God help us from the Communist Party’s idea of ‘ethics’

Xi Jinping called for a new world order mapped out by China at the Boao Forum, or Davos by the sea, on Tuesday. 

Hours later, an influential report backed by the Vatican showed what that would look like when it comes to religious freedom.

It also illustrated the true cost of President Xi’s repressive Communist Party regime and the “atrocities” it is prepared to commit to strangle the right of peaceful worship.

“Atrocities [against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang] have reached such a scale that a growing number of experts describe them as genocide,” the Religious Freedom in the World Report, stated.

Before the 800-page study was released, Xi was delivering a keynote address via video to an all-star audience on the tropical island of Hainan. 

At the heart of his speech was that there was no place for “ideological confrontation” and that the global governance “rules should not be imposed on others.”

Even, it appears, when it comes to human rights.

The facts:

• The Religious Freedom in the World Report was compiled by Aid to the Church in Need International.
• It is a worldwide Catholic charity that investigates violations of religious freedom.
• Human rights groups and the United Nations have expressed grave concerns about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims.
• They point to allegations of torture, forced labor and sexual abuse of nearly 1.4 million men and women held in Xinjiang internment camps. 
• The European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have taken concerted action against China for human rights violations.
• China has called the “genocide” allegations “lies.”

What was said: “The apparatus of repression constructed by the Chinese Communist Party in recent years is … fine-tuned, pervasive, and technologically sophisticated,” the Aid to the Church in Need International report said.

Crimes against humanity: “Amid growing international condemnation, [China] continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement last month.

Smear campaign: “The few Western forces smearing and slandering China should know that the era of interfering in China’s internal affairs with made-up stories or fabricated lies has ended, never to return,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, as reported by the official Xinhua News Agency, in March.

Delve deeper: Xi’s master plan to overhaul global governance rules was trumpeted by the fiercely nationalistic and state-owned Global Times earlier this week. 

Ethical mumbo jumbo: “The world needs a political enlightenment movement to break free from the mind suffocation created by the US and to clarify the most basic international ethics,” Global Times said in an editorial this week. Obviously, “basic international ethics” fail to include religious freedom and human rights.

China Factor comment: Beijing has tried to spin its oppressive policies by accusing major Western democracies of “lying.” But when you strip away the usual Party propaganda, China looks to be boxed in a corner after believing that trade would trump human rights. The red tide might be slowly turning.