Jojje Olsson - Ignore China's economic muscle and condemn it for kidnapping Gui Minhai
The kidnapping of a
foreign citizen in front of accompanying diplomats constitutes a new level of
assault, even for China. If the world does not condemn it in the strongest
possible terms, it will also represent a new level of submission,
encouraging China to
continue exporting its repression abroad.
Ever since Swedish
publisher Gui Minhai was first
kidnapped in October 2015, my government’s primary focus in its relations
with China has been to increase economic cooperation. Last year, our prime
minister, Stefan Löfven, visited China with the largest Swedish trade
delegation in decades.
Yet while Löfven
claimed he had raised the issue of Gui Minhai behind closed doors, neither he
nor anyone else, uttered a single word about Gui in public. The post-trip
communique was packed with details about new trade deals and economic
cooperation. Not a single line mentioned the Swedish political prisoner who was
falling sick behind bars at a secret location far from conventions and
banquets. The quiet diplomacy
that has characterised Sweden’s handling of Gui Minhai stands in stark contrast
to the case of Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, two Swedish journalists who
were jailed in Ethiopia in 2011. Swedish ministers became personally involved in
that case almost immediately. The prime minister branded Ethiopia a
“dictatorship”.
Gui Minhai has enjoyed
no such support. Despite several requests, his daughter, Angela Gui, only
managed to speak on the phone with foreign minister Margot Wallström for the
first time at the weekend. The foreign ministry has told her not to contact the
Swedish embassy in Beijing. Last year Angela told me that Lars Fredén, the
Swedish ambassador to China until 2016, had deliberately avoided her when they
ended up at the same social event in Stockholm.
Gui was kidnapped for a second time last Saturday. But only after the story was
reported on Monday did Wallström issue a short statement calling for “the
immediate release of our fellow citizen”.
That was the first
time during Gui’s 829 days of extralegal detention that the Swedish authorities
had openly criticised China’s actions. That is, of course,
exactly the way Beijing wants it. Because shedding light on the regime’s
oppression hurts its ambitions to build its soft power to help increase the
Chinese influence in international organisations, and make overseas investments
with as little scrutiny as possible.
Several western
countries have already been brought into line by the stick and carrot of
economic cooperation. When Liu
Xiaobo received the Nobel peace prizein 2010, Beijing severed diplomatic
and trade relations with Oslo. Only after the Norwegian foreign minister in
late 2016 travelled to Beijing and read aloud a humiliating joint statement was
Norway again able to export its salmon to China... read more:
