On July 7, 2021, 48 environmental and progressive advocacy groups released an open letter that “[called] on the Biden administration and all members of Congress to eschew the dominant antagonistic approach to US-China relations” in favor of “multilateralism, diplomacy, and cooperation with China to address the existential threat that is the climate crisis.” While superficially a benign call for urgency on global climate change policy, the letter was a thinly veiled admission of environmentalists’ willingness to ignore and abet Chinese Communist Party (CCP) human rights abuses to advance their climate initiatives.
The choice by some Western progressive activist groups to prioritize climate policy collaboration over confronting the CCP’s human rights violations empowers such violations while failing to recognize the interdependency of the two issues. Their refusal to acknowledge China’s abuses not only further victimizes those persecuted by the CCP but also proves counterproductive toward climate and conservation policy goals.
While the letter sidesteps naming issues like the Uyghur genocide or the wrongful detention of journalists and political dissidents, what it decries as America’s “antagonistic approach” to relations with China in large part refers to US efforts to stem the CCP’s human rights abuses. The same year the open letter was released, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that CCP policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region constituted genocide and crimes against humanity. Congress took action in 2020, passing the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. Months later, the United States levied sanctions against the former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, and other Hong Kong officials following their punitive response to protests against a policy to cede further autonomy to China.
Some American advocacy groups and environmental leaders have directly expressed their desire to avoid US-China friction on human rights violations. The anti-war group CODEPINK, a signatory of the letter, defended China’s Uyghur policy on its website in a section titled, “China is not our enemy.” It provided links to Uyghur genocide denial content and implied that China’s policies in Xinjiang are a response to terrorism, in line with CCP rhetoric justifying genocide as a defense against extremism. Omer Kanat, Executive Director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said of the letter’s dire implications, “We felt they were sacrificing Uyghurs to convince China to come to the table for climate change.”
Embedded within advocacy for eschewing human rights concerns in favor of climate policy collaboration is the near-sighted assumption that environmental policy is extricable from humanitarian and social justice issues. In reality, any effective approach to climate policy in China simply cannot avoid addressing the international reach of the CCP’s state control. Any number of policies designed to promote Chinese sustainability demonstrate the interconnectedness of environmental and social justice. For example, if environmental groups were to advocate for sustainability in the manufacturing of rayon, a semi-synthetic fabric made from eucalyptus pulp, policy efforts would have to tackle reliance on forced Uyghur labor for processing the pulp and the exploitation of Indigenous peoples and land for eucalyptus farming. In Indonesia, eucalyptus farming by pulp corporation PT Toba Pulp Lestari Tbk has led to mass deforestation and appropriation of 62,000 acres of land that local Indigenous peoples rely on for their livelihoods. Much of that eucalyptus is subsequently sent to Xinjiang for further processing—particularly because of China’s more lax policies around sustainable sourcing—where there is ample evidence of coercive and abusive labor practices being levied against Uyghurs. Clearly, then, American success at improving climate practices in China depends on a parallel effort to mitigate its multinational human rights violations.
Domestically, the two policy areas are no less interconnected: The CCP’s environmental initiatives are based on the very authoritarian ideologies that lead to its human rights violations. Beijing’s green policies often rely on draconian, poorly implemented measures that devastate the most disenfranchised rural and industrial manufacturing communities. The shutdowns of high-polluting factories have single-handedly crippled the livelihoods of low-income laborers in Hebei, while coal bans in Linfen have left households with either inadequate heating or exorbitant fines. Bans, factory shutdowns, fines, land reclamations, and intense surveillance imposed on China’s marginalized have become pillars of Beijing’s sustainable initiatives. Meanwhile, China’s top-down implementation of green policies cuts out local democratic input, leading to pushback and a lack of compliance. Protests against the policies have erupted, disrupting factories working toward goals like carbon capture and solar panel manufacturing, and provincial officials underreport emissions. Many environmental advocacy groups, especially those with offices in China, often praise the climate policy progress made by the CCP, ignoring its eco-authoritarian approach.
Moreover, Chinese climate activists who speak out against the CCP in their advocacy face harsh retribution from the state. In 2020, Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong democracy activist who is now imprisoned, shed light on the CCP’s political persecution of teen activist and climate organizer Howey Ou. The censorship and harassment of Ou exemplify China’s broader pattern of silencing independent climate activism within its borders, an issue that Western climate advocacy groups have largely ignored.
Given that the CCP has gone so far as to oppress climate advocacy within its borders, US environmental activists ought to align themselves with the policies of human rights groups. In turning a blind eye to China’s rampant human rights violations, environmental groups have failed to stay true to their mission. They have let the perceived need to court and cooperate with the aggressor obscure their stated commitment to working toward a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world. Signatories of the 2021 letter vigorously and rightfully advocate on behalf of an array of human rights issues when it is politically favorable to do so: condemning Israel’s crimes in Gaza, supporting American racial justice initiatives, and speaking out against US police brutality. Despite targeting similar structures of oppression, whether it is the mass detention of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang or the religious persecution of Buddhists in Tibet, Chinese dissidents have been consistently left out of activist discourse in the West.
Tragically, two movements with the shared goal of fighting institutional injustice find themselves alienated from and even in opposition to one another when it comes to the CCP. This is not just a moral issue but also a practical one: Western environmental groups hurt their own cause when they prop up Beijing’s repressive and ineffective climate policy by staying complicit in China’s human rights abuses. If these climate advocacy groups wish to work toward a more just and sustainable world, they must stop tolerating CCP authoritarian rule.