THE DISAPPEARED China’s global kidnapping campaign. By Zach Dorfman
Before he disappeared
from his luxury apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong on Jan. 27,
2017, Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian billionaire, favored female bodyguards.
Why, exactly, was unclear: Perhaps he simply liked being surrounded by women;
perhaps he trusted them more than men. Whatever the reason,
those guards weren’t much help when a group of mysterious men showed up at his
apartment that January day and took him away. According to anonymous sources
who viewed the hotel’s internal video feed and later spoke to the New York Times, Xiao, who may have been sedated, was rolled
through the Four Seasons lobby in a wheelchair, a sheet covering his head. He
was then reportedly loaded onto a boat and ferried to the Chinese mainland.
In what has become a
familiar script for such disappearances, an initial police report filed by a
family member was quickly withdrawn, and Xiao later issued a statement denying
that he had been kidnapped. More than one year later, he remains in mainland
China, and though he has not yet been charged with any crime, his businesses,
under government direction, are expected to sell almost $24 billion in investments, which will
reportedly be used to repay state banks.
Such stories are not
unique. In October 2015, Chinese government operatives kidnapped Gui Minhai, a
Hong Kong-based book publisher and bookstore owner, from his apartment in
Thailand. Months later, Gui, a Swedish citizen, resurfaced in China, declaring
on state television that he had turned himself in to face decade-old drunk
driving charges. Gui’s colleague, Lee Bo, a dual Chinese-British national, also
appears to have been kidnapped in Hong Kong in December 2015 by Chinese
security forces and brought back to the Chinese mainland.
Over the years, the
cases have started to pile up. In 2002, Wang Bingzhang, a prominent
pro-democracy activist, was seized in Vietnam by Chinese operatives and thrown
into prison on the mainland, where he remains to this day. Two years later,
another well-known dissident, Peng Ming, was kidnapped in Myanmar and jailed in
China; in late 2016, he died under suspicious circumstances in prison. Now, however,
Beijing’s policy of forcibly repatriating people it considers Chinese nationals
— some of whom are in fact citizens of other countries — appears to be
accelerating. Powerful businessmen, ex-Chinese Communist Party officials,
dissidents, and activists have all been targeted as part of what Western
intelligence officials say appears to be a large-scale campaign.
These abductions have
become prevalent enough that officials at the U.S. State Department are growing
concerned — though they have yet to raise the subject formally with Beijing.
The issue “is being talked constantly about at the top,” says one current State
official, who has asked not to be named because they are not authorized to
speak publicly on the issue. The official notes a recent cable focusing
specifically on Chinese renditions in Southeast Asia.
China is not alone in
such policies. After 9/11, in what came to be known as “extraordinary
rendition,” the United States apprehended scores of foreign nationals accused
of terrorism, many of whom it then sent to third countries for harsh treatment,
including torture — a policy that soon ignited ferocious domestic and
international criticism. But China’s kidnappings appear to be almost
exclusively focused on current or former Chinese citizens living abroad who are
suspected of corruption-related offenses or more nebulous political crimes... read more:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-renditions-kidnapping/
