The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny – and where do we go from here?

In this talk, Benedict Rogers will take the audience through his personal journey and the key messages of his his new book, The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny (Optimum Publishing International, 2022), and will then engage in exploring what the international community should do now to address the challenge that Beijing poses to the world.

The book weaves together his own personal journey with China together with an in-depth analysis of the human rights crisis across the country today, and ends with a final chapter on what the international community should do to confront the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime’s intensifying repression at home and aggression abroad.

The book charts his journey from teaching English in Qingdao at the age of 18 three years after the Tiananmen Square massacre and working as a journalist in Hong Kong for the first five years after the handover to becoming a human rights activist and then being denied entry to Hong Kong, receiving numerous anonymous threats and a warning from the Hong Kong Police Force that his work with Hong Kong Watch, based in London, could violate Hong Kong’s National Security Law and lead to a prison sentence.

The book also draws on first-hand interviews with dissidents, survivors, activists and experts, to describe the crackdown on civil society, bloggers, lawyers and human rights defenders across China under Xi Jinping’s rule, as well as the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms, the genocide of the Uyghurs, atrocities in Tibet, the persecution of Christians and Falun Gong, forced organ harvesting, the threats to Taiwan and China’s relations with the dictatorships in neighbouring Myanmar and North Korea. 

About the speaker

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist specialising in Asia, particularly China, Hong Kong, Myanmar, North Korea and Indonesia. For almost 30 years Benedict has been associated with the international human rights organisation CSW, specialising in religious freedom, previously serving as CSW’s East Asia Team Leader and now as CSW’s Senior Analyst for East Asia. He is also the co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch, a member of the advisory group of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an advisor to Stop Uyghur Genocide Campaign, and has served on the boards of several other charities.

He is the author of seven books, including his latest, The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny, and three on Myanmar, including Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads (Penguin/Random House, 2^nd edition 2015), and numerous human rights reports. He has travelled extensively in Asia, including more than 50 visits to China and at least 50 visits to Myanmar and its borders, and in 2010 visited North Korea with a parliamentary delegation. He lived in Hong Kong for 5-years from 1997-2002, and first went to China in 1992 to teach English in Qingdao for 6-months, aged 18. He lived in Washington, DC from 2003-2004, and is now based in London.

Ben is a regular contributor to international media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, Foreign Policy and The Diplomat, has testified before the US Congress, the European Parliament and the UK Parliament and is a regular speaker at conferences and in the media around the world. He is the recipient of the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit’s award for Champion of Effective Advocacy, and the International Catholic Legislators Network (ICLN)’s St Thomas More Award for advocacy for freedom of religion or belief. He holds an MA in China Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Chair: Professor Steve Tsang (Director, SOAS China Institute)

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. 

Please note that this seminar is taking place on campus and will not be recorded or live-streamed.

Organiser

SOAS China Institute

Contact

• Email: sci@soas.ac.uk