Xi Jinping's visit to the United States again focuses on cross-border repression: Freedom House warns Beijing to export censorship and fear to democracies

Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit Washington on September 24.House of Liberty released policy briefing on September 17The agency noted that Beijing is making unprecedented efforts to target foreign dissidents and believes that the United States should include protection of Chinese dissidents and human rights defenders on the national security agenda when it welcomes Xi Jinping.

The border line has not ended the CCP's desire to control critics

Freedom House’s definition of cross-border repression is not limited to direct abductions or violent attacks.Long-term records show that threatening families, digital surveillance, cyberbullying, using agents to pressure, abusing international law enforcement cooperation and forcing exiles to self-censorship can be tools for authoritarian governments to extend domestic control overseas.

This agencyThis year’s Global ReportAccording to the report, Thailand’s forced repatriation of 40 Uighurs further consolidated China’s position as the primary implementer of global cross-border repression. This judgment comes from the Freedom House research framework and is not a U.S. court’s judicial ruling of all Chinese government’s overseas activities, but it reveals a continuously expanding policy problem: escaping authoritarian rule does not necessarily mean that it has escaped its control radius.

The protest scene in Washington explains exactly why the issue belongs to U.S. public security.

Within the territory of China, opposition to Xi Jinping, demanding the release of political prisoners or publicly organizing independent political activities, can lead to severe repression; in the United States, these acts are protected by the Constitution. outside the Chinese embassy in Washington, China for many years continued to show solidarity with Chinese prisoners of conscience such as Zhong Zhong, Deng Xiaobo, and also overseas Chinese democrats have openly issued signals against the one-party dictatorship.

When a foreign government or its agents try to prevent people in the United States from expressing their opinions through tracking, threatening, harassment, family pressure or other means, the issue is no longer just “human rights within China”.

The power structure under Xi’s rule is worthy of consideration in this context.Since taking power at the end of 2012, Xi has pushed for further concentration of party power, and the concept of national security has been expanding, significantly strengthening control over the expression of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, civil society, independent media and the Internet.The early Chinese case study of the Free House found that China’s cross-border repression system covers political dissidents, Uighurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong activists, Falun Gong activists, and uses multi-layer means from digital threats to direct coercion.

A state visit cannot erase human rights from the diplomatic agenda.

The White House announced in May.Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to continue high-level interactions after meeting in Beijing, and said Trump would welcome Xi Jinping in Washington in the autumn. With the September 24 visit approaching, trade, artificial intelligence, rare earth, Taiwan and strategic stability became the focus of public discussions; at the same time, organizations such as Chinese human rights defenders joined multiple human rights groups.Open Letter on September 16They demanded the release of prisoners of conscience, the cessation of cross-border repression and the promotion of legal reform.

The claims of these organizations belong to the policy initiatives of human rights groups, rather than the agreement reached by the summit.But the facts they put forward cannot be replaced by diplomatic rituals: a government’s oppression of freedom of expression in its own country, and whether it tries to extend this oppression abroad, are two spatial versions of the same set of power logic.

For democracies, the real institutional boundary is not whether to negotiate with Beijing. Foreign, trade and security negotiations can of course be held; the key is that negotiations cannot give foreign authorities the privilege of interfering with the basic freedoms of their citizens and residents. Any criminal acts directed at overseas dissidents should be based on local legal investigation; any political assertion, whether supported or opposed by the Communist Party of China, should be free to express under the protection of the law.

When Xi Jinping came to Washington, the freedom of overseas Chinese people was itself a test measure.

The most profound effect of cross-border repression is often not an attack, but generating long-term fear: people abroad are worried about retaliation from domestic relatives; have freedom of speech, but proactively silence because of the feeling of being monitored; be able to participate in demonstrations, but afraid of their photos being passed back to China.

Therefore, the meaning of Xi’s visit to Washington should not be defined only by banquets, trade agreements or photographs of leaders.For those who have left China’s political control, the more basic criteria are whether they can criticize Xi’s conduct in a democratic country without being intimidated by Beijing, oppose the one-party rule of the Communist Party of China, solidarize with political prisoners and organize public activities.

The democratic system does not need to ban Xi’s visit, nor does it need to set political views for anyone. What it needs to do is to guard its own legal boundaries – diplomatic contact belongs to the government, and freedom of speech belongs to everyone. If Beijing tries to replicate domestic political banned zones overseas, democratic countries protect their public space from such power invasions, which is itself the clearest institutional response to authoritarian expansion.