On the eve of Xi Jinping’s arrival in the United States, overseas human rights organizations pushed China’s issue of freedom of speech to the doorstep of the Washington Summit.

In addition to trade, artificial intelligence and rare earth, China's narrowed public expression space has also been brought back to the agenda of the summit by overseas human rights organizations.The Freedom House issued a public message on September 17, calling on the U.S. government not to exclude freedom of speech and political rights from bilateral issues when in contact with Xi.

The background of such appeals is not abstract.China's mainland news media, internet platforms, publications and public gatherings are all under a strict Party State regulatory system; those who criticize the government, organize independent political activities or promote civil society action may face account ban, administrative punishment and even criminal prosecution.The Chinese government has long advocated its Internet and social governance measures aimed at safeguarding national security, public order and managing cyberspace in accordance with law.

After Xi Jinping became Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2012, the Party's political leadership further covered the media, universities, Internet enterprises and social organizations. Network real name, platform content review, national security legal system and the compression of independent organizational space, together changed the boundaries of China's public discussion. For the outside world, judging this system can not only look at the legal text, but also look at the expression costs of dissidents, lawyers, journalists and ordinary netizens in reality.

Freedom House is a Washington-based non-governmental organization that has long studied global political rights and civil liberties. Its assessment of China's political system has been opposed by Beijing, and the Chinese government has repeatedly criticized U.S. human rights organizations and government agencies for interfering in China's internal affairs on human rights issues. Such differences in themselves show that human rights are not a dispute that can be technically eliminated in the U.S.-China relationship, but a direct clash between the two political systems' understanding of the boundaries of power and individual freedom.

When the summit is occupied by tariff numbers, corporate orders and strategic transactions, prisoners and oppressed groups can easily disappear from the diplomatic picture. The meaning of overseas human rights groups at this time is to put these specific people back on the political agenda. The judgment of the state of freedom of speech in China must eventually fall to the observable system facts: whether citizens can publicly criticize the highest leader, whether the media can independently investigate power, whether organizations can independently operate from the ruling party, and whether the courts can independently remedy the right to expression.