Guo Feixiong, a prominent Chinese dissident who wished to travel to the United States to care for his wife after cancer surgery, was stopped at Shanghai Pudong Airport on January 28 by Chinese authorities, who refused to allow him to leave the country on the pretext that he was “endangering national security. Guo Feixiong is a free Chinese citizen, and the CCP has no reason to prevent him from leaving the country to visit his Family, whether from a legal perspective, a human rights perspective, or a humanitarian perspective. This inhumane behavior by the CCP proves once again that the regime has become increasingly fascist. Guo Feixiong has announced that he has begun an indefinite hunger strike. We call on the outside world to follow this development and on Western countries to assist Guo Feixiong’s wish to visit his family in the United States through diplomatic means.
At the same Time, we need to see that behind this drama of blocking Guo Feixiong’s exit from the country, there is something behind Beijing‘s agenda. Why do you say so? We know that Guo Feixiong had actually published an open letter to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang half a month ago, making a request to be allowed to visit his family abroad. According to people who know the situation, the Guangdong Public Security Bureau did not express strong opposition to Guo Feixiong’s departure from China at first, and even gave him a passport, which seemed to be ready to be released. However, the day before Guo Feixiong was ready to depart, the Guangdong Public Security Bureau’s attitude suddenly made a 180-degree turn, requiring Guo Feixiong to write a letter of guarantee before he could leave the country. After Guo Feixiong refused, they said it was a directive from the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. Obviously, this blocking of Guo Feixiong from leaving the country was not done by the local government, and the change in policy came entirely from the relevant authorities in Beijing.
Another strange thing is that if the authorities did not intend to let Guo Feixiong leave the country, they could have stopped him at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport. Instead, the authorities let Guo fly from Guangzhou to Shanghai, and only formally stopped him when he was about to connect to a flight to the United States. Such an approach is a bit unthinkable and seems a bit unwilling to make a big deal out of it. If this is the case, we have to ask: Who are the Chinese Communist authorities trying to show Guo Feixiong’s desire to leave the country by staging this drama?
I believe that the Beijing authorities’ direct involvement in Guo Feixiong’s case, their order to prevent him from leaving the country, and their high-profile efforts to do so are all for the new U.S. government to see. The actual purpose is to test and challenge the bottom line of the Biden administration’s policy toward China. As we all know, the Democratic administration has always attached importance to human rights issues in its past policies towards China, and Beijing certainly has reasons to worry that the Biden cabinet will strike at the Chinese Communist regime on human rights issues in the future. Therefore, Beijing is making some moves first to show that China will not give in to the U.S. on human rights issues and to warn the U.S. not to try to challenge China’s so-called “internal affairs”; and to see how the Biden Administration will handle the human rights controversy arising from the Guo Feixiong case, so as to prepare for future Sino-U.S. battles on human rights issues.
In recent times, the Chinese government has been testing the new U.S. administration’s bottom line on issues such as the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and Hong Kong, including passing a new Maritime Police Act that allows the use of force by the maritime police, including sending more military aircraft to harass Taiwan, including hinting that it wants to negotiate the election of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive and completely cancel all elections in Hong Kong, etc. Now it is using the Guo Feixiong case to test the U.S. in the area of human rights. This series of probes, which are being carried out at a time when the transition between the old and new U.S. administrations is complicated, have actually constituted a provocation to the United States. I believe that the U.S. government should take such provocations seriously and take a tough stance at the beginning of the “reset” of U.S.-China relations.
Now, before Guo Feixiong was taken away by the police, his last appeal was that the U.S. government should help him come to the United States. In the face of such an appeal, the U.S. government should respond appropriately and demonstrate its firm stance on universal values and the global human rights situation. Only by doing so can we avoid future advances by the Chinese Communist authorities.
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