Freedom House record to Foreign Policy that Chinese agents had beaten and drugged multiple individuals in Australia, returning them to China by boat.125 The anticorruption campaign is also a vehicle for the CCP to seek to change international norms to better suit its objectives and interests. Chinese officials and media present the anticorruption campaign as part of a global effort to shape anticorruption norms. This includes endorsing the 2014 “Beijing Declaration” on fighting corruption, a product of that year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), and the G20 Anti-Corruption Action Plan of 2017–18. In all of its efforts, officials highlight calls to join the UN Convention against Corruption. The CCP has also put significant diplomatic effort into building bilateral legal relationships that would enable authorities to more readily “reach” individuals who flee abroad. A 2019 analysis by the Center for Advanced China Research identified 37 countries with which China had extradition treaties, a list that notably includes European Union (EU) member states like Italy, France, and Portugal.126 According to analysis in The Diplomat, from 2015–17, five EU member states extradited “economic fugitives” to China.127 In at least one other European state—Switzerland—Chinese officials successfully entered into a secret agreement to give their security agents free reign in the territory to monitor and potentially intimidate a wide range of targets, including Fox Hunt fugitives.128 Despite its cultivation of an image of legality and careful references to international law, at its core the CCP’s In October 2020, the US Department of Justice accused eight individuals of acting as illegal agents of China in a multiyear campaign of harassment and stalking in order to coerce an unnamed Chinese individual to return to face trial. anticorruption campaign reflects its domestic context, in which the preferences of the party-state stand above all other considerations. It is useful to recall the case of Meng Hongwei. A prominent CCP official from the domestic security apparatus, Meng served as president of Interpol from 2016 until October 2018, when he was abruptly arrested in China, expelled from the party, and sentenced to prison for corruption.129 This sequence of events should act as a reminder of how the CCP’s global anticorruption drive is part and parcel of its overall strategy of shaping international norms to its advantage. As countries around the world grapple with how to manage relations with China, they should avoid assuming that “anticorruption” is neutral ground without implications for broader engagement with the Chinese Communist Party. freedomhouse.org 21