The U.S. political system came in for a beating from those arguing for the motion, “China Picks Better Leaders Than the West.”

Hong Kong’s former solicitor-general, Daniel Fung, pointed out that in the U.S., “it is possible — indeed it has been the case — that an individual who has never governed, or even run a large corporation, could end up in his very first job of government, running the most powerful government in the entire world.”

His debating partner, Daniel A. Bell, who lectures in political ethics at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, contrasted that with the Chinese system, which he believes is meritocratic. Those who make it to the very highest levels of government are tried and tested administrators, having mostly served as governor or party secretary of a province the size of most countries.

“You can’t have a Sarah Palin, or a [Silvio] Berlusconi, or even a George W. Bush succeed in the Chinese system because they lack the basic competence,” Bell argued. “Instead of wasting time campaigning for votes and wasting money, [Chinese] political leaders spend much of their time improving their political performance and knowledge.”

Lim notes that the opposing team held its ground, arguing that the insecurity that comes with being selected – rather than elected – oftentimes produces a defensive and repressive leader:

The Communist Party’s legitimacy crisis also worried his debating partner, Kenneth Lieberthal from the Brookings Institution.

“You look at any mature democracy, and no one worries about the stability of the system,” Lieberthal argued. “They worry about individual leaders, they worry about particular policies, but the system is stable. … In China, they worry about the stability of the system every single day.”

Lieberthal cited one of the fundamental philosophical differences between the two systems. He believes the American political system is premised on the notion that anyone exposed to power could be tempted to stray, therefore checks and balances — in the form of term limits and a transparent legal system — are in place to constrain them. In contrast, China assumes its leaders are virtuous, and so has a system that maximizes their power, assuming they’ll shape a good society.

The idea that an authoritarian system can claim superiority over a democracy might seem counterintuitive, especially in light of China’s human rights’ record and the recent black marks of corruption to emerge within its ranks. But economist and author Martin Jacques challenges the argument that “the legitimacy and authority of the state, or government, is overwhelmingly a function of democracy, Western-style.” From BBC News:

As China’s dramatic ascent continues – which it surely will – then China’s strengths will become a growing subject of interest in the West. We will realise that our relationship with them can no longer consist of telling them how they should be like us. A little humility is in order.

One of the most dramatic illustrations of this will be the state. We think of it as their greatest weakness but we will come to realise that it is one of their greatest strengths.

Beyond a point it would be quite impossible for a Western state to be like China’s. It is the product of a different history and a different relationship between state and society. You could never transplant their state into a Western country, and vice versa. But this does not mean that we cannot learn from the Chinese state, just as they have learnt much from us.

China’s rise will have a profound effect on Western debate.

ChinaGeeks’ Charlie Custer calls some of Jacques’ claims “shockingly insane,” and raises a number of issues with a series of surveys Jacques cites that found “between 80 and 95% of Chinese people were either relatively or extremely satisfied with central government:”

All of those issues aside, there is a more fundamental problem with Jacques’ approach here: the reliability of strangers doing opinion polls in a country where a sarcastic tweet can get you sent to a labor camp. I am sure that Jacques, being a China expert, is familiar with the phrase 家丑不可外扬 (‘never air your dirty laundry in public’). I have yet to see a convincing explanation anywhere of how opinion polling conducted in China accounts for the fact that (a) people don’t tend to share their true feelings with random strangers and (b) that is doubly true when people perceive expressing critical sentiment to be dangerous, which we all know it can be.

Why would anyone choose to go out on a limb and tell a stranger they disapprove of the central government? They gain nothing whatsoever from such an action, and the risks, while minimal, are not nonexistent. Moreover, many Chinese are used to censoring themselves when it comes to discussions of politics in public or with strangers. Even if you are dissatisfied, being forthcoming about that has no upside.

Jacques is correct in asserting that democracies are not, by default, more “legitimate” governments than non-democracies. But since that’s refuting a straw-man argument that I’ve never heard anyone actually make, I’m not sure he deserves much credit for being right.

Sam Crane at The Useless Tree also found a number of problems with Jacques’ piece, “perhaps the least of which is its main thesis,” and attacks his assertion that the Chinese state “enjoys greater legitimacy than any Western state:”

This was less shocking than simply inane. What does it mean to say that the PRC state is more legitimate than any in the “West”? He gives us no definition or basis for understanding what he means by “legitimacy.” Serious considerations of the topic, remind us that legitimacy is not simply popularity. And it’s obvious that Jacques has not really done any sort of systematic analysis to back up his claim. He’s just throwing rather empty rhetoric out there to demonstrate his admiration for the CCP.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authoritarianism, CCP 5th generation, corruption, democracy, Human Rights, leadership transition, state legitimacy, U.S. election 2012
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[…] When asked by a reporter if his “four principles of academic freedom” might be seen as contradicting the regime’s “Four Upholds” (the socialist path, dictatorship of the proletariat, CCP leadership, and the leading role of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought), Fang responded: “Is it possible that science, democracy, creativity, and independence are in conflict with the Four Upholds? If so, it’s because the Four Upholds advocate the opposite of science, which is superstition; the opposite of democracy, which is dictatorship; the opposite of creativity, which is conservatism; and the opposite of independence, which is dependency.”

[…] Fang’s research focused on the structure and evolution of the early universe, the formation of galaxies, and the role of dark energy and dark matter. The range of phenomena he was conversant with was extremely broad, from quantum processes to the expansion of the universe. The bulk of his papers might best be characterized as observational cosmology, in that they took the limited data available from astronomical observations – mostly, the spectral lines of light emitted eons ago from impossibly distant objects – and applied many kinds of rigorous mathematical analyses to them, to tease out the patterns and test which theoretical models were consistent or inconsistent with the data. One of Fang’s great skills in science was to recognize the patterns and underlying dynamics of the universe given the observed data, and then to explain it to people in a very simple and direct way. This was perhaps his greatest skill as an observer of Chinese society as well.

Writing shortly after Fang’s death in April, Perry Link also described the connection between the physicist’s work and political views, summarising the arguments he had contributed to a co-authored book review. From The New York Review of Books:

He was good at explaining how, for him, concepts of human rights grew out of science. In an essay in these pages, he named five axioms of science that had led him toward human rights: 1. “Science begins with doubt,” whereas in Mao’s China students were taught to begin with fixed beliefs. 2. Science stresses independence of judgment, not conformity to the judgment of others. 3. “Science is egalitarian”; no one’s subjective view starts ahead of anyone else’s in the pursuit of objective truth. 4. Science needs a free flow of information, and cannot thrive in a system that restricts access to information. 5. Scientific truths, like human rights principles, are universal; they do not change when one crosses a political border.

Fang’s stay in the U.S. embassy was brought back into the spotlight soon after his death by the escape of Chen Guangcheng, who also received shelter there. See ‘Chen Guangcheng Speaks from New York‘ and ‘“Free Citizen”, Uncertain Future‘, at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, Deng Xiaoping, Fang Lizhi, Human Rights, June 4th, Mao era, Mao Zedong Thought, perry link, physics, scientific advancement, scientists
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Front: If you can fight for democracy and human rights, what sorrow is there in death?
Back: If you cannot be free and equal, what gain is there in life?

能争取民主人权死又何哀（前）
得不到自由平等生有何益（后）

Surprisingly, the text of the Weibo pictured above (“A handsome guy suddenly appeared at Xinjiekou in Nanjing, really handsome” 南京新街口惊现一帅哥，真帅) still returns search results. The username has been cut off, but this one post alone received 6062 reposts and 1452 comments. CDT Chinese has collected words of praise and caution for their brother-in-arms:

ZhouYu424: Braver than going to the Diaoyu Islands.

周宇424：比去钓鱼岛更有勇气。

wudongwei: The pride of Nanjing.

wudongwei：南京的骄傲

JuiceSueeze: Now this is what’s f**king called backbone.

榨取剩余妹汁：这TM才叫脊梁

StudyBuddyGuoYukuan: Our compatriot is still enslaved. Sweet boy, what joy is there in life, what regret in death?

郭宇宽以研究会友:同胞还在受奴役，好男儿，生又何欢，死又何憾？

HuozhouWhetstone: One person isn’t enough. We need 500 million like this… You understand.

火洲砺剑：—个人太少。。要有五亿人都这样。。。你懂的

EverywhereGspots: Front: If you cannot have a high rank and a mistress, what gain is there in life? Back: If you can fight to run naked, what sorrow is there in emigrating? Side: Party-state. //@BeautyArcher: Front: If you cannot have a high rank and a mistress, what gain is there in life? Back: If you can fight to run naked, what sorrow is there in emigrating? Side: Corrupt.

处处G点: 上联：得不到三公二奶党有何益。下联：能争取裸奔转移国又何哀。横批：党国。 //@美女射狼:上联：得不到三公二奶贪有何益。下联：能争取裸奔转移腐又何哀。横批：贪腐。

ManuIsBashensIdol: Most of us will turn up our noses at these people. We think they’re good-for-nothings who can only shout a few slogans, worthless trash. But it is precisely because these people exist in China that the government has any misgivings about its actions and considers the will of the people when making policy, like with health care and land compensation. We enjoy the benefits these people bring us while mentally turning away from them.

马努是巴神的偶像：我们见到这些人，大多数人对他们嗤之以鼻。觉得他们除了会喊两句口号，什么都不会，一事无成的垃圾。但中国就是因为这些人的存在中国政府才会顾虑多点。在制定政策时才会考虑到民意。如医疗，土地赔偿。我们一边享受着这些人带给我们的利益，一边心理面歧视他们。

zd319: I hope he can get home safely. //@MiJiejie: //@ExquisiteSapphire: —>//@DummyLY: Not far from the re-education center.

zd319: 希望他能安全回家//@弥介介: //@水青玉玲珑: —>//@小痴LY: 离劳教所不远了
ZhangHongfeng: The sign on his side must say: labor re-education. //@RenWeixin: Sign on his side: He will be quietly arrested.

张洪峰:横批应该是：劳教。 //@任卫新:横批：静等被抓。

UFOguest: If he’s sent to labor re-education for wearing his wishes on a sandwich board, our country is beyond the pale.

幽浮客：如果因为在自己的前胸后背挂了这么两句表达心愿的话，就要被抓捕被劳教，那这个国度可真够邪乎的。
GoldenDumpling: Take a walk to change China. Surrounding and watching is a virtue.

金牌爽饺：散步改变中国，围观是种美德。

Via CDT Chinese.
“Netizen Voices” is an original CDT series. If you would like to reuse this content, please follow the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 agreement.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, diaoyu islands, Human Rights, mistresses, Nanjing, Netizen Voices, netizens, re-education through labor, Sign Brother, sina weibo, weibo
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Having traveled for about half an hour, first on highway and then over a bumpy road, we arrived and got out of the car. Intuitively I tried to remove the black cover over my head when a man huffed, “Don’t!” and two men seized me by the arms.

We got into a room, as I sensed, and I was pressed down into what seemed to me like the corner of a sofa. I was stripped of my belt, my shoe laces and everything I had with me. People were shuffling in and out of the room. One voice said to me, “For now, think what you have done lately. Think hard! We’ll ask you questions in the afternoon!” I sat still and said nothing.

Xu recalls that last year he was detained by security police for organizing “a relatively large-scale petition for equal rights for education”. He was taken to a hot-spring resort but refused to cooperate with security police in this so-called “tourism”. On both occasions, Xu protested his illegal detention by refusing to accept the meals provided by security officers.

After an officer threatened to prosecute Xu for “inciting subversion of state power”, Xu argued that “all of our efforts are to protect the liberty and human rights of each and every Chinese …. No one will be able to reverse the historical tide, so don’t overdo it.”

Xu attributed the relatively humane treatment he received to “wide attention” from the outside world, contrasting this with other cases of illegal detention involving physical abuse and even deaths. He expressed gratitude towards the “new citizens” who are concerned with human rights conditions in China. He ascribed his detention and harassment to his endless efforts to promote civil rights and stated that he would be willing to “pay a price for the freedom of the people”. From Seeing Red in China:

The new civil movement calls individual citizens to spread the principles of democracy and rule of law, to abide a civil code of actions, to reject privileges and corruption. And we advocate liberty, justice and love, which is the spirit of the new civic movement. Our mission is to end, from the root, the cycle of regime change through violence and give freedom back to each and every Chinese. This is the reason for which I lost my own freedom for the time being.

Xu signed his blog post “Citizen Xu Zhiyong”: his organisation, ‘Citizen’, has been distributing pins bearing the Chinese characters for the term, 公民 gongmin, in Sun Yat-sen’s handwriting. A recent post on CDT described the “decapitation” of Sina Weibo users who had adopted these characters as their avatars.

Xu was accused of tax evasion in 2010, but the case was dismissed soon afterwards. Read more about Xu Zhiyong on China Digital Times.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: civil society, Human Rights, illegal detentions, lawyers, Xu Zhiyong
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The US ambassador to Beijing said that China’s human rights record was deteriorating as its communist rulers feel threatened in the wake of pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East.

“The human rights climate has always ebbed and flowed in China, up and down, but we seem to be in a down period and it’s getting worse,” Ambassador Gary Locke told “The Charlie Rose Show” on US public television.

Locke pointed to China’s detentions of dissidents, lawyers and other perceived critics since the onset of the “Arab Spring” which toppled authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia last year.

“The Chinese leaders are very fearful of something similar happening within China,” Locke said.

“So there’s been a significant crackdown on dissension, political discussion, even the rights and the activities of lawyers who advocate on behalf of people who have been poisoned from tainted food and medicines.”

Below is the section of the interview in question, via Youtube (Rose’s question about human rights is posed at 0:52):

Locke’s candid reply to a topic of ongoing contention in the U.S.-China dialogue piqued an official response from Beijing. China Daily reports:

China objects to other countries’ interference in its internal affairs and the violation of China’s judicial sovereignty by making an issue of human rights, a Foreign Ministry spokesman [Liu Weimin] said on Tuesday.

[...]Liu told reporters at a regular news conference what Locke said is “not the truth”.

“China has attached great importance to promoting and safeguarding the basic rights of the Chinese people, including the freedom of belief and speech,” Liu said. “China’s progress in human rights is obvious to all”.

The Charlie Rose interview includes a discussion of many other topics, including cyber-espionage, domestic protest, internet censorship and activism, the space program, globalization, economic disparity, China’s relationship with Iran, currency manipulation, US ambitions in the Asia-Pacific, and some “good news” about China. The entire interview can be seen at Charlie Rose’s homepage. Ambassador Locke’s opinions about China can also be heard in an interview conducted by NPR’s Morning Edition.  Also see “Why China Seems so Fascinated by US Ambassador Gary Locke” via CDT.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Gary Locke, Human Rights, U.S. relations
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China is hiding a secret network of more than 1,000 slave labour prison camps, in which dissidents are imprisoned without trial and forced to produce consumer goods for export to the west, Al Jazeera reports.

The investigation states that an estimated 5.5m men and women are held in what some experts describe as “state sponsored slavery”. Al Jazeera’s report says work from these camps has contributed to the country’s economic boom.

The Al Jazeera video delivers personal interviews with individuals who were incarcerated and forced to produce goods in these prisons and detention centers, and provides footage from inside the work camps. The journalistic investigation pays special attention to the illegal export of goods produced in these labor camps, and the lack of pressure from the international community to force China to abandon this inhumane practice. Transcribed from the video’s conclusion:

China’s deliberate policy of using prisoners as slaves to boost the profits for Chinese export companies continues unchecked, and western governments remain reluctant to rock the economic boat. As long as the world’s consumer markets place a higher value on cheap products than they do on human life, the misery of 5,000,000 human lives locked up behind these walls will continue.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced labor, Human Rights, prisoners' rights
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From the territorial disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea to tensions with Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand, relationships that were sound, if not always friendly, have now soured.Myanmar’s decision to shelve the Chinese-backed Myitsone Dam project shocked China. Likewise, the killing of 13 Chinese boat crewmen on the Mekong River in October serves as a stark reminder that China’s presumably peaceful southern land border, which has been untroubled for nearly 20 years, today resembles the most hostile sort of neighborhood.

China’s people and government are especially dismayed by the Mekong killings, which seemed to demonstrate, once again, the government’s inability to protect its citizens from being murdered abroad, despite the country’s newfound global status. As a result, two compelling questions have arisen: Why do China’s neighbours choose to neglect its interests? And why, despite China’s rise, do its authorities seem increasingly unable to secure Chinese lives and commercial interests abroad?

…

Indeed, China’s neighbours will not be reliably good to Chinese interests unless and until China begins to provide essential public goods – not just commerce, but also full-fledged regional governance based on the rule of law, respect for human rights, and regional economic growth. Otherwise, ruptures such as those at Myitsone and along the Mekong will recur, deepening China’s sense of isolation and panic.

China reached an agreement earlier this week with Laos, Myanmar and Thailand to send patrol ships to protect its interests on the Mekong River, though questions remain over the exact nature of the initiative and how its Southeast Asian partners will contribute. See also CDT coverage of the Myitsone dam project and recent analysis of rising tensions on the South China Sea.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Burma, economic growth, Human Rights, Laos, Myanmar, neighbors, philippines, rule of law, Southeast Asia, thailand, Vietnam
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The United States faces at least two challenges as it ”returns” to Asia.

First, it should learn to get along with China. Its “return” to Asia has drawn people’s attention back to a possible confrontation between itself and China. Many Western scholars believe that the reassertion of the leading U.S. role in Asia is directed against China because only China’s rise can pose a potential challenge to its hegemony. Furthermore, a few Asian countries hope to take advantage of the United States, especially its military power, to strike a so-called strategic balance with China. If the United States adopts this mentality in “returning” to Asia, it will face a zero-sum game with China, and will neither benefit from Asia’s development nor play a positive role in promoting th regional security.

Second, a leading role requires more than ambition. The United States’ status in Asia ultimately depends on its input. It should play a more constructive role in promoting the regional economic development and cooperation in multiple fields, instead of expanding its military presence to show off its irreplaceability because it has proven to be a dead end. Certain Asian scholars are worried that once the United States finds itself unable to maintain its leading role, it may extort more money from Asian countries in the name of protection and even stir up trouble by playing dirty tricks.

Asia’s development is an unstoppable trend, and Asian countries will get closer and closer to one another during the process of development. Asia is a big stage and has enough space for the “return” of the United States. In this regard, the superpower’s priority should be putting itself in the right place and working out an appropriate and practical strategy.

Another editorial in The People’s Daily responded further to Clinton on Friday, accusing the U.S. of pursuing dominance in the face of a global power shift and challenging Clinton on economic issues:

Clinton has admitted that in terms of the economic sector, the United States and China must closely cooperate with each other to ensure strong, dynamic and balanced development of the world in the future. She also said that the United States has effectively worked with China through the G20 to save the world from the verge of collapse and “we have to build on that cooperation.”

However, it was groundless for her to claim that U.S. firms want “fair opportunities” to export to China’s growing market and urge China to end “unfair discrimination” against U.S. companies or against their innovative technologies. It is simply the United States that is embracing protectionism and has discriminated and hindered Chinese firms from investing in the country under the cover of “national security.”

The United States has played up the RMB exchange rate and trade deficit issues on the one hand and has restricted high-tech exports to China in many ways on the other hand. Does China need only soybeans and corn from the United States? The economic win-win cooperation must be two-way and “sanctions” will not always remain unilateral.

The late U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan once said that the world would never accept a single leadership center. What people need is the democratization international relations as well as equality and win-win cooperation. It is hoped that Clinton and U.S. leaders further adapt to the transition of the times and are actually aware that the Pacific should be the ocean of the people living within and around the Pacific and will never become a “monopolized ocean” of the United States.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asia economy, China's rise, currency valuation, economic reform, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, military, United States
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Like so many other countries before it, China has prospered as part of the open and rules-based system that the United States helped to build and works to sustain. And today, China represents one of the most challenging and consequential bilateral relationships the United States has ever had to manage. This calls for careful, steady, dynamic stewardship, an approach to China on our part that is grounded in reality, focused on results, and true to our principles and interests.

We all know that fears and misperceptions linger on both sides of the Pacific. Some in our country see China’s progress as a threat to the United States; some in China worry that America seeks to constrain China’s growth. We reject both those views. The fact is that a thriving America is good for China and a thriving China is good for America. We both have much more to gain from cooperation than from conflict. But you cannot build a relationship on aspirations alone. It is up to both of us to more consistently translate positive words into effective cooperation — and, crucially, to meet our respective global responsibilities and obligations. These are the things that will determine whether our relationship delivers on its potential in the years to come. We also have to be honest about our differences. We will address them firmly and decisively as we pursue the urgent work we have to do together. And we have to avoid unrealistic expectations.

…

At the end of the day, there is no handbook for the evolving U.S.-China relationship. But the stakes are much too high for us to fail. As we proceed, we will continue to embed our relationship with China in a broader regional framework of security alliances, economic networks, and social connections.

In The Diplomat, Minxin Pei writes that while Beijing has many reasons to like the Clinton statement, including the constructive tone used to describe U.S.-China relations, other components of the United States’ Asia strategy may cause concern:

In particular, they will be unnerved by those policy actions – strengthening bilateral security alliances (identified as the most important component of US policy), forging a broad-based military presence (which essentially means further upgrading and expanding US military capabilities in the Western Pacific), and advancing democracy and human rights. In Beijing’s eyes, these measures are part of a subtle framework of strategic containment and can harm Chinese security interests and undermine the Chinese Communist Party’s rule.

…

Taken together, at the strategic level, the Clinton statement will be seen in Beijing simply as another declaration that the United States is determined to remain as Asia-Pacific’s pre-eminent power. That is probably why the essay is titled ‘America’s Pacific Century.’ The strategic message to every country in the region, particularly China, is crystal clear: don’t count us out and don’t even think about pushing us out.

Seeing itself as the inevitable regional hegemon, and the United States a declining superpower, China can’t be pleased by this bold assertion of American resolve. But in reality, there’s little China can do, either today or in the foreseeable future, to change this strategic reality. The staying power of US pre-eminence in Asia doesn’t solely depend on Washington’s absolute or even relative capabilities (which are declining). It is derived from the United States’ unique role as Asia’s strategic balancer. Elsewhere in the world, the United States may be deeply resented for its power and imperial overreach. In Asia, the American presence is welcomed with open arms. The reason is simple: However unpleasant US hegemony may be, Asians would pick it over Chinese hegemony at any time.

Unless China can do something to transform this geopolitical reality in Asia, it will have no choice but to learn to co-exist and thrive under the shadow of enduring American pre-eminence.

See also CDT coverage of a September New York Times Op-Ed piece by Vice President Joe Biden and related commentary on the implications of China’s rise for the United States.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asia economy, CCP, China's rise, economic reform, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, Joe Biden, military, United States
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Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said late Friday that it is wrong to compare China to countries that have faced recent unrest.

“It is inappropriate for anyone to relate or compare China to some west Asian and north African nations facing turmoil,” Jiang said in a statement on the ministry’s website.

“And any attempt to direct the Middle East turmoil to China and change the development path chosen by the Chinese people will be futile,” she said.

Jiang made the statement when asked to respond to Clinton’s comments earlier in the week in an interview with Atlantic magazine in which she was quoted as saying that China’s human rights record was “deplorable” and that history was not on the side of governments that resist democracy.

Clinton’s remarks seems to be a reflect a shift in the Obama Administration’s strategy towards China. As recently as 2009, Clinton had downplayed the issue of human rights violations in China.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broached the issue of human rights with Chinese leaders on Saturday, but emphasized that the global financial slump and other international crises were more pressing and immediate priorities.

The United States will continue to press China on issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and human rights, she told reporters accompanying her.

“Successive 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,” she told reporters in Seoul, South Korea.

Since the beginning of 2011 the Obama Administration has been emphasizing human rights in China much more strongly than it has before. From China Law and Policy:

Clinton was surprisingly blunt when it came to China’s human rights record and didn’t just portray human rights as a peculiar aspect of the American culture (see President Obama’s talk to Shanghai students in November 2009 for this approach).  Instead, Clinton emphasized the universality of certain human rights and highlighted the fact that China is a signatory to many United Nations human rights treaties.  The United States is not interfering with China’s domestic politics; instead the United States is merely requesting that China fulfill its human rights obligations, obligations it voluntary agreed to.

But Clinton went further and mentioned specific dissidents, including the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo who is currently languishing in a Chinese prison; rights defending attorney Chen Guangcheng who since his release from prison has been subject to repeat police harassment; and missing rights defending attorney Gao Zhisheng.   Clinton stressed that as long as people like these three continue to advocate peacefully within the confines of the law, China should not persecute them.  Clinton poetically commented that the empty seat for Liu Xiaobo at last month’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony symbolizes China’s unrealized potential.  Clinton stressed that these human rights are necessary to China’s success; freedom of speech is essential to fostering free thought that leads to technological and scientific advancement and a vibrant civil society addresses social-economic problems that are currently one the regime’s biggest fears.

The Obama Administration has a new policy on China – it’s tougher, more logical and stresses the importance of human rights.

© cdtstaff for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hillary Clinton, Human Rights
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The session opened with criticism by top U.S. officials of recent arrests of Chinese activists and artists that came in the wake of the spreading pro-democracy movement in the Middle East.

“We have vigorous disagreement in the area of human rights,” Vice President Biden said at the opening of the meeting. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: ”We have made very clear, publicly and privately, our concern about human rights.”

A senior administration official later said the discussions on human rights were “very candid and honest.”

On economic issues, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said there had been “very promising changes” in Chinese economic policy over the past year. These include a modest appreciation of China’s currency, with a sense that more is on the way, and a promise to better protect the rights of U.S. and other foreign companies.

Still, the U.S. is using the meetings to push into sensitive terrain — urging the Community Party-controlled government to loosen control of its financial system, a major source of state power and conduit of investment to state-controlled enterprises.

Opening up the financial sector is considered important to boosting the spending power of Chinese households and making the country less dependent on exports for its economic success.

The Chinese delegation asked the U.S. government to loosen export and investment controls. From Sydney Morning Herald:

China urged Washington to lift export and investment controls directed against Beijing, saying such a move could go a long way towards conquering the steep trade imbalance between the two powers.

But in their annual bilateral dialogue, US officials continued to press Beijing over its allegedly undervalued yuan as a way to redress China’s $273 billion trade surplus with the United States.

“The way to resolve this imbalance is to ease the export control regime of the United States towards China and to encourage US exports to China rather than restricting Chinese exports to the United States,” Chen Deming, the Chinese trade minister, told reporters.

Chen said Washington’s forex argument over the trade issue between the world’s two largest economies “is not founded.”

Chinese officials said later the yuan was not discussed on Monday. A senior US official said Geithner would raise the issues of currency and economic rebalancing in greater depth on Tuesday.

In his opening remarks, Geithner also listed China’s need for banking reforms to boost its private sector, and the need for “a more level playing field” in trade and investment between the two economic superpowers.

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan called addressing economic imbalances “a long process.”

American Congressmen have also indicated what results they hope to see come out of the two day Strategic and Economic Dialogue. From Reuters:

Congressional Republicans on Monday urged the Obama administration to hold China’s feet to the fire over currency and industrial policies they said are hurting American companies.

“The U.S.-China relationship is critically important. But much work needs to be done to strengthen that relationship and improve U.S. market access into China,” Republican members of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee said.

They put their message in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hosted Chinese officials beginning on Monday two days of high-level talks on economic and geopolitical concerns.

“China must let the RMB (renminbi) appreciate and move toward allowing market supply and demand to determine the value of its currency,” they said.

The Republicans, who won control of the House in last November’s election, steered clear of threatening legislation to force China to revalue its yuan, or renminbi, currency.

But in the Democrat-controlled Senate, Senator Sherrod Brown said he believed legislation was needed to stop “China’s unfair currency manipulation.”

Lawmakers criticized China’s use of “WTO-inconsistent subsidies” and regulatory practices that they said give Chinese companies an unfair advantage over foreign firms.

They also accused Beijing of of misusing its anti-dumping laws “to retaliate against U.S. companies,” and of throwing up food safety barriers to keep out U.S. farm exports.

The Republicans took aim at Chinese restrictions on rare earth exports and called on Beijing to do more to help bring world trade talks to a successful conclusion.

Here is Vice President Joe Biden delivering the opening remarks at today’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

© cdtstaff for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Human Rights, strategic economic dialogue
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“I have no enemies” is a betrayal of the prisoners of conscience, a defamation of those who perished in the June 4th massacre, and an insult to those who have sacrificed so much for the cause of democratization in China. It is a continuation of Liu’s whitewashing of the human rights record in China in the last 20 years, and it is yet another exposure of himself as a hypocrite who always tries to please the Chinese Communist Regime. This is a re-enactment of his speech on the Chinese national TV 20 years ago openly denying that any killing had occurred in Tiananmen Square.

Twenty years ago, Liu proposed his “no enemy” maxim, namely, not treating the Communist Party as an enemy. Today, the moderate collaborationists defend him by saying that this is his “great love” after achieving thorough awakening and enlightenment. In fact, this is deliberately confusing religious and legal concepts by substituting modern legal justice and protection of human rights with religious forgiveness.

We all know that a nation has no future if it forgets its own history. The memorials erected by the Jewish people all over the world tell the world that “those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.” At the moment when the Chinese Communist Party is trampling human rights without fear, Liu Xiaobo’s call for people not to treat Communism as an enemy is to ask people to forget the crimes committed by the regime, to forget the unspeakable sufferings of hundreds of millions of Chinese people under the totalitarian Communist rule, and to forgive the Communist regime who is still continuing to commit crimes.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Human Rights, June 4th, Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize
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The two-hour-plus hearing in the case of Xue Feng ended without a judgment. He and his lawyer argued the government wrongly applied its broad powers to classify as secrets information that should be commonly available, said the lawyer, Tong Wei.

Outside the Beijing High People’s Court, a senior U.S. Embassy official called for Xue’s release and return to the U.S. and fumed about the court’s decision to exclude American diplomats.

“This case has not been handled with the kind of transparency that would befit a nation which tells us the rule of law is paramount in all judicial proceedings,” Robert Goldberg, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission, told foreign reporters.

© alicebirney for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diplomacy, foreigners in China, Human Rights, state secrets, Xue Feng
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The term “universal values”, or pushi jiazhi, is a new one in Chinese political debate—surprising given that concepts commonly associated with it, such as freedom, democracy and human rights, have been bickered over incessantly for 30 years. Many Chinese scholars think the debate really took off in 2008 after an earthquake in Sichuan province that killed around 80,000 people. Ten days after the disaster, a liberal newspaper in the southern province of Guangdong, Southern Weekend, published an editorial that praised the government’s swift response. It said it had “honoured its commitments to its own people and to the whole world with respect to universal values”.

That single mention of the term was enough to enrage hardliners. A flurry of commentary appeared in Beijing newspapers and on conservative websites attacking the idea of universal values as a Western plot to undermine party rule. China was preparing to host the Olympics in August 2008 with the slogan, “one world, one dream”. But conservatives feared that embracing universal values would mean acknowledging the superiority of the West’s political systems. In September, after the games, the party’s own mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, weighed in. A signed article accused supporters of universal values of trying to westernise China and turn it into a laissez-faire economy that would no longer uphold “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, Human Rights
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Google’s decision to confront the Chinese government is an early sign that the Americans are getting fed up with dealing with Chinese authoritarianism. But the biggest pressures are likely to come from politicians rather than businessmen. Google is an unusual company in an unusually politicised industry. If the Googlers do indeed head for the exits in China, they are unlikely to be crushed by a stampede of other multinationals rushing to follow them. To most big companies the country’s market is too large and tempting to ignore. Despite Google, US business is likely to remain the lobby that argues hardest for continuing engagement with China.

The pressures for disengagement will come from labour activists, security hawks and politicians – particularly in Congress. To date, the Obama administration has based its policy firmly on the assumptions that have governed America’s approach to China for a generation. The president’s recent set-piece speech on Asia was a classic statement of the case for US engagement with China – complete with the ritualistic assertion that America welcomes China’s rise. But, after being censored by Chinese television in Shanghai and harangued by a junior Chinese official at the Copenhagen climate talks, Barack Obama may be feeling less warm towards Beijing. An early sign that the White House is hardening its policy could come in the next few months, with an official decision to label China a “currency manipulator”.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Googlecn, Human Rights, U.S. relations
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