What does Canada, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, Nigeria, Spain, Brazil, Lesotho, Japan, Ukraine, and Argentina all have in common? Seems like a pretty random pick of countries, does it not? Across the world, from Asia to America, Africa to Europe, what ever could these nations all have in common. The answer might surprise you! And chill you to the fucking bone…
Back in 2018, under the official guise of combating international telecommunication fraud, the Communists of China started looking into reaching out of their bulging borders for footholds in select foreign countries. Not to set up spy networks, or to initiate cooperative branches with local law enforcement, but to set up police stations of their own. On foreign soil. To persecute whoever they deem to have broken Chinese domestic laws. To pressure these people, with threats and reprimands against themselves and whatever family the CPC (the Communist Party of China) could lay their claws on.
So it began. Now, today, four years later, the campaign reaches 30 countries across the world, through offices independent of the local embassies. Across North America with three offices in Toronto and one in New York. Across South America with offices in Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, and two in Brazil. Through Africa with departments in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Lesotho. Among Asian neighbours such as Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Japan, Cambodia, and Brunei (which is technically in Oceania, but whatever). And in nearly every European country, with four in Italy, three in Paris, nine of the pustules in Spain, three in the UK, and so on and forth…
These offices persecute anyone that the CPC considers deviant and Chinese, regardless of their ethnicity, history, or citizenship. To bend them to the Communist will, with distant family as collateral. The same sort of practise that let the CPC kidnap the Swedish citizen Gui Minhai.
Foreign interference and manipulation is an old game. As old as nation states themselves. The CPC didn’t invent espionage or coercion. And they’re far from the only country still at it. But most countries today have a bit more tact to it. And most countries are not as allergic to criticism to what they call “domestic affairs” as the CPC are. Most other nations do not consider anyone and everything even vaguely Chinese to exist under their sovereignty. Most other nations do not move border posts at night to expand their territory. Most other nations do not violently annex and culturally assimilate neighbouring nations like some fucking Borg. Most other nations do not condone and revel in re-education and institutionalized indoctrination. Most other nations do not simply buy their way toward world domination quite like the CPC do. So it is particularly curious… particularly hypocritical, that such a prickly empire as the CPC has set up national law enforcement offices across the international world, without the consent of harbouring countries.
Anyone still reading this and who doesn’t nurture a rivulet of cold sweat along their backs by now will no doubt cry whataboutism. About European involvement in the Hong Kong insurrection. About US defilement of international rights in their war on terror for oil. About Russia’s evil attempt to annex the Ukraine. About Indian and Israeli apartheid statehoods. About Swedish repression of our own minority ethnicity, the Sapmi. Which, granted, are all evils that burden those nations’ consciences. None of which being an argument in favour of instituting an actual, non-ironic, world police force under the sole governance of the CPC.
I’m trying to find a stinger to this story. Some fun twist to bend that cold shiver to a nervous laughter. But there isn’t one. We still live in a world of Empire. The US Empire is failing. Vultures peck away at its hegemony from without and within. Putin’s Russia had its eyes set on Europe, before he overplayed his hand in the Ukraine. Xi’s CPC still has its eyes on… everything, trying to swallow the whole lot of it up with a projection of power and assets that aren’t there any more. All of those bumbling powers bumping into one another, just like their predecessors did a hundred years ago.
Back to the issue at hand. The CPC seems to think the whole world is within their jurisdiction. And the truth is that the whole world will be unless the whole world teaches them differently. Until the whole world tells them “no”.
Unfortunately, I doubt we will…
/Sebastian Lindberg 1/11-2022
WastedWords 