The following is from an article on the front page of the Sankei Shimbun on January 3.
China threatens Swedish newspapers.
Europe's eyes turn to Japan.
While democracies are suffering from the spread of the new coronavirus from Wuhan, China is flaunting the "superiority of its authoritarian regime" by claiming that it has suppressed the infection on its own.
The self-righteousness of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) threatens Europe's universal values of freedom and democracy. This sense of crisis forces Europe to look beyond the geographical distance to the "Indo-Pacific" and Japan as bulwarks of democracy.
China, which wants to export 'non-free speech,' is testing in Sweden to see how much pressure it will yield. But they can't silence me.'
Kurd Bakshi, 55, a journalist in Sweden specializing in China's human rights issues, told me in a telephone interview late last year.
The "pressure" refers to the coarse and intimidating "spokesman's statements" by the local Chinese embassy condemning local journalists and intellectuals' speech over the crackdown on human rights in Xinjiang, the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and Hong Kong.
Since 2018, 71 of these have been counted, five of which have targeted Bakshi.
Bakshi was targeted because he defended Gui Minhai, a shareholder of the parent company of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay Bookstore, which was forced to close after handling books critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
Since 2006, when the Chinese authorities detained Gui, Baxi has been writing articles for local newspapers calling for the freedom of Gui, who is also a Swedish citizen.
A spokesman's statement said, "We were shocked by his (Bakshi's) ignorance and insanity. We strongly condemn his extreme and unscrupulous anti-China behavior" (September 2019) and smeared him.
He urged newspapers and other local media to self-censor, saying, "It would be better not to give any chance of publicity to his shoddy conduct.
In 1766, Sweden became the first country to abolish censorship and enshrine freedom of the press in its constitution.
The people of Sweden are proud of their tradition of "freedom of the press," and they strongly opposed China's attack on their speech, which seemed to challenge their high freedom level.
China continues to attack the democratic values that Europe has defended through economic pressure and suppression of speech,' said Patrick Oksanen, a senior researcher at the Stockholm Free World Forum, a Swedish think tank.
China seeks to divide Central and Eastern Europe.
Sweden is not alone.
China's ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, wrote on the Chinese embassy's website last spring, "The spread of (the new corona) in Western Europe is due to individualism and egoism.
The European Union (EU) has been relying on China for global warming measures and the Iran nuclear agreement, which the U.S. has backed away from due to deteriorating relations with the Trump administration.
It has also refrained from imposing sanctions like the U.S. for human rights violations in Hong Kong and the Uighur.
However, the European countries' patience is wearing thin as China's moves to trample on the progress it has made in seeking European integration based on the fundamental values of freedom and democracy have become apparent.
China is also trying to divide Central and Eastern Europe by cutting them off.
In 2012, after the European debt crisis triggered by the Greek debt crisis in 2009, China established the "16+1" framework for economic cooperation with 16 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and other regions suffering from economic stagnation.
Under Xi Jinping's administration, it poured China's money into constructing ports and railroads through the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, a vast economic zone.
With the addition of Greece, the "17+1" has been meticulously penetrated.
Among them, Hungary and Poland, which lean toward authoritarianism, have shown a marked disregard for freedom and democracy by tightening media restrictions under the pretext of measures against the new corona.
Reinhard Bütikofer, the EU Parliament's representative about China, is increasingly concerned about China's penetration of Europe, which could plant the seeds of authoritarianism in the region.
'Because of China's aggressive diplomacy, Europe's view of China has become the harshest since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.'
Bütikofer stressed that the EU should increase its cooperation with Asia-Pacific countries such as Japan, which value democracy and the rule of law.
To "counter the dominance of the Indo-Pacific powers," he said.
This article continues.
