Repression Without Arrest: The Invisible Weight of Fear in China
China’s quiet war on dissent is more effective — and more exportable — than it looks.
On May 20, 2024, Chen Mingyu, a mother, local activist, and longtime volunteer, went out to dinner with friends in Chongqing, China, a city of over 22 million. She and her friends had gathered in a restaurant to celebrate Taiwan’s recent presidential inauguration. In the weeks that followed, several attendees were detained. Chen was formally arrested on July 4, 2024. In March 2025, she was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
This episode was a public display of China’s broad and arbitrary crackdown on dissent, in this case aimed at one person. But how many others were discouraged by it? Most people who draw the attention of the Chinese state aren’t jailed; they are simply silenced. They vanish from view, stop organizing, stop speaking, or are quietly pushed out of public life.
The true power of the Chinese state lies in its ability to cultivate fear — to force people to censor themselves under the weight of structured uncertainty. That fear is sustained by a daily system of warnings, monitoring, and quiet intimidation, starting with the most routine encounters.
The Chinese Toolkit of Silent Repression
Informal Detentions and Forced Disappearances:
Chinese authorities frequently use informal contact to intimidate people. One of the most common tactics is the so-called “invitation to tea” (“被喝茶”), a euphemism for police summons or interrogation. These meetings are rarely optional or formalized and may even be conducted regularly, serving as check-ins to ensure outspoken individuals are acting “responsibly.”
Adding to the legal ambiguity, under China’s expansive counter-espionage law, police can detain individuals without charges for anything deemed a national security threat. Detention can stem from working at a foreign consultancy, criticizing the economy online, or being connected to the wrong people.
Following the “White Paper” protests against pandemic controls in late 2022, several protesters went missing in what one rights activist described to the BBC as “killing the chicken to scare the monkeys.” The disappearance of these activists into China’s elusive and unaccountable national security apparatus sent a message to any would-be activists and friends of the detained: try this again, and you may be next.
Social Credit, Blacklists, and Big Data:
According to an analysis in the Journal of Contemporary China in 2023, the Chinese state relies on a combination of state apparatuses and the “co-option” of individuals’ social connections for social control. Officially, people can be quietly blacklisted from travel, employment, or financial tools through the Social Credit Blacklist System, all without being charged or even notified. Social ostracization can follow, with impacted individuals’ social networks treating them (or even their children) differently.
China’s efforts to centralize data and monitor behavior also continue to expand. A recent example is the rollout of a “Cyber ID” mobile app, which integrates identification, service access, and personal tracking. The mass adoption of this app, which state media continues to promote, would transition citizen data from multiple platforms to a central Ministry of Public Security (MPS) database. Officials have suggested that individuals who opt out of the system might be excluded from essential services, including public transit and highway access. Even without widespread adoption, the app signals where China’s social control system is heading.
Professional Reach:
Beyond infrastructure and personal data, the state’s influence reaches deep into professional life, shaping careers and academic work through ideological oversight. Since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, the Chinese Communist Party has intensified efforts to embed itself across private and academic life. Under Xi’s “party-building” initiative, the state has pushed for “complete coverage” of Party cells (including embedded Party secretaries) in the country’s top 500 private firms. This growing presence has given the Party increased influence over internal business operations and ideological alignment. Entrepreneurs are now encouraged to “undergo further education and monitoring” to ensure they remain aligned with Party objectives.
A recent China Journal study highlighted how this pressure extends to China’s academic sector. Researchers found that since Xi took power, self-censorship has intensified, with academics avoiding politically sensitive topics to steer clear of scrutiny. Conversations with institutional Party secretaries have become a routine concern, as Party committees play a direct role in faculty evaluations and promotions. For many professionals, compliance is about career survival.
Family Pressure and Community Surveillance:
For those who step outside approved boundaries, the pressure often extends beyond the individual. Family members and communities can become tools of control, and China’s repression does not stop at its borders. Through a system of transnational pressure and family-based intimidation, authorities often target the relatives of critics living abroad. Chinese citizens who speak out overseas may see their family members back home harassed, surveilled, or punished.
According to an Amnesty International report on Chinese students overseas, such retaliation can include job loss, travel restrictions, or loss of access to public benefits for their families. In many cases, students and activists abroad reported living in fear, self-censoring not because of direct legal risk, but because the cost would be borne by their families. As one student studying in Europe described, “Police call my parents quite often to harass them and don’t allow them to travel abroad easily.”
This strategy of coercion is particularly visible in the treatment of China’s ethnic Uyghur diaspora. A 2021 Uyghur Human Rights Project report found that many Uyghurs living overseas experienced digital threats, harassment, and coercion tied to their advocacy work. Respondents said their relatives in Xinjiang were threatened or detained due to their overseas speech.
Exit Bans:
Inside China, this pressure can take an even more direct form. For some, the state can simply prevent them from leaving the country. Each year, countless individuals arrive at Chinese airports for international flights only to be stopped at the exit gate. They are told authorities have placed a hold on their ability to leave the country. Often, there is no warrant or criminal case associated with this quiet bureaucratic decision.
The reasons for exit bans vary. Some face unresolved civil disputes. Others are relatives of overseas dissidents. Others attract local law enforcement scrutiny for reasons that are never clearly explained. For foreign nationals, this means being trapped in China with no legal conviction but no clear path home. For Chinese citizens, especially those with ties to activists, the idea of leaving the country becomes a distant hope. Digital communications are monitored, and anything from a private message to a casual post can be used to justify denying departure.
A Reality in China, A Warning for the World
These methods of quiet control form the core of China’s domestic repression. Increasingly, they are being studied (and in some cases adopted) by other governments. Experts warn that China is already “pioneering a new brand of digital authoritarianism,” exporting both surveillance tools and the norms that justify them. But the greater danger remains the normalization of repression without overt force: control through fear, ambiguity, and quiet pressure.
China’s model is effective because of its subtlety. The state rarely needs to arrest someone to silence them. It relies instead on legal gray areas, social pressure, and the constant potential for punishment. This kind of repression is more difficult to detect and easier to replicate.
As more governments look for ways to manage dissent and information, China’s approach may quietly gain appeal. The risk is that it becomes a model not by force, but by default. And in that quiet, what vanishes first is both dissent and the space even to imagine it.
Editorial contributions by Rachael Rhine Milliard
The views and information contained in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Asia Cable.
 |
|