Latest news with #ChinaTargets
Irish Times
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on the China Targets series: Authoritarianism without borders
The Irish Times this week published articles researched as part of an international investigation, 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. READ MORE 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.
Irish Times
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
How China uses soft power to exert influence in Ireland
Following recent revelations of the China Targets project – an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) involving 42 media partners, including The Irish Times – of Chinese party-state interference activities in Ireland, the discreet, highly impactful influence activities of the party state with regard to Irish citizens also deserve attention. At the core of party-state influencing is the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department (UFWD). This is a key institution involved in building relationships with individuals and organisations outside the party, including among Chinese communities overseas. UFWD work seeks to foster connections, encourage support for Beijing's positions and promote unity among ethnic Chinese people globally. This is often done through cultural outreach, forums and community events. Experts describe the UFWD as playing a strategic role in shaping how overseas Chinese communities relate to both China and their host societies. Organs of the Chinese party state affiliated with United Front work have been active in Ireland, engaging with various levels of government and civil society. Part of its work involves interacting with policymakers, industry and opinion leaders abroad through various intermediaries – from official party-state affiliated organisations to more covertly connected media organisations, associations and other entities that often present themselves as independent. The goal is to counter criticism of the CCP, secure support for it and advance the country's national interests. Rather than coercion, this approach mainly relies on incentives – offering events, training and media engagement. These efforts often operate beneath the radar of national governments and can result in foreign individuals or institutions unknowingly advancing CCP interests. READ MORE The International Liaison Department (ILD), which sits directly under the highest organ of the CCP and is affiliated with United Front work, has engaged Irish leaders in Ireland and China. It focuses on party-to-party diplomacy, cultivating ties with foreign political parties and indirectly influencing adjacent sectors such as academia, civil society and policymaking circles. In Ireland, the head of the ILD has met TDs such as Fianna Fáil's Cork East TD James O'Connor , as well as an Irish think tank, and has engaged in subnational diplomacy. The concept of the United Front has its roots in the Soviet Union. In China, it became a foundational component of CCP ideology when Mao Zedong described the United Front as one of the CCP's three 'magic weapons'. Since then, it has been a steady pillar of the CCP's governance model. The importance of United Front work has been incorporated into Xi Jinping 's ruling ideology. The department's efforts are primarily steered by a top-level small group headed by Wang Huning, one of China's most senior leaders and the party's chief ideologue. The UFWD has grown significantly under Xi, who views it as a tool for China's 'great rejuvenation'. Established in 1949, it has branches in all levels of government. One of its key bureaux focuses specifically on overseas Chinese and people of Chinese descent, with the goal of cultivating loyalty to the PRC. Domestically, the UFWD targets non-party groups, such as religious groups and ethnic minorities, to bring them into the CCP's sphere of influence. It employs soft power and targeted engagement to bring individuals and organisations into ideological alignment with the party. Internationally, it builds networks that subtly guide the political and cultural discourse of Chinese diaspora communities with the aim of shaping how China is perceived abroad, inconspicuously influencing local policy environments, and ultimately ensuring that loyalty to the party trumps dissent. Another organisation that has been active in Ireland and is affiliated with United Front work is the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). It presents itself as a NGO but operates under the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs and forms part of the United Front system. It focuses on people-to-people diplomacy, often working through city-to-city exchanges, local governments and academic institutions. Its goal is to promote CCP objectives – like the One China Principle and Belt and Road Initiative – through grassroots relationships. The CPAFFC uses a bottom-up strategy to cultivate sympathetic foreign individuals and institutions. Its former president Li Xiaolin described its aim as being to 'create a favourable and friendly atmosphere' towards China through 'targeted co-operation'. In June 2024, Fianna Fáil TDs James O'Connor and Pádraig O'Sullivan and Louth-based Senator Erin McGreehan met its chairman Yang Wanming in Dublin . Later that month, the three politicians travelled to China where they met CPAFFC vice-president Yuan Mindao. In a readout from the Chinese side, O'Connor is stated to have said that the Ireland-China Parliamentary Friendship Group is committed to strengthening communication with the CPAFFC and deepening practical co-operation in high technology. O'Connor again met with the ILD, this time with its vice-president, during his visit to China. [ China's intimidation of an Irish citizen in Dublin: 'I wanted to escape. It's scary' Opens in new window ] The work of the ILD and CPAFFC blurs the lines not only between party and state diplomacy but also between state and non-state diplomacy. Their activities in Ireland reflect the CCP's broader strategy: influencing without confrontation through soft power and informal ties. Despite their strategic role, they often operate without national-level protocol or oversight. Ultimately, we should pull back the cloak of neutrality that party-state affiliated organisations often wear, to see who entities active in Ireland are connected to in China and engage with a clear understanding of what objectives they serve – so that co-operation is informed, transparent and in the public interest. Alexander Davey is an analyst with the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics), Berlin
Mint
29-04-2025
- Business
- Mint
Jack Ma implicated in removal of top official case: Was he forced by the Chinese regime?
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's co-founder, Jack Ma, was implicated in a scheme to help remove a top Chinese regime official, reported the news portal The Guardian, citing documents on Tuesday, April 29. The news portal report also highlighted how Jack Ma was tasked to turn a Chinese businessman in France after promising him his problems would go away. The businessman cited with the letter 'H' was kept undisclosed due to the danger of the repercussions from the regime, as his family is still in China. The businessman reportedly faced a series of threats from China in an attempt to return home from France. The threats included phone calls, the arrest of his sister, and issuing a red notice, i.e., an international alert through Interpol. 'They said I'm the only one who can persuade you to return,' said Jack Ma in April 2021, according to the report. According to the news portal's report, H had known Jack Ma for many years, and he recorded his call. He also recorded other calls that he received from his friends as well as Chinese security officials, all with the same message. The transcripts and documents lay out in detail the combination of threats, co-opted legal mechanisms and extrajudicial pressures that are used to control even beyond China's borders, according to the report. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' (ICIJ) findings show that the China Targets project, in which the journalists documented the methods the Chinese regime uses to track and crush its citizens abroad, according to the report. (This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.) First Published: 29 Apr 2025, 11:24 PM IST
Business of Fashion
29-04-2025
- Business
- Business of Fashion
Alibaba Co-Founder Jack Ma Implicated in Intimidation Campaign by Chinese Regime
The Chinese regime enlisted Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, in an intimidation campaign to press a businessman to help in the purge of a top official, documents seen by the Guardian suggest. The businessman, who can be named only as 'H' for fear of reprisals against his family still in China, faced a series of threats from the Chinese state, in an attempt to get him to return home from France, where he was living. They included a barrage of phone calls, the arrest of his sister, and the issuing of a red notice, an international alert, through Interpol. The climax, in April 2021, was the call from Ma. 'They said I'm the only one who can persuade you to return,' Ma said. H, who had known Ma for many years, recorded the call. He had done the same for calls he had received from other friends, as well as Chinese security officials, who had called in the weeks before, all with the same message. Transcripts of those calls presented in a French court, along with other legal records, provide a rare insight into some of the methods used by the Chinese regime to exert its influence around the world. The documents lay out in detail how a combination of threats, co-opted legal mechanisms and extrajudicial pressures are used to control even those beyond the country's borders. The findings are part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' (ICIJ) China Targets project, in which journalists documented the methods the Chinese regime uses to track and crush dissent abroad. The team includes the Guardian as well as Radio France and Le Monde, who obtained the transcripts and other legal paperwork. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the UK said: 'The so-called 'transnational repression' by China is pure fabrication.' Extradition threat H, 48, a China-born citizen of Singapore, was in Bordeaux, France, when he received the call from Ma. A year earlier, a warrant had been issued by Chinese police for H's arrest on charges of financial crime. Then, China had put out a notice for him through Interpol's international criminal alert system. The French authorities confiscated his passport while they considered whether to extradite him. The transcripts show that on the call, Ma suggested all of H's problems would go away if he would help in the prosecution of Sun Lijun, a Chinese politician who had fallen out of favour with the ruling Chinese Communist party (CCP). Sun was being prosecuted for taking bribes and manipulating the stock market. 'They are doing this all for Sun, not for you,' Ma said. Sun, a former deputy security minister, was entrusted in 2017 with overseeing security in Hong Kong during mass protests against Beijing's crackdown on democratic freedoms. He had been arrested the year before H started receiving the phone calls. Later, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) denounced Sun for 'harbouring hugely inflated political ambitions' and 'arbitrarily disagreeing with central policy guidelines'. He became one of many top officials caught up in President Xi Jinping's sweeping anti-corruption campaign, which human rights groups have said serves as a tool for Xi to purge his political rivals. 'You have no other solution' The transcript of the call suggests Ma was not happy to have been drawn into the affair. 'Why did you involve me in this?' he asked H. Like Sun, Ma had fallen out of favour with Xi's regime. After giving a speech in October 2020 in which he criticised Chinese financial regulators, he was hit with repeated sanctions including a $2.8 billion fine, and he disappeared from public view. The phone call to H was made six months later. Ma explained in the call that he had been contacted by Chinese security officials. 'They spoke to me very seriously,' Ma told H. 'They say they guarantee that if you come back now, they will give you a chance to be exempted … You have no other solution … the noose will tighten more and more.' Later, Ma called H's lawyer to reiterate the message. H did not return to China and his lawyers fought his extradition in the French courts. Clara Gérard-Rodriguez, one of H's lawyers, said: 'We knew that if H went back to China, he would himself be arrested, detained, probably tortured until he agreed to testify … and that most of his assets, the shares of his company, would most likely be also transferred to other persons.' The conviction rate for criminal cases in China is 99.98 percent, according to Safeguard Defenders, an organisation that investigates abuses by the Chinese regime. It has documented how forcible disappearances and torture are endemic within the justice system. The money laundering charges brought against H in China, a year before the call from Ma, related to his connection to a credit platform, The founder of that company was jailed for 20 years for illegal fundraising. The Chinese police believed that he had attempted to hide some of the misappropriated funds when the investigation started. H, who had invested in the company, was accused of helping to move some of the money abroad through companies he controlled. H's lawyers told the French courts there was no evidence that he had known that the source of the funds was questionable. On a call to a friend, recorded in the French court documents, H protested his innocence. 'None of this is true,' he said. The Chinese government issued a red notice for H through Interpol, the international police watchdog. This flagged him as a potential criminal to police forces around the world and meant he was unable to travel. 'It is like a pin through a butterfly,' said Ted R Bromund, an expert witness in legal cases involving Interpol procedures. 'It holds someone down, locks them in place so they can't get away.' While red notices are used against serious criminals, campaigners have long warned that they can be abused. The British lawyer Rhys Davies recently told a government inquiry into transnational repression that red notices were 'routinely used and abused by autocratic regimes to target dissidents and opponents overseas'. He called the system 'the sniper rifle of autocrats because it is long-distance, targeted and very effective'. While other countries, including Russia, Turkey and Rwanda, have also been known to abuse the system, China's tactics are different, according to experts. Instead of relying on extraditions, the Chinese authorities use Interpol to locate people and then they ramp up the pressure, threatening them and family members back home until the individual agrees to return 'voluntarily'. A spokesperson for Interpol said the system meant thousands of the world's 'most serious criminals' were arrested every year. They added: 'Interpol knows red notices are powerful tools for law enforcement cooperation and is fully aware of their potential impact on the individuals concerned, which is why we have robust – and continuously assessed and updated – processes for ensuring our systems are used appropriately.' 'Psychological warfare' As H waited in France, trapped by the legal process the red notice had begun, he received calls from friends and security officials, in what his lawyers called 'all-out psychological warfare'. Sometimes the tone was friendly, with promises that all charges would be dropped; other times it was more threatening. Transcripts of the call with the deputy investigator of the unit prosecuting Sun, Wei Fujie, suggest he promised H that if he returned there would be 'no prosecution now, plus the cancellation of the red notice'. A friend called and told H: 'Within three days your whole family will be arrested!' Days later, H's sister was arrested in China. His case is far from unusual. The ICIJ's China Targets project logged the details of 105 targets of transnational repression by China, in 23 countries. Half of them said their family members back home had been harassed through intimidation and interrogation by police or state security officials. Rehabilitation When H's case came before the Bordeaux court of appeal, in July 2021, the court denied the extradition request. Later, the red notice was removed from Interpol's systems. H's lawyers successfully argued that the extradition request had been issued for political purposes, to compel testimony against Sun. Sun was convicted of manipulating the stock market, taking bribes and other offences, without H's intervention in the prosecution. He was given a suspended death sentence. H, unable to trade or work in China, could not pay back loans or rent on a luxury property and became engulfed in debts totalling $135 million, according to Chinese media. He declined to comment when approached by the Guardian. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the UK said: 'China always respects the sovereignty of other countries and conducts law enforcement and judicial cooperation with other countries in accordance with the law.' Representatives for Ma raised questions about his identity in the calls. The Guardian spoke to H's lawyers, who said he had known the billionaire for many years prior to the call and that he had no doubt the caller was Ma. Throughout the legal process in which his lawyers challenged the red notice there were no questions raised about the identities of the callers. Ma did not respond further to the Guardian. Earlier this year, he was seen energetically applauding Xi at a meeting of business leaders in Beijing's Great Hall of the People – a sign, according to local media, of the billionaire's public rehabilitation. Gérard-Rodriguez, H's lawyer, said: 'We saw and learned publicly of Jack Ma's disappearance … this man, thought to be untouchable, extremely powerful, extremely well-connected in every country in the world, disappeared completely for several months and then reappeared, pledging his allegiance to the Chinese Communist party. 'And in the end, it was the same thing expected of H … that he would return to show his loyalty, to show which side he was on.' By Tom Burgis and Maeve McClenaghan Learn more: Alibaba's Lazada Wants Armani, D&G to Help Hit $100 Billion Goal The company is targeting top European fashion brands to boost its luxury segment and achieve $100 billion in e-commerce volume by 2030.
HKFP
29-04-2025
- Politics
- HKFP
China deploys army of fake NGOs at UN to intimidate, silence critics: media investigation
China is deploying a growing army of organisations masquerading as NGOs to monitor and intimidate rights activists at the UN, a new investigation by the ICIJ media consortium said on Monday. Dubbed 'China Targets', the fresh investigation involving 42 media organisations delves into the various tactics Beijing uses to silence critics beyond its borders. One segment of the probe published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) deals with China's increasing offensive at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. In particular, it focuses on the growing presence at the council of pro-China, government-organised non-governmental organisations, referred to as 'Gongos'. Such groups crowd into council sessions to praise China and present glowing accounts of its actions that are largely at odds with UN and expert findings of widespread rights violations and repression. A bombshell report published by former UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet in 2022 for instance cited possible 'crimes against humanity' against China's Uyghur minority in the western Xinjiang region. Other reports have highlighted the separation of Tibetan children from their families and the targeting of democracy activists in Hong Kong. But when legitimate NGOs raise such issues at the council, Gongos often strive to disrupt the session and drown out their testimonies, the ICIJ said. 'Corrosive' An ICIJ analysis of 106 NGOs from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan registered with the UN found that 59 had close links to the government in Beijing or the Chinese Communist Party. During a regular review of China's rights record before the council last year, attended by AFP, more than half of the NGOs granted a speaking slot were pro-government groups. 'It's corrosive. It's dishonest,' Michele Taylor, who served as US ambassador to the Human Rights Council from 2022 until January this year, was quoted as saying in the report. She decried a broader effort by Beijing 'to obfuscate their own human rights violations and reshape the narrative'. Increasingly, the Beijing-controlled groups are also used to monitor and intimidate those planning to testify about alleged abuses, the investigation found. The ICIJ and its partners said they spoke with 15 activists and lawyers focused on rights issues in China who 'described being surveilled or harassed by people suspected to be proxies for the Chinese government'. Such incidents occurred both inside the UN and elsewhere in Geneva. 'We're watching' The report highlighted how a group of Chinese activists and dissidents were so fearful of Beijing's swelling presence at the council that they in March last year refused to set foot inside the UN buildings. 'Instead, they gathered for a secret meeting on the top floor of a nondescript office building nearby' with UN rights chief Volker Turk, the report said. But suddenly, four people claiming to work with the Guangdong Human rights Association showed up asking about the meeting, to which they had not been invited. Staff from the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) who were facilitating the meeting denied it was taking place. The four left, but later, when two Uyghur participants left the office for a smoke, they reported that someone in a black car with tinted windows photographed them before people matching the description of the Guangdong group got into the vehicle and it pulled away. Zumretay Arkin, vice president of the World Uyghur Congress, told ICIJ she believed the Guangdong group was sending a message from Beijing: 'We're watching you… You can't escape us.' 'Deadly reprisal' The activists had reason to be fearful. Over a decade ago, activist Cao Shunli was detained as she attempted to travel to Geneva ahead of a China rights record review at the UN. After being held for several months without charge, she fell gravely ill and died on March 14, 2014. ICIJ said her death 'stood out as a powerful warning shot', determining that the 'deadly reprisal' had discouraged other activists from engaging with the UN. A decade later, Chinese rights defenders are participating in UN activities at record low numbers, the investigation found. At the same time, the number of Chinese NGOs registered with the UN has nearly doubled since 2018, it said.
