Ian Boyne, Contributor
CHINA'S HOSTING of the Olympics has afforded human rights activists worldwide and oppressed Tibetans at home the golden opportunity to focus global attention on China's disgraceful human rights record.
China is an increasingly influential Great Power whose scorn of the western human rights tradition is of deep concern to foreign policy analysts. The recent protests in Tibet and the subsequent repression by the Chinese authorities, which sparked the Olympic torch disruptions, could advance the torch of freedom in China. Human rights activists must continue the pressure on China, with the hope that that country can tame its totalitarian impulse.
Frightening and depressing
That a country with such a spectacular and awe-inspiring record of economic and industrial transformation, now set to overtake the United States by 2020, could use its status to embolden other authoritarian regimes, is frightening and depressing. While the United States has often failed to be true to its democratic rhetoric and heritage, that country has a strong philosophical and cultural commitment to human rights and civil liberties. China is philosophically committed to a set of ideas which are obnoxious to the Western liberal tradition.
The watchdog group Reporters Without Borders ranks China 163 out of 168 countries in its 2007 index of press freedom - a grotesque status for a Great Power with the prospect of being the superpower of the 21st century. Chinese authorities censor Internet use and in the first half of last year shut down 700 online forums. The Government controls the media in China, and in August of last year China passed an Emergency Response Law which bans the spread of "unverified information" regarding riots, disasters and other emergencies. Journalists who have been critical of the Chinese Communist Party have been jailed, and China's own Peoples' Daily said in a 2005 report that 338 publications were shut down for printing "internal" information. China leads the world in the number of imprisoned journalists, and has had that record for nine years running.
Restricting media coverage
The Chinese Communist Party still has a Central Propaganda Department (CPD) which gives media outlets directive restricting coverage of politically sensitive areas such as the environment, protests in Tibet and matters concerning Taiwan.
China has more than 2,000 newspapers, 8,000 magazines and some 374 television stations, and yet the long, tough arm of the state rigidly sets the limits of their operation.
Ironically, the Olympic Games are being promoted under the theme 'One World, One Dream'. But this is precisely what is terrifying about China's rise to prominence in the global system: an authoritarian world is certainly not the dream which humanity wants to embrace. Some have launched a campaign against what they term "the Genocide Olympics," focusing not only on the Tibet repression since the 1950s, but China's consort with the murderous regime in Sudan, where 200,000 people have been slaughtered and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes.
Even Spielberg quit
In February, famed Hollywood director, Steven Spielberg, quit as artistic director for the Games, saying China should be doing more to end the continued human suffering in Sudan.
Because there is no free press in China, and even the Internet is rigidly controlled, the Chinese people on the mainland have a jaundiced view of outside reaction to their totalitarian government.
Says history professor James Millward in an article on April 16 in the Open Democracy forum: "Chinese censorship and propaganda, starting with the history and civics Chinese children study in school, has a lot to do with Chinese popular attitudes. The Chinese public thinks the world is out to get them and that the West just wants to keep China down."
No doubt some of the criticism about China is just a reflection of Western chauvinism and racism. Some resent the fact of Chinese economic prowess and "the decline of the West". One should give no credence to these anti-Chinese positions.
One must evaluate the Chinese record on universal values, despite the scepticism of the postmodernists about any notion of universalism or objective morality.
The pressure must continue on the Chinese, and the Americans must play a pivotal role in applying diplomatic leverage on the Chinese to change their ways and join the modern world. The Chinese must not just transform their economy. They must transform their politics. And freedom-loving peoples all over the world must register their protest over the anachronism which China represents in a world that has made notable democratic strides.
Response to pressure
Happily, there are signs that China has quietly been responding to the pressure which has been mounting for it to respect human rights and add its own pressure on the dictatorial regimes which it has been propping up. In an interesting article in the January/February issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal ('China's New Dictatorship Diplomacy: Is Beijing Parting with Pariahs?') Stephanie Kleine Ahlbrandt and Andrew Small say, "China is often accused of supporting a string of despots, nuclear proliferators and genocidal regimes, shielding them from international pressure and thus reversing progress on human rights and humanitarian principles, yet over the last two years, Beijing has been quietly overhauling its policies toward pariah states."
Says the Foreign Affairs article: "Beijing has no choice but to worry about its international image. China's fears about a backlash and the potential damage to its strategic and economic relationships with the United States and Europe have prompted Beijing to put great effort into demonstrating that it is responsible power."
China must realise its responsibilities as a Great Power. We cannot be nonchalant about a Great Power with the largest population in the world remaining in the Dark Ages in terms of human rights and democracy. A Great Power using is phenomenal wealth and clout as well as its power on the Security Council to prop up genocidal regimes is something the international community must be deeply concerned about.
In 1996, when Western oil companies were pulling out of Sudan, which was then exporting terrorism, Chinese companies purchased a 40 per cent majority share in that country's oil company. They have since increased their stakes.
They now buy two-thirds of Darfur's oil exports. In 2004, Iran agreed to sell a Chinese corporation $20 billion worth of natural gas per year for 25 years - representing the world's largest natural gas purchase. By 2007, China had become the largest trading partner of rogue states Iran, North Korea and Sudan, and the second-largest of Burma and Zimbabwe.
Also in 2005, after Uzbek Government troops killed dozens of protesters in Andijan, the Chinese Government welcomed its president with a 21-gun salute and praised his handling of the uprising.
At the height of international outrage over Mugabe's Operation Drive Out Trash campaign to demolish the homes of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans in the opposition strongholds, the dictator Mugabe was fêted on a one-week trip to China. And Chinese diplomats in New York used their position on the Security Council to block a discussion of a damning UN report on the Zimbabwean crisis. (Roosevelt must be turning in his grave for pushing for China to get a permanent seat on the Security Council).
Responsible stakeholder
In September 2005, then Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, called for China to become a responsible stakeholder in the international system, warning that its ties to "troublesome" states would have "repercussions elsewhere". China, he said, had to choose whether "to be against us, and perhaps others, in the international system as well". China made a strategic shift, which underlines the power that the United States has to foment change in the behaviour of other states. Pressure must continue to mount on not only China, but on the United States and Britain (the rest of Europe does not need much encouragement) to press China towards respect for good international behaviour and human rights.
There have been some welcome signs of strategic repositioning from Beijing. In October 2006, Beijing cooperated with the United States in imposing sweeping UN sanctions on North Korea after its nuclear test, and China sent an official to Pyongyang to warn Kim Jong 11 about any further testing. In the summer of 2006, also, China voted for Security Council Resolution 1696 demanding the suspension of Iranian enrichment activities, threatening sanctions in the case of non-compliance. China's foreign minister has been to Teheran to urge the regime to stop enriching uranium.
China has also backed off its long- held position that the massacre in Darfur was "an internal matter". (China clings conveniently and opportunistically to outdated Westphalian notions of sovereignty). But China has been nudging the Darfur regime to cooperate with the West.
"Beijing has also recently scaled back its support for Mugabe's government even in the absence of strong international pressure to do so," says the Foreign Affairs article. As the authors say, "China will continue to set its own agenda, of course, but the United States and other concerned countries can play an important role in shaping the calculations."
Another superpower
Also, there is another superpower apart from the United States - the superpower of international public opinion; a superpower which unleashed its forces in unmistakable opposition to the Iraq War. That superpower, highly sensitive to human rights, will not stand back and allow an authoritarian China to flex its muscles with impunity.
The enormous moral force of the Dalai Lama cannot be ultimately resisted by China, despite its long campaign of distortions and demonisation. (It's a bald lie of the Chinese authorities that the Dalai Lama is advocating independence, rather than autonomy, for Tibet and that he is a 'splitist'.)
China can move from its authoritarian fixation but that has to come through intense pressure from a variety of forces.
The Olympics provides an excellent opportunity to press China to enter the race towards democracy.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
