The Global Chinese Anaconda
Rana Siu Inboden, May 12, 2025
Scholar Perry Link famously referred to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the “anaconda in the chandelier” whose omnipresent monitoring meant that the Chinese people often engaged in self-censorship or preemptive obedience, avoiding saying or doing things that might get them on the wrong side of the Chinese government. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) now extends its surveillance and control activities globally and the anaconda now hovers above people outside of China’s borders. In addition to the Chinese government’s well-documented use of transnational repression to surveil, harass, and intimidate dissidents overseas, the Chinese government is utilizing other more subtle but still damaging tactics to control and censor beyond China’s borders.
The PRC’s reach was felt at a film screening I attended recently in New York across the street from the United Nations (UN) headquarters. The film, “Reeducated,’ depicts the lives of three men during their detention in China’s infamous re-education camps where over 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have been detained in conditions that are so severe that many survivors emerge with life-long trauma and physical disabilities. China’s letter, which was sent to all foreign missions to the UN, stated that PRC permanent mission “has the honor to express our resolute opposition to this event and strongly recommend your mission not to participate in this anti-China event.” The letter attempted to paint a rosy picture of life in Xinjiang, claiming that “the political, economic and cultural rights of people of all ethnic groups are fully guaranteed.” Yet, survivor testimony, satellite images, photographs, and leaked government documents indicate mass and arbitrary detention under harsh conditions that according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The Chinese government’s intimidating letter is an example of how the Chinese government is using many of its domestic control tactics abroad. For example, the CCP’s use of omnipresent propaganda and pervasive restrictions on freedom of expression domestically are being employed overseas. Beijing is exploiting rules that allow non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to participate in UN proceedings to fill civil society speaking slots with government organized NGOs (GONGOs) who make pro-PRC statements. A report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that the majority of civil society statements made at the UN on China contain pro-Chinese government content.
Just as China issued a note to foreign missions not to attend the “Reeducated” film screening, the PRC uses a similar tactic to elicit positive statements during the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Last year, prior to its UPR, the Chinese mission sent a letter to other government missions in Geneva urging them to participate in the UPR and offer statements that praised China. This resulted in the majority of countries offering vague, anodyne or adulatory statements while only a minority raised violations against ethnic Uyghurs, Hong Kong activists, and human rights lawyers. Similarly, China is spending billions of dollars on efforts to “tell China’s story well” overseas, especially in Africa. In Latin America, Beijing’s multipronged strategy to control information on China includes influencers for China Global Television Network, purchases of regional media by the PRC’s state run media outlets and cooptation of regional news outlets.
But the PRC is not merely filling the information sphere with pro-PRC propaganda, Beijing is increasingly pressuring others to echo its views. In the UN’s NGO Committee Beijing consistently blocks the applications of any NGOs whose websites includes mention of Taiwan without listing Taiwan as a part of the PRC. NGOs that want to secure UN consultative status are forced to scrub their websites of any mention of Taiwan as well as other content that runs afoul of Beijing’s positions. As part of its campaign to “turn China’s words into global words,” China is embedding party slogans and rhetoric into UN resolutions, press statements and speeches. For example, China is working to get elements of Xi Jinping’s words and Xi Jinping Thought, such as “win-win cooperation” and “a community of shared future for humankind” embedded into UN resolutions and endorsement of China’s Global Development Initiative in remarks by the UN Secretary General. These CCP slogans are not mere words. They contain concepts, such as protecting human rights only via cooperation rather than accountability, elevating development over human rights, and aligning our views with China’s in this “shared future.”
UN officials and NGOs are not the only ones being forced to align with China. In 2018, when Marriott included Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong and Macau on its website as individual nations, the hotel chain was forced to apologize to China as it faced the shutdown of its website and the threat of an investigation by the Chinese government.
The Chinese people living under the gaze of the anaconda face the risk of government repression, such as the life-long jail sentences that Uyghur scholars Ilham Tohti and Rahile Dawut received merely for their focus on Uyghur studies. Many, including pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai, human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, and Pastor Wang Yi, have been subjected to trumped up criminal charges and sentences, and numerous other dissidents have suffered arbitrary detention, forced disappearances and torture. For most of us outside China, while the global Chinese anaconda is present, we can resist the controls China seeks to exert. The willingness of the organizers and audience to attend the film screening despite the Chinese government’s warning is one way we can stand with those in China by using our freedom to defy China’s dictates.
Dr. Rana Siu Inboden is a Senior Fellow with the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin.
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