CCP’s General Secretary Xi seeks PRC advantage through unilateral activities despite claims against the West
FORUM Staff
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has stepped up its unilateral actions to pressure and control other nations and regions of the world since the COVID-19 pandemic started.
In the past year, the PRC seized a border region in India, pushed its illegal claims in the South China Sea, increased military threats against Taiwan, cracked down on Hong Kong and imposed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule there with a draconian national law, among other one-sided acts of aggression.
In addition to these coercive activities, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has accused the United States of pushing rules on other nations.
“One or a few countries shouldn’t impose their rules on others, and the world shouldn’t be led on by the unilateralism of a few countries,” Xi said in a prerecorded keynote speech, pictured on a video screen at a media center, released April 20, 2021, via a video link from Boao in China’s Hainan province, Bloomberg reported. Xi was referring to the U.S., analysts said.
He levied his thinly veiled criticism during the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual conference organized by the World Economic Forum.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been working multilaterally with allies and partners to promote a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. For example, the U.S. and allies and partners, including Australia, France, Great Britain and Japan, have conducted ongoing freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea to ensure security in the Indo-Pacific region.
Xi also claimed that “what we need in today’s world is justice, not hegemony.”
His comments received a raft of criticism on Twitter, according to news reports.
Salih Hudayar, founder of the Washington, D.C.-based East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, tweeted that the world needs justice by prosecuting Xi and other Chinese officials at the International Criminal Court “for directing the genocide of #Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in Occupied #EastTurkistan.”
Many Western nations, including the U.S, have accused the CCP of committing genocide against ethnic Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region through forced sterilization and abortion, torture, forced labor, removal of children from families and internment of more than 1 million Uyghurs in camps that the CCP claims are “vocational training centers.” Western nations have also denounced the CCP for its human rights violations in Hong Kong, Tibet and elsewhere and for its coercion of Taiwan.
The CCP maintains those issues are internal affairs.
“Bossing others around or meddling in others’ internal affairs will not get one any support,” Xi said in his speech.
Sreeram Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs at India’s O.P. Jindal Global University, retorted in a tweet: “Countries in Asia need justice for China’s territorial aggression. People of #Xinjiang, #Tibet and #HongKong need justice. #XiJinping should stop lecturing others and reflect on China’s inhumane policies.”
The world also needs justice for the PRC causing the COVID-19 pandemic, Chaulia tweeted, according to news reports.
The PRC has also continued to push its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) scheme across foreign nations during the pandemic despite additional economic stress.
Former PRC central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan acknowledged the pandemic has worsened debt problems of developing countries involved in OBOR, Bloomberg reported.
Nations worldwide have admonished the PRC for its predatory lending and investment practices that push countries into nonviable financial schemes that in time only advance the PRC’s political leverage over debtor nations.
IMAGE CREDIT: REUTERS
