Another big Chinese project

Another big Chinese project

China’s power in the world is growing. Governments of countries around the world are under increasing pressure to turn a blind eye to the human rights violations taking place in China so as not to jeopardise trade relations with the country. Such is the case in the Netherlands, where the foreign minister had to push the government’s new China strategy through parliament in late 2019. It was a strategy that barely touched on human rights, even though new evidence had surfaced shortly before for the existence of mass detention camps in which more than a million Uighurs were held without trial and subjected to ‘re-education’.

Amnesty asked us to come up with an ad to make the Dutch public aware of this and thus put pressure on the MPs. The ad was placed in NRC Handelsblad on the morning the debate took place in the House. During that debate, the House forced the minister to withdraw and rewrite the China strategy.