Free Trade has Failed to Reform China

The promise of allowing China to enter “most favored nation status” in 1980 and entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 was predicated on the notion that insurgent free markets would revolutionize and liberate the largest communist nation in the world. The economic reality of 2025 is that this project has largely failed. Dictator Xi of China embodies one of the most hardline manifestations of Communist Party power in a generation. Previous reforms are now repealed and a pattern of internal and global human rights abuses are better funded than ever and rationalized in a growing technological network of propaganda.

Arguably the clearest indication of human rights failure in China for the 21st century is the massive abuse of capital punishment. Amnesty International in April asserted that China continues to lead the world in this violent act and the past year was the most extensive use of the penalty since 2015. It is likely that the thousands of people killed every year by the Communist government of China dwarf their global rivals in this civil abuse as committed by nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. The dearth of details in the most recent report about these killings demonstrates that the insularity of the Chinese state has increased. Credible reports of organ harvesting in Chinese prisons remain.

Genocide remains a serious and egregious mode of conduct by the Beijing government. The well-documented genocide of Uighurs continues unabated after an embarrassing 1936 Berlin-style rationalization of this mass murder at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, where the government audaciously paraded a Uighur torchbearer at opening ceremonies and then abruptly dropped him from actual competition. Chinese government minders violently disrupted media broadcasts during the games to maintain the faulty image of a politically pristine super-state. The ongoing nature of genocidal crimes against the Uighurs were again acknowledged recently by the International Bar Association.

China betrayed the democratic character of Hong Kong when it took over the former British holding and draconian limits on free speech and protest are accepted as the new normal. China continues to escalate its violent plans to overthrow the independent government and nation of Taiwan. There is evidence that China sends soldiers to fight against democratic Ukraine in alliance with Russia.

The millions of deaths resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic remain one of the most important atrocities of the current era. Multiple international intelligence agencies confirm that the virus originated in the military research lab at Wuhan. Chinese officials strongarmed propaganda about the virus not being airborne from the outset of infections. The communist government banned internal travel within China while allowing international travel in 2019 and 2020. All this points to malicious military-based misconduct with catastrophic consequences experts warned about for decades regarding gain of function research. China faces no serious penalties for the deaths of more than 7 million people. The government of China falsely brags that only 83,000 people in China died from the virus when almost certainly more than a million people died.

China’s economic advantages are predicated upon a range of labor mistreatment that utilizes everything from slavery to severe worker abuse. Their current propaganda efforts focus upon convincing the United States that no one is willing to endure the same level of suffering as a Chinese laborer. These decades-long processes compound to create a dystopian ecological nightmare that threatens vast segments of the urban water supply and make air pollution a catastrophic health threat for tens of millions of Chinese residents. All these ecological sacrifices allow the government of China to co-opt strategic industries ranging from solar panels to electric cars. Every global economic expert is aware of these strategic refusals to protect the environment but the idea that financial penalties should be paid in a manner commensurate to the Paris Climate accords is explicitly exempted from future political realities. 2024 set a record for new coal-fired plants built in China — almost 100 gigawatts. This happens while most of the world is compelled to mothball and remove all coal-fired plants. All this adds up to anything but “Free trade.”

Chinese exports to the world on an annual basis are valued at about $3.5 trillion. This is a substantial financial boon to the Communist Party of China that exclusively controls the political order of more than one billion domestic citizens. China’s pursuit of authoritarian domination has not diminished and expresses itself in a growing sophistication of internet-driven artificial intelligence designed to mislead the global public about almost any public matter of interest to the government of China. Cybercrimes, covert and overt business espionage, false imprisonment, and a global regime of intimidation for its citizens abroad are an increasingly deep and evident surface of China’s global public malice. It is time to initiate a truer realm of “free trade” that aims more to free the people of China than the government of China.

Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He his the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, and genocide. His 2014 book — Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text and 2021 book — Debate as Global Pedagogy: Rwanda Rising — explain the vital necessity of communication openness to solve entrenched political problems.

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