Why did the Chinese government feel impelled to go to Laos to kidnap Yang Zewei and then imprison him?
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) describes Zewei, pen name Qiao Xinxin, as a “journalist, political commentator, and press freedom defender.” RSF reports that in late May 2023, Zewei “was kidnapped from his residence in Vientiane, capital of Laos.”
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for the release of Chinese journalist Yang Zewei, who was kidnapped in Laos three months ago, and is detained in China under the charge of “subversion”, which bears a life sentence. . . .
Prior to his kidnapping, Yang claimed to be under Chinese police surveillance while his family back home in China received threats.
Over the past years, Yang Zewei was working as a journalist in the city of Guangzhou, in southern China, and also served as a contributor to Radio Free Asia, a media funded by the US Congress. In March 2023, he also launched the online campaign Ban Great Firewall (also known as BanGFW) advocating for the end of internet censorship in China.
There are precedents. In Thailand in 2015, the Chinese government grabbed the Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, cofounder of a publishing house that specialized in investigations of leading Chinazis. China has also acted by proxy in Laos. In July 2023, the Laos government, apparently acting on orders of the Chinese government, arrested the Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei.
Nor does China confine such activities to its backyard. The Chinese government has been willing to go anywhere—Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Spain, Serbia—to harass and forcibly repatriate many thousands of Chinese nationals living overseas. One of its methods is to threaten family members still in China. The escapees need not be outspoken public figures to be pursued. It’s enough that they’ve implicitly rebuked the Chinese state by departing for freer pastures.
