Your right to protest the CCP is at risk
Trump/Rubio are cracking down on speech they deem contrary to “foreign policy.” Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kongers should worry they’re next
The Trump Administration is restricting freedom of expression in the United States by penalizing the right to protest on the grounds it is contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Take the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia university student with a green card and a U.S. citizen spouse who the Administration is seeking to deport. Secretary of State Marco Rubio authorized his arrest on a law that that provides that “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable” (emphasis mine). Rumeysa Öztürk, the Tufts student seized off the street by hooded agents, is another case.
Khalil was protesting Israel’s conduct in the war on Gaza. Thus, the Trump Administration is asserting that criticism of the Israeli government is not protected speech and punishable under U.S. law. As Rubio wrote, “The foreign policy of the United States champions core American interests and American citizens and condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective.”
There are several heinous wrongs here: 1. The erroneous (and dangerous) conflation of legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism (which serves to devalue real antisemitism), 2. The deceitful characterization of expressions of sympathy for Palestinian lives as (in Trump’s words) “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity,” and 3. The denial of First Amendment protections afforded to non-citizens (including green card holders like Khalil), per the Supreme Court.
My focus here is on the foreign policy basis for penalization, and the dangerous consequences that entails.
Because foreign policies change. Take the once-durable bipartisan support for NATO for almost eight decades and the bipartisan enmity toward Vladimir Putin for two. Donald Trump has done a 180 on both.
And President Trump can flip on China too. As I have been documenting on Unexemptional, Trump shares ideological and behavioral similarities with Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders. He admires Xi’s ability to rule with an “iron fist.” Since taking office,
Trump has taken actions beneficial to CCP interests (see: “The GOP’s gifts to the CCP: a list”): eliminating foreign aid (reducing America’s soft power), de-funding China human rights NGOs, attacking democracy-promoting institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Institute of Peace and Freedom House, and more.
China watchers are anxious about Trump’s expected visit to Beijing this summer. We know President Trump is transactional. We know he wants a Grand Deal with China. The question is what Xi Jinping will demand in return for what Trump wants. It is well documented that the CCP works to shut down criticism of China overseas, whether through official channels or United Front activity.
A prime example is what happened at the APEC Summit in San Francisco in 2023. Chinese officials hired local security guards and recruited tough guys to harass and physically restrict protests by Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uyghurs and others critical of PRC policies. Plus, their acts of transnational repression to shut down dissent in other countries.
It’s not hard to imagine Xi demanding that Trump clamp down on such protests in the U.S. as part of a deal. It is likely that Trump would acquiesce, given his personal dislike of dissent and use of the powers of the state to target those who dissent. At the next APEC summit, it might be American federal agents beating up protestors rather than China-hired thugs.
It becomes easy to imagine that, after Trump and Xi strike a deal, the Trump Administration deems those who criticize the Chinese government as creating serious adverse foreign policy consequences, instructing state security forces to target them for deportation or other penalty.
Non-violent protest has been a hallmark of the Tibetan cause for decades. Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Falun Gong, Southern Mongolians and Chinese people do this too. They have been able to enjoy the rights to freedom of expression and assembly in the United States -- rights denied to them in their homelands.
But for how long? The Trump Administration has been hacking away at freedom of expression, using the power of the state to coerce universities, media outlets and government grantees to limit speech to conform to his politics. His Party is accelerating these restrictions through legislation at the federal and state level.
Tibetans, Uyghurs and Hong Kongers shouldn’t assume they are safe to protest as long as they are citizens. Trump has publicly floated the idea of seizing American citizens and sending them to a Salvadoran Gulag for acts of expression he doesn’t like.
What options do Tibetans, Uyghur and Hong Kongers have?
They can keep their head down and be silent to avoid being targeted, hoping that Rubio won’t betray them this time despite all the other ways he’s betrayed them, and hoping that Stephen Miller somehow excludes them from the White Nationalist target list. Or,
They can speak up for Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk in principled defense of freedom of expression, knowing that when one person’s fundamental rights are abridged, everyone’s rights are at risk.
That is their call to make, not mine. Each community and individual has to make their own risk assessment, especially if they are in a vulnerable position (such as having a student visa or an asylum seeker work authorization).
Each of these communities has their heroes: people who stood up bravely on principle and for a cause larger than themselves, knowing that doing so would land them in prison or worse:
Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong newspaper publisher who sits in solitary confinement in jail for exercising freedom of the press to defend Hong Kong’s democracy.
Tashi Wangchuk, the Tibetan cultural rights advocate who got a five-year sentence for asking authorities to preserve the Tibetan language.
Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economist given a life sentence for saying that Uyghurs deserved autonomous rights the Chinese government promised.
Diaspora groups repeatedly praise the bravery of Lai, Wangchuk and Tohti for standing up for fundamental human rights. Are diaspora members in the United States willing to exhibit this same bravery?
Or are they staying mum, fearing retribution by the state? But isn’t fear of retribution by the state a key reason they label the Chinese government as authoritarian? And if they’re experiencing fear of retribution in the United States, what does that say about our government under Trump? And if that means our country is sliding into authoritarianism, isn’t that also worth a measure of bravery to resist?
Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk aren’t isolated cases. It won’t end with them. Anyone with a stake in safeguarding the right to protest (and that is all of) should be speaking out in their defense.