A civnat and imperial subject expresses his horror of a nation daring to govern its own nationals:
Beijing is obsessed with suppressing dissent among ethnic Chinese living in democracies and has no hesitation intimidating human-rights activists and dissidents in the West.
Beijing calls it, euphemistically, ‘persuade to return’ and thinks it legitimate because democracies will, by and large, not extradite people to dictatorships like China. Indeed, the European Court of Human Rights has effectively banned its member states (which include Britain) from extraditing to China anyone under their jurisdiction. Hence the ‘persuasion’.
China thinks it has a right to enforce this because, under Chinese law, its citizens are subject to Communist Party law wherever they live. And China’s National Intelligence Law requires its people and companies to assist Beijing’s spies whenever requested — and to keep that assistance secret.
The irony of paper citizens arguing that borders don’t exist and the economy is global, but that the Chinese people don’t have the right to govern Chinese people around the world, requires a degree of intellectual incoherence that is both impressive and historically ignorant.
Meanwhile, they have no problem with private corporations attempting to control the behavior of people of every nation, everywhere around the world.
Again, the incoherence is astounding. Especially when it wasn’t until November 1991 that the USA defined economic growth in terms of state-based Gross Domestic Product rather than the historical nation-based Gross National Product.
Finally, it’s more than a bit ironic that the article warns about China infiltrating and making use of the Five Eyes surveillance system used by Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States to spy on each other’s citizens.