'A sinister new law brings Chinese repression to Britain’s doorstep', Benedict Rogers
From tomorrow, Beijing will be empowered to pursue critics anywhere in the world – and I’m one of them
A new law takes effect in China tomorrow which may become a tool of genocide and a weapon of transnational repression. The Orwellian-sounding “Ethnic Unity and Progress Law” will achieve the very antithesis of its name. It amounts to one of the most dangerous and draconian in a long line of repressive laws imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
For a start, it is an explicit mandate for Beijing to pursue critics of Chinese policy wherever they live. Article 10 states that “matters of ethnic unity and progress are not to be interfered with by foreign forces. All acts using excuses such as ethnicity, religion, or human rights to insult or disparage, contain and suppress, or infiltrate and undermine the PRC are to be resolutely opposed”.
More ominously, according to Article 63: “organizations and individuals outside the [mainland] territory of the PRC that commit acts aimed at the PRC that undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division are to be pursued for legal responsibility in accordance with the law”.
In other words, the reach of China’s criminal justice system will extend around the globe. Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Kong and Chinese dissident diaspora communities abroad will likely be first to be targeted.
Over recent years Beijing’s campaign of transnational repression has intensified. Bounties have been placed on exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activists’ heads. Chinese diplomats assaulted a peaceful Hong Kong protester outside China’s Manchester consulate. And CCP thugs attacked peaceful demonstrators in San Francisco during Xi Jinping’s visit.
Some, like former Hong Kong district councillor Carmen Lau in Britain and former legislator Ted Hui in Australia, have been targeted with sexually explicit abuse. Earlier this month, two men working for the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London were jailed for conducting a campaign of surveillance and harassment against Hong Kong exiles. This new law is likely to make such threats more common.
Even for me, while I have not faced the same dangers as those in the diaspora, the risks are increasing.
In 2017, I became one of the first Westerners to be denied entry to Hong Kong on the orders of Beijing. Five years later, I received a letter at my home in London from the Hong Kong police threatening me with a jail sentence for violating the territory’s national security law. I was targeted due to my work as co-founder of Hong Kong Watch.
In the trial of Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old Hong Kong media entrepreneur who was sentenced earlier this year to 20 years in jail, I was named 95 times for collaborating with him in pro-democracy activities.
I have received dozens of anonymous, threatening letters at my home in London, as has my mother who lives in a different part of the country. My neighbours have also received anonymous letters urging them to watch me. And about six weeks ago, an unknown Chinese lady turned up unexpectedly outside my home one morning to take photos of me.
While I have never sought to “insult” China as a country, nor “undermine ethnic unity or progress”, I criticise China’s policies every day, because I believe in freedom and human rights and because I love the people of China and do not want them to be persecuted. Under this new law, I will be a serial offender.
In addition to it being used to target our own citizens, the world’s democracies should also be concerned about the way this new law will accelerate the CCP’s genocidal campaign of forced assimilation.
Within the territories under Beijing’s control, the new law will compel all teaching and public communication to be conducted primarily in Mandarin, with indigenous languages of the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and other non-Han Chinese ethnic populations severely restricted.
It will require religious institutions to spread CCP propaganda, further advancing Xi Jinping’s campaign of “Sinicization” of religion – launched a decade ago and designed to coerce, co-opt and corrupt religion into the CCP’s fold.
It is the latest sign of the eradication of non-Han language and culture. More than a million Tibetan children have been forcibly transferred into boarding schools to be brainwashed, forced to speak Mandarin and denied the right to practice Buddhism or celebrate their culture. Similar repression has been aimed at the Uyghurs and ethnic Mongolians.
Meanwhile, there’s been an intensifying crackdown on unregistered Christian churches. In recent months several Protestant churches have been raided, their leaders jailed and worshippers detained and harassed. This persecution will only intensify under the new law.
China is also ratcheting up its aggression against Taiwan. One should make no mistake about the primary target of this law: one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies, an island under increasing threat from Xi Jinping, an economy upon which the world depends for semi-conductors. It is in all our interests to stand with Taiwan.
It is no coincidence that the law takes effect on the 29th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China. It is also the sixth anniversary of the imposition by Beijing of the draconian national security law on Hong Kong, which has shredded the city’s freedoms and landed thousands in jail.
The new law will turbo-charge the repression which Xi Jinping has unleashed throughout China over the past decade, and spread it well beyond China’s borders.
This week we had news that China’s controversial new London embassy – in the historic old Royal Mint, opposite the Tower of London – may have cells in its basement to imprison dissidents. If the new embassy plans – currently under judicial review – proceed, Beijing could well point to the new law as justification for holding critics in its dungeons.
I don’t wish to end up in the Tower of London or in torture chambers across the road, nor do I want to see my diaspora friends there. So it is time for Britain, and all democracies, to stand up to Beijing, rebuke this thuggery, and defend our values and the security of our citizens.
This article was published in The Telegraph on 30 June 2026.
Photo: Voice of America, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons