http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080420/focus/focus4.html
'Genocide Olympics' in China
published: Sunday | April 20, 2008
Ian Boyne, Contributor
CHINA'S HOSTING of the Olympics has afforded human rights activists
worldwide and oppressed Tibetans at home the golden op****tunity 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 Re****ters 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 re****t 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 censor****p 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 Dictator****p
Diplomacy: Is Beijing Parting with Pariahs?') Stephanie Kleine
Ahlbrandt and Andrew Small say, "China is often accused of sup****ting
a string of despots, nuclear proliferators and genocidal regimes,
****elding 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 relation****ps 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 ex****ting 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 ex****ts. In 2004, Iran agreed
to sell a Chinese cor****ation $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
f=EAted 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 re****t on the Zimbabwean crisis. (Roosevelt must be turning
in his grave for pu****ng 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 ****ft, 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
op****tunistically to outdated Westphalian notions of sovereignty). But
China has been ****ging the Darfur regime to cooperate with the West.
"Beijing has also recently scaled back its sup****t 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 im****tant 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 op****tunity to press China to enter
the race towards democracy.
|
