It isn’t all that often that I agree with Gordo, but this one he got right:
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China’s Human Rights Record: rewarding bad behavior
A new Amnesty International report concludes that China’s human rights abuses have worsened during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics.
Nobody should be surprised by this outcome. For a couple of decades now, we’ve been told that integrating China into the world’s economic and political structures will lead to China’s becoming more democratic. The theory is that free markets and free speech are inextricably intertwined, as if Singapore was a beacon of democracy and Sweden a totalitarian state. Free the Chinese market, and you free the Chinese people.
So shortly after the Tienanmen Square massacre, George the Smart sent Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft to Beijing, in order to reassure the Chinese government that the US would not let a little thing like a televised massacre derail China’s quest for membership in the World Trade Organization.
But increased foreign investment expanded international trade had little effect on China’s human rights policies. Why would they? China didn’t suffer any significant penalty for the Tienanmen Square massacre. In fact, China’s oppression of its workers probably made foreign investors and corporations more eager to do business in China. Like the pigs in Animal Farm, the Chinese government had achieved a level of labor control that was greatly admired and envied by their capitalist trade partners.
A few years later, Bill Clinton decided to dispense with annual reviews of China’s human rights record, in which officials would fraudulently certify that China’s human rights record was improving, so their Most Favored Nation status should continue. Instead, he and the US congress decided to extend MFN status regardless of the human rights situation. In 2000, politically-motivated Republicans in congress accused the Chinese of forcing women to have abortions, and accused the Clinton administration of allowing Chinese spies to steal nuclear secrets. But they set such minor issues aside and voted overwhelmingly for granting China MFN status on a permanent basis. Democrats, who had criticized the Chinese for human rights and labor abuses just a couple of months before, followed suit. And in 2001, the Bush administration pushed for Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization, despite the fact that China’s human rights record had not improved, and despite the fact that only months before, the Chinese had detained for twelve days American Naval aviators who had crash landed in China.
The pattern remained unchanged for nineteen years. Outrageous behavior by the Chinese government was rewarded and repeated again and again. And now we find that rewarding China by awarding them the 2008 Olympic games has only led to further outrages? Imagine that.
I copied Gordo’s whole article, knowing that he won’t mind; I hope that he cross-posts it on the Liberal Avenger as well.
I’d guess that we looked at what happened to the Soviet Union as it tried to moderize, and saw how the push-back of people, just ordinary people, led by Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II, put a real dent in the Soviet power structure. But there was an added factor: President Reagan’s continual challenges of Soviet expansionism, from Nicaragua to Angola to Afghanistan, as well as forcing deployment of the Pershing II LR-IRBMs in Europe as a counter to the Soviet SS-20s, which pushed far greater military costs on the Soviets, with no appreciable return. As Poland and the USSR were saddled with weaker leaders at the time, they didn’t know how to respond to maintain totalitarian control. Mikhail Gorbachev tried introducing his Glasnost to the USSR, as part of his peristroika program. But in loosening the reins, instead of easing the pressure on the totalitarian government, the long-repressed people wound up increasing the pressure on the government. Mr Gorbachev has unleashed the whirlwind.
The Chinese Communists saw that, and have been absolutely firm in keeping the reins tight. Because the democratic West does not exert any pressure on China, the way President Reagan led NATO to do in the 1980s, the Chinese face one less impediment to their totalitarian control; rather than having the West impose tremendous costs on our enemy, we are happily sending them billions and billions of our dollars and euros to buy Chinese products.
With their constant vigilance toward keeping up their repression, their restrictions on the internet that we seem to think will liberate everyone’s minds, and their harsh internal penalties, they have assured that the Chinese Lech Walesa will never get an opportunity to inspire a Chinese Solidarity.
We have clung to the notion that if we just treat the Chinese Communists with respect and openness, they’ll come around. So far, that policy hasn’t worked in the slightest.
Of course, if we go the other direction and look at what complete isolation has wrought in Cuba, it doesn’t look much better. So clearly some engagement with the outside world is necessary to bring down a dictatorship that has as efficient a hold on the media as China and Cuba. But openness in and of itself won’t do the trick, as you point out.
Unfortunately, our economy is so intertwined with China’s right now that ratcheting up restrictions on Chinese exports would hurt us in the short run, mostly by raising consumer prices significantly as manufacturers find somewhere else to which they can outsource their operations. If we weren’t worried sick about inflation over here, I’d say go for it – but imagine the greeting we’d give any policy that raised consumer prices even more!
Just ordinary folks like the Pope, huh? At any rate, I think you’ve got the history a bit turned around. First of all, challenging Soviet expansion was by no means unique to Reagan. Recall Truman’s Berlin airlift, Kennedy’s actions in Cuba, Johnson’s occupation of Vietnam, Nixon’s coup in Chile, and Carter’s support for the Mujahideen. In reality, staunch opposition to Soviet expansion was a key feature of every cold war president’s foreign policy, and Reagan’s support for right wing dictators throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America was a policy that was also pursued by every cold war president, interrupted only for a brief period at the end of Carter’s presidency (and interrupted only in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Iran).
The Soviet Union did not reform as a result of the Cold War militarism of the United States, even during the Reagan era. And the Soviets did not, as some assert, go on a wild binge of military spending in response to Star Wars or the deployment of Pershing missiles. For most of Reagan’s term in office Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko carried on their Stalinist policies and continued their war in Afghanistan despite his efforts. Gorbachev didn’t come to power until 1985, and immediately began to scale back Soviet military spending.
Also, glasnost and perestroika were completely independent programs. They were part of a three-pronged reform of the Soviet system (demokratizatsiya was the third prong).
The effects of glasnost, the policy of government transparency, tolerance of dissent, and freedom of information, became evident first. It was a huge success, in terms of bolstering Gorbachev’s support and prestige and undermining his Stalinist rivals.
Demokratizatsiya, the policy of allowing multiparty elections at the local and regional levels, backfired badly. Nationalist parties swept local elections, undermining Gorbachev as much as it undermined his rivals.
The effects of peretroika were felt last, and led directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet economy went into a severe depression and a deflationary spiral. The Stalinists grabbed the opportunity to unseat Gorbachev, but were quickly pushed out of power by Russian nationalist Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin began the process of rolling back glasnost and undermining demokratizatsiya, and expanding perestroika. The Russian economy shrank by a further 50%, and did not recover until the Putin era.
And as Jeff points out, it’s simply not practical to simply pull the rug out from under the Chinese right now. A Cuba-style embargo is unlikely to force reform, and if we try to force the WTO to choose between China and the US, we might not be the country that the organization retains.
So when I say that we ought to penalize China for bad behavior, I don’t mean that we ought to fund African dictators who resist Chinese influence in the region. I mean that instead of the stick-and-no-carrot approach we used with the Soviet Union, we should offer the Chinese the benefits of international economic and political integration, but only so long as they can show progress on human rights.
Unfortunately, we’ve already given the store away, in terms of incentives. So what I would propose is this: as long as the Chinese can meet preset benchmarks on human rights (e.g., an end to torture and detention of dissidents by the end of 2010, the right to organize independent trade unions by the end of 2012, etc.), they can keep their membership in the WTO and their MFN status. But if not, then we should revoke MFN status and gradually begin increasing tariffs on various goods. I think some version of this approach would be more likely to bring about change than simply continuing the same failed approach.
That Presidents Truman and Kennedy challenged Soviet expansionism is granted, and they were the best of our recent Democrats. But when President Johnson’s prosecution of the Vietnam War went sour, the Democratic Party in this country turned in to the Wimpocratic Party, unable to be either effective or trustworthy in foreighn policy. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan? Jimmy Carter’s strong response was to boycott the Moscow Olympics, but his “help” for the Mujahadin was weak and second-rate. That he was tied down by another wimpy response, to an act of war committed by Iran, certainly hindered him. Had Mr Carter had any testosterone, he would have told the Iranians, “You have 48 hours to put our people on an airplane, safely, and have them out of the country, or they will be considered casualties of war, and Tehran and Qonm will become smoking, radioactive ruins.”
By not showing that resolve, when needed, he encouraged the Soviets.
President Reagan’s responses to the Soviets should have been nothing new, simply part of a consistent American policy. It was due to Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter that it was innovative. (I don’t blame Gerald Ford, because his hands were thoroughly tied.)
Moreover than coddling what’s on my mind is, due to the growing debts and mountainous debt the U S already owes what do you folks think would happen if China decides it’s going to take Taiwan.
Would the U S government refuse and send in troops and if we did what would or could the U S A do if China then say pay up in full plus the interest you owe us.
Would the U S just knuckle under, pay up and flatten this nation completely? And if the U S did pay up what would we pay up with the funny monopoly money dished out to us. There isn’t enough gold and other precious metals in our U S federal vaults to cover half what China is owed.
The point is that the United States should have never borrowed a cent from China in the first place and take this nation to a point of no return and into a position where we have to cow tow aka coddle a potential and very viable enemy more than capable of entering into war with us on an equal basis and don’t kid yourselves that China can’t do just that.
War with China was the first bane and dread the boys and girls at the Pentagon had after that government adopted communism shortly after the end of WW II, bane and dread over and above a terrorist guerrilla type war.