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Free China Movement Editorial / Policy Statement

Miles Yu’s recent critique of what he calls the dangerous mythology of “closed-door diplomacy” with the Mainland Chinese Communist Government raises a question Washington should have confronted long ago: how many broken assurances are required before policy stops treating an authoritarian regime’s promises as a substitute for verifiable conduct?

The Free China Movement welcomes the fact that increasingly prominent American policy voices are challenging assumptions that dominated United States policy toward Beijing for decades.

But this debate did not begin today.

As early as the period surrounding the 1997 Hong Kong handover, Free China activists warned that democratic governments should not assume that promises made by the Chinese Communist Party would protect freedom once political control had passed to Beijing. Contemporary media records document Shengde Lian and other democracy activists publicly opposing Hong Kong’s transfer to Communist rule.

Those concerns became even more urgent as Washington embraced a strategy based on economic integration.

In 2000, during the congressional battle over Permanent Normal Trade Relations, Free China Movement leaders were among democracy activists publicly urging Congress not to grant Beijing permanent trade treatment without meaningful political and human-rights accountability. On May 18, 2000, Shengde Lian addressed a Capitol Hill demonstration calling on Congress to reject PNTR.

Economic engagement without enforceable political conditions could strengthen the Communist system much faster than it would liberalize it.

Similar concerns were raised by Chinese democracy advocates around China’s accession to the World Trade Organization and the decision to award Beijing the Olympic Games. FCM’s exact archival record on those two episodes is still being re-verified, so this statement does not rely on an unverified claim about a specific FCM document or event.

Those questions deserve renewed examination today.

The historical argument for engagement was not irrational. Many American leaders sincerely believed that international commerce, information flows, a growing middle class and participation in global institutions would create incentives for political moderation. Others argued that engagement offered greater leverage than isolation.

History nevertheless requires policymakers to judge policies by results rather than intentions.

The Mainland Chinese Communist Government received access to global markets, investment, technology and international institutions on an unprecedented scale. Yet political liberalization did not follow the trajectory many advocates predicted. Hong Kong’s promised autonomy was progressively curtailed; repression of dissidents, religious believers and civil-society organizations continued; and the Communist Party developed far greater economic, technological and international power.

That history gives Miles Yu’s argument significance beyond one article.

The fundamental problem is not whether diplomacy with Beijing should occur. Diplomacy between governments is necessary. The problem is diplomacy based upon unverifiable assurances, secrecy and the repeated hope that the Communist Party will eventually become something fundamentally different from what its institutions and conduct demonstrate it to be.

A different standard

• Trust must be replaced by verification. Commitments involving human rights, trade, security or international agreements should have measurable benchmarks and transparent reporting.
• Engagement must carry consequences. Repeated violations cannot simply produce another round of private assurances.
• Chinese citizens must not be confused with the Communist regime that rules them. America and other democracies should deepen engagement with independent Chinese thinkers, democracy advocates, human-rights defenders, religious communities and civil society.
• Policy must look beyond managing the Communist regime and begin thinking seriously about China’s democratic future. A peaceful transition toward a free, constitutional and democratic China should be regarded as a legitimate long-term international interest rather than an unspeakable subject.
• Free China should become part of the mainstream policy conversation. Supporting the Chinese people’s right to constitutional government, political pluralism, freedom of expression and peaceful democratic change is not hostility toward China. It is confidence in the Chinese people.

FCM does not ask American policymakers to accept every conclusion offered by Chinese democracy activists.

We ask something more basic: listen to the evidence.

When people who had experienced Communist rule warned Washington in the 1990s that Beijing’s political promises should not be accepted without safeguards, their concerns were frequently treated as secondary to the optimism of the engagement era.

When democracy activists warned during the PNTR debate, and more broadly around WTO entry and the Beijing Olympics, that economic integration alone would not democratize the Communist Party, those arguments often remained outside the political mainstream. FCM’s verified public record is strongest at present for the 1997 Hong Kong and 2000 PNTR episodes; additional FCM archival verification for WTO/Olympics remains underway.

A quarter-century later, many of the assumptions behind that policy are being reconsidered across the American political spectrum.

That reconsideration is overdue.

Free China Movement therefore welcomes serious voices—including Miles Yu and others—who are willing to examine the record critically. We encourage scholars, former officials, members of Congress, administrations of either party, journalists and policy institutions to go further: study the warnings that Chinese democracy advocates made at the time, compare them with what subsequently happened, and bring the democratic future of China into mainstream policy discussion.

The strategic choice should not be reduced to accommodation with Beijing or conflict with China.

There is another possibility: a free China

A China governed by constitutional institutions rather than one-party dictatorship.

A China in which political power belongs ultimately to its citizens.

A China capable of peaceful relations with Taiwan and its neighbors because its government derives legitimacy from its own people rather than nationalism and coercion.

A China that contributes to international institutions while accepting the same rules expected of other nations.

For decades, many Western policymakers asked how to change the behavior of the Communist Party.

It is time also to ask a larger question: how can the democratic world help create the conditions in which the Chinese people themselves can peacefully determine China’s future?

That is the Free China question.

And after thirty years of misplaced confidence in authoritarian promises, it deserves a place at the center—not the margins—of the international policy debate.

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Original sources

Miles Yu, The Washington Times: “The dangerous delusion of quiet diplomacy with China”, August 31, 2026.

Miles Yu on X: Chinese-language post and framing of the article.

Source note: Miles Yu’s article and social-media post are cited as the current policy-discussion trigger. Their inclusion does not imply that every claim or formulation in the source is adopted by Free China Movement.

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Free China Movement
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 2, 2026

Free China Movement Says New York Actions for Chow Hang-tung and Hong Kong Political Prisoners Show Why June Fourth Memory and Suppressed Democratic Speech Must Be Preserved

WASHINGTON — The Free China Movement today welcomed peaceful actions by Chinese democracy activists in New York who brought the words of Hong Kong democracy advocate Chow Hang-tung and the cases of Hong Kong political prisoners into public spaces thousands of miles from the courtroom where those voices are increasingly constrained.

On August 29, participants associated with the China Democracy Party gathered in Times Square and publicly read portions of Chow Hang-tung’s mitigation statement in the Hong Kong Alliance national-security case, according to reporting based in part on information and images supplied by participants.

A separate action in Flushing organized by members of the China New Democratic Party expressed support for defendants in the Hong Kong Alliance case and other political prisoners.

The Free China Movement emphasizes that these were separate actions by separate organizations. FCM does not claim an organizational relationship with either group.

What connects them is more important: people enjoying freedom outside Hong Kong used that freedom to keep the words and experiences of people facing imprisonment inside Hong Kong from disappearing.

The Importance Is Not the Size of the Crowd

A demonstration does not become historically important simply because thousands of people attend it, nor does a small demonstration become insignificant because only a handful participate.

The more important question is: What does an action preserve, transmit and make possible?

In Hong Kong, the political environment that once allowed enormous June Fourth candlelight vigils in Victoria Park has been dismantled. The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was forced to dissolve amid national-security pressure. Its former leaders have faced years of imprisonment and prosecution.

Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho have now faced prosecution arising from the Alliance’s activities.

Under those circumstances, reading Chow’s words publicly in New York takes on meaning beyond an ordinary demonstration.

“The importance of these New York actions is not the size of the crowd. It is that words the authorities would rather contain were carried from a Hong Kong courtroom into a free public square.”

That is something authoritarian governments have historically found difficult to control.

They can restrict a courtroom. They can close an organization. They can prohibit a vigil. They can imprison an organizer. But once testimony, memory and political ideas cross borders, they become much harder to erase.

June Fourth Memory Is Part of This Struggle

The Hong Kong Alliance was inseparable from Hong Kong’s extraordinary role in preserving the memory of the June Fourth massacre.

For decades, Hong Kong citizens gathered publicly to remember those killed in Beijing in 1989 and to demand accountability and democratic reform in China.

Suppressing the Alliance therefore does not merely eliminate another political organization. It attacks an institution that helped transmit historical memory from one generation to another.

This is why the responsibility of overseas Chinese communities and democracy organizations has grown. When a vigil cannot be held in Hong Kong, it can be held elsewhere. When a political prisoner cannot address the public freely, that person’s words can be read elsewhere. When archives, testimony or historical records are endangered, copies can be preserved elsewhere. And when authorities attempt to make a political movement disappear from public memory, people living in free societies can refuse to participate in that forgetting.

“Beijing can close a courtroom door, but it should not be allowed to close the historical record. A prison sentence can restrict a person’s freedom. It must not be allowed to erase that person’s words from history.”

Overseas Democracy Organizations Have a Larger Responsibility

These New York actions also point toward an important question for the overseas Chinese democracy movement itself.

Organizations do not have to become one organization to work toward common democratic objectives. They do not have to conceal their disagreements. They do not have to exaggerate their numbers or claim relationships that do not exist.

A mature democratic movement should be capable of something more difficult: cooperation while preserving institutional independence.

Different organizations can preserve political-prisoner records, commemorate June Fourth, defend freedom of religion and expression, support democratic prisoners, document repression and respond to urgent events while remaining organizationally distinct.

That is not weakness. It is democratic pluralism in practice.

The Free China Movement believes the future strength of the Chinese democracy movement will depend not simply on individual leaders or organizations, but on whether democratic forces can develop durable institutions, trustworthy historical records and practical mechanisms for cooperation across generations, cities and countries.

From Hong Kong to New York — and Beyond

The Mainland Chinese Communist Government has succeeded in drastically narrowing the space for organized democratic activity in Hong Kong.

But repression inside one jurisdiction does not have to determine what the rest of the world remembers. Indeed, repression can create the opposite obligation.

“When democratic voices are silenced in Hong Kong, people living in freedom have a responsibility to carry those voices farther. Freedom should not end at the border where repression begins.”

The principle applies beyond Chow Hang-tung or the Hong Kong Alliance. It applies to political prisoners throughout China. It applies to independent journalists whose reporting is removed. It applies to religious believers whose communities are dismantled. It applies to lawyers whose ability to speak publicly is restricted. And it applies to the historical record of the 1989 democracy movement itself.

Every dictatorship depends, to some degree, not merely upon controlling what people can do today but upon controlling what future generations remember about yesterday.

Preserving memory is therefore not separate from democratic action. It is democratic action.

What the Free China Movement Calls For

The Free China Movement calls on overseas Chinese democracy organizations, human-rights groups, universities, libraries, archives, journalists and democratic governments to systematically preserve court statements and testimony from Hong Kong political prisoners; maintain verified records of prisoners of conscience; preserve endangered publications and organizational archives; continue public June Fourth commemorations wherever peaceful assembly remains possible; translate important testimony so that it can cross linguistic and national boundaries; and cooperate across organizations without erasing institutional independence or manufacturing political unity.

We also urge journalists not to measure the significance of overseas Chinese democratic activity only by attendance numbers.

Sometimes the historically important question is not how many people stood in a square. It is whether someone carried forward the words that another government was trying to silence.

The August 29 actions in New York did exactly that.

The Free China Movement will continue documenting those voices, preserving the historical record, and supporting peaceful efforts to ensure that China’s unfinished struggle for democracy cannot be erased by imprisonment, censorship or time.

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Related coverage
News + Editorial: New York Democracy Activists Read Chow Hang-tung’s Court Statement and Rally for Hong Kong Political Prisoners
Rapid Response: New York Actions Carry Chow Hang-tung’s Words Beyond Hong Kong

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