Chinese authorities arrested 726,000 people last year, a jump of 47.1% from the previous year, the country’s chief prosecutor told the National People’s Congress that ended Monday amid a crackdown on crimes linked to “hostile foreign forces.”
Authorities also formally prosecuted 1.688 million people last year, up 17.3%, Chief Prosecutor Ying Yong said.
Ying said more than 2.4 million people were “arrested or prosecuted” last year for offenses related to “national security,” although he didn’t provide a breakdown for each category.
The Chinese authorities have typically employed a highly elastic definition of what constitutes a state secret, and national security charges are frequently leveled at journalists, rights lawyers and activists, often based on material they posted online.
The ruling Communist Party blames “hostile foreign forces” for the “white paper” protests that spread across the country in November 2022 as people vented their anger and frustration, holding up blank sheets of paper as a symbol of what they can’t say, about Xi Jinping’s three-year long zero-COVID policy.
It also claims that foreign forces were behind waves of mass popular protest in Hong Kong against national security legislation, patriotic education and extradition to mainland China in recent years.
“The explosion of these numbers is either due to a rise in social resistance during the past year, or it’s due to the Communist Party itself, which may be acting to maintain stability, catch spies … to ward off a crisis.”
www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-arrests-hostile-foreign-forces-03112024204531.html