17
votes
China threatened Sweden with unspecified counter measures if its culture minister attends a literary award ceremony for Gui Minhai
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- Title
- China envoy threatens Sweden over award to detained writer Gui Minhai
- Authors
- Reuters Editorial
- Published
- Nov 15 2019
- Word count
- 335 words
World powers only have so much soft power they can exhaust. It's incredible childish and short sighted on the Chinese leaders to waste their soft power on relatively meaningless gestures like this.
Like I have never heard of Sweden's Literary Award, but thanks to the Streisand Effect, I now know who's supposed to get to the award and I know China is meddling in other countries internal affairs.
This is lose-lose for China. They not only wasted their political capital, they're also making western nations further distance themselves from the Chinese. If China didn't say anything, Gui Minhai would just have gotten their deserved 15min of fame, and everyone will forget the next day.
the chinese government kidnapped him in thailand when he was there on vacation with his daughter. the guy is swedish (but was born in china), his daughter is 100% swedish. the problem they're having with him is that he rejects the chinese party, and they are making an example of him.
there have been made multiple attempts to free him, most recent the swedish ambassador tried to get a meeting with him in secret and ended up losing her post. his daughter has been in front of the american senate to plead for their support. etc.
basically, this is yet another one of china's overreach. i'd say they're testing sweden to see how much sway they have.