Isn't the US snubbing China's prime minister on human rights grounds a bit rich?

Great Debates
1

So this week Hu Jintao is visiting Washington as part of ongoing good will talks with the US and to discuss additional trade agreements. In an act of what I can only call blatant hypocrisy, the US congress makes it clear it’s not Mr Hu’s biggest fan. Story here.

In a desperate scramble to be on a higher pedestal than China congress seems to have conveniently forgotten that it’s own history on human rights is pretty crap, in the recent past and up until the modern day.Less than 50 years ago racial segregation was occurring, homosexuality was illegal, women were pretty much excluded from anything but a wife/homemaker role and everything belonged to a tiny number of white men.

Now congress and the US in general attacks China for its role on human rights and freedom of speech, its behaviour in foreign trade and how it deals with political prisoners. Again, I think this is a tad rich. Human rights in the US today? Let’s ask all the gay people who want to get married what they think about that. The acronym DOMA comes to mind. Indeed the US population doesn’t seem to have even made up its mind that the rights of minorities are even necessary to protect, bowing to the “will of the people” in prop 8 and then complaining about activist judges when legal recourse against blatant discrimination is used to try and remedy it. What about all those women who want to exercise the right to an abortion and have to be constantly reminded that this right is pretty much one supreme court case away from being revoked? How about the black Americans all but kept in institutionalised poverty, denied access to decent education and pretty much destined due to the criminal justice system and the war on drugs to be headed to prison, yet another institutionalisation of poverty and racial discrimination - in 2006 ethnic minorities made up 79% of the prison population despite being 32% of the entire population.

China is accused of holding people without charge for breaches of spurious laws in disregard of the rights of the individual and due process. Again I find it somewhat surprising that the US would want to talk about that too much considering it just voted to carrying on doing exactly the same thing itself. Nancy Pelossi in a dinner with Mr Hu raised the status of Liu Xiaobo, effectively a political prisoner, arguing that his incarceration for speaking out against the Chinese state is again a breach of human rights. So what about Bradley Manning? Currently he is in solitary confinement, on suicide watch, denied access to sunlight or contact with family and friends, basically because he got egg on the face of the US government. So just how is this different?

As for trading practices - this is even more amusing to me. Ask the good people of Cuba just how they feel about the trading policies followed by the US, I’m sure they’ll have a lot to say, and not a lot of it complimentary. How about the protectionism that the US has introduced on incoming airmail under the guise of greater security? Just what is it exactly that China does in the area of trade that is so bad, apart from do better than the US in manufacturing and providing a location for off shored jobs that Americans seem to think should belong to them? And of the two powers one of them has invaded four sovereign nations in the past fifty years, and one hasn’t. Guess which one is which?

The US since the world wars has always strived for hegemony, and it doesn’t seem to care what methods it uses to achieve it or who is made a casualty in the process. China, throughout it’s long history, has always strived for stability, accepting that the needs of the individual must come before the greater good. Whilst the US claims to be focussed on the rights of the individual, and that China must learn to follow suit, how many rights do the individuals in the US have in reality if they don’t have money and power to exercise those rights? Whilst the situation may not be much different in China right now, it appears that China is playing the long game when it comes to investment in its future and its desire to slowly improve the lot of its people, accepting that it will be a long arduous process, and that the opportunity for people to have a say in the process is something that must be sacrificed to make it work (I’m not claiming this way is preferable, but it does seem to be working).

Apparently the US in the form of congress thinks that China must do better (I’m guessing that’s a D+ or a C-) and the US will hold them to account. I would like to know quite how the US thinks it is standing on the moral high ground on this one. Could someone please explain, between the two powers, why the US should be lecturing China on human rights and behaviour on the global stage?

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Liu leaked classified information to the press?

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The idea that that government repression in the United States is comparable to that in China is not worth commenting on.

However, on the larger issue, the state of human rights in China is an entirely reasonable issue of discussion regardless of who raises the issue. If you are apt to fall for ad hominem attacks on those raising the issue, then that’s your own personal issue, and it does not address the substance of the matter.

Even paranoids have enemies, even hypocrites can be right. Why don’t you address the substance of the human rights issues in China?

Why is it right to censor the Internet? Why is it right to lock up people whose only crime is criticizing the government? Why is it okay to deny people religious freedom? Why is it okay for the state to compel abortions? Why is it okay to execute someone for non-violent offenses? Why should torture be allowed? Why can’t workers form unions to address oppressive working conditions? Why can’t people sue the government to address environmental disasters?

Let’s start with why you think China is right on those human rights issues, and proceed from there.

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How would you respond, Ravenman, if the Chinese government was setting the tone of the debate, so that the only item of the agenda was on the failures of American civil rights, as determined by Chinese netizens - and any inter-country comparison was considered dodging the question?

Edit: http://chinasmack.com/ has a interesting window into the Chinese netizenry.

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I am curious what the OP see as the role of our leaders in international relations? Would you rather they just slap the backs of their Chinese counterparts and tell them what a great job they are doing? I read the linked article and was gladdened to see some leaders actually taking a stand for something.

If China wants to give us a stern look and refuse to eat dinner with us for some of the things we do wrong, more power to them.

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Mr Hu is the President of the People’s Republic of China, not the Prime Minister.

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If we didn’t bring up this issue, in a few years wouldn’t doing business with China without mentioning their abuse of human rights be added to your list of woes America has done?

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I don’t understand what’s going on on that website and I won’t respond to it.

If we were criticized for holding people without trial at Guantanamo, I’d say that I agree that we need to put them on trial. If we were criticized for locking up Bradley Manning I’d point out that he signed papers agreeing not to release classified information, he understood the laws in that regard, and protecting classified information is not the same as being penalized for exercising free speech in criticizing one’s government. If we were criticized for censoring the Internet I’d say that the person doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about.

How would YOU respond?

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Do you think China has a superior human rights record? Despite the U.S.'s numerous glaring failures, I’m not sure what compares to China’s treatment of Taiwan, Falun Gong, and Tibet, and its imprisonment of democratic activists. There’s the minor matter of China’s one-child policy and the effect that has had on its women and girls. You didn’t mention the death penalty in your OP. The U.S. is one of the last holdouts on that, of course, and it’s wrong. How many people do you think China has executed? How many people are in prison in China and what do you think their chances are of getting out through any kind of court system or democratic process? How would you compare labor practices in the two countries? Since you decried U.S. policies on gay rights, how is China doing? And the comparison of Liu and Manning stinks - and I say that as somebody who’s pretty supportive of WikiLeaks. The Guantanamo prison would be a better comparison.

The bottom line, I think, is this: governments will get away with whatever they think they can get away with. Few are going to limit their power because of human rights concerns. The U.S. certainly hasn’t and neither has China. That said, the U.S. is a more democratic and less authoritarian country and China’s record on human rights sucks. The U.S. intermittently pays attention to human rights; China doesn’t give a shit about them.

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I forgot to mention that I answered lots of questions about racism, human rights, the justice system, and other matters when I lived in China. It isn’t a particularly difficult question you asked me there.

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I’m more than a little confused by the OP.

For starters, while I’m certainly not a fan of countries not allowing gay marriage, less than ten years ago not a single country on earth allowed gay marriage.

By the standards of the OP, the Netherlands of 2000 has no right to condemn Iran and Saudi Arabia for executing gays because they didn’t(at that time) allow them to get married.

Beyond that, by the standards of the OP I guess the US had no right to condemn Iran, Apartheid South Africa, or the Soviet Union.

Furthermore, some of his other remarks are just absurd. The OP is obviously quite upset at the treatment of minorities within the US but completely ignores the treatment of non-Han in China which is much, much worse than anything non-whites face in the US(and I say that as someone who’s not white). The OP implies that it’s extremely difficult for women to get an abortion in the US which seems incredibly hard to believe considering that there are around a million abortions performed every year. In fact, other than delivering a baby, it’s the most performed surgical procedure in the US.

One wonders how the OP feels about the government of China making it illegal for mothers in China to be told the gender of their fetus.

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Just because there is hypocracy, does not excuse or balances out an absolute action.

After my 20 years of living and working in China, I certainly believe that the challenges of feeding and governing 1.3 billion people make for a different base level of human rights than say the US. That said, there are plenty of areas where I think the China base level is too low. In other words, given China’s economic level and population, I don’t think it’s realistic to hold China to the same high level as say the US in many areas but that they should be held to a base level and that level should be going up over time as China modernizes.

To use one of your examples, the fact that the US practiced racial segregation 50 years ago does not excuse the racial segregation in China TODAY (Eg, Tibet, Xinjiang, etc). We shouldn’t be so self-righteous about it, or perhaps we should preface the discussion with admitting to US short comings in the past and how we are a better society for it today, and these lessons are valuable in China’s own modernization, etc.

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I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that. What does feeding and governing 1.3 billion people have to do with executing those who criticize the way you do it? Should we excuse China’s shortcomings just because they’re a big country?

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I doubt it has anything to do with human rights, I see it as a yellow flag for China that the honey moon period is just about over. To me its about the money, that China should be adjusting their currency and other business practices, if they want the bennifits of having a stable economic relationship with the states.

Declan

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I just don’t understand the argument “America did bad things in the past, therefore America is unqualified to judge a country who is doing bad things now.”

Societies change (and dare I say, advance.) If one country is stuck in the past in terms of its human rights record, America has the right to object to this.

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I’d go even further: now that we know that it is wrong, why shouldn’t we be telling others that it’s wrong? If you did hard drugs in the past, and it horribly screwed it up, are you a hypocrite for telling your kids not to let that happen to them?

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I personally wouldn’t. But that does happen with some other countries, such as Pakistan.

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Great, a nitpick - was that the best you could contribute to the discussion?

Guantanomo bay is open NOW. The denial of equal rights to gays is happening NOW. The invasion of other sovereign countries by the US because it suits their purposes is happening NOW. To use the metaphor someone else invoked, it’s like someone shooting up in front of someone else and saying “this shit’ll fuck you up, don’t touch it”. So no, on that basis I don think the US can lecture anyone on behaviour globally, or on disregarding human rights.

I think that’s a false equivalence. I’m trying to make like for like comparisons here and I think between China and America there is often similarity. The difficulty of people seeking redress against those who cause pollution was brought up in the thread - until class action law suits were made (by poor people suffering the effects of the pollution) in the US, nothing was done about this situation in the US either because it was in the interests of business and they could protect themselves with money and lawyers. Like I said, if you don’t have the money to protect your rights they’re a bit academic.

As for the standard I am attempting to hold the US to, I’m not stupid or naive, and I don’t expect any country (including the US) to do things that are not in its own interests. What does gall me is how the US quite flagrantly acts against democracy, human rights and freedom when it suits it (particularly outside its own borders where the voters don’t feel the impact) whilst condemning anyone else who does the same. It’s hypocrisy pure and simple.

Do I think it’s lamentable that people have their family planning actively managed for them by the Chinese state? Yes. Do I understand why China feels it needs to do something about overpopulation? Yes. Do I think it has used the right solution? Well it’s hard for me to judge, I’m not affected by it (although I’m personally quite happy to limit my own children if I ever have them to one). I do know that overpopulation is possibly the biggest threat to the planet and that it seems without restraints on reproduction people have no regard for what impact their choices have on others in this area. I think time will tell who has the right approach here.

As for how it has affected the role of women, it’s interesting you cite this as apparently the gender imbalance now has given women much more power in the dating and marriage game than they had before because they are a scarcer commodity. Furthermore the impact of this is also slowly starting to change how people view the gender roles too - it’s been bitter medicine for the traditional view of gender but maybe it’s what was needed.

Where did I say that?

Sadly, I think that’s the best answer I can hope for.

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I’m saying that it’s a lot more complex than a smaller developed country of 300 million. For example, China has to do *something *about population control and they have. You can argue about whether or not that infringes on the human rights of the population and whether the execution of that program is done in a reasonably fair and respectful manner, etc, but practically speaking China has to do something. This is not a comparable issue in the US.

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To tell you the truth, the way the Chinese government handles their population control isn’t the biggest problem I have with their policies. I don’t believe that it’s a question of size to deny your citizens proper Internet access, to silence those who disagree with you or to suppress uprisings in occupied territories with brutal military force. Sure, there are worse countries in the world in terms of human rights, but if China wants to be a main player on the world stage, I believe they have to answer these questions.

Or maybe I’m still not getting it - why is it necessary for a big country to imprison dissidents or censor the internet, but not for such a small country like the US? Where is the added complexity? It’s not like we’re talking Russia vs. Luxembourg here, in terms of size…