On March 22, EU foreign ministers adopted sanctions against the Chinese Communist Party, Myanmar and Russia for human rights violations under the Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. This is the first Time since the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square incident that the EU has initiated sanctions against the CCP, with four Chinese officials and one entity being subject to travel bans and asset freezes respectively.
Notably, the U.S., U.K. and Canada have also announced sanctions against the CCP in parallel.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry also responded in the first instance, claiming that the move had seriously damaged China-EU relations and that it had implemented countermeasures, doubling the number of officials and institutions sanctioned, and that at least eight countries, including Germany, France, and Italy, had summoned the Chinese ambassador there to express their opposition to the retaliatory measures.
According to Tang Jingyuan, a commentator for the Epoch Times’ Visionary Express, the “clusterfuck” was clearly coordinated by multiple parties, and even Hua Chunying has publicly acknowledged this. In other words, the sanctions this time and the U.S. sanctions before the U.S.-China talks in Alaska are clearly arranged combinations, a slap on the wrist before the talks, and then a collective kick after the talks.
Tang Jingyuan said that it is Xi’s stated strategy to implement full-scale war-wolf diplomacy and publicly declare that the CCP no longer abides by the existing international rules and values, while starting to strongly promote its own values and rules of conduct.
This mass attack on the CCP looks like a lively and loud scene, but the blow to the CCP is basically only cosmetic, and does not touch the substantive interests of economic and trade.
According to Tang, what the Chinese Communist Party really cares about is the “China-EU Investment Agreement”, a big cake. The agreement was signed in two contexts. One is that the Trump administration had been opposed to it, and the other is that the Chinese Communist Party made concessions in many areas of investment access in order to divide Europe and the United States, and this bait was swallowed by the EU.
In other words, the EU signed the agreement under the pressure of the Trump Administration, which has been highly publicized by the Chinese Communist Party as a major breakthrough in the diplomatic field. The Chinese Communist Party has been deliberately treating China-Europe relations as the third pole in addition to China-US relations and China-Russia relations, with the aim of breaking them down.
Tang Jingyuan said that Xi Jinping has made a declaration to the world, borrowing from Yang Jiechi, that he wants to promote his own values and his own rules of international conduct. What are these values? It is the “managing differences and practical cooperation” that he has been talking about. To put it bluntly, he is putting aside human rights and morality and ignoring moral codes, as long as everyone gets rich.
Xi Jinping is forcing Western democracies to choose between huge profits and the values of freedom, human rights and democracy in a forceful, bullying manner. If you want to get rich, you need to shut your mouths and you must turn a blind eye to whatever we do; if you want to be a teacher and lecture us about persecuting human rights, then you need to be prepared to sacrifice a lot of silver and take the risk of being blown out of power by your voters.
Tang emphasizes that this is the philosophy of the Chinese Communist Party, nakedly exchanging interests for moral righteousness, and in a condescending and coercive way that makes you feel that there is no other way out.
In the past two days, China has suddenly launched a boycott of Swedish clothing brand H&M, with a large number of 50-cent fans cursing under H&M’s Chinese social media accounts. Some e-commerce platforms began to take down all related products, and the Communist Youth League also came out to parrot a statement, saying “Xinjiang cotton does not eat this”.
The reason for the CCP’s boycott of H&M was the company’s statement refusing to use Xinjiang’s “blood cotton”. But those who are more attentive may find that H&M’s statement was not issued now, but last October.
This is strange, why did not boycott at that time last year, now suddenly to boycott? Tang Jingyuan said, this is the official deliberately selected such a small target to combat demonstration, to make an example of the monkey, the purpose is to warn the EU, want money or human rights, you weigh to do, this H & M company is the model.
H&M has a total of 445 stores in 146 cities in China by the end of fiscal year 2020, with total sales of $1.13 billion last year, ranking as one of the top 4 markets for the apparel brand worldwide.
Xi understands that this isolation and dilemma is, in his eyes, just a small price to pay before he can dominate the world, and he believes that sooner or later his interests can make many countries that defend human rights values bow their heads before him, and this is how he will establish his own international rules to replace the United States, Tang noted.
As to whether the world will really give him what he wants, and whether European and American countries, which are already used to bowing down in front of the Chinese Communist Party’s money offensive, can really hold up their heads and behave, we can only say that it remains to be seen.
The old statement of “refusing to use Xinjiang cotton” by the famous Swedish brand H&M was rehashed and boycotted by China, and the products were quickly taken off the shelves. Photo: Taken from H&M IG video
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