The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engages in the world’s most comprehensive campaign of transnational repression, targeting exile communities, members of the diaspora, and supporters in dozens of countries around the world with digital surveillance, attempted censorship, and even physical attacks. This campaign has also reached university campuses in the United States, generating discussion among faculty, students, administrators, and policymakers.
As a new academic year begins, experts on transnational repression, Beijing’s influence on university campuses, and the persecution of Falun Gong shed light on how CCP surveillance, slander, and censorship impinge upon free expression and belief at American universities, and what university administrators and government officials can do to respond.
Hosted by the Falun Dafa Information Center and moderated by leading Confucius Institute expert, Ian Oxnevad of the National Association of Scholars, this webinar offers new insight into the key challenges facing universities and recommendations for action to best protect freedom of speech and belief for all students, faculty, and members of the campus community.
Yeah, you, you also mentioned, uh, I have a couple more questions for Grady.
And I'll open it back up.
You mentioned that these different governments are collaborating
increasingly with each other.
Can you, can you kind of describe how that happens?
I mean, is this an issue of reach?
Is this an issue of convenience or is it part of like part of increased
geopolitical cooperation that's more formal, like where you see
Russia and China getting together?
Is it, is it more institutionalized like that?
Or is this thing just kind of always been happening?
It just kind of increases.
I mean, you do have long established security ties, for example, and a
region that I focused on in Eurasia between Russia and, uh, other
central Asian governments, which used to be a part of the Soviet union.
Uh, and following the collapse of the Soviet union, a lot of these security
ties, uh, we're still there.
And the, some of the officials were still there.
So they had that, they had that joint experience and history together to crack
down on activism within the, uh, the CSTO collective security treaty
organization within that territory.
Also in the middle East, um, we're seeing increasing cooperation
among members of the Arab league.
Uh, there's this, uh, there's this body called the Arab interior ministers
council, uh, in which these different countries in the, in the region, uh,
funnel noted, they're not red notices like Interpol, but they basically, uh,
have like wanted, they, they issue, uh, wanted notices for individuals who are
in other countries in the region.
And over the last year, we've seen several cases of people traveling to,
let's say Jordan or another country being stopped at airports and being sent back
to their origin country, uh, when it comes to China, I think, uh, it can, it
can exercise its influence geopolitical influence and, uh, one boat, one belt,
one road, uh, interest and different host country and different host countries
to, uh, gain leverage when it comes to these sorts of, uh, sorts of
exchanges and security interests.
I think most of the, the, uh, more physical like, uh, cases when it like
kidnappings, deportations, detentions occur and neighboring authoritarian
States, Southeast Asia, uh, Southeast Asian countries, especially, uh,
are our focal point of this, uh, pursuit.
I mean, I think Laos, Cambodia, these countries are often willing to let in,
are often willing to collaborate with, uh, Chinese security officials to, uh,
hunt down journalists through other dissonant figures that
China wants returned or silenced.
So I think it's a mixture of like long established and well-built security ties.
Uh, but also, I mean, there are, there's, there are institutional
structures on a regional level besides Interpol that allow this, uh, problem
to persist and makes it easier for some authoritarian States to collaborate.
