POLITICS APRIL 16, 2008
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In this TNR debate, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation and New Republic deputy editor Richard Just discuss the appropriate response to the Beijing Olympics. In light of China's manifold human rights problems, how should fans, Olympic athletes, presidential candidates, and the U.S. government itself respond to the games? Click here for part one of the exchange.
From: Richard Just
To: Steven Clemons
Click here to read the previous entry in the conversation.
Steve and I agree that individual athletes should go to the Olympics prepared to raise hell about China's support of Sudan and Burma as well as its internal brutality towards dissidents. Where we apparently part company is on the question of whether the U.S. government should be using the Olympics to protest China's human rights record. Steve says no; I say yes.
To be clear, I do not favor a full boycott of the Olympics. For one thing, I think it would be unfair to American athletes. For another, I think that our goal when dealing with Beijing on human rights should be to signal solidarity with the Chinese people against their repressive government, not to thumb our noses at Chinese society as a whole. That distinction is crucial, and I worry that deploying the blunt tool of a full boycott would obscure it. Sending a delegation to the Olympics--and giving our athletes, coaches, corporate executives, and celebrities a rare, high-profile opportunity to speak directly to the Chinese people from within China--seems like our best bet for conveying the human rights message we want to send.
But, while I think our athletes should go to Beijing, I also think the U.S. government should use every tool short of a full boycott to embarrass China over its human rights record, at home and abroad. In this vein, Hillary Clinton's suggestion that President Bush skip the opening ceremonies strikes me as a good idea. Alternatively, Bush could go to the Games and deliver a major speech with other western leaders designed to shame China on human rights. Or he could demand to meet with jailed dissidents. Or he could tell China that he will only attend the Games if he is allowed to speak beforehand in Tibet.
Steve's argument that the president should not be in the business of publicly shaming China over human rights during the run-up to the Olympics rests on two planks: first, that human rights should take a backseat to other issues in the relationship between China and the United States, such as nuclear proliferation and economics; and, second, that shaming China over human rights will only backfire, worsening the human rights situation rather than improving it.
The first argument ignores the clear relationship between human rights and the Olympics. However you rank our priorities in dealing with China generally, you have to acknowledge that, at this point, there is a specific connection between China's human rights policy and the Olympics. Without the Olympics, there would have been no killings in Tibet last month; there would have been no forced removals of more than one million residents to clear the way for Olympic construction; and the crackdown on dissent that is currently underway would probably not have taken place. As Josh Kurlantzick has documented (here and here), the Olympics have made China's human rights policy dramatically worse. If it is not appropriate for our government to use the Olympics to address Olympics-related human rights abuses, in what context will it ever be appropriate? Moreover, if President Bush participates in the Olympics without registering his displeasure over abuses that are a direct result of the Games, isn't he implicitly condoning them?
Of course, China's human rights problems--Sudan, Burma, internal repression--go well beyond abuses that can be tied specifically to the Olympics. These larger issues need to be addressed as well. But Steve has set up a zero-sum hierarchy of foreign policy objectives under which these concerns could very well go ignored forever. If nuclear proliferation and economic concerns are just plain more important than human rights, and if, as Steve implies, diplomatic capital spent on one objective is diplomatic capital that cannot be used on another, then no U.S. president will ever be able to justify pressuring China on any moral issue--until the day arrives when all nukes are secured and China is no longer a threat to our economy. The alternative, of course, is to recognize that sometimes you have to prioritize human rights and sometimes you have to prioritize geostrategy. And the Olympics--when the whole world will be paying attention to China--seem a logical time to prioritize human rights rather than our own interests narrowly defined.
The second plank of Steve's argument is a practical one: Pressuring China publicly on human rights, he says, simply won't work. If that's true, then how to explain the timing of China's decision last year to counsel Sudan to admit U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur? That move from Beijing came right after activists launched a campaign to link the Olympics to the Darfur genocide. Coincidence? Unlikely. Of course, those peacekeepers are proving utterly ineffective, but the point is that China has responded to public pressure surrounding the Olympics before--and might again. Seen in this light, a presidential threat to boycott the opening ceremonies is less a "dose of emotionalism" than a shrewd strategic calculation that could yield real progress on human rights issues.
The Olympics were awarded to China at a time when most observers still believed that market capitalism--and other efforts to tie Beijing to the western world--would eventually lead to political liberalism. If that were happening, I might be more sympathetic to Steve's warning that shaming China on human rights could make things worse. But China's human rights record has deteriorated since it was awarded the Games seven years ago, not improved. No one can guarantee that a policy of shaming China over human rights won't somehow backfire, but we can pretty reliably forecast that a policy of patiently waiting for the country to reform itself will backfire. How do we know? Because it already has.
Finally, a note about maturity. Steve describes Hillary's stance as "immature." I know that, in the eyes of some foreign policy thinkers, grand strategy is for the adults and human rights is for the kids--and the mark of foreign-policy maturity is the ability to coolly play the game of global chess without paying too much attention to the emotional stuff: the political prisoners and genocide victims and war refugees in faraway places. I have never understood this trope. It seems to me that a key mark of adulthood is the ability to empathize with others, and, when possible, to act on that empathy. I see no reason why we should expect our elected leaders to do anything less.
Richard Just is deputy editor of The New Republic. Steven Clemons is Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publisher of The Washington Note.
Click here to read the next part in the debate.
By Steven Clemons and Richard Just
14 comments
I don't understand why people in the West are so obsessed with "shaming China". You behave like that you know so much better than we do about everything. Let me tell you that you don't. You don't understand China better than the Chinese so you don't the right to cirtize us. Yes there are still many problems in the Chinese scoiety. However, things are getting better in China and we can definitely see progress. The Chinese are in fact among the most optimistic people of the world because we feel good about our future. Hence, when foreigners tell us that we should be ashamed of ourselves, we have to tell you this: cultures are different; freedom is not a Chinese idea; and we will always do things our way.
- Ordinary Chinese
April 16, 2008 at 1:54am
I've been to China and stayed with young Chinese people. They told me they hated their government for repressing them and lamented the fact that they were unable to travel to other parts of the world and experience new cultures as I was able to do. This is a good article. I particularly like the last paragraph. this whole idea of maturity vs immaturity would be better described as calloused vs. sensitized. Get ready for the corporate sponsor protest campaign! Coming soon!
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April 16, 2008 at 1:26pm
We have leverage over China? You could have fooled me-all they have to do is dump their dollar holdings and we're toast. And considering what we're doing in Iraq we can't blather morally either. Not only that but they're even becoming better capitalists than us-they save.
- lesserliz
April 16, 2008 at 2:33pm
"we will always do things our way." Great idea! Now how about letting Tibetans do things their way?
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April 16, 2008 at 2:43pm
lesserliz, I concur in part and dissent in part. For now, I think you're right that we've got no real advantage over China. However, you might be interested to hear that exports to China are growing faster than imports from China, and that the cost of cheap Chinese stuff is going to go up. The declining dollar is no accident. We've been pushing down its value for years, in part, I believe, because the yuan is pegged to the value of the dollar. This pegged value helps give China a ridiculous competitive advantage in costs, thus fueling a huge boom and causing lots of cash to flow overseas, which in turn has allowed China to buy all of those bonds. Since cutting spending or raising taxes or both are all political no-goes in this country, forcing the value of the dollar down grinds the value of the yuan against the floor, and makes those pesky bond debts less expensive in the long run. The only problems? Too much cash flowing around means loans to people that shouldn't get them (what one might call "sub-prime loans"), and inflation.
- HellifIknow
April 16, 2008 at 3:27pm
I've lived in China as well. And grew up in area with a huge proportion of Chinese. People choose to pay attention to want they want. Westerners just don't want to hear this: Most Chinese are happy with the direction the government is going. And that's what it comes down to. Is the Chinese government improving over the year and decades? Are people's lives getting better as time goes on? 90% of Chinese people will likely tell you "Yes". And this has nothing to do with corporations or communist propoganda. To assume so is an insult. I'm all for watchdog groups to keep the powers that be under control, but keep in mind that their purpose is not to demonize, but to make sure life improves. Which it is.
- Shia
April 16, 2008 at 4:47pm
"Without the Olympics, there would have been no killings in Tibet last month" Untrue, the uprising occurred at the 40th anniversary of the previous uprising, the one in which the Dalai Llama fled. If the Tibetans were really interested in the Olympics, they would have held out to just before the Olympics to make their protest. I would have had no problem with Bush not attending the opening ceremonies, but he has already committed to it and would need a very compelling reason not to go now, if it were to be about Tibet it would be understandable but it is not, it is about Darfur, in which conditions now are no different than when we accepted the invitation. Diplomacy has its protocols, changing due to public opinion and not new conditions (like the unrest in Tibet) would screw up our own future diplomatic efforts. If you say you are going to do something, do it otherwise there will be much less chance to get anything done in the future.
- blackton
April 16, 2008 at 5:03pm
"freedom is not a Chinese idea; and we will always do things our way" Taiwan disproves this. Despite the fact that Taiwan is culturally very close to China, they have a free society and would never want to go back to authoritarian dictatorship; indeed, that is the reason why there is so little desire to go forward with reunification at this time. The popularity of democratic parties in Hong Kong also shows the same thing. It is insulting to say that Chinese people hate freedom. All the evidence is that they would love freedom if the Communist Party would just give up power and let it happen.
- Dilan Esper
April 16, 2008 at 5:12pm
Will you two go the China and raise hell?
- Mason Lawrence
April 16, 2008 at 6:56pm
Shaming China => Angry Chinese Masses => Surge in Nationalism & hatred of Westerners and Tibetans => Increased Public Support for Chinese Gov't => Brutal Crackdown in Tibet => A (true) Cultural Genocide and the Disappearance of Tibetan Culture USA and Western Europe governments watch helplessly. Their citizens are initially shocked and angry, but soon forget as their attention shifts to the next celebrity sex scandal or global warming.
- Nigerian Observer
April 16, 2008 at 9:38pm
The notion of using the Olympics to coerce China into changing its fundamental domestic and foreign policies betrays the fatuousness of Western moralists. The Olympics are a sporting event. They are already sold out and, despite silly pie throwing, will be a great success. I was in Hong King last month and witnessed a huge parade down Nathan Road, protesting everything from Tibet to the trafficking in condemned prisoners' body parts to the repression of Falun Gong. The protesters were lively, in-your-face, but peaceful and orderly. Every day, in dozens of venues across China, there are protests, mainly over local issues. Peking does not encourage international coverage of them -- assuming the international media are interested -- but these protests happen and are rarely if ever suppressed or brutalized. Even due process is advancing. The #1 municipal construction in China is courthouses, and newly-fledged lawyers (God help us!) are being graduated from new law schools by the thousands every year. Precious Westerners who beat up on China over human rights forget that the first, THE FIRST, mandate of government is to "insure domestic tranquility," i.e. keep the peace, maintain stability. China's history is replete with instances (I'm thinking of the Taiping Rebellion, which cost about 20 million lives, and of Mao's Cultural Revolution) of the enormous cost of allowing the centrifugal forces of this vast, crowded, heterogeneous nation to gain traction. To be sure, China's policy in Tibet -- as the Dalai Lama calls it, "cultural genocide" -- and its condoning of the genocide in Darfur are abominable, and the daily repression of ordinary Chinese is not so much to insure domestic tranquility or promote the general welfare as it is to promote special interests with cozy relationships to government. China is a work in progress, it has made enormous strides in only a few decades and still has a long way to go before achieving our level of virtue. So, as we use China's shortcomings to make ourselves look superior, perhaps we should pause, to open a window and allow the fresh air of perspective to displace the thick fumes of sanctimony.
- jm_rice
April 17, 2008 at 12:13pm
Human rights problem is alway we think relatively.When U.S.occupied Iraq or when India forcing Kashmiri not to express their right is not human right, both India and U.S.call this their duty to keep peace in that terrory butwhen China priveting Tibetties, that is act again human right.
- Ramesh Raghuvanshi
April 17, 2008 at 12:31pm
It is happening, as anyone who can read Chinese is reading these days on newspapers, websites and political blogs in not just mainland China, but also Hong Kong, and Taiwan. It has already reached to the stage of increased public support for the Chinese Gov't, which is very confident about any future crack down in Tibet. The decision not to reopen Tibet for tourism after May 1 should be taken as an alarming sign that something is being planned.
- How True
April 17, 2008 at 5:05pm
I am very tired of all those chinese crybabies. Thinking that we have to wait the end of the Omympic games to stop hearing those complaints makes me sick. One for sure : NO WORLD CUP IN CHINA EVER.
- John
April 22, 2008 at 5:20am