Human Rights in China

Hillary Clinton's Beijing gaffe

Wed, 02/25/2009 - 7:26pm

The U.S. secretary of state's careless remarks on China are a great leap backward for human rights everywhere.

By Sophie Richardson

When did U.S. diplomats forget that a warm welcome in Beijing -- one laden with platitudes about pulchritude -- is not necessarily a good thing? It's not that greater cooperation on a variety of issues is unimportant. But coming from a representative of an administration that promised to take the high road on human rights, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments last week in China are surprising. Clinton asserted that discussions about human rights shouldn't interfere with other issues on the U.S.-China agenda. What might have been intended as determined pragmatism in fact suggests a dangerous disregard for the facts -- namely, that the United States is dealing with a government that regularly crushes any real or perceived challenge to its grip on power.

We don't know whether Clinton privately emphasized the importance of human rights to her hosts. But what was said publicly, perhaps to quell the apprehension of the Politburo, came across as callous to the victims of human rights abuses. This is a shame and a change of tack for Clinton, who has previously lauded China's human rights defenders. It's a change for U.S. policy too; one of the long-standing themes across party lines has been U.S. support for the brave individuals who are working within China to try to improve their country's rights environment.

During Clinton's visit, prominent government critics were put under house arrest, threatened, or subjected to increased surveillance. Liu Xiaobo, a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen movement, has been under house arrest since December 2008 for helping draft "Charter 08," a statement calling for greater rights protections. Liu has been welcomed at the U.S. Embassy in the past. One can only imagine how Liu and China's other courageous human rights defenders felt when hearing that the United States now considers them an impediment to progress on other issues.

Even more dangerous, Clinton's statements undermine the Obama administration's credibility on human rights the world over. Does the secretary now plan to tell the Burmese military junta, or the Taliban, that it will "agree to disagree" on rights while they work through other issues? Any government with the slightest political sophistication will now see an opportunity to renegotiate standards on human rights and how the United States approaches them. By publicly backing off with China, rather than making human rights a keystone of policy, the secretary has lowered the bar not just for China's leaders but for would-be rights abusers everywhere.

Clinton has already responded to some of the human rights community's criticisms, insisting that she will raise rights issues but wants to protect the opportunity to make progress on trade, security, and environmental concerns. But the core problem with Clinton's approach still hasn't been addressed: The secretary now risks wasting the chance to promote both goals simultaneously. Improvement on economic, military, and political concerns requires that the Chinese government stop censoring the domestic press, emancipate the legal system from the deeply vested interests of the Chinese Communist Party and its cadres, and protect rather than persecute whistle-blowers. Therefore, Clinton's best chance of ensuring the success of long-term U.S. interests is to place human rights at the core of the bilateral relationship, not relegate it to the periphery.

It's too soon to tell what lies behind the Obama administration's apparent decision to downgrade the importance of human rights. But not all is lost for Liu Xiaobo and the many others like him around the world. Clinton could still recommit the United States to regularly and publicly raising rights issues with the Chinese government. Speaking through a medium such as Voice of America or Radio Free Asia, Clinton could affirm her commitment so that people in China can hear her. She can appoint an ambassador who will press rights with his or her Chinese counterparts. And on subsequent visits to China, Clinton and other cabinet members could emphasize the values of the Obama administration. We cannot afford to give the Chinese government an excuse to ignore rights reforms over the coming four years. To do so would be tantamount to giving Beijing a green light to carry on with its worst abusive practices.

Sophie Richardson is the Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

Photo: OLIVER WEIKEN/AFP/Getty Images

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Why Hillary Clinton got it right on China

Wed, 02/25/2009 - 7:20pm

How the U.S. Secretary of State opened a new door for human rights.

By William F. Schulz

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's recent comments about human rights in China have dismayed many human rights activists. Might they be overreacting?

"Successive [U.S.] administrations and Chinese governments have been poised back and forth on these issues, and we have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis" the secretary told reporters. On what grounds could a responsible observer -- even one devoted to human rights, like myself -- disagree with those observations?

It is certainly true, as I pointed out last week, that China will be a far more reliable partner to the United States on all three of those issues when it adopts democratic reforms and improves its human rights record. If Clinton believes there is no connection between human rights and economic recovery, combating climate change, and maintaining security, she is surely wrong. But that is not what she said. She said that the fact that China's human rights record remains problematic ought not to preclude trying to make progress and find common ground on three other critical issues.

The fact is that if the world economy continues to deteriorate, millions of people around the world -- especially the poorest -- will suffer devastating infringements of their economic right to, in the words of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "a standard of living adequate for [their] health and well-being." If we don't solve the climate crisis, millions of people will sacrifice their right to life. And if superpowers such as China and the United States fail to find common ground on international security issues, such as their own bilateral military relations (to say nothing of North Korea and Iran), the world could witness suffering on an unimaginable scale.

Of course, the United States should continue to press China on human rights, as the secretary explicitly said and as her own record, including her call last year for former U.S. President George W. Bush to skip the Olympics, demonstrates. But if China fails to make the kind of human rights changes we in the international community seek, should we suspend efforts to reach agreement on other issues that themselves have powerful human rights implications?

"We pretty much know what [the Chinese] are going to say" on human rights, religious freedom, and Tibet, Clinton said, and that comment too caused consternation. However, not only is it factually correct, but it underscores how formulaic the traditional U.S.-China dialogue on human rights has become. The truth is that rhetoric untethered from consequences has done more harm than good. If the secretary meant that the United States should stop trying to influence Chinese human rights practices, her view is shortsighted. But if she was expressing frustration that the old tactics have largely failed to move the Chinese in positive directions, she was right on the money.

Bilateral dialogue is still important. But what is likely to be far more effective in the long run are such things as reversing the decline in U.S. funding of human rights programs in China (which dropped from $23 million in fiscal 2007 to $15 million in fiscal 2008); partnering with such entities as the European Union and the International Labor Organization to globalize pressure on China; monitoring information and communications technology companies to ensure that they resist China's attempts to use them to restrict access to information; and updating the bans on imports of products made in Chinese prisons and on exports to China of questionable law enforcement equipment.

The United States would betray both its values and its interests if it neglected to pursue improvements in Chinese human rights practices. But that pursuit must be smart, strategic, and persistent, not just symbolic or ideological. Clinton's comments appear to indicate that she shares that view and, if she does, the human rights community has nothing to fear from her leadership.

William F. Schulz, senior fellow in human rights policy at the Center for American Progress and author of "Strategic Persistence: How the United States Can Help Improve Human Rights in China," served as executive director of Amnesty International USA from 1994 to 2006.

Photo: Guang Niu/Pool/Getty Images

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Diminishing human rights gets us nothing with China

Wed, 02/25/2009 - 2:57pm

By Aaron Friedberg

During her recent visit to China, Secretary Clinton told her hosts that the Obama administration will not allow human rights issues to "interfere" with Sino-American cooperation on "the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis." 

The kindest thing one can say about these remarks is that they do not really express a fundamental shift in the substance of U.S. policy. Neither George Bush nor Bill Clinton before him placed human rights at the top of the U.S.-China agenda, and neither was willing to press the issue hard enough to disrupt other aspects of the relationship. Clinton's blunt declaration was presumably intended to reassure Beijing that the new administration does not intend to change course and, if anything, is even less inclined to make a fuss about human rights than its predecessors.

Despite their apparent lack of substance, Clinton's comments will have real costs. Her words cannot help but be demoralizing to those brave souls (like the signers of the recent Charter 08 document), who continue to risk arrest by calling for fundamental political reforms in China. Her statement will also reinforce Beijing's growing sense of its own power and reduce the U.S. government's admittedly limited leverage over its internal policies. In the past, concern over foreign reaction, or a desire to improve the diplomatic "atmosphere" with Washington, has sometimes caused China to temper its treatment of domestic dissidents. Though this is certainly not what she intended, Clinton's statement is likely to be interpreted by Beijing as a free pass on human rights. 

In its eagerness to differentiate itself from the Bush administration, which it faults for having been overly "ideological," the Obama team risks leaning too far in the opposite direction. As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, democracies can do business with authoritarian regimes without appearing to accept the premise of moral equivalency.

Downplaying human rights in hopes of making gains in other areas is usually described as the preferred approach of foreign policy "realists." But as every true realist knows, great powers are cold monsters; they act in accordance with what they perceive to be their national interests, not what others say (or don't say) about them. Beijing will doubtless be pleased if the United States is less outspoken about how it treats political dissidents, religious groups, and ethnic minorities. To believe that, in response, it will change its policies on North Korea and Iran, currency valuation, carbon emissions, Taiwan or the pace of its military buildup is the antithesis of realism.

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