Why will some Western companies pay a hefty price for ignoring Jiang Zemin’s brutal legacy?
Former leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Jiang Zemin has died. Western media attributed China’s economic growth to Jiang while gently touching on his human rights records, including his role during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the brutal persecution of Falun Gong.
Western media has generally associated Xi Jinping to the Maoist era and Jiang Zemin to Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up. This preferential view of Jiang has caused Western multinational companies to have played a complicit role in Jiang’s atrocities. Failure to understand Jiang’s brutal legacy will soon cost the West dearly.
Turning China into a Mass Surveillance State
Jiang Zemin initiated the Golden Shield Project — the construction of the infamous China’s Great Firewall. His son Jiang Mianheng did the actual work. But who helped the Jiangs? Western high-tech firms. American and Canadian high-tech companies helped the CCP turn China into a massive surveillance state.
According to a 2011 Stanford University study, Tsinghua University and Canada’s Nortel Networks were two organizations that spearheaded the research of the Golden Shield Project. Motorola provided wireless communication solutions; Sun Microsystems linked all 33 provincial police departments through computer networks; and Cisco Systems provided China with routers and firewalls.
Cisco has admitted its deep involvement in the project. One of its presentations acknowledged the repressive use of their technology that quoted their Chinese government buyers as saying that Cisco’s products could be used to “combat ‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles.”
The UK’s Guardian reported that Cisco provided over 60% of all routers, switches, and network gear to China and made $500 million annually from China. That was 10 years ago. But the collaboration is still ongoing.
In December 2021, two researchers specializing in cyberspace security and internet censorship at the University of Oxford and the University of Berlin published a report called “China’s Surveillance State: A Global Project.”
The project concluded that:
- Technology made by seven American companies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, continues to facilitate China’s surveillance state.
- Intel core processors are “likely being used for surveillance purposes” in Xinjiang.
- Two leading U.S. chip companies, Intel and Nvidia are involved in building the Chinese Police Command Centres.
- IBM, Intel, and Oracle are helping to build the provincial surveillance system, the very system used in monitoring people at the local level during the COVID lockdowns.
- Intel and Microsoft are helping with the “Mobile Police Terminal.”
The 2011 Stanford study said that after having developed its sophisticated internet censorship tools, China exports its technology to countries such as Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Belarus.
Pharma Firms’ Complicity in Jiang’s Organ Harvesting
On April 20, 2006, the day former CCP leader Hu Jintao visited the White House and met with President George W. Bush, two individuals by the pseudonyms of Annie and Peter held a rally and press conference in the McPherson Park behind the White House in Washington DC.
Annie was a nurse from Shenyang, Liaoning Province in northeastern China. She said at the rally that, from 2001 to 2003, over 6000 Falun Gong practitioners were detained at a camp associated with the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital (officially known as the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine) at Sujiatun, Shenyang City, and 4000 were murdered for their organs.
Annie found it out through her husband at the time, who was a surgeon at the hospital. She found him to be mentally unstable. He often had nightmares and would scream if anyone, even a loved one, touched him. Her husband later told her that he performed surgeries to remove organs from 2000 young, healthy, and living Falun Gong practitioners. Their bodies were cremated before they had even died. The man couldn’t take the brutality and wanted to quit but was threatened that if he did, his family would be in danger. Annie couldn’t take the pressure and divorced her husband.
By the time Annie spoke in DC at the rally, her ex-husband had moved to Canada and was dying from cancer. She hoped that by stepping out and exposing the atrocities she could atone for her ex-husband’s sin.
Another witness Peter was a former Chinese journalist. Peter made this statement on that day:
“In the 3 years from 2003 to now, I spent a lot of manpower, resources and money to have finally investigated a facility in Sujiatun where a large number of Falun Gong practitioners are being detained. Their corneas, internal organs including bone marrow were removed while they were alive…Even their hair was used to make wigs; their skin and body fat were sold.”
No mainstream media reported on what Annie and Peter revealed at the rally.
On July 6, 2006, two Canadians, David Kilgour, former Canadian MP, and David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, released their independent investigative report, confirming that at least 60,000 organ transplant surgeries were performed in China between 2000 and 2005, and more than 40,000 of these organs were most likely removed from Falun Gong practitioners.
The mastermind behind this atrocity was Jiang Zemin. In the early months of the persecution starting from July 1999, Jiang ordered to carry out the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in a way that “ruins their reputation, destroy them financially, and eliminate them physically.”
In June 2019, the China Tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffey Nice, who was the lead prosecutor at the trial of Slobodan Milošević in The Hague International Criminal Court, stated in its final judgment:
1. Falun Gong practitioners have been one, and probably the main source of organ supply
2. Crimes against humanity have been proven beyond reasonable doubt
3. Governments and anyone who interacts with China should recognize that they are interacting with a criminal state.
The last point however has been entirely ignored by Western businesses.
Again, Jiang’s crime would not be carried out without the pharmaceutical companies’ assistance.
A non-profit based in the Czech Republic called “Institute to Research the Crimes of Communism” published a report titled “The Economics of Organ Harvesting In China” in December 2019. It states that numerous Western medical and pharmaceutical companies are profiting from forced organ harvesting in China.
At least 20 Western companies – and possibly 28 – supply China, with the materials, drugs, and devices supporting the transplantation business, while being aware of the facts and evidence related to illegal organ harvesting. The revenue of these companies from doing so goes to billions of USD each year and shows signs of growing over the last decade.
They sell immunosuppressive drugs or medical equipment necessary to perform the operations. The report notes that China’s transplant system is effectively dependent on the import of devices for organ preservation.
Susie Hughes, executive director of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), said:
“These companies are in a very powerful position because China’s transplant industry would falter without them. It is imperative they withdraw from China immediately to help save innocent people who are being killed for their organs.”
When these pharmaceutical companies entered China, it was during Jiang’s time. To remain silent on the issue of Falun Gong was the condition Jiang demanded from any countries, organizations, or businesses who wanted the Chinese market or to build relations with China. Unfortunately, they have all complied.
One such company is British pharma GSK. It entered the Chinese market during Jiang’s time. In 2007, GSK was named Most Advanced Foreign Company in Tianjin, and in 2011, honored as one of the top 10 Most Admired Companies in China. Why did Jiang love GSK so much? Because GSK had a drug for organ transplants called Imuran.
After Xi Jinping came to power in China as the CCP leader, in September 2014 GSK was found guilty of bribery and fined nearly $500 million—the largest corporate fine ever levied in China. Former GSK China chief Mark Reilly was given a three-year suspended sentence and faced deportation.
In 2010, two World Economic Forum NGOs, the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace Switzerland, named Roche Pharmaceuticals the “most shameful company” of the year. The reason is that Roche had been selling organ transplantation drugs to the CCP for years while knowing the source of the organs was questionable. Roche and GSK were also involved in conducting clinical trials on humans in China before doing animal trials.
These companies all went to China to make money during the “good old Jiang time,” but Chinese people won’t forgive them for being complicit in Jiang’s crimes. In the ongoing trend of protests in China, these companies’ ignorance will cost them dearly.
Now that Jiang is dead, Xi Jinping is in need of money. Xi may investigate these companies for his regime’s purpose and get their wealth confiscated.
Collaboration with CCP to be self-destructive for Western companies
These high-tech companies have made tons of money from helping the Chinese communist regime build the tools to crack down on Chinese citizens or provide the means to kill them for their organs. But over the long run, they will not have a Chinese market.
The Chinese market is made up of 1.3 billion Chinese consumers. When these big multinational companies provide the means to help the communist government persecute the Chinese people, they have turned against 1.3 billion Chinese consumers. And with the way things are developing in China, Chinese people know who is on their side and who is on the CCP’s side.
In February 2001, IBM was sued in New York for its tabulation machines being used by Nazi Germany more than 50 years ago. The machine was made by IBM’s German subsidiary. The lawsuit says IBM supplied the technology that it knew would be used to ‘‘facilitate persecution and genocide.’’ The victims of Nazi oppression also brought lawsuits against European banks, insurers, and manufacturing companies.
By helping the CCP build networks that “promote persecution and genocide” and providing the tools used in the organ harvesting atrocity, those multinational companies are equally guilty. And I don’t think the Chinese will wait 50 years.
I think pharmaceutical companies should immediately stop selling these drugs and devices to China. They should donate the money they’ve made in China to the victims of organ harvesting, Falun Gong, and Uyghurs. High-tech companies, like CISCO and Microsoft, should donate a portion of their profits to organizations that develop VPN technologies in China, such as “The Internet Freedom Consortium.”
Otherwise, when the regime collapses and all the crimes CCP has committed are to be exposed, these companies won’t be given a chance to redeem themselves. They will be more than likely sued like IBM was sued by the Holocaust survivors.
These companies should wake up now. Otherwise, their losses will be tremendous.
