After the 2020 election, some Chinese scholars commented that “the U.S. had failed in its years of ‘color revolution’ in China, but finally used the full set of methods on itself. Knowing this history, I believe this commentary is consistent with history and reality. But for most Chinese, the idea of a U.S. “color revolution” in China is just official propaganda; the American public knows very little about it, but many of those who personally promoted the “color revolution” in China have written about this complicated past. So, what is the truth?
The “reality” of the U.S. “color revolution” in China
Anyone who studies the evolution of U.S. policy toward China cannot deny that two of the most significant aspects of the Clinton administration’s policy toward China are its support for China’s accession to the WTO and its human rights diplomacy with China, both of which were written in the United States-China Relations Act of 2000 signed by President Clinton. The latter was an addendum to the former, and its centerpiece was a legal assistance program for China scheduled to begin in 2003 as a precondition for supporting China’s accession to the WTO, which China did accept in order to do so. Professor Paul Gewirtz of Yale University, the creator of the Legal Aid to China program, went to the U.S. Department of State from 1997 to 1998 to head the program for this purpose, and has a reminiscence article devoted to it. Ms. Amy Gadsden, former Special Advisor to the Bureau of Democratic Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State, was the principal implementer of this program. She has written an article, From “Confrontation” to “Cooperation” and Back Again, outlining the history of the legal reform exchange program between the U.S. and Chinese governments. She has written “From “Confrontation” to “Cooperation” and Back Again,” which outlines the history of the legal reform exchange program between the U.S. and Chinese governments and the changes that occurred between 1997 and 2008.
This article provides ample evidence that the U.S., an “outside force,” has played a significant role as a leader in the 17-year history of the CCP’s “rule of law. judges, lawyers, and training them in the judicial system and judicial practice” and foreshadowed a major meeting between the two sides in November 1998 to discuss the legal protection of human rights, including international human rights conventions, criminal procedural rights, legal protection of religious freedom, and other topics.
Based on her own experience, Ms. Amy Gadsden notes in particular that prior to this decision, U.S.-China legal exchange programs had been underway since the 1980s, and that many foreign NGOs and foundations had been fully involved in supporting projects in China in the areas of legislative development, judicial training, legal research, and education, of which the author herself was an important participant. During this period, before China’s “rise to power,” Chinese officials relied on foreign governments and organizations to fund “study tours” to learn about the law and legal system overseas.
Who has been awarded legal assistance to China?
From FY 2002 to FY 2010, U.S. funding for legal aid programs in China totaled $153.5 billion. $23 million was provided in FY 2006, and other annual aid figures ranged from approximately $15 to $17 million. Aid funds are earmarked for the promotion of democracy, governance, human rights, independent media, and the rule of law. While U.S. NGOs and educational institutions working with Chinese government agencies are the primary recipients of funds, NED provides funds to small NGOs working on human rights or other reform projects in China and abroad.
At the beginning of the exchange, the Chinese government welcomed and valued such legal cooperation programs and undertook large-scale legal reforms within the system. The State Council, the National People’s Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Ministries of Civil Affairs and Justice, all of which are partners in the U.S. legal aid program for China, have undertaken extensive reviews of laws and policies under their respective jurisdictions. Not to be left behind in the United States, in 1998 the Council of Europe and the Chinese government also signed on to establish and launch a training center for villagers to elect local officials.
In the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, the Chinese government began to put the brakes on these cooperative programs. The author’s analysis is factual: there are at least two reasons for the regression: the “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, a sense of crisis that prompted China to conduct an internal investigation of its rule of law and democracy programs, and as a result, government agencies and related organizations with which the U.S. side cooperates came under increasing pressure to suspend their cooperation with foreign NGOs. projects. Second, as China became richer, officials no longer needed foreign government and NGO funding for “study tours.
Since then, “rule by law” has taken a back seat in China’s official propaganda, Zhou Yongkang has taken full charge of the Politics and Law Commission, and China has entered an era of “stability maintenance.
If one looks only at official U.S. documents and the recollections of U.S. participants, one would think that the legal aid program for China worked well in the first half of the program and was only aborted in the second half because China changed its mind. But that is not the case. This can be gauged from the flow of U.S. aid to China: the vast majority of U.S. funds go to the three types of government agencies that China officially allows to receive funds from foreign powers: government-affiliated NGOs, universities, and research institutions.
Anthony J. Spires, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has done special research on this topic. According to the statistical analysis of the U.S. Foundation Center database (www.foundationcenter.org), between 2002 and 2009, U.S. foundations gave about 430 million USD to China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), of which 44.01%, 25.38% and 16.62% went to academic institutions, government departments and official NGOs respectively. These three components of aid accounted for 86.01% of the total, while grassroots NGOs received only 5.61% of the donations.
But even this punctuated funding is not reassuring to China. Following Xi Jinping’s administration a new draft Law on the Management of Foreign NGOs, the first specific law on the mainland for foreign NGOs, came into effect on January 1, 2017. The law requires foreign NGOs, including charitable and environmental groups, to register with the public security authorities in China, and the management of the sources and use of funds by foreign NGOs must be reported. The police have the authority to investigate these organizations, and can also place NGOs that subvert state power or split the country on an unwelcome list and bar them from establishing further representation in China. Since then, the U.S. “color revolution” in China has officially ended.
U.S. NGOs in China are a tool of the “color revolution” is pure exaggeration
According to official Chinese data, in 2015, there were more than 7,000 foreign NGOs in China, of which more than 1,000 were registered, while the remaining 6,000 were short-term projects or temporary ones. China’s crackdown on these NGOs is described as a collective effort to help promote human rights, health, women’s and children’s rights in China, but in reality, the number of NGOs that are actually involved in China’s officially sensitive human rights and ethnic minority issues and in political activities is small (grassroots NGOs receive only 5.61 percent of U.S. funding), and their actions are controlled and often suppressed. NGOs under the control of Chinese government agencies certainly do not do anything to annoy those in power. What are the main foreign NGOs that bring their own money to China? The June 18, 2015 article in the New York Times, “Foreign NGOs in China Fear Foul Future,” devotes a great deal of space to such NGOs’ self-reporting in interviews.
“A U.S. employee of a prominent foundation said. The foundation focuses on health and education, and …… ironically, some of the institutions threatened by this law have supported a number of policies over the past 30 years that have contributed to China’s recovery, including exchange programs and expanded trade.” Another director of a U.S. university program in Beijing said his own such institutions “provide valuable exposure to China,” noting that the new draft law does not distinguish between advocacy groups, such as labor rights advocates, and business associations and academic institutions with their heads in the sand, suggesting that the work of advocacy groups is the The implication is that the work of rights groups is the political threat that the Chinese government should be targeting, and that their work is not only harmless but beneficial to the Chinese government.
There is also the Ping Pong Project, a non-profit organization that brings contemporary Chinese dance groups to Europe and American theater to Chinese theaters. The National Geographic Society, the Motion Picture Association of America and others are not involved in politics. Even organizations like the Humane Society International (HSI), which appears to be closely involved with human rights, are limited in their activities in China to saving dogs at the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in Guangxi.
–These organizations, whether they exist or not, have nothing to do with the “color revolution. The Chinese Communist Party has cracked down on them because it is overly vigilant about the Color Revolution; the U.S. side considers them important, presumably because it believes that the Color Revolution is all-encompassing.
Muddy Waters Exposes the Role of U.S. Commercial NGOs in China
The New York Times article also mentions that before China wanted to impose controls on foreign NGOs, nearly 40 U.S. trade and professional associations wrote a joint letter to the Chinese legislature, including several major associations serving the U.S. business community, with the exception of the Motion Picture Association of America. Examples include the American Petroleum Institute and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The American Bar Association (ABA), which represents to Chinese government agencies that their work is mutually beneficial to the Chinese government.
After 2003, more than 300 Chinese concept stocks went public in the U.S. through reverse takeovers, all thanks to the top five firms such as Deloitte, Ernst & Yong, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and BDO. Deloitte, Ernst & Yong, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and BDO, the Chinese members of the Big Five, violated securities laws by helping them to falsify their financial and listing information. The “Big Five” entered China back in the 1990s, but their U.S. signage (reputation) did not bring them luck when they first entered. It was not until 2001 that the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued the “Supplemental Auditing Circular No. 16” after the local accounting firms were involved in accounting scandals such as “Yin Guang Xia”, “Zheng Bai Wen” and “Lan Tian”. The “Supplementary Audit No. 16” was issued by the CSRC, requiring listed companies to have their financial reports “supplemented by international accounting firms” in addition to the statutory audit by domestic accounting firms for IPOs (initial public offerings) and refinancing.
The Chinese government was suffering from serious accounting fraud in the country, and in order to change the situation, it gave foreign accounting firms this huge piece of pie in the form of a regulation. In a few years, while more than 5,600 local Chinese accounting firms had to fight for tens or even thousands of dollars for each audit, the “Big Four” had a monopoly on high-end accounting audits in China and on all audits of Chinese companies listed overseas. The “Big Four” audit more than 40% of the assets of more than 1,400 A-share listed companies.
But instead of helping Chinese companies strengthen their integrity, they have helped Chinese companies fake their U.S. listings. Muddy waters, a firm founded in 2010, specializes in exposing the fraudulent practices of these U.S. accounting firms and law firms that help companies listed in the United States. Over the years, more than 130 “China concept stocks” have been placed on the SEC’s no-buy list. When the SEC asked these accounting firms to provide information on Chinese companies, the firms refused on the grounds that Chinese law did not allow them to do so. This is a very long story, and I have written more than a dozen articles about it.
These firms have done a disservice to their home countries by making investors in their home countries lose money, and even to the Chinese government who handed them a pie by putting on the aura of an NGO non-profit organization, but in reality they just want to make money in the Chinese market, even if it means selling out their professional integrity.
Unlike the strategic and tactical defeat, the U.S. is still defeated in this real color revolution that it has promoted. The U.S. was instrumental in China’s accession to the WTO, which did allow China’s economy to rise, but its add-on, the color revolution that promoted China’s democratization and the rule of law, became a wisp of historical smoke. Now it is clear that this color revolution is not real – the money, the NGO category, the reins that the Chinese government put on it from the beginning – and it is clear that it cannot succeed at all.
Recent Comments