engage on whose terms with what objective, um, and, and in what ways. And so I think we should be, uh, certainly, um,

re-evaluating the economic relationship, if not decoupling, at least certainly significantly diversifying our economic relationships so that we're not dependent on China. We should stop having Chinese investment in critical international

industries and sectors. And we should be looking at punitive measures for their crimes, because I think to allow them to get away with the genocide of the Uyghurs, the crimes against humanity that the China Tribunal has found with forced organ harvesting, atrocities in Tibet, and the dismantling of Hong Kong's freedoms in complete breach of an international treaty, to

to allow all that to go with no consequences, with no penalties, will just mean the CCP is emboldened to continue and further increase its repression and its aggression abroad as well. So I set out in the book 10 ideas. I won't go through all 10, but they relate to the points I've just made. If there was one that you could magically be like, all right,

Like this will actually happen. What would you pick? I think it would be and this probably would require some some degree of magic or miracle, but it would be getting all of the Western and not just Western, actually, all of the free world, all of the world's major democracies together.

from the US and Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia, but also countries in the region like Japan, Korea, India, to

exert economic pressure together, so to impose targeted sanctions together. That, I think, is the approach that could have an effect. When countries act on their own, it sends an important message, but obviously the CCP is able to play countries off each other and create divisions and retaliate more easily. But if the free world acted as a bloc,

that could have some effect and hit the CCP, you know, where it hurts, which is in their pockets. But you did ask for something magical. And I think that would be maybe wishful thinking, but something to aim for. Well, a little bit of that has happened. Like didn't the UK and US sanction certain officials for the Uyghur genocide around the same time?

That's correct. They did. And it was definitely very welcome and a very good start, although they only really sanctioned a handful of officials. And very strangely, Chen Chuang-kuo, who was the party secretary at the time, who was the architect of the Uyghur genocide and had been the architect of the intensification of

repression in Tibet previously, he was not on the sanctions list, at least for the UK. And, and that's very strange. But yeah, I see what you mean about how it would really take some kind of miracle at current as it currently stands for a lot of these countries to work together, because you just had the German Chancellor go to China,

and made some remarks about the Uyghurs, but also was like, "Oh, well, we need to do business with China. We're not going to stop doing business with China," and things like that. So that's quite tough.

That's right. And we're seeing here in the UK, you know, we had our previous, our most recent prime minister, Liz Truss, who was prime minister for 44 days. I think she had given us a bit of hope that she gets this and was going to take a much tougher position. But sadly, you know, she didn't last long. And Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister,

is sending out mixed messages. I mean, he is on the one hand, he has, he gave a speech a week or so ago where he declared the so-called golden era of a few years ago, golden era of Sino-British relations to be dead and to be in the past. And he's described China as the biggest challenge for the UK.

and he said that the UK must stand up for our values, and that's all very welcome, and you wouldn't have even had that a few years ago. But at the same time, he's also talked about the importance of the business relationship, and he's used a new expression, which we're all trying to either find out what it means or perhaps try to define for him in a way that is helpful to our cause. He's used the phrase robust pragmatism,

And depending on what that means, you know, that's either rather worrying or, you know, if we define it for him and, you know, I would like to see a robust foreign policy, but I don't mind it being pragmatic as well in the sense of working. We want it to be practical. But I suspect he has something else in mind by robust pragmatism. Well, if China is able to have a secret slush, not even secret slush fund to the head of the U.N.,

I wonder what else is happening around the world. That is, you know, very pragmatic for the UN. It's very robust, too. I'm sure it's robust. Now, I know you mentioned briefly here the China tribunal. And in the book, I didn't know this, but you had a pretty important role in that.

Well, yes. So I came into the issue of organ harvesting in around 2016, when the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, which I'm the deputy chair of, was holding an inquiry on human rights in China across the board. And Ethan Gutman, who's one of the

world's experts on the issue of organ harvesting, wrote an excellent book called The Slaughter, got in touch with me. I didn't know him up to that point.

And he summarized his findings. It was around the time that he, David Kilgore and David Matus were doing their update report where they put their research together. And I listened to Ethan. We had him testify at our hearing. We then had Anastasia Lin come and speak at the hearing. And I was initially, as I think a lot of people are, kind of

to hearing this, but also a little bit sceptical because, you know, it's such a shocking atrocity. And of course, it's so hard to prove, unlike other human rights violations, the, you know, there are basically no survivors and the people committing organ harvesting are the victims

the doctors and nurses and surgeons carrying it out and the officials ordering it. And so it's, you know, the level of evidence is much harder to find. But as I listened to them, I felt they were sincere. I didn't think they were people who would make this kind of thing up. And so I became convinced and started advocating on the issue. But I felt there was a need for...

some kind of independent legal analysis. And I happen to know Sir Geoffrey Nice from work we've done together on actually on North Korea and previously on Burma.

And so I asked Sir Geoffrey Nice if he would consider looking at all the reports and testimony and evidence that did exist and providing a legal opinion. And he said, why don't we do something bigger than that? Why don't we do an independent tribunal? And so I introduced him to

the coalition working on forced organ harvesting. And that's how the China Tribunal came about. And actually, I had a small sort of catalyzing role in the Uyghur Tribunal as well, because almost as soon as the China Tribunal had concluded, there was a Uyghur delegation visiting London that I was helping to host.

And I introduced them to Sir Geoffrey Nice. And he'd also, the Uyghur situation had come up in the China tribunal because of organ harvesting taking place among the Uyghurs. So he was already interested in the Uyghur situation.

situation. And I introduced him to some Uyghurs and that led to conversations that led to the Uyghur tribunal. So other people did the work on both tribunals, but I had a tiny part to play just in kind of getting the ball rolling. Why do you think those tribunals were important? I think they were very important in both cases, essentially because the panel in both tribunals was made up of

really top world-class experts in different fields, the law, academia,

human rights, medicine and medical ethics, and even business. But none of them were people who had a previous agenda on China. So they weren't made up of, you know, people like you or me, who've been speaking about these issues for a long time, they were really coming to it

fresh and with a degree of genuine independence so they couldn't be accused of being long-time anti-CCP critics. Plus,

Plus, of course, the fact that Sir Geoffrey Nice had been the prosecutor of Slobodan Milosevic. So, you know, he knows a thing or two about atrocity crimes. And I think that gave it a real credibility. And also the way they, in both tribunals, really conducted the inquiries very rigorously. The hearings for both tribunals were all

public. All the evidence, apart from perhaps some evidence that had to be withheld for security reasons to protect the individuals involved, but almost all the evidence is on the websites of both tribunals, not just the hearings, but all the thousands of pages of written evidence. And then in their judgments in both tribunals, they really approached it in a very

I would say almost cautious way. So, for example, when I sat almost exactly a year ago today to hear the delivery of the judgment on the Uyghur tribunal, I sat in the room with a few hundred other people

as Sir Geoffrey Nice went through the conclusions. And he started on various counts of genocide by saying not proven. And he went through the list of each time it was not proven. And I was initially thinking, my goodness, they're going to be opening champagne in Beijing. And what have I done? You know, this is really counterproductive. Until he got to the final count, which was on

forced sterilization and forced abortion, where he said, you know, proven beyond reasonable doubt. And it was on that count alone that they found genocide. And I think that has real strength because they can't be accused of throwing the term genocide around loosely. They showed this rigor. But on one count alone, genocide was proven.

Yeah, I do think that for both the China Tribunal on organ harvesting and the Uyghur Tribunal, they lent another air, like a further air of legitimacy to these issues, like that of the Uyghur genocide, which a lot of

you know there was a lot of debate about like oh well does it really count as genocide yeah um etc and then the UN report coming out recently and being like well it was crimes against humanity probably um but not mentioning genocide and with organ harvesting of course with nobody really wanting to address that it was happening at all you know after the tribunal suddenly you saw um

And I remember this because we were in Hong Kong at the time, right? When it came out that like suddenly, you know, you would see news reports from mainstream media who were like, oh, there's this organ harvesting happening in China, according to this tribunal.

Which was especially interesting because with the China Tribunal, they had people give testimony, and one of the people who gave testimony was Dede Kirsten Tatlow, former New York Times reporter. Well, she submitted written testimony. Written testimony, yeah. And one of the things she said is she...

was at an event at Beijing Hospital where state officials were talking about the organ donation system, and she overheard two Chinese doctors talking about organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. Oh, I mean, they talked to her about it, where one of them asked the other, that's not okay.

No, there's another part where she like overheard something. Yeah. Well anyways the point is like she was like oh this is a big story and she asked her editors to for permission to start looking into it and she said that basically she was told that's not a story the New York Times wants to cover.

Yeah, absolutely. That's quite right. I mean, getting it out in mainstream media and to politicians that would take it seriously was a real challenge. I remember, I think, I don't remember exactly when this was, but somewhere around 2010,

2018, I think, I proposed an opinion piece to the Wall Street Journal on organ harvesting. And apparently it was the first time they had ever published an opinion piece on this issue. And previously they'd always refused pieces. So that was quite a breakthrough to get something there. But I think the China Tribunal really opened up a lot of doors that previously were closed to us.

Do you think that the increased focus on certain China human rights issues where the CCP has been responsible for things like the crackdown on Hong Kong, the genocide of the Uyghurs, as more of these things come to light, does that help other human rights issues in China that have been more neglected, like the Tibet issue or that of the persecution of Christians? I can see that it's had some effect on Taiwan, definitely, like the way that people talk about Taiwan

Hong Kong has definitely affected that. But I was wondering, since you've brought all this stuff up in your book together, whether you see some of the more prominent things helping these other issues come to light, or if it's more kind of like, well, now people have lost, like, you know, we can only have room for one or two China human rights issues at a time.

I think it could go either way. I think it is helpful in getting people to pay attention to China. And maybe some people see the genocide of the Uyghurs or the situation in Hong Kong and then go a bit deeper and find all these other issues. But there is at the same time, I think, a danger that China

Tibet especially, you know, which used to get a lot of attention, has fallen down the agenda. And that's, I think, partly because people are focusing on some of these other issues. It's also because in the case of Tibet, you know, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is not traveling internationally as much as he used to. And that's partly because of COVID, partly because of his age.

the Hollywood champions of Tibet have largely been marginalized. And because of the CCP's influence in Hollywood, it's now pretty hard to find Hollywood stars that would take up that cause. The persecution of Christians certainly isn't getting the attention that I think it needs. So it could go either way. But one of the reasons I wrote the book, and I was very...

I was particularly interested in researching the chapter on Tibet because I was concerned that it's not getting the attention it needs. So my message certainly to people is that the Uyghurs need all the attention they can get. Hong Kong needs all the attention it can get. But we should also be paying attention to all these other issues and countries.

And we should see the picture as a whole, which is that the CCP is repressive and persecutes anyone that either dissents from it or that it just regards as having an ethnic identity or religious or cultural identity that it dislikes.

Well, I wonder if we could talk about some of the protests that have happened, which happened after the book came out. But I would be curious to hear some of your thoughts about it, especially, you know, I think over the years there's always been this big question about what does your average Chinese person think and feel about the Chinese Communist Party? Because it's, you know, a totalitarian repressive state with Orwellian surveillance.

you can't do a public opinion survey and get good answers. How do... I mean, I think the answer is that 99% of people really love the ruling party. That's what those opinion polls say. That's sure true. But with these protests, we've seen how widespread...

dissent was and also in particular people were focusing on the Chinese Communist Party itself, which I think was a really big spot. In certain places. In certain places that wasn't widespread. But then you also saw abroad a lot of Chinese, a lot of the Chinese diaspora also picking up the protest slogans and in particular a lot of like young Chinese university students abroad

who I think a lot of people just kind of dismissed as being, you know, bought and paid for by the Communist Party. That, you know, they were able to study abroad because their families were rich enough to send them abroad, and they got rich through the Chinese Communist Party, essentially. So what do you think about this? Like, this seems to be kind of proof of just much larger dissent than maybe a lot of people were expecting.

I think that's absolutely right. And of course, there were some early signs of this even before the large protests that we've just seen. You'll remember that as the

CTP's 20th Party Congress began, there was that form of protest in terms of banners being put up on the bridge in Beijing. And at the same time, there was actually a protest in London in Trafalgar Square by Chinese students, which is

probably the first time or one of the very few times that I've been aware of Chinese students in London protesting. And then obviously it became much bigger, initially sparked by the impact of the incredibly draconian COVID restrictions and the fire in Urumqi. But

What was interesting about the protests, as you've said, is that they were not protests saying lift COVID restrictions. They were protests saying Xi Jinping step down, CCP step down, we want freedom and democracy.

And one Chinese dissident has described it to me as the blank paper revolution. You know, we had the colour revolutions before. This was the blank paper revolution where people held up pieces of blank paper to signify, you know, a clear message that they're not free to say what they want to say, but implicitly it's clear that they don't like...

the repression and the surveillance under Xi Jinping's regime. And I think I would say that Xi Jinping has

has really broken what people described as the sort of unspoken pact between the party and the people that's existed over the last few decades, where the sort of unspoken deal was that the party would preside over economic growth that would really improve people's living standards. And as we said earlier in the

late 90s and early 2000s, allow some space for some freedom of expression, albeit within red lines. Under Xi Jinping, we've seen all of that freedom come

not freedom, but all of that little space completely disappear. And at the same time, he seems to be hostile to private enterprise, to the entrepreneurial spirit that existed under his predecessors and the zero COVID policy and all the surveillance. And he's sort of, you know, what's he offering the people in return for freedom

for respect for the party's authority. So I think we're seeing much greater discontent. Where it will lead, time will tell. But I've certainly been very inspired by what we've seen in the last few weeks. I was kind of thinking about the beginning chapters of your book where you talk about going to Qingdao in the 1990s, the early 90s and teaching English, and how you mentioned that there seemed to be some space for people to joke about socialism. Yeah.

or joke about the party a little bit. Have you kept in touch with anybody from that time? And do you know if their thoughts on how the CCP is going, how China's going have changed?

So I kept in touch with quite a lot of my friends from Qingdao for probably at least a decade or more. Unfortunately, over the last few years, I've lost contact with pretty much all of them. I mean, that was partly because people had moved on and we just lost contact. But it was also since I started being very public in my advocacy on

on China, I deliberately stopped contacting those that I had been kept in touch with for their sakes, because obviously the more public I became, the more dangerous it would be for them. So sadly, I'm not in contact now with anyone that I knew then. Yeah, I mean, that's such a shame because I feel like that part of your book kind of hints at what China could have become.

Even though also 1992 was only three years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. But it does hint at if the CCP had taken a different route and had somehow not been the CCP and not been so repressive in so many ways that...

that spirit of the Chinese people like that curiosity about the outside world that entrepreneurial spirit it clearly could have Taken China in a different direction well, it's interesting because that was the whole idea of like getting China to WTO that like if we give them money and access that will help those reformers and

That will help. They were thinking that there were reformers within the CCP. Yeah. And that's the thing. So we actually just ended up strengthening the Chinese Communist Party to the point where any hope that we actually did the opposite thing. If the West probably had done nothing, it would have been more likely to bring reform to China. I think with hindsight, that's that's very true, although it was probably harder to see it at the time.

Yeah, I remember in your chapter on Hong Kong, you even talked about how it seemed that the way the CCP was talking about one country, two systems, like under Jiang Zemin at the time, was already different than how people in Hong Kong were thinking of one country, two systems. Not one party, two systems, but essentially, that's what it is. Yeah, really.

Yes, that's right. I mean, I describe in the book, although I conclude the chapter, the first chapter on Hong Kong, looking at my five years there from 1997 to 2002, I conclude by saying that when I left Hong Kong, I was...

cautiously optimistic that one country, two systems was working and would endure. At the same time, I do describe some early warning signs, kind of subtle early warning signs of encroachment on Hong Kong's promised freedoms. But I never anticipated that it would end up in the situation it's in today. It was very fast.

Well, it was very slow and then very fast. Yes. Yes, exactly. So I guess moving forward, what do you think is next for you now that you've got this book out there? Because you seem to get your hands in all of the China pies. Yes. That's a good analogy. Yeah.

I certainly didn't set out to do that, but it has ended up that way. In terms of what's next, it's very funny. At several of the launches for the book, people have said to me, what's your next book? And I sort of say, well, I've just got this one out. I'll maybe take a step back for a bit before I think of doing any other book. But in terms of what's next more generally, I

I mean, the work of Hong Kong Watch continues. Actually, we're just about to mark our fifth anniversary. And we, you know, I think our work is needed now more than ever, particularly with some of the upcoming trials in Hong Kong, the trial of Jimmy Lai, the trial of the 47 former legislators and activists. So a lot of work to be done there. I'll continue to be involved in all the other issues. And I'm, I think...

I don't have specific plans for this, but now that the COVID restrictions in Taiwan have lifted, I would be really keen to go back to Taiwan at some point and sort of strengthen my involvement in supporting Taiwan, because I think that's obviously the next... Now that they've dismantled Hong Kong, it's clear that their sights are set on Taiwan,

No one knows what the timeframe for that will be, but I think we all should be strengthening our solidarity with Taiwan. I guess we'll have to see who wins the Taiwanese presidential elections in 2024. It's going to be a big thing. I was wondering, actually, because you had mentioned this briefly in the book, what you think of how

Western countries and other liberal democracies around the world, how they've shifted on China. And if you could tell us a little bit about what led to that and where you see that going. Yes. I mean, I think although there's still a lot more I would like to see

Western countries do. Definitely the rhetoric and the mood has shifted very significantly. You know, back in 2016, when the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission did its first inquiry, it

We were really regarded as a sort of fringe, marginal nuisance. There were only two Conservative MPs who would put their names to our report, although others privately said they agreed with us.

And now, you know, what I say, I think, is pretty mainstream and in the British Parliament and in other countries, there are many more voices. So that's very welcome. And the shift from...

The British government, we're seeing it to some extent in Canada, in Australia, of course. And of course, in the US, it's probably the one issue that brings Democrats and Republicans together, you know, at a time when politics is so polarized and divided. It does appear to be a real bipartisan consensus there.

at least in diagnosing the problem. There may be differences over policy. So, yeah, I think the situation has really moved, but we need to...

We can't rest on our laurels. We you know, we need to be alert to any backsliding in this and we need to be pushing our governments to really follow through on the rhetoric with Concrete policies which you know, which I set out in the final chapter of the book You know, I don't think we ever told you this but pretty recently we did an episode about the UK's China policy and

YouTube age restricted that which basically means like people won't be able to really watch the show it kills the view of the episode and I was just it was so strange because it's

Oh, I know why they age restricted that one. Well, we can guess because they don't actually tell us. They don't tell us. But my guess for that one is that we showed a still image because this is actually before the conservative leadership election. So we were talking about Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak and their differing views on China and where that could go. And we showed a still image of Hong Kong police arresting protesters in 2019.

And that, I think, was the thing that got this episode age-restricted. Because otherwise, the whole thing was just about British politics. So I don't... Unless they think that that's inappropriate for people under 18. I can't imagine that that was why. But it is... We've been having a lot of trouble with YouTube age-restricting things for, like, any time we show Chinese police. Uyghurs. When we've showed...

That fairly famous footage of the blindfolded Uyghurs that was leaked a number of years ago, the blindfolded Uyghur prisoners, when we've shown any kind of harsh COVID methods, like people being arrested in the street or something like that, that can all get us age-restricted. Wow. Yeah. And people who don't sign into YouTube,

can't see the video. So it's not just people who are under 18. It is anybody who doesn't have a YouTube account can't look at it. And then YouTube will not show the video to anybody, essentially. So it is... Which makes me think of, you know, what the China Tribunal found out about the New York Times. Like there's just, we have so many problems with media and big tech just not wanting to help

Spread the word about what's happening in China, which is why it's so nice that there is a book that sort of is a good summary of all of these issues in one place. Oh, yes, if people read. If people read. I do think that it's interesting, Benedict, that you said that even in 2017, your commission, Human Rights Commission, seemed like a pretty fringe. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. It was a very different time then. It was, you know, David Cameron's government, what they called the golden era of Sino-British relations. And a lot has changed since then. And I think I didn't answer part of your earlier question, which was sort of how has this change come about? And I think there are, there have been in the last decades,

I guess, nearly three years now, a succession of different issues that coming very close together or one after the other that I think have really woken people up. I think there was a big debate over...

allowing Huawei to be part of our 5G network in the UK at the start of the end of 2019, early 2020. That was probably the first big, big debate that worked some people up. And then, you know, soon after that, we had the pandemic and questions about where did COVID come from and how was it caused? And the CCP's determination to

to cover that up and not to allow an independent investigation. And then all the crackdown and dismantling of Hong Kong's freedoms, very much in our news and very visible to people. And then the evidence of the Uyghur genocide, which obviously those of us that were following it were aware of for some years before that. But I think

over the last two years, it's become much better known. It's received much more media attention. So I think all these issues, and then of course the CCP has helped with its wolf warrior diplomacy and there was the incident at the Manchester consulate six weeks or so ago. So the behaviour of Chinese officials being much, much more aggressive

I think has also not won them any friends. So all these factors have contributed to people rethinking. I do remember the Trump administration's, the State Department on the way out, basically declaring what was happening to the Uyghurs a genocide. And I was actually surprised because even though

the State Department under Mike Pompeo had done a lot more and even the Commerce Department had been more aggressive on the CCP. I didn't think that I would see a U.S. government actually come out and call it genocide.

Yeah, I agree. It was a really significant moment, which I also describe in the book. And I interviewed some of the people, Mary Kissel, who was Mike Pompeo's senior advisor, Sam Brownback, who was the ambassador for international religious freedom, and Kelly Curry, who I mentioned earlier. And, you know, they described to me

you know, how that battle was won from within the State Department, where there was certainly some built-in resistance. But the other thing that was significant about it, of course, was that...

I think a matter of hours after Mike Pompeo had declared this designation, Antony Blinken, his successor, I think at his confirmation hearing in the Senate that same day, confirmed that he agreed with it. And so it's one of the few decisions that the previous administration and the current administration agree on. That almost seems like a miracle in itself. Miracles do happen. Yeah. Well, definitely we're seeing...

I think we're seeing more and more people getting very clear on China, except for all the people who are being bought off. Well, what was the... There was a headline from...

Was it the Wall Street Journal this week or something where they were talking about how it was something like, damn the torpedoes, Wall Street executives want to go full speed ahead on China. So people are already talking about, oh, well, I mean, they're lifting the pandemic restrictions. Now's the time to invest again. So I think it's it's I don't think the the the battle is won. No, no. The sides are just the lines are being drawn.

Absolutely. No, I think you're absolutely right. And we see that here in the UK as well, where

As I mentioned earlier, I'm concerned about where Rishi Sunak is going to go on this. And one of the issues that Hong Kong Watch has highlighted in the last year in three different reports is the number of pension funds across the world, in the UK, the US, Canada, across Europe, that are invested in Chinese companies that are directly facilitating pensions.

the atrocities against the Uyghurs and others in the surveillance state. So, yeah, there's still a lot of work to be done. Well, that means more books for you to write and more interviews for us to do. Yes. I think Benedict has the harder of the two things. He has to write an entire book. We just talk to him for an hour. This is why they let us into Hong Kong. This is why we don't matter.

Because we're not writing books. We're not writing books. I'll write a book. How hard can it be? How hard was it? Well, it was hard just in terms of the amount of time it required, definitely. I mean, it was most weekends and lots of late nights. And I wanted to do it, even though I was familiar with the subject matter, I wanted to really bring

not just my own voice, but other voices to it, which is why I did over 80 interviews. The job was made a bit easier. I mean, if I'd had to do the 80 interviews and transcribe them or go through my notes from them, most of them I recorded.

If I'd had to do that myself, that would have been very hard. I was fortunate to have three students who helped me with transcribing the interviews. So that made it a bit easier. But yeah, it was a lot of work, but I'm really glad I've done it. And it was, I think, very worthwhile. Definitely.

Well, Benedict, it's always a pleasure to have you on. I know we'll probably have you on again at some point. Yeah, and we really enjoyed the book. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's always great to have Benedict on the show. I think I'll write a book. Yeah? You're going to give up all your evenings and weekends? Well, I just won't interview anyone else or get anyone else's thoughts. I'll just... No fact-checking. No. No citing anything. Just, like, right from the id.

That's right. You know, there's a whole spiritual dimension to reality. You can't be focused on like this materialistic fact checking everything. Some things are metaphor. So this is going to be like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the China Uncensored version? I have no idea what that is, but yes. Stream of consciousness writing? Sure. All about China. You'd buy that, right? I think it'll make a splash. I think it would be good enough.

that would get us banned from going to Hong Kong? You don't have to do anything anymore to get yourself banned. That's true. I think everything we did retroactively is now enough to get us banned from Hong Kong. So if that is your life goal, I think you've already achieved it. Hey, wow. I'm suddenly fully actualized. Thanks for being here for that. Once again, I'm Chris Chappell. I'm Shelley Chang. We'll talk to you next time.