The Jerusalem Post has refused to withdraw a published interview with Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) after China on Tuesday demanded that the newspaper retract it.
The paper’s editor-in-chief, Yaakov Katz, said a Chinese embassy official threatened that China would “downgrade relations with the state of Israel” if the article was not removed.
The threat demonstrates China’s fundamental inability, or refusal, to acknowledge the existence of media freedom in democracies it has relations with.
During a June 2016 news conference in Ottawa with then-Canadian minister of foreign affairs Stephane Dion, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) berated a Canadian reporter for asking about human rights in China and its jailing of a Canadian on dubious espionage charges.
“Your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance... I don’t know where that comes from,” Wang replied through a translator. “This is totally unacceptable.”
Typically, officials deal with troublesome media queries by ignoring questions, denying accusations or obfuscation. Wang’s irate reaction revealed China’s disdain for media freedoms, its antagonism toward the West and its lack of concern over how the country is perceived outside its borders — a point that is especially evident given the involvement of its foreign minister.
The greatest hypocrisy is China telling other countries not to “interfere with its internal affairs” when they criticize its human rights abuses, or express support for Taiwan or Hong Kong.
China is continually directing international companies on how to refer to Taiwan on their Web sites, telling Western celebrities and athletes what they can say about Taiwan and Hong Kong, berating reporters in their own countries, censoring content in foreign films that have Chinese investors and attempting to censor discourse on university campuses in democratic nations.
The US and other countries have had China’s Confucius Institutes removed from their campuses after it was found that they were endangering academic freedom. In Australia, China critic Drew Pavlou has been physically attacked by pro-China thugs on campus and ridiculed in Chinese state-run media for shining a light on Beijing’s influence over his country’s universities, including his alma mater, the University of Queensland, with which he was engaged in a legal battle.
Fortunately, Katz’s response on Twitter was that the “story ain’t going anywhere.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has grown emboldened in the past few decades and is working to change the narrative in other countries. A Sept. 6, 2019, report in Canada’s National Post cited the training manual of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, in which CCP members operating in Canada were told to approach politicians of Chinese descent and “work with those individuals and groups that are at a relatively high level, operate within the mainstream of society and have prospects for advancement.”
People who notice the CCP’s incursions and speak out often find themselves and their families threatened.
After he grew vocal in his criticism of the CCP, Pavlou began receiving threats on social media such as: “I will hire a killer through deep web and then kill your family,” and “Your mother will be raped till dead.”
Hong Kong democracy advocates visiting or relocating to Taiwan have also been assaulted.
Taiwan must work with other democracies to stand up to threats and bullying from China, and governments must stand by individuals and companies who find themselves threatened.
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