Three recent pieces of news have added to global concerns about Chinese red penetration: the “five-year Reentry Agreement” signed in 2015 between China and Switzerland, which allows Chinese agents to enter Switzerland to interrogate Chinese suspects at the expense of Swiss tax collectors. The other two are old news and new news. A database containing information on 1.95 million communist Party members has been online since September. With the help of Internet 2.0, a data security analyst, IPAC certified the material and sent the database to four media organisations around the world, including the Daily Mail. The list is divided into more than 79, 000 party branches, many of which are affiliated with companies or institutions, and the media has since uncovered a number of such members in The United States and Britain.
Taken together, the international community has become more suspicious of China. This article will only analyze why Switzerland has signed such a bizarre agreement with China.
What is so bizarre about Switzerland’s secret deal with China?
Britain’s Guardian newspaper says Switzerland and China signed a so-called “readmission” agreement in 2015. The agreement expires on December 7 and needs to be renewed. Switzerland has signed similar agreements with more than 50 countries, allowing officials from those countries to help identify and expel illegal citizens, but the agreement with China has never been detailed.
The agreement had been kept secret, but a report in Swiss newspaper NZZ in August finally brought the secret agreement to light: it provided for Chinese officials to enter Switzerland to interrogate Chinese nationals preparing to be repatriated. The Asia-focused human rights group Safeguard disclosed details of the terms of the agreement and noted in its accompanying report how it differed from similar agreements signed in Switzerland and other countries that would pose a threat to “those whom the Chinese government wants to see deported.”
Switzerland has embraced China-related dissidents, mainly Tibetans and Uighurs from Xinjiang, as well as some in Hong Kong. As a result, Peter Dahlin, the head of Guardian, said details of the secret agreement “will tarnish The reputation of Switzerland.” Mr Darling said the Chinese “experts” sent to Switzerland were not “immigration bureaucrats” but agents, and the agreement allowed them to move freely around Switzerland, interview and interrogate without supervision. Exiled dissidents from Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere could be extradited to China.
The Swiss Immigration department flatly denied that there was any secret to the agreement and said it was a standard “technical arrangement”, like the one it had reached with 60 other countries. The Swiss immigration department said in a statement that while the agreement was never publicly released like other agreements, it was always available on request, adding that the Agreement with China had been used only once in 2016 over the past five years. The two Chinese officials spent several days in Switzerland and questioned 13 Chinese nationals.
Allowing an authoritarian state to retain political crimes free access to its own country for questioning of political dissidents is the first bizarre disclosure in the West.
Why would Switzerland sign such a bizarre deal with China?
Switzerland would sign such a bizarre agreement with China because of its heavy economic dependence on China. It is generally believed that Switzerland is a small country with a special economic pillar industry, mainly because of the role of Swiss banks’ wealth safe deposit box. Therefore, this economic dependence mainly comes from the huge deposits of Chinese dignitaries in Switzerland.
It is, of course, a secret how much money the Chinese bigwigs keep in Switzerland. On August 3, 2019, Jia Kang, an official Chinese economist, caused a stir on the Internet when he announced that the Swiss bank had released a report saying that 100 Chinese people had accumulated 7.8 trillion yuan in Swiss bank deposits. Surprised you think is the contradiction between content: jia kang as economic committee of the CPPCC national committee, the Chinese people’s political consultative conference (CPPCC), and at the China international economic and exchange center, China taxation society, Chinese society for the study of urban society and China’s reform of the financial director of the standing and so on, as he said this matter, should be seen some unusual person contact information. But according to this number, more than 100 Chinese millionaires in the Swiss bank deposit 7.8 trillion RMB, split to each head is 78 billion yuan, according to the data on the rich list, add up the assets of the top 100 is less than 7.8 trillion, and most of these funds is equity, not cash, there may be a Swiss bank.
So Mr Jia’s claims may have been misinformed by a wealth report. Credit Suisse previously released a report, which put the number of billionaires in China at more than 300, with total assets of around 7 trillion yuan. Moreover, the wealth safe deposit box of the rich is not in China’s national interest, according to this analysis, Switzerland’s economic dependence on China should not be this wealth safe deposit box business.
Switzerland’s economic relationship with China is complex
In 2011, I wrote about Switzerland’s decision to remove anonymous accounts in 1987 after years of pressure from the United States and others, and how the security of Swiss wealth safes was linked to the dictator’s political security. The Dictators’ Assets Act, which took effect in January 2011, led to the seizure of all assets of autocrats in the four Middle East and North Africa countries after they lost power. Since then, Switzerland’s wealth safe deposit box business has suffered as dozens of other tax havens around the world with far less credit and experience have boomed. In April 2016, after the revelation of human rights, tax havens and money-laundering centers around the world were no longer safe and were targeted by the United States and the European Union, so the rich and powerful in developing countries looked elsewhere. America, Britain and other countries under the rule of all kinds of luxury is a developing country money laundering stash money to be bestowed favor on newly, the United States more than 10 cities such as New York, San Francisco, London, Sydney, Australia, vancouver, Canada and other places, home prices in the past two years continues to rise quickly, can’t stand people all countries housing into a speculative, countries have started to purchase.
During this period, Switzerland did not sit around and wait for death, but began to develop diversified economic relations with China. Credit Suisse and UBS Securities made great efforts to develop various investment relations in China. For example, Credit Suisse Founder’s Business in China achieved great development during this period. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Beijing, the company provides A range of capital markets services to local Chinese clients, including the sponsorship and underwriting of A-shares, foreign equity, government and corporate bonds and related financial advisory services. Credit Suisse also set up an asset management joint venture, ICBC Credit Suisse Fund Management Co LTD, which is currently one of the largest asset managers in China, with total assets under management approaching 1.3 trillion yuan as of the end of December 2019.
How deep is Credit Suisse’s economic relationship with China? Staples Street Capital III, the parent company of the Dominion voting system in the US general election, received $400 million from UBS Securities CO LTD on October 8, 2020, according to SEC records. Ubs securities is 75% owned by the Chinese government. The following is a link to the records of the transaction by Stamples Street Capital III of the American Stock Exchange.
Given Switzerland’s complex and highly intertwined economic dependence on China, it should come as no surprise that Switzerland and China have this special agreement. The task of western human rights institutions to help improve the human rights situation in China also faces an extremely complex and difficult situation.
Recent Comments