OPINION:
On July 1, a new Chinese law took effect. It claims the right to punish people who have never set foot in China, including those residing on American soil.
Beijing calls it the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress. In practice, it does two things: orders the country’s minorities to become Chinese and declares that anyone, anywhere who “undermines ethnic unity” can be held to account under Chinese law.
Becoming Chinese
The law’s core message to the people living under Chinese Communist Party control — in Tibet, Xinjiang (East Turkestan), Inner Mongolia, Manchuria and other regions with cultures and identities of their own — is that there is no alternative to becoming Chinese. Refuse, and you can be cast as an enemy of “ethnic unity.”
It also reaches into religion. Faith in China now has to be remade in the party’s image. There are many videos on the internet of Christian priests made to sing party anthems.
That is no longer just a propaganda campaign; it is the direction of the Chinese legal system. Religion is permitted only once it has been made to serve Beijing.
The border means nothing
The most alarming provision of the law is Article 63, which states that organizations and individuals outside China who “undermine ethnic unity” are to be pursued for legal responsibility. Amnesty International has warned that this clause could be used as a tool for transnational repression, and the vagueness is the point.
Beijing deliberately uses elastic language so it can decide after the fact what counts as a violation.
The CCP applies its own laws loosely, so they can mean almost anything. Waved a Taiwanese flag once. Spoke to a Hong Konger about the protests. Watched “Seven Years in Tibet.” In Beijing’s reading, each of these could “undermine ethnic unity.”
Under Article 63, a U.S. citizen posting from California is, in the party’s eyes, subject to Chinese law.
Beijing has spent years expanding its reach abroad. Its approved mega-embassy in London — situated near critical financial data cables, with plans revealing a network of 208 secret basement rooms close to those cables — has alarmed Uyghur, Hong Konger and Tibetan dissidents there.
The former mayor of Arcadia, California, resigned this spring and pleaded guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, promoting its propaganda. Secret Chinese “police stations” have been reported operating on American and British soil.
Taiwan, by Beijing’s own admission
Then there is Taiwan. For years, the CCP has tried to convince the world and itself that Taiwan is part of one Chinese nation. “Compatriots on both sides of the strait are all Chinese,” President Xi Jinping said in April.
Even a former foreign ministry spokeswoman claimed that Taiwanese must be Chinese because they like Chinese food.
Still, year after year, Taiwan’s own identity surveys show that a large majority identify as Taiwanese, not Chinese.
That is why the new law, for all its talk of one Chinese nation, contains a section devoted to “nourishing the Chinese identity” of the Taiwanese. If the Taiwanese were already part of the Chinese nation, why would that identity need nourishing? Because they are not, and the communists in Beijing understand it perfectly.
Taipei understands the threat too: Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has said Taiwan will build protection mechanisms for any citizen the law targets.
Why this reaches Washington
With this legislation, Beijing is openly challenging the rule of law and basic rights protections wherever its critics live, including the U.S. The CCP has always treated overseas Chinese as its property, and it is now reaching out directly to American citizens who dare criticize a foreign dictatorship.
Washington is not blind to it. On the day the law took effect, a bipartisan group of senators — led by Jim Risch, Jeanne Shaheen, Lindsey Graham, Tim Kaine and others — warned that the law codifies Beijing’s policies to erase the religion, culture and language of minority groups both inside and outside China and asserts the right to hold people outside China legally responsible.
That warning has to become policy. The United States must do everything it can to shield its residents from Beijing’s reach and make one thing unmistakable to Mr. Xi: His laws must stop at China’s border. Washington’s job is to make sure he learns that the hard way.
• Stan Kwiatkowski is a political commentator and host of the YouTube channels “Hard News” and “Freedom Is Not Free.”
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