Beijing’s Crackdown Intensifies: Dissidents Vanish, U.S. Goods Tainted by Forced Labor

Paul Riverbank, 12/11/2025Inside China’s escalating crackdowns: vanished dissidents, forced labor, censored voices, and resilient hope.

Take the situation in Shanghai. Attorneys there know too well that defending someone accused of “spreading rumors” or “illegal assembly” is a game played on a razor’s edge. One lawyer, who asked to stay anonymous, whispered, “Sensitive cases can get you blacklisted. The authorities, they quietly remind us—either you follow the rules or you lose your license.” Elsewhere, in Beijing and Shandong, that unspoken threat grows into outright intimidation, with annual license reviews serving as a tool for authorities to keep the legal community in check. Each year, the margins for dissent seem to tighten, like a noose.

The arrests span a wide cast: young people who held up blank pieces of paper in 2022—an act of silent defiance—now awaiting closed-door verdicts; church groups in Anyang told by security officers to dismantle their gatherings if they refuse to fold into state-controlled “Three-Self” churches. “These days, if it’s not a blood relative, you risk someone calling the police just for being present,” a pastor told me, his voice low. He gestures at the walls of his apartment, as if expecting them to listen.

Censorship, too, is seldom subtle anymore. Ask Lyu, a social media user who watched government censors erase his WeChat and Weibo accounts—sometimes overnight, sometimes in broad daylight, depending on the posts. On these networks, words like “democracy,” “freedom,” or even mild criticism are enough to prompt a quiet digital erasure, as though the person behind them never existed at all.

A pattern emerges, noted not just by families and rights groups but by outside observers. Last week’s Congressional-Executive Commission on China report calls the government’s turn away from its own legal commitments “more feature than bug.” The ink has long dried on treaties like the Convention Against Torture or the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Yet inside detention centers and labor camps, evidence tells a different story—a story of promises made, then broken in secret.

Americans, too, find themselves tangled in this web. Seafood labeled “product of China” has, in some cases, been traced back to ships where North Korean fishermen worked in conditions that resemble indentured servitude. Xinjiang’s sprawling factory complexes produce everything from cotton shirts to instant coffee for shelves in U.S. stores. “Forced labor is in our supply chains, whether we want to admit it or not,” explained one commission investigator. Meanwhile, researchers and students enter China for conferences, only to discover years-old social media posts can now serve as grounds for an exit ban. Diplomatic missions, once bastions of dialogue, now stand accused of harassment and political interference far from home.

The machinery of control has only grown more efficient. Since 2023, China’s leaders rolled out new social oversight bureaus—a kind of parallel governance meant to drive out “illegal organizations.” The United Front Work Department expands its footprint, not just in major cities but in distant towns, overseeing everything from Catholic masses to the schooling of Uyghur children. Cultural expression fares little better: artist Gao Zhen’s reflections on the Cultural Revolution have become unsanctioned history, while Mongolian and Uyghur children learn to keep their mother tongue quiet, even in the playground.

None of this is lost on the people who spend their lives defending basic rights. Voices from the United Nations remind us that the desire for dignity knows no borders. “The right to live safely, to study, to speak—these aren’t abstract ideals,” Astrid Van Genderen Stort of the UN Human Rights Office told me. “They’re woven into daily life: the water we drink, the books we’re allowed to read, the future we imagine for our children.”

For all the solemn reports and somber figures (adult literacy up globally since 1950, yet millions without names or nations), it’s the small, everyday actions—someone lighting a candle, or writing a name on a blank sheet of paper—that sketch the true contours of human rights. Crackdowns, however relentless, haven’t silenced the calls for change. Families in Beijing, activists in Anyang, lawmakers across the ocean—they keep pushing.

They know, as do we, that every broken promise on human rights leaves a footprint not just in China, but in the world beyond. And in the quiet spaces between arrests and erasures, there remains hope, fragile but persistent, that the truth still gets out—and, perhaps, one day, is heard.

In the days leading up to International Human Rights Day, China’s uneasy silence grows unmistakable. It starts quietly enough: a daughter’s unanswered call, an email that bounces back, a young man’s dorm room suddenly empty. By the time word filters out, families are already wrestling with a familiar sense of dread. Their loved ones—lawyers, writers, students—are missing again, or worse, trapped inside ghostly, shuttered courts.Take the situation in Shanghai. Attorneys there know too well that defending someone accused of “spreading rumors” or “illegal assembly” is a game played on a razor’s edge. One lawyer, who asked to stay anonymous, whispered, “Sensitive cases can get you blacklisted. The authorities, they quietly remind us—either you follow the rules or you lose your license.” Elsewhere, in Beijing and Shandong, that unspoken threat grows into outright intimidation, with annual license reviews serving as a tool for authorities to keep the legal community in check. Each year, the margins for dissent seem to tighten, like a noose.The arrests span a wide cast: young people who held up blank pieces of paper in 2022—an act of silent defiance—now awaiting closed-door verdicts; church groups in Anyang told by security officers to dismantle their gatherings if they refuse to fold into state-controlled “Three-Self” churches. “These days, if it’s not a blood relative, you risk someone calling the police just for being present,” a pastor told me, his voice low. He gestures at the walls of his apartment, as if expecting them to listen.Censorship, too, is seldom subtle anymore. Ask Lyu, a social media user who watched government censors erase his WeChat and Weibo accounts—sometimes overnight, sometimes in broad daylight, depending on the posts. On these networks, words like “democracy,” “freedom,” or even mild criticism are enough to prompt a quiet digital erasure, as though the person behind them never existed at all.A pattern emerges, noted not just by families and rights groups but by outside observers. Last week’s Congressional-Executive Commission on China report calls the government’s turn away from its own legal commitments “more feature than bug.” The ink has long dried on treaties like the Convention Against Torture or the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Yet inside detention centers and labor camps, evidence tells a different story—a story of promises made, then broken in secret.Americans, too, find themselves tangled in this web. Seafood labeled “product of China” has, in some cases, been traced back to ships where North Korean fishermen worked in conditions that resemble indentured servitude. Xinjiang’s sprawling factory complexes produce everything from cotton shirts to instant coffee for shelves in U.S. stores. “Forced labor is in our supply chains, whether we want to admit it or not,” explained one commission investigator. Meanwhile, researchers and students enter China for conferences, only to discover years-old social media posts can now serve as grounds for an exit ban. Diplomatic missions, once bastions of dialogue, now stand accused of harassment and political interference far from home.The machinery of control has only grown more efficient. Since 2023, China’s leaders rolled out new social oversight bureaus—a kind of parallel governance meant to drive out “illegal organizations.” The United Front Work Department expands its footprint, not just in major cities but in distant towns, overseeing everything from Catholic masses to the schooling of Uyghur children. Cultural expression fares little better: artist Gao Zhen’s reflections on the Cultural Revolution have become unsanctioned history, while Mongolian and Uyghur children learn to keep their mother tongue quiet, even in the playground.None of this is lost on the people who spend their lives defending basic rights. Voices from the United Nations remind us that the desire for dignity knows no borders. “The right to live safely, to study, to speak—these aren’t abstract ideals,” Astrid Van Genderen Stort of the UN Human Rights Office told me. “They’re woven into daily life: the water we drink, the books we’re allowed to read, the future we imagine for our children.”For all the solemn reports and somber figures (adult literacy up globally since 1950, yet millions without names or nations), it’s the small, everyday actions—someone lighting a candle, or writing a name on a blank sheet of paper—that sketch the true contours of human rights. Crackdowns, however relentless, haven’t silenced the calls for change. Families in Beijing, activists in Anyang, lawmakers across the ocean—they keep pushing.They know, as do we, that every broken promise on human rights leaves a footprint not just in China, but in the world beyond. And in the quiet spaces between arrests and erasures, there remains hope, fragile but persistent, that the truth still gets out—and, perhaps, one day, is heard.