The Chinese Communist Party gave me a strange Christmas present. On Dec. 23 Foreign Minister Wang Yi signed an order imposing sanctions on me and Todd Stein, a Tibet expert who serves on the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
The sanctions amount to nothing. The regime froze my assets in China but I don’t have any. It banned any Chinese entities, institutions or individuals from making “transactions” with me (I have no intention of entering into any such transactions). And it prohibited my immediate family and me from obtaining visas to travel to China. I was born in China, but I regard it as unsafe to visit and haven’t since 2015.
So what was the point? Publicity. After Mr. Wang’s order, state propaganda outlets celebrated the news. The English-language Global Times did so in threatening terms: “Since ancient times, all those who have betrayed the country and the nation have met a tragic end. Yu’s can’t be any better.”