The Winter Olympics in Beijing is still three weeks away. We take a look ahead and back: In today’s interview, former German ambassador Michael Schaefer talked with Frank Sieren about the diplomatic handling of the Games in 2008. Nowadays, it has almost been forgotten that human rights were discussed back then as well. That is why Germany was only represented very reservedly. This time, too, Germany should look for a compromise that would send a signal without immediately breaking off the dialogue, says Schaefer.
The seasoned diplomat also advocates a “red line” for products manufactured under forced labor. EU member states should quickly find a common China strategy. And Beijing, for its part, has to stop turning the EU states against each other, says Schaefer.
But how high are the chances for unity among Western allies? The UK is currently dealing with a China-related political scandal. The British intelligence service MI5 warned parliamentarians about a British lawyer with Hong Kong roots. Christine Lee allegedly tried to influence UK politics in China’s favor. Over the past few years, Lee has donated several hundred thousand pounds to various politicians. What is particularly dicey is the fact that MI5 has revealed Lee’s ties to China’s United Front, as Marcel Grzanna reports. This CP organization tries to influence China’s image in foreign countries in various ways.
Have a pleasant week!
Mr. Schaefer, at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing in the summer of 2008, you were the highest-ranking representative of German politics as ambassador apart from the private attendance of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. At that time, the German government protested against China’s human rights course with a sort of diplomatic boycott. Beijing certainly was not pleased with that. How did you feel about that?l about that?
Beijing was not exceptionally irritated by Germany’s symbolic decision. After all, the decision did not come as a surprise to either side. A year earlier, Chancellor Merkel had met with the Dalai Lama in Berlin. After that, Beijing had announced an ice age in diplomatic relations. The relationship had then eased in early 2008 through an exchange of letters. But in March 2008, the tension increased again because of the developments in Tibet. That was the reason for the graduated reaction of the German government: boycott of the opening, but the attendance of two federal ministers during the Games- Wolfgang Schaeuble, as Minister of the Interior responsible for sports, and Franz Josef Jung, as Minister of Defense responsible for the promotion of sports in the sports companies. Then, at the opening of the Paralympic Games, even the then Federal President Horst Koehler was present.
How did you feel about the decision as ambassador?
At the time, I thought it was a good, differentiated decision that I could work well with as an ambassador on the ground.
However, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President George W. Bush, for example, were present at the opening at the time. Didn’t the Chinese let you feel that?
Not particularly. After all, we were not alone. The British, the Spanish, the Italians, or the Poles acted like Germany. So did the Indians or the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.
How effective are such political gestures?
If you know the Chinese, you know that image is important to them, especially at such a world event, which they were hosting for the first time. But they took it professionally and were still able to report that no Olympic Games had ever been attended by more heads of state. And the fact that the Olympic Games can spark political protests is nothing new.
As an ambassador, you have two hearts in your chest. On the one hand, you can understand that human rights violations must be followed by reactions, but on the other hand, relations should be harmonic. How did you balance this after the Games?
Your observation is correct.
You want to establish relations that can also withstand wildly differing positions without the relations escalating every time, simply because there is a fundamental trust. That was particularly important to me because the human rights situation was and still is very close to my heart. I was in charge of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva for four years. That left its mark on me. There, my main concern was how to act to bring about positive changes for people in the medium and long term. I’ve always been against mere symbolic politics, which is primarily directed at one’s domestic politics.
How do you bring about such changes?
The most important requirement: The German government and the EU must speak with one voice on human rights issues. It is no good for one representative to be particularly vocal and another to act with silence towards Beijing. That undermines the credibility of our political line. And you should not act as a teacher, but instead make it clear that, in our experience, the realization of both individual and collective human rights is also in the interest of stable social development.
Will the new federal government be able to manage that? Was the decision not to attend the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics the right one?
I think the German government’s decision not to attend the opening of the Winter Olympics is the right one – apart from the fact that it would have been difficult as it is, given the new Covid wave. As far as unity within the government is concerned, it is still too early to pass judgment. Such a common line cannot be implemented overnight. Every chancellor has to struggle at first to find a line and push it through in the government.
What is particularly important in this process?
That everyone involved understands the different perspectives of the debate about China. The Chinese say: You are only using human rights to keep us down and put us in a corner. We want to choose our own path. The trauma of partial colonization by the West certainly still plays an important role here. In turn, we answer: Our history is marked by two dictatorships with massive human rights violations caused by Germans. We have gone through a learning process. Individual freedom always affects the stability of society as a whole. And sharing this experience is essential. It is just as important as China’s national sovereignty. I have often discussed this, particularly with young people at universities in China, and I have been met with a great deal of openness.
Another argument that Beijing comes up with frequently is that China adheres to human rights, but prioritizes them differently than the West. First food, health, work, and education, then the rule of law, freedom of expression, and free elections. Is this the excuse of a dictatorship?
Basically, this order is not wrong. I heard this over and over again in my years as deputy ambassador to Singapore, particularly by Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state’s founder and then prime minister. He distinguished between civil and political, and economic and social human rights. In developing societies, priority would always be given to economic and social rights. I then always referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, which all UN members have signed. And it does not acknowledge any tiers for human rights. However, both complexes were differentiated into two large and different human rights pacts. The Chinese have also signed them. And they must abide by them.
However, this is not the case when you look at the developments in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
This is true for political and civil rights, but not for economic and social rights. The economic and social situation of the vast majority of people in China has improved very quickly and lastingly within just one generation. In political and civil rights, on the other hand, the Chinese leadership is beginning to show a clear line: they will not be granted the same significance in China they have in the West. To me, this is an unacceptable decision.
So what now?
We cannot brute force such issues. That’s why we should begin where the violation of rights crosses national borders, for example in the production of economic goods. Here we can say that we do not want to import goods that were manufactured in re-education camps in Xinjiang, for example, because that is a flagrant violation of international law. In this respect, the new Supply Chain Act is a sensible step. We can and should draw a red line here.
Especially since the overall atmosphere is much more controversial than in 2008.
That makes it all the more important to engage in intensive discussions with the Chinese.
The sanctions imposed by the EU and the sanctions imposed by the Chinese in response point in a different direction.
Yes. This is a wrong development. Sanctions were supposed to be the last resort after unsuccessful talks. However, the sanctions came at a time when there was still room for maneuver in the talks. That has become much more difficult now. That’s why it seems that for some parties involved, internal political interests, possibly even electoral interests, played a greater role than reaching an agreement with China, which is not easy.
In addition, the discord at the European level over the next course of action has, if anything, increased.
This is the second wrong development. Dialogue is not possible if Europe does not speak with one voice. So far, we do not really have an extensive China strategy on the European side. However, such a strategy is imperative. In any case, boycotting the opening of the Winter Olympics and imposing sanctions is no solution.
So which lessons do the Chinese have to learn?
The Chinese must first learn that they are now part of an international community in which rules apply to everyone, not just for the others. They cannot pick and choose what suits them best. The second one is that China has to, I don’t want to say, divide, but turn the European Union against each other on individual issues through bilateral negotiations. It is also clear that no one can force Beijing not to enter into bilateral agreements with Hungary, Romania, or Bulgaria that might contradict a European consensus. But, it is doubtful whether this will prove wise in the long run. China should realize that a strong Europe, especially in competition with the US, is in China’s best interest.
What does this mean for China and the EU?
We need to talk to each other again, and ideally not about our disputes first, but about issues that are in our common interest. These are topics such as climate change or health policy. And in these talks, we must make it clear that we are not pursuing a policy in tow of the Americans.
But isn’t that factually the case?
At least, that is how it seems at present. However, I believe that Europe would do well not to join, nolens volens, an American policy that is very much shaped by geopolitical interests, namely, for example, domination of the Pacific. That is not Europe’s primary interest. We have an interest in a stable, rules-based international system as well as, for example, freedom of shipping lanes. We do not have broader interests in the Pacific, nor should we pretend to. I believe Europe would do well to define its own climate policy. We also have our own interests in trade and investment conditions. There is room for negotiation with the Chinese here. But fair trade means that both sides abide by the agreed rules.
But I don’t see these talks happening because Europe cannot agree on what to do.
China has been very adept at developing relations with individual European states that seem to benefit them in the short term. But if Europe continues to allow itself to become divided, it will not play a global role. We must learn to speak with one voice, not only to China but also to the United States. We must overcome the nitty-gritty of national, contradictory policies.
The problem is that Germany, as an exporting nation, has a different dependence on China than France, for example.
However, dependence also means more influence on China. As the strongest economic nation in Europe, Germany carries more weight than smaller trading partners. That’s why Germany can play a key role when it comes to negotiating the EU’s common rules with China. In doing so, we should show leadership in Europe and show the Chinese that they are now a strong economic nation for which there can no longer be any special treatment. They must abide by the same rules as we do. And we have to broker those rules. This involves striking a balance between the values and interests of the EU and China. This is the opportunity for interdependence. There is little to be gained from only ever looking at the risks.
In this balance, is there not a risk that human rights issues will take a back seat in the face of profound economic interests?
I think that is the wrong question. Of course, human rights violations must be critically addressed. The question is whether this always has to be done over the loudspeaker or if it instead can be addressed in confidential talks, as the German Chancellor has done for many years. The public has often criticized her for holding back too much. I have often been present and have heard how emphatically she has addressed such issues. The important thing is the outcome for the people who are affected. We should strive to set rules that both sides will have to abide by.
Michael Schaefer is considered one of the most renowned German diplomats. After holding various positions, including at the United Nations in New York, the lawyer with a doctorate in international law spent four years as a permanent representative in Singapore. For four years, he represented Germany in Geneva at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, where he frequently had to deal with China. From 2002 to 2007, he was the political director of the Federal Foreign Office and security adviser to Foreign Ministers Joschka Fischer (Alliance 90/The Greens) and Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD). From 2007 to 2013, he was posted as ambassador in Beijing. He then moved to the BMW Foundation as Chairman of the Board, where, among other things, he established the Zukunftsbrücke – a Chinese German Young Professional Campus.
Suddenly, all these pictures of Christine Lee appear in a different light. There’s this shot of her in what appears to be a close exchange with former British Prime Minister David Cameron. In another photo, she can be seen with a group of young Chinese alongside the former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
For a few days now, the name Christine Lee has been on everyone’s lips in the UK. The domestic intelligence service MI5 set the ball rolling on Thursday. It has warned members of parliament about the influential lawyer with a British passport. She allegedly was trying to influence the country’s politics in the interests of the People’s Republic of China. The pictures with Cameron or Corbyn suggest that she was successful.
Neither Cameron nor Corbyn are at the center of the affair. Instead, it is Labour MP, Barry Gardiner. Until 2020, Gardiner was Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change under Corbyn and had already been active for Tony Blair’s government as a junior minister almost 20 years ago. His office received donations from Lee totaling £200,000. Gardiner was the biggest beneficiary of Lee’s payments, which totaled nearly half a million pounds. But many other MPs and parties from across the political spectrum also received donations.
Gardiner received these donations entirely legitimately and transparently. He always made the payments public. This money was used to fund studies and research in his London constituency of Brent North. The politician appeared surprised by MI5’s warning. He had informed the intelligence agency about Lee’s donations for years and claimed that he had never been warned. Lee had been a registered donor, and the money she paid was clean. The Home Secretary classified Lee’s activities as “currently under the criminal threshold”.
Nevertheless, Gardiner now has to defend himself. He is accused of having promoted Chinese participation in the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in southern England under Lee’s influence. The MP denies this. Gardiner says he wanted to protect the British taxpayer from extortionate prices from other suppliers.
But these accusations are not new. The British press already mentioned Christine Lee in a report about donations to Gardiner’s office in 2019. The crucial difference: MI5 did not comment at the time. Instead, then Prime Minister Theresa May awarded Christine Lee the “Points of Light” award in the same year for her commitment to Sino-British relations. She should be “very proud,” May wrote to the lawyer in a personal letter.
Now the turnaround. MI5 not only warned Parliament about Christine Lee but also addressed the Hong Kong native’s good contacts to United Front Work Department (UFWD), the Chinese United Front. “This is the first time MI5 has publicly identified the UFWD as a national security risk,” says Didi-Kirsten Tatlow of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). “This has not only symbolic significance, but is a signal that there seems to be a decision in the UK to seriously push back Chinese influence.”
The United Front is almost as old as the party itself (China.Table reported). It operates intensively wherever doubts about the CP’s legitimacy arise, where criticism of its policies is voiced and where there is a threat of resistance to its authoritarian rule. Through the ramifications of many party organizations, the United Front also establishes contacts with influential forces overseas. Politics, business, science – it is active everywhere. And it is literally active in all countries around the world.
Experts warn against underestimating the influence of the United Front. “It is a kind of management tool of the Chinese Communist Party to ensure that, on the one hand, non-members are brought into line with the party and, on the other hand, negative voices are marginalized,” Ralph Weber, a professor at the Europa Institute at the University of Basel, told China.Table last year.
Conservative MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith expressed deep concern over MI5’s warning about Christine Lee. Smith is sanctioned by the Chinese government for his support of pro-democracy Hong Kong politicians and activists. He demanded information about the risks to Hong Kong activists, on the one hand, and also questioned whether Parliament’s accreditation process “for such people” – meaning Lee – needed to be revised.
Some political observers, meanwhile, wondered whether the timing of the intelligence warning could also have domestic political reasons. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is knee-deep in trouble over a party visit during the Covid pandemic. So donations to a Labour politician from a generous donor with the best connections to the Communist Party are not entirely inconvenient. However, there is the argument that too many British parties and politicians are involved in the Christine Lee case.
Lee is a UK citizen. Her parents emigrated to Northern Ireland when she was still a child. The fact that she maintains good contacts with the Chinese party-state should have been obvious to any parliamentarian who accepted her money. Her company runs its own office in the British Embassy building in Beijing. For many years, she has been advising Chinese companies that want to invest in the UK.
Photographs show her at the Shenzhen Overseas Exchange Association Conference. As a volunteer advisor, she assisted the director of the Shenzhen branch of the United Front. Another picture shows her shaking hands with China’s President Xi Jinping.
In China, Lee had attended a speech by United Front chairman You Quan, Martin Thorley of the University of Exeter wrote on Twitter. Thorley researches Sino-British relations. You encouraged the audience to “accept the guidance of Xi Jinping’s new era of Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. According to Thorley, Lee was “encouraged and touched” by the speech. According to the report, she gushed about her strong sense of national pride. She gushed about her strong sense of national pride. Although she has spent all these years in the UK, she wants to be “a communicator of China’s voice,” Lee reportedly said.
Thorley believes the Lee case is “just the tip of the iceberg.” Authors Mareike Ohlberg and Clive Hamilton take an even darker assessment of Chinese interests’ influence in the UK. In their book “The Silent Conquest,” they describe the British political and economic elite deeply infiltrated “to the point of no return”. The system could virtually no longer be cleaned up.
Researcher Tatlow of the German Council on Foreign Relations, on the other hand, is less pessimistic. She believes that the “creeping, sometimes aggressive exertion of influence” can still be successfully countered. The prerequisite: less naivety and more determination. But that doesn’t just apply to the UK, she says. “China has already penetrated deep into the political corridor of power both in Germany and throughout Europe. This is the result of decades of work by the Communist Party.”
It was a combination of passion and pragmatism that led Joanna Klabisch to China. Even as a child she was passionate about Asia, from martial arts to food culture to literature. Yet, she would never have dared to study an orchid subject such as Japanese studies. For her, as a migrant and the child of workers from southern Poland and the first student in her family, it was clear that she would choose a down-to-earth career. However, Sinology and East Asian Studies were the subjects that came to mind. After all, China was already on its way to becoming a major economic power. By then, the practicality of what she had learned was already apparent.
Despite all the challenges, Joanna Klabisch remembers her student days fondly. “It takes a lot of love to push through your studies. When I went into my Chinese exam in December of the first semester, my right arm was completely bandaged from elbow to wrist because I had tendinitis from all the drawing,” she says.
The sinology student was particularly impressed by her stays abroad at the National Taiwan Normal University and Nankai University in Tianjin. Here she fell in love with the country. And she learned that China is not only fascinatingly different from her familiar home but also holds unexpectedly familiar phenomena. “I had been a member of the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland since my school days, volunteered at animal shelters, and during my studies, I became interested in the work of Amnesty International and other non-profit organizations,” the 36-year-old says. She was surprised to learn that there are also civil society actors in China. “For example, they take to the streets to make sure their rivers are not polluted.” And that’s even though such activism can be dangerous in China.
Joanna Klabisch was the only student in her class to specialize in Chinese civil society. For six months, she worked on a project run by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit in Beijing, which was dedicated to civil society issues such as the inclusion of people with disabilities. And finally, she joined the Asia House Foundation, which promotes exchange with NGOs in Asian countries and takes an eye-to-eye approach to solidarity and cooperation.
Joanna Klabisch has been working in the China program of Asia House Foundation since 2016, and since 2019 she has been managing the program with her colleague Dr. Christian Straube. The goal of a new project launched in 2020 is to establish a civil society dialogue within the framework of the New Silk Road. “We want to gather the voices of Chinese NGOs,” she says. They know best how to push social or environmental goals through the Chinese system. “And we want to bring them together with NGOs from other countries, like Indonesia, where Belt and Road Initiative projects are being implemented.” Both sides could learn a lot from each other. This makes it easier to successfully carry out campaigns.
Joanna Klabisch devotes about a quarter of her work time to the project “Asia in the Globalized World,” in which she and her colleagues address transnational problems in publications and events. She finds this particularly exciting because the small team of the Asia House Foundation, with just six staff members, brings together expertise for East Timor, Indonesia, and Cambodia, as well as Myanmar and Thailand. It also works with the Korea Verband, the Philippinenbuero, the Nepal Dialogforum für Frieden und Menschenrechte, and the North East India Forum. “So we can cover a wide range of Asian countries with the few people we have,” Klabisch tells us. For example, the Asia House team can look at the impact of European waste exports to the Philippines or the importance of the BRI for gender justice in Nepal. Klabisch is also devoting a working group to the issue of racism and power imbalances in development cooperation.
In addition to the Covid pandemic, NGOs also face major challenges in funding projects. “Funds for China, in particular, have become very scarce at the moment.” The climate is extremely unfavorable for political and academic cooperation in Germany. Klabisch hopes that there is still room for cooperation with Chinese civil society. “Because we need them to support positive developments in China.” Jana Degener-Storr
Lockdown, finals, overtime madness? Time to take revenge! And what’s the best way to do that? Through revenge purchases, of course! China has even coined a new word for this behavioral pattern. 报复性消费 bàofùxìng xiāofèi “revenge buying” or “revenge consumption” is the name of the popular term, not unlike the English “comfort buying”. It is made up of the words for “revenge, vengeance” (报复bàofù or “revenge-like” 报复性 bàofùxìng) and “consumption, consuming” (消费 xiāofèi).
The technical term – known in our part of the world as “compensatory consumption” – made its way into everyday use thanks to Covid. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been repeated partial lockdowns and curfews in the Middle Kingdom. As is well known, this can sometimes lead to insatiable cravings, especially for shopaholics. At that time, the Internet also hardly offered relief in China, since packages were often not even delivered to high-risk areas. And when Covid barriers finally were lifted, all shopping dams broke for many. Missed purchases were made up for in a frenzy, and some clothing stores were stripped down to their mannequins.
In addition to “revenge buying,” the Chinese repertoire of revenge includes several sub-concepts. For example, “revenge consumption” (报复性吃喝 bàofùxìng chī-hē – literally “revenge-like eating and drinking”). Dairy stores and coffee chains, for example, saw sales peaks in XXL cup sizes after lockdowns were lifted. A small barbecue restaurant in Shandong even reported a customer who ordered the entire menu (!) and then had the food delivered to his home. It took the kitchen staff of three and three hours to prepare the order. Others invested their cash in nurturing their pets’ souls, which had been criminally neglected during home quarantine. Premium food and expensive treats sold like hot cakes thanks to 报复性爱宠物 bàofùxìng ài chǒngwù – “vengeful pet love”.
Some went even further and went on “revenge trips” (报复性出游 bàofùxìng chūyóu), booking expensive trips and vacations as soon as they were able to. Most of them also gave vent to their frustration with their friends. After all, they had been deprived of the well-deserved social-media-likes-induced dopamine for weeks because they simply ran out of post ideas when they were bored at home. Back in freedom, they posted what they could: from a Sichuan hotpot to a walk on the beach to a serial selfie. The Internet community called this revenge-like posting in WeChat 报复性发朋友圈 (bàofùxìng fā péngyouquān) in reference to the Chinese name for the WeChat circle of friends – 朋友圈 péngyouquān.
Meanwhile, bàofùxìng is also jokingly applied to general problems in Chinese. For example, the revenge-like late nights after phases of stress at work or school (报复性熬夜 bàofùxìng áoyè). Or revenge time-wasting on the weekend to compensate for all the time-consuming work during the week (报复性浪费时间 bàofùxìng làngfèi shíjiān). So: Keep a lookout for potential creative acts of revenge. The next opportunity is sure to arise.
Verena Menzel runs the language school New Chinese in Beijing.
The Winter Olympics in Beijing is still three weeks away. We take a look ahead and back: In today’s interview, former German ambassador Michael Schaefer talked with Frank Sieren about the diplomatic handling of the Games in 2008. Nowadays, it has almost been forgotten that human rights were discussed back then as well. That is why Germany was only represented very reservedly. This time, too, Germany should look for a compromise that would send a signal without immediately breaking off the dialogue, says Schaefer.
The seasoned diplomat also advocates a “red line” for products manufactured under forced labor. EU member states should quickly find a common China strategy. And Beijing, for its part, has to stop turning the EU states against each other, says Schaefer.
But how high are the chances for unity among Western allies? The UK is currently dealing with a China-related political scandal. The British intelligence service MI5 warned parliamentarians about a British lawyer with Hong Kong roots. Christine Lee allegedly tried to influence UK politics in China’s favor. Over the past few years, Lee has donated several hundred thousand pounds to various politicians. What is particularly dicey is the fact that MI5 has revealed Lee’s ties to China’s United Front, as Marcel Grzanna reports. This CP organization tries to influence China’s image in foreign countries in various ways.
Have a pleasant week!
Mr. Schaefer, at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing in the summer of 2008, you were the highest-ranking representative of German politics as ambassador apart from the private attendance of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. At that time, the German government protested against China’s human rights course with a sort of diplomatic boycott. Beijing certainly was not pleased with that. How did you feel about that?l about that?
Beijing was not exceptionally irritated by Germany’s symbolic decision. After all, the decision did not come as a surprise to either side. A year earlier, Chancellor Merkel had met with the Dalai Lama in Berlin. After that, Beijing had announced an ice age in diplomatic relations. The relationship had then eased in early 2008 through an exchange of letters. But in March 2008, the tension increased again because of the developments in Tibet. That was the reason for the graduated reaction of the German government: boycott of the opening, but the attendance of two federal ministers during the Games- Wolfgang Schaeuble, as Minister of the Interior responsible for sports, and Franz Josef Jung, as Minister of Defense responsible for the promotion of sports in the sports companies. Then, at the opening of the Paralympic Games, even the then Federal President Horst Koehler was present.
How did you feel about the decision as ambassador?
At the time, I thought it was a good, differentiated decision that I could work well with as an ambassador on the ground.
However, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President George W. Bush, for example, were present at the opening at the time. Didn’t the Chinese let you feel that?
Not particularly. After all, we were not alone. The British, the Spanish, the Italians, or the Poles acted like Germany. So did the Indians or the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.
How effective are such political gestures?
If you know the Chinese, you know that image is important to them, especially at such a world event, which they were hosting for the first time. But they took it professionally and were still able to report that no Olympic Games had ever been attended by more heads of state. And the fact that the Olympic Games can spark political protests is nothing new.
As an ambassador, you have two hearts in your chest. On the one hand, you can understand that human rights violations must be followed by reactions, but on the other hand, relations should be harmonic. How did you balance this after the Games?
Your observation is correct.
You want to establish relations that can also withstand wildly differing positions without the relations escalating every time, simply because there is a fundamental trust. That was particularly important to me because the human rights situation was and still is very close to my heart. I was in charge of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva for four years. That left its mark on me. There, my main concern was how to act to bring about positive changes for people in the medium and long term. I’ve always been against mere symbolic politics, which is primarily directed at one’s domestic politics.
How do you bring about such changes?
The most important requirement: The German government and the EU must speak with one voice on human rights issues. It is no good for one representative to be particularly vocal and another to act with silence towards Beijing. That undermines the credibility of our political line. And you should not act as a teacher, but instead make it clear that, in our experience, the realization of both individual and collective human rights is also in the interest of stable social development.
Will the new federal government be able to manage that? Was the decision not to attend the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics the right one?
I think the German government’s decision not to attend the opening of the Winter Olympics is the right one – apart from the fact that it would have been difficult as it is, given the new Covid wave. As far as unity within the government is concerned, it is still too early to pass judgment. Such a common line cannot be implemented overnight. Every chancellor has to struggle at first to find a line and push it through in the government.
What is particularly important in this process?
That everyone involved understands the different perspectives of the debate about China. The Chinese say: You are only using human rights to keep us down and put us in a corner. We want to choose our own path. The trauma of partial colonization by the West certainly still plays an important role here. In turn, we answer: Our history is marked by two dictatorships with massive human rights violations caused by Germans. We have gone through a learning process. Individual freedom always affects the stability of society as a whole. And sharing this experience is essential. It is just as important as China’s national sovereignty. I have often discussed this, particularly with young people at universities in China, and I have been met with a great deal of openness.
Another argument that Beijing comes up with frequently is that China adheres to human rights, but prioritizes them differently than the West. First food, health, work, and education, then the rule of law, freedom of expression, and free elections. Is this the excuse of a dictatorship?
Basically, this order is not wrong. I heard this over and over again in my years as deputy ambassador to Singapore, particularly by Lee Kuan Yew, the city-state’s founder and then prime minister. He distinguished between civil and political, and economic and social human rights. In developing societies, priority would always be given to economic and social rights. I then always referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, which all UN members have signed. And it does not acknowledge any tiers for human rights. However, both complexes were differentiated into two large and different human rights pacts. The Chinese have also signed them. And they must abide by them.
However, this is not the case when you look at the developments in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
This is true for political and civil rights, but not for economic and social rights. The economic and social situation of the vast majority of people in China has improved very quickly and lastingly within just one generation. In political and civil rights, on the other hand, the Chinese leadership is beginning to show a clear line: they will not be granted the same significance in China they have in the West. To me, this is an unacceptable decision.
So what now?
We cannot brute force such issues. That’s why we should begin where the violation of rights crosses national borders, for example in the production of economic goods. Here we can say that we do not want to import goods that were manufactured in re-education camps in Xinjiang, for example, because that is a flagrant violation of international law. In this respect, the new Supply Chain Act is a sensible step. We can and should draw a red line here.
Especially since the overall atmosphere is much more controversial than in 2008.
That makes it all the more important to engage in intensive discussions with the Chinese.
The sanctions imposed by the EU and the sanctions imposed by the Chinese in response point in a different direction.
Yes. This is a wrong development. Sanctions were supposed to be the last resort after unsuccessful talks. However, the sanctions came at a time when there was still room for maneuver in the talks. That has become much more difficult now. That’s why it seems that for some parties involved, internal political interests, possibly even electoral interests, played a greater role than reaching an agreement with China, which is not easy.
In addition, the discord at the European level over the next course of action has, if anything, increased.
This is the second wrong development. Dialogue is not possible if Europe does not speak with one voice. So far, we do not really have an extensive China strategy on the European side. However, such a strategy is imperative. In any case, boycotting the opening of the Winter Olympics and imposing sanctions is no solution.
So which lessons do the Chinese have to learn?
The Chinese must first learn that they are now part of an international community in which rules apply to everyone, not just for the others. They cannot pick and choose what suits them best. The second one is that China has to, I don’t want to say, divide, but turn the European Union against each other on individual issues through bilateral negotiations. It is also clear that no one can force Beijing not to enter into bilateral agreements with Hungary, Romania, or Bulgaria that might contradict a European consensus. But, it is doubtful whether this will prove wise in the long run. China should realize that a strong Europe, especially in competition with the US, is in China’s best interest.
What does this mean for China and the EU?
We need to talk to each other again, and ideally not about our disputes first, but about issues that are in our common interest. These are topics such as climate change or health policy. And in these talks, we must make it clear that we are not pursuing a policy in tow of the Americans.
But isn’t that factually the case?
At least, that is how it seems at present. However, I believe that Europe would do well not to join, nolens volens, an American policy that is very much shaped by geopolitical interests, namely, for example, domination of the Pacific. That is not Europe’s primary interest. We have an interest in a stable, rules-based international system as well as, for example, freedom of shipping lanes. We do not have broader interests in the Pacific, nor should we pretend to. I believe Europe would do well to define its own climate policy. We also have our own interests in trade and investment conditions. There is room for negotiation with the Chinese here. But fair trade means that both sides abide by the agreed rules.
But I don’t see these talks happening because Europe cannot agree on what to do.
China has been very adept at developing relations with individual European states that seem to benefit them in the short term. But if Europe continues to allow itself to become divided, it will not play a global role. We must learn to speak with one voice, not only to China but also to the United States. We must overcome the nitty-gritty of national, contradictory policies.
The problem is that Germany, as an exporting nation, has a different dependence on China than France, for example.
However, dependence also means more influence on China. As the strongest economic nation in Europe, Germany carries more weight than smaller trading partners. That’s why Germany can play a key role when it comes to negotiating the EU’s common rules with China. In doing so, we should show leadership in Europe and show the Chinese that they are now a strong economic nation for which there can no longer be any special treatment. They must abide by the same rules as we do. And we have to broker those rules. This involves striking a balance between the values and interests of the EU and China. This is the opportunity for interdependence. There is little to be gained from only ever looking at the risks.
In this balance, is there not a risk that human rights issues will take a back seat in the face of profound economic interests?
I think that is the wrong question. Of course, human rights violations must be critically addressed. The question is whether this always has to be done over the loudspeaker or if it instead can be addressed in confidential talks, as the German Chancellor has done for many years. The public has often criticized her for holding back too much. I have often been present and have heard how emphatically she has addressed such issues. The important thing is the outcome for the people who are affected. We should strive to set rules that both sides will have to abide by.
Michael Schaefer is considered one of the most renowned German diplomats. After holding various positions, including at the United Nations in New York, the lawyer with a doctorate in international law spent four years as a permanent representative in Singapore. For four years, he represented Germany in Geneva at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, where he frequently had to deal with China. From 2002 to 2007, he was the political director of the Federal Foreign Office and security adviser to Foreign Ministers Joschka Fischer (Alliance 90/The Greens) and Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD). From 2007 to 2013, he was posted as ambassador in Beijing. He then moved to the BMW Foundation as Chairman of the Board, where, among other things, he established the Zukunftsbrücke – a Chinese German Young Professional Campus.
Suddenly, all these pictures of Christine Lee appear in a different light. There’s this shot of her in what appears to be a close exchange with former British Prime Minister David Cameron. In another photo, she can be seen with a group of young Chinese alongside the former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
For a few days now, the name Christine Lee has been on everyone’s lips in the UK. The domestic intelligence service MI5 set the ball rolling on Thursday. It has warned members of parliament about the influential lawyer with a British passport. She allegedly was trying to influence the country’s politics in the interests of the People’s Republic of China. The pictures with Cameron or Corbyn suggest that she was successful.
Neither Cameron nor Corbyn are at the center of the affair. Instead, it is Labour MP, Barry Gardiner. Until 2020, Gardiner was Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change under Corbyn and had already been active for Tony Blair’s government as a junior minister almost 20 years ago. His office received donations from Lee totaling £200,000. Gardiner was the biggest beneficiary of Lee’s payments, which totaled nearly half a million pounds. But many other MPs and parties from across the political spectrum also received donations.
Gardiner received these donations entirely legitimately and transparently. He always made the payments public. This money was used to fund studies and research in his London constituency of Brent North. The politician appeared surprised by MI5’s warning. He had informed the intelligence agency about Lee’s donations for years and claimed that he had never been warned. Lee had been a registered donor, and the money she paid was clean. The Home Secretary classified Lee’s activities as “currently under the criminal threshold”.
Nevertheless, Gardiner now has to defend himself. He is accused of having promoted Chinese participation in the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in southern England under Lee’s influence. The MP denies this. Gardiner says he wanted to protect the British taxpayer from extortionate prices from other suppliers.
But these accusations are not new. The British press already mentioned Christine Lee in a report about donations to Gardiner’s office in 2019. The crucial difference: MI5 did not comment at the time. Instead, then Prime Minister Theresa May awarded Christine Lee the “Points of Light” award in the same year for her commitment to Sino-British relations. She should be “very proud,” May wrote to the lawyer in a personal letter.
Now the turnaround. MI5 not only warned Parliament about Christine Lee but also addressed the Hong Kong native’s good contacts to United Front Work Department (UFWD), the Chinese United Front. “This is the first time MI5 has publicly identified the UFWD as a national security risk,” says Didi-Kirsten Tatlow of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). “This has not only symbolic significance, but is a signal that there seems to be a decision in the UK to seriously push back Chinese influence.”
The United Front is almost as old as the party itself (China.Table reported). It operates intensively wherever doubts about the CP’s legitimacy arise, where criticism of its policies is voiced and where there is a threat of resistance to its authoritarian rule. Through the ramifications of many party organizations, the United Front also establishes contacts with influential forces overseas. Politics, business, science – it is active everywhere. And it is literally active in all countries around the world.
Experts warn against underestimating the influence of the United Front. “It is a kind of management tool of the Chinese Communist Party to ensure that, on the one hand, non-members are brought into line with the party and, on the other hand, negative voices are marginalized,” Ralph Weber, a professor at the Europa Institute at the University of Basel, told China.Table last year.
Conservative MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith expressed deep concern over MI5’s warning about Christine Lee. Smith is sanctioned by the Chinese government for his support of pro-democracy Hong Kong politicians and activists. He demanded information about the risks to Hong Kong activists, on the one hand, and also questioned whether Parliament’s accreditation process “for such people” – meaning Lee – needed to be revised.
Some political observers, meanwhile, wondered whether the timing of the intelligence warning could also have domestic political reasons. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is knee-deep in trouble over a party visit during the Covid pandemic. So donations to a Labour politician from a generous donor with the best connections to the Communist Party are not entirely inconvenient. However, there is the argument that too many British parties and politicians are involved in the Christine Lee case.
Lee is a UK citizen. Her parents emigrated to Northern Ireland when she was still a child. The fact that she maintains good contacts with the Chinese party-state should have been obvious to any parliamentarian who accepted her money. Her company runs its own office in the British Embassy building in Beijing. For many years, she has been advising Chinese companies that want to invest in the UK.
Photographs show her at the Shenzhen Overseas Exchange Association Conference. As a volunteer advisor, she assisted the director of the Shenzhen branch of the United Front. Another picture shows her shaking hands with China’s President Xi Jinping.
In China, Lee had attended a speech by United Front chairman You Quan, Martin Thorley of the University of Exeter wrote on Twitter. Thorley researches Sino-British relations. You encouraged the audience to “accept the guidance of Xi Jinping’s new era of Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. According to Thorley, Lee was “encouraged and touched” by the speech. According to the report, she gushed about her strong sense of national pride. She gushed about her strong sense of national pride. Although she has spent all these years in the UK, she wants to be “a communicator of China’s voice,” Lee reportedly said.
Thorley believes the Lee case is “just the tip of the iceberg.” Authors Mareike Ohlberg and Clive Hamilton take an even darker assessment of Chinese interests’ influence in the UK. In their book “The Silent Conquest,” they describe the British political and economic elite deeply infiltrated “to the point of no return”. The system could virtually no longer be cleaned up.
Researcher Tatlow of the German Council on Foreign Relations, on the other hand, is less pessimistic. She believes that the “creeping, sometimes aggressive exertion of influence” can still be successfully countered. The prerequisite: less naivety and more determination. But that doesn’t just apply to the UK, she says. “China has already penetrated deep into the political corridor of power both in Germany and throughout Europe. This is the result of decades of work by the Communist Party.”
It was a combination of passion and pragmatism that led Joanna Klabisch to China. Even as a child she was passionate about Asia, from martial arts to food culture to literature. Yet, she would never have dared to study an orchid subject such as Japanese studies. For her, as a migrant and the child of workers from southern Poland and the first student in her family, it was clear that she would choose a down-to-earth career. However, Sinology and East Asian Studies were the subjects that came to mind. After all, China was already on its way to becoming a major economic power. By then, the practicality of what she had learned was already apparent.
Despite all the challenges, Joanna Klabisch remembers her student days fondly. “It takes a lot of love to push through your studies. When I went into my Chinese exam in December of the first semester, my right arm was completely bandaged from elbow to wrist because I had tendinitis from all the drawing,” she says.
The sinology student was particularly impressed by her stays abroad at the National Taiwan Normal University and Nankai University in Tianjin. Here she fell in love with the country. And she learned that China is not only fascinatingly different from her familiar home but also holds unexpectedly familiar phenomena. “I had been a member of the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland since my school days, volunteered at animal shelters, and during my studies, I became interested in the work of Amnesty International and other non-profit organizations,” the 36-year-old says. She was surprised to learn that there are also civil society actors in China. “For example, they take to the streets to make sure their rivers are not polluted.” And that’s even though such activism can be dangerous in China.
Joanna Klabisch was the only student in her class to specialize in Chinese civil society. For six months, she worked on a project run by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit in Beijing, which was dedicated to civil society issues such as the inclusion of people with disabilities. And finally, she joined the Asia House Foundation, which promotes exchange with NGOs in Asian countries and takes an eye-to-eye approach to solidarity and cooperation.
Joanna Klabisch has been working in the China program of Asia House Foundation since 2016, and since 2019 she has been managing the program with her colleague Dr. Christian Straube. The goal of a new project launched in 2020 is to establish a civil society dialogue within the framework of the New Silk Road. “We want to gather the voices of Chinese NGOs,” she says. They know best how to push social or environmental goals through the Chinese system. “And we want to bring them together with NGOs from other countries, like Indonesia, where Belt and Road Initiative projects are being implemented.” Both sides could learn a lot from each other. This makes it easier to successfully carry out campaigns.
Joanna Klabisch devotes about a quarter of her work time to the project “Asia in the Globalized World,” in which she and her colleagues address transnational problems in publications and events. She finds this particularly exciting because the small team of the Asia House Foundation, with just six staff members, brings together expertise for East Timor, Indonesia, and Cambodia, as well as Myanmar and Thailand. It also works with the Korea Verband, the Philippinenbuero, the Nepal Dialogforum für Frieden und Menschenrechte, and the North East India Forum. “So we can cover a wide range of Asian countries with the few people we have,” Klabisch tells us. For example, the Asia House team can look at the impact of European waste exports to the Philippines or the importance of the BRI for gender justice in Nepal. Klabisch is also devoting a working group to the issue of racism and power imbalances in development cooperation.
In addition to the Covid pandemic, NGOs also face major challenges in funding projects. “Funds for China, in particular, have become very scarce at the moment.” The climate is extremely unfavorable for political and academic cooperation in Germany. Klabisch hopes that there is still room for cooperation with Chinese civil society. “Because we need them to support positive developments in China.” Jana Degener-Storr
Lockdown, finals, overtime madness? Time to take revenge! And what’s the best way to do that? Through revenge purchases, of course! China has even coined a new word for this behavioral pattern. 报复性消费 bàofùxìng xiāofèi “revenge buying” or “revenge consumption” is the name of the popular term, not unlike the English “comfort buying”. It is made up of the words for “revenge, vengeance” (报复bàofù or “revenge-like” 报复性 bàofùxìng) and “consumption, consuming” (消费 xiāofèi).
The technical term – known in our part of the world as “compensatory consumption” – made its way into everyday use thanks to Covid. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been repeated partial lockdowns and curfews in the Middle Kingdom. As is well known, this can sometimes lead to insatiable cravings, especially for shopaholics. At that time, the Internet also hardly offered relief in China, since packages were often not even delivered to high-risk areas. And when Covid barriers finally were lifted, all shopping dams broke for many. Missed purchases were made up for in a frenzy, and some clothing stores were stripped down to their mannequins.
In addition to “revenge buying,” the Chinese repertoire of revenge includes several sub-concepts. For example, “revenge consumption” (报复性吃喝 bàofùxìng chī-hē – literally “revenge-like eating and drinking”). Dairy stores and coffee chains, for example, saw sales peaks in XXL cup sizes after lockdowns were lifted. A small barbecue restaurant in Shandong even reported a customer who ordered the entire menu (!) and then had the food delivered to his home. It took the kitchen staff of three and three hours to prepare the order. Others invested their cash in nurturing their pets’ souls, which had been criminally neglected during home quarantine. Premium food and expensive treats sold like hot cakes thanks to 报复性爱宠物 bàofùxìng ài chǒngwù – “vengeful pet love”.
Some went even further and went on “revenge trips” (报复性出游 bàofùxìng chūyóu), booking expensive trips and vacations as soon as they were able to. Most of them also gave vent to their frustration with their friends. After all, they had been deprived of the well-deserved social-media-likes-induced dopamine for weeks because they simply ran out of post ideas when they were bored at home. Back in freedom, they posted what they could: from a Sichuan hotpot to a walk on the beach to a serial selfie. The Internet community called this revenge-like posting in WeChat 报复性发朋友圈 (bàofùxìng fā péngyouquān) in reference to the Chinese name for the WeChat circle of friends – 朋友圈 péngyouquān.
Meanwhile, bàofùxìng is also jokingly applied to general problems in Chinese. For example, the revenge-like late nights after phases of stress at work or school (报复性熬夜 bàofùxìng áoyè). Or revenge time-wasting on the weekend to compensate for all the time-consuming work during the week (报复性浪费时间 bàofùxìng làngfèi shíjiān). So: Keep a lookout for potential creative acts of revenge. The next opportunity is sure to arise.
Verena Menzel runs the language school New Chinese in Beijing.
