Can anyone blame expatriate victims of the Chinese Communist Party now living in places like Great Britain and the United States if they want to criticize the CCP only anonymously?
Like other thorns in the sides of other tyrants, Chinese-born foes of the Chinese government often have good reason to conceal their identities, even if these persons are now nominally beyond that government’s jurisdictional and geographical reach. Often, family members of expatriate dissidents still reside in China, and the CCP has no compunctions about harassing such family members as a way to get at someone living elsewhere. Nor is the CCP reluctant to directly harass persons who have escaped China or even to forcibly return them to China.
Such persecuting by a country government of former citizens or subjects has been given a name: transnational repression. According to Freedom House, “China’s overt transnational repression” is conducted with the help of “cultural associations, diaspora groups, and in some cases, organized crime networks, which places it in contact with a huge population of Chinese citizens, Chinese diaspora members, and minority populations from China who reside around the world.”
China also “asserts control over non-Chinese citizens overseas, including ethnic Chinese, Taiwanese, or other foreigners, who are critical of CCP influence and human rights abuses.”
So far as we know, the most prolific practitioner of transnational repression is China. But other governments do the same thing.
If these expatriate Chinese nationals wish to speak out against China without painting a target on their backs, is it okay? It is okay with me. Is it okay with you? Is it okay with Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States Nikki Haley?
It is not okay with Nikki Haley. CNN reports:
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Tuesday said she would push for social media users to identify by their legal names online, drawing pushback from her GOP rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy.
“Every person on social media should be verified by their name. It’s a national security threat. When you do that, people have to stand by what they say. It gets rid of the Russian bots, and China and Iranian bots,” Haley told Fox News Tuesday.
Oh no. Bots. Which the abetting of tyranny proposed by Haley will “get rid of.”
Bots can pretend to have real names. And the CCP can come up with fake ID cards, if presenting ID is the means by which one would be allowed to go online under the Haley administration. I’m sure that if the CCP made it a priority, it could manufacture 1.4 billion United States ID cards within about ten minutes. So exactly how would this prohibition be effectually implemented? Would all the ID cards of persons in the United States who wish to say something online have to be checked against a national registry or what? Once the new mandates are in place, would site administrators now conscientiously perform the required tyranny-abetting administrative tasks, or would they just say “Ah, screw it, online comments are getting to be too much trouble” and shut down the ability to comment?
But let’s say Haley succeeds and, in the name of “national security” (the same catchall rationalization of tyranny perennially employed by the Chinese Communist Party), her ban on anonymity and pseudonyms does end all bad bots (just the bad ones, not also the good ones). Is gaining this dubious prize worth jeopardizing the freedom, lives, and speech of all critics of tyranny and tyrants who prefer to remain anonymous?
The most generous interpretation of the candidate’s words is that Haley has not thought this through. Well, think it through, Haley.
