I believe the international community has not done enough yet through peaceful means to protect the citizens of China. Military action is not yet an option for peace. This is absolutely and unequivocally an International Crisis. Many governments have already recognized China’s abuse and basically zero of them will even consider taking significant action. As stated in the three pillars of the Responsibility to Protect, it is a state’s obligation to protect its people from “crimes against humanity.” All democracies (specifically the US) vehemently recognize the freedom of the press as an absolute, essential, and human right. This would undeniably be a crisis in our democracy, and so it should be considered and treated as a crisis no matter where it is in the world. Crimes against humanity are currently occurring. Chinese authorities and their agents are abducting critics and broadcasting their false “confessions” on national tv. According to Hong Kong’s National Security Laws, “ National security was used as a pretext to restrict freedom of expression,” China’s government imposes extreme censorship and surveillance upon their citizens, and human rights defenders continue to be wrongfully imprisoned for long periods of time for simply speaking out on human rights abuses. The perpetrator is the Chinese government. The victim is the entirety of China’s people- they are all suffering.
China actually has a history of censorship, starting as far back as the cultural revolution, where old customs, culture, habits, and ideas were unofficially banned from newspapers. If journalists wrote about these topics, they were subject to arrest and violence. But the censorship did not stop there, books containing “offensive literature” would be burned and television was regulated by the government. The reason the Chinese government censored China’s media so intensely is that they wanted to encourage the efforts of chairman Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. To do this, it was critical for them to suppress the voices of those who encouraged old customs, culture, habits, and ideas. Individual countries have various economic sanctions on China but the Global Coalition has urged the UN to create an individual international mechanism to “end China’s impunity at the UN Human Rights Council.”These diplomatic means have been effective enough and have failed to take meaningful action. While I do think this is a humanitarian crisis that deserves and needs more international attention, intervening militarily would do far more harm than good. I believe that no military action is needed; however, I also believe that the international community is not doing enough to help the people of China. In order to solve the problem, economic sanctions may be most effective and helpful. We need to show China that we’re serious about their human rights abuses. China has reneged on its guarantees of Hong Kong’s freedom, threatened Taiwan, supported North Korea’s nuclear program, laid debt traps for Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and sought to restrict freedom of the seas in the South China Sea. And that’s just a partial list of Beijing’s transgressions. Instead of working to increase world peace, stability, and prosperity, China is actively undermining it.
