Beijing has blocked the website of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) after it published an article criticizing China’s sanctions against a European think tank, the South China Morning Post reported exclusively on Saturday (April 17) local time.
The latest page in the deteriorating U.S.-China relationship turns at a time when academic exchanges have shrunk and the Communist Party has increased its efforts to spread its worldview beyond its borders, scholars said.
“Ironically, this article will provoke a reaction from China because its whole purpose is … to reduce restrictions, which is what China opposes in decoupling,” said Scott Kennedy, a CSIS fellow and co-author of the review.
“The biggest change recently is that China now believes it has the right to monitor the debate about China wherever in the world it occurs, on whatever platform it appears, and by whomever it is done.”
The tit-for-tat began last month, when the European Union (which is usually more lenient with China than Washington) imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials and the Xinjiang Provincial Public Security Bureau for human rights violations. The statement was coordinated by the United States, Britain and Canada.
China has reportedly detained more than 1 million ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which Beijing describes as a vocational training center.
China then hit back, sanctioning four entities and 10 European parliamentarians, diplomats and their families. These included the German Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics), a think tank known for its balanced analysis.
CSIS was quick to defend itself, as were dozens of institutions (mainly European).
In an article, China researchers Bonnie Glaser, Jude Blanchette, Matthew Goodman and Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said, “We are on Merics’ side “. The article describes China’s move as short-sighted, self-defeating and part of a “dark trend” in academic communication. Subsequently, Beijing blocked the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Kennedy said, “The timing seems more than coincidental, considering we published this article the day before.”
Experts on China say it is difficult to discern why China would block a website and who in the Communist Party leadership would make that decision.
“It’s the oldest trick in the book, killing the chicken to show the monkey,” Jeffrey Moon, president of China Moon Strategies and former U.S. consul general in Chengdu, said, citing a Chinese proverb. “It makes other think tanks wait and see, hoping to scare them.”
Sometimes China’s standards seem ideological, sometimes in response to apparent defiance, and its logic is deliberately opaque to encourage self-censorship and keep scholars guessing, Moon and others said.
Merics does not know why China imposed the “regrettable” sanctions, said Claudia Wessling, its president. “No one came to us or talked to us before this measure was taken.”
According to a China firewall test, a monitoring site, the conservative Heritage Foundation and libertarian Cato Institute’s website was blocked, while the conservative American Enterprise Institute was not.
The centrist Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are blocked, while the progressive Center for American Progress (CAP) is not.
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