The Irish Times view on the China Targets series: Authoritarianism without borders
China Targets
, organised by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The investigation focused on transnational repression by China and drew on interviews with more than 100 people in 23 countries who said they had experienced such repression. Half of those interviewed said the harassment extended to family members back home.
In Ireland
the project highlighted
the case of Nuria Zyden
, an Irish citizen with three Irish born children who is from Xinjiang, China, is a Uyghur, and a co-founder of the Irish Uyghur Cultural Association. Zyden has complained to the Garda about receiving phone calls from the police in Xinjiang, being followed, and about the way contact with her mother back in China is being used to put pressure on her to cooperate with the security authorities there.
This newspaper also published new material outlining the background to the opening of a Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station
on Dublin's Capel Street
in 2022, the Irish-Chinese associations and bodies associated with the station (since closed), and, in turn, their connections with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state.
Ireland has strong trade links with China, there are substantial Chinese corporations with large operations in Ireland, and there have been tens of thousands of Chinese people living and working in Ireland for decades. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration in Washington, its tariffs policy, and the seeming hostility of the administration towards the European Union, there is much understandable consideration of increasing Europe and Ireland's trade links with China.
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The Chinese embassy, when asked to comment for the China Targets reports published by The Irish Times, said it firmly opposed any stigmatisation of legitimate services provided to Chinese citizens abroad and criticised the quotation by The Irish Times of people who, the embassy said, hold biased positions against China. China, like Ireland, engages with and supports its citizens living abroad, the embassy said.
But the issue is not China and the Chinese people. Rather it is the authoritarian regime that rules in Beijing and the way it can seek to export its authoritarian practices, try to control its diaspora, and use its economic power to influence policy and attitudes in democracies, including Ireland. China is not the only autocratic state with citizens or former citizens now living and working and raising children in this State. How to protect these people from being targeted by the governments of the countries they came from is a significant issue for the State and one to which the Government will have to come up with determined policies.
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