China has renewed its war on religion. The Communist regime views religion with disdain and considers Islam a particular threat. It views the Islamic faith of Uyghur Muslims as a mental disease that must be treated in the concentration camps, where the prisoners are forced to recite Communist Party slogans, praise President Xi Jinping, eat pork and renounce the Qur'an. Those who have come out have told of torture, beatings and inhumane treatment including working as slave labor to produce goods for foreign countries.

While China has treated its Christian population somewhat better, it ranks among the top 10 countries where it is most dangerous to practice Christianity. Officially, China recognizes only two strains of Christianity — Catholicism, and protestantism — and heavily regulates their affairs. Not until 2014 did the Catholic church experience a thaw in its relations with the Chinese government. Christians who shun state-sponsored Christianity have been driven to forming underground home churches.

According to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations, Fenggang Yang, professor of sociology and founding director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University, said, "Faith-based organizations are perceived as one of the most serious threats to the Communist Party."

"The government has orchestrated a campaign to 'sinicise' Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party," said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, who focuses on Christianity in modern China, told The Guardian newspaper.

China is using its wealth to build its military might and silence those who criticize violations of human rights. How did the world's biggest Communist country become its second largest capitalist economy?

I say we are responsible for China's spectacular economic rise. We buy Chinese goods. Many products that American stores sell are made in China. In the last few decades, American and European companies have tremendously benefited China by moving production to that country. Big U.S. companies, like Google, Apple and Microsoft, have bent over backwards to do business in China.

Flush with cash, China plans to invest vast sums under its so-called Belt and Road Initiative in over 68 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe facing financial challenges. The initiative is meant to build major public infrastructure in those countries that will connect China through land and sea, and China will lend money for these projects.

Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Malta, Poland and Portugal have signed memorandums of understanding, and now Italy is contemplating doing so. Should Italy sign on, it would be the first Group of Seven major industrialized nations to join BRI. Critics fear that China is laying a debt trap for these countries who will be hesitant to criticize its domestic or international policies.

When Turkey recently criticized China's imprisonment of nearly 2 million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province, Beijing was swift to warn Ankara about the economic consequences. Its top diplomat in Turkey, Deng Li, said that criticism of China "will be reflected in commercial and economic relations" with Turkey, according to Reuters. Ankara needs Chinese investment in its third nuclear power plant.

In 2018, the Chinese economy was $14 trillion compared to the U.S., at $20 trillion. In 30 years or fewer, China's economy is projected to surpass the U.S. economy and with that, it will wield greater political and military influence.

Nearly a century after Edgar Snow's 1937 momentous novel, Red Star Over China, and Joseph McCarthy's flawed obsession with Communist infiltration in the U.S. government, China still casts a long shadow on the U.S. and the world. Even powerful western governments are hesitant to criticize China fearing retribution.

Nations that value freedoms of speech and religion need to rethink their strategy toward China, which dreams of dominating the world. Trying to rein in China through tariffs on Chinese goods has proved futile because it retaliates by slapping similar tariffs on American goods. The U.S., Canada, and EU need to divest from China and build factories at home to create jobs and produce goods locally.

Since economic power is a big factor driving China's religious persecution and disregard of resulting international condemnation, we should consider punishing Beijing where it would hurt the most: an economic boycott. We did it successfully against South Africa's racist Apartheid regime in the 1980s. Conscientious people everywhere have the potential to bring China to its knees by simply refusing to buy Chinese.

Ekram Haque is acting executive director for Council on American-Islamic Relations-DFW and author, most recently, of Powered by Hope, Positivity, and Optimism: Where Religion, Science, and Nature Converge. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.