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B. Allen-Ebrahimian Profile picture
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5 Jun, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Scoop: The Bush Foundation for US-China Relations accepted $5 million from a Chinese Community Party-linked policy organization known for its efforts to make U.S. policy discussions more Beijing-friendly.

My latest w/ @lachlan

axios.com/scoop-bush-fam…
Axios obtained a written agreement that spells out the details of a $5 million grant from the China-United States Exchange Foundation to the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, established in 2017 with the former president's blessing.
This grant was not previously public and was not disclosed through U.S. filings.

Tax filings from May-Dec 2019 show Bush China Foundation brought in a total of $1.2 million in contributions, meaning CUSEF's donations would likely comprise a substantial portion of its revenue.
CUSEF is funded by the vice-chair of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a key part of China's united front system, which aims to extend Party policies across all parts of society.
CUSEF is registered as a foreign agent. It has disclosed in US filings that it paid for lobbying campaigns to "influence key constituencies" in the U.S. regarding "China's true intentions and efforts in Tibet," including an analysis of how U.S. high school textbooks portray Tibet
Personal story: I once interned (unpaid) for a program funded in part by a CUSEF grant. I tried to publish an article about Uyghurs on the program website's intern blog. I was told they couldn't publish my article because it could "disrupt sensitive relationships in China."

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More from @BethanyAllenEbr

B. Allen-Ebrahimian Profile picture
24 May
Strongly agree. It's difficult, from the outside, to distinguish genuine nationalist sentiment among Chinese students abroad, from Chn govt incentives to display nationalism.

Best approach: Be aware of these incentives AND that many Chinese students genuinely very nationalist.
There's a risk here, though. We always try hard to distinguish between the CCP/Chinese govt and Chinese people, to avoid blaming innocent people for a bad govt.

But when those people strongly support that govt's bad policies and decisions--things get real complicated real quick
In some ways—if the goal is to prevent average Americans from thinking all Chinese people are scary, and IF we know that only simplistic messages will trickle down to average ppl—I'd almost rather that simple message be: Chinese people are victims and govt is bad.
Read 6 tweets
B. Allen-Ebrahimian Profile picture
18 May
Perhat Tursun is a prominent modernist writer in Xinjiang whose work is inspired by Kafka and Rumi — and who is now serving a 16-year sentence in a Chinese prison.

axios.com/perhat-tursun-…
In Beijing the 1980s, Perhat led a Uyghur student group that met twice weekly to discuss literature, and the "books he was introducing to us were completely different from what we had ever read before — Kafka, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky," his friend Tahir Hamut Izgil told me.
Perhat's own writings explored symbolism and modernist themes in new ways, inspiring devoted fans as well as critics.

"So few people can give Uyghur literature that aesthetic sense," Tahir said. "He is truly unique. There is no one like him."
Read 10 tweets
B. Allen-Ebrahimian Profile picture
20 Apr
If you read one China book this month, let it be China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, by @PeterMartin_PCM.

I really, really cannot recommend it highly enough. Here's my review:

axios.com/new-book-explo…
This is a masterful retelling of the history of the People's Republic of China, through the eyes of its diplomats.

Bloomberg reporter Peter Martin paints a deeply human portrait of China's emissaries, pulling back the veil on their motivations and struggles.
Peter draws on dozens of interviews and more than 100 Chinese-language memoirs, digging up wild anecdotes and occasional glimpses into the personalities and true feelings of China's diplomats as they navigated career, politics, bureaucracy and the rest of the world.
Read 6 tweets
B. Allen-Ebrahimian Profile picture
14 Apr
Last year, the Better Cotton Initiative stated it was pulling out of Xinjiang b/c it could no longer operate ethically there.

Now, after sustained criticism in China, that statement has disappeared from BCI's website.

BCI's response to me? No comment.

axios.com/xinjiang-cotto…
Here's a screenshot of the statement that no longer exists on their website:
Here is the original link to the statement. If you click on it now, it shows an error.

bettercotton.org/bci-to-cease-a…
Read 6 tweets
B. Allen-Ebrahimian Profile picture
9 Mar
New: I interviewed Lithuania's deputy foreign affairs minister Mantas Adomėnas about withdrawing from the China-led 17+1 summit. He said the 17+1 was "always on the initiative and terms and agenda proposed by China" and lacked "mutuality."

axios.com/china-lithuani…
Adoménas also criticized China's refusal to allow the 17+1 to discuss human rights, and he is opposed to China's insistence on separating economics/development discussions from human rights.
Adoménas cast China's rise & the pressure it puts on global democratic institutions as a near-existential struggle for Lithuania.

"As Lithuanians, we see our survival as conditional on the international order based on the rule of law and seeking for the increase of democracy."
Read 4 tweets
B. Allen-Ebrahimian Profile picture
31 Jan
This is why the question “why don’t Muslims care about what’s happening to the Uighurs” often bothers me. It depends who is asking and why. I’ve seen this question asked too many times by people whose implicit answer is “because Muslims are subhuman.”
(The answer to the question is that Muslims who know about Uighur repression do care! And those who live in countries with political freedoms show it through their speech and actions).
The useful question to be asking is, why doesn’t the Saudi government et al criticize China for its Muslim genocide? The answer is that autocratic governments of Muslim-majority populations pretty much all have close ties to the Chinese govt.
Read 10 tweets

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