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On Values, Human Rights and Their Interpretation
The Chinese take a neutral stand on foreign internal issues. Like on Sudan, where China buys oil and does not loudmouth much about remote struggles in Darfur, liberal interventionists and their neocon brethren damn them for such behavior whenever it suits their goals.
There are some basic issues where all nations agree upon, like the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But even there the interpretation of these rights already varies, and this not only between the 'west' and others, but between each pair of societies. 'Everyone has the right to life,' says the declaration. How does that fit with the death penalty and opinions thereon in Europe and the U.S.?
Then there is the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which most parties have signed with the notable exception of a bunch of Arab countries at the Persian Gulf, most of whom are allies to the 'western' countries that ratified the treaty. How can that be?
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights includes the 'right to work' and the 'right to social security'. It has 159 full parties. The U.S. signed the treaty in 1977 but is one of the very few countries that never ratified it.
Which is to show only that such rights are never really universal, especially when it comes to interpretation of internal issues in other countries.
The French President Sarkozy recently received the Dalai Lama in official capacity. When China expressed concern, Sarcozy cited 'European values'. The Chinese remember those very well.
I like the Chinese stand on this:
China on Tuesday said it doesn't accept the French leader Nicholas Sarkozy using "European values" as a pretext to defend its act that hurts fundamental interests of other countries.
"We will not interfere in the values adopted by other countries. At the same time we cannot accept using these values as an excuse for act that hurts the fundamental interests of other nations and peoples," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told the regular Tuesday press briefing.
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Liu's said this when asked to comment on French President Sarkozy's recent remarks that the French side would like to restart dialogue with China, but "not at the price of renouncing our own European values."
The Chinese spokesman took a traditional stand on Westphalian sovereignty which is some time tested real European valuable consideration.
My personal stand on 'rights' and 'values' discussions between nations was well expressed in a recent interview (in German, my translation) with the former German chancellor Schmidt:
I have great sympathies for human rights, but I am very concerned when, in the name of human rights, political aims, or even strategic aims, are pursued.
Over the last years the U.S. neocons used 'human rights' as a sales argument for their destructive policy aims. The incoming Obama administration will use the argument even more. Whether that will be from genuine conviction or as a tactical argument will be difficult to decipher in the onslaught of propaganda that will accompany it in this or that case of 'needed' military intervention.
I for one will adhere to Schmidt's warning and take the Chinese standpoint. You may not like the 'values' of others. But that is not an argument to force your 'values' onto them, especially not with force.
Slothrop:
I’m a full-throated supporter of the Universal Declaration, and i don’t see anything at all wrong with what b’s written here about it.
There’s a big difference between saying i — as a human — support human rights, and saying that i think the U.S., nationally, supports it.
My experience in living amongst the Chinese is that they have a very keen sense of human rights, just as idealistic as that of the U.S. The main distinction between the two ideologies, as i see it, is in how they dispense public justice and in their interpretation of the relative values of those rights.
Traditionally, the Chinese government is very laissez faire, whether in economics, social mores, or whatever else you want to look at. They keep their laws few and the punishments severe. Nationalism, and the pressures of living in a competitive world, have skewed recent governments rather significantly towards a more intrusive control, but even then it’s generally maintained a laissez faire approach.
For instance, the Cultural Revolution merely shifted authority and responsibility from established, experienced networks of middle aged moderates to the country’s unwashed, ignorant, and suggestible youth. The excesses of that time were almost always localized, and so blaming “the Chinese government” for everything that happened then is rather like blaming the “The U.S. Government” for terrorizing the U.S. people with the civil war.
The CR was the last, dying gasp of China’s century of civil anarchy. It was a frightening human failure, but not surprising considering the history from which China was emerging. It was basically a civil conflict played out with ranks cruelly manipulated teenagers, and none of them had anything like what we’d call real discipline or continuity. The CCCP’s story is that the Gang of Four were taking advantage of Mao, who had advanced syphilitic dementia, and were essentially trying to orchestrate a coup; when Mao died, the coup could finally be broken (and was). Regardless if you accept this or not, most of the cadres of the Red Guard were only whimsically connected to anything resembling central authority, and if the government isn’t in control then it can’t really be blamed.
Everyone was involved, at every level of society and, of course, virtually everyone was a victim. Deng Xiaoping was imprisoned for several years before being freed, his life in question most of that time. It was rather like a medieval European witch craze, actually.
So the CR was a massive human failure. But it was a breakdown of the system — not a product of it. Governments sometimes fail (how much money has the U.S. tossed down the gullet of its most craven money chasers, these last few weeks?), and sometimes they even Epic Fail.
The Falun Gong is another useful example; many of the excesses perpetrated against these people are the result of local corruption, rather than central government policy. Americans howl that the freedom of these people’s religion is being violated — but of course, the Chinese have a five thousand year history where the state reserves the right to shut down any institution it perceives as threatening social stability. The Falun Gong are a cult of recent origin linked to a shady character who lives outside China. A lot of money passes through it, and not for charity purposes. It’s a “religion” only in the sense that new age astrologers, scientologists, or reiki healers are. Germany is very strict with Scientologists, and gets a lot of criticism for it; personally, i’m fully behind them.
The Falun Gong could easily have become a political force in the same way that Sun Myung Moon currently wields power in the U.S. What most folks don’t know is that Moon was set up in business by the CIA, to be used as a counter-communist force during the 60’s and 70’s. It’s not crazy to wonder if the Falun Gong aren’t a similar sort of operation — and if they are, then can the Chinese government be blamed?
What if the government thinks — wrongly — that they are. Would they be justified then?
I believe in freedom of religion, but Chinese government traditions have a long-established procedure for estimating whether something is or is not a religion, and those processes have been around for, again, millenia. So regardless of how you feel about human rights, you’ve got to admit that the Chinese take them seriously — and that they are esteemed very differently than most Westerners would like to admit.
Posted by: china_hand #2 | Dec 17 2008 14:17 utc | 32
I’d hate to engage in battle of overgeneralization over what “China” is and what the “West” is: both are too big and complex to be overgeneralized anyways and anybody who bothers can literally come up with millions of exceptions to any generalization made. I do want to point to the alleged Chinese “policy” towards Tibet that illustrates the point I am trying to make–specifically how dangerous it is to engage in facile arguments from both sides, not just on China, but in general.
On one hand, it is easy to refute the claims of Chinese “genocide” being perpetrated against Tibetans. There is no systematic assault on Tibetans and their culture directed by Beijing. There is no program to systematically bring in Han Chinese to Tibet and forcibly displace Tibetans from their place of residence. Indeed it is not especially difficult to demonstrate, if anything, Chinese policy in Tibet has materially benefited many Tibetans over past several decades and that Beijing’s policy in fact seeks to preserve many aspects of Tibetan culture.
Yet, the facts on the ground also point to something quite different, consistent with critics of China’s Tibet policy. Those who are being plowed under, figuratively or literally, by Chinese policy in Tibet are mostly Tibetan. The beneficiaries of Chinese policy in Tibet are disproportionately Han Chinese, with connivance and, often, overt and not-so-overt support of the Chinese officialdom, both high and low.
It is tempting to say that given the distributions of those who gain and lose, the conflict is between the “Han Chinese” and the “Tibetans,” but who exactly are they anyways? Not surprisingly, the Han Chinese move to Tibet in search of economic opportunities–whatever that means. Most of them don’t care for Tibet-ness. They are, figuratively, or literally, looking for something to turn into gold, even if it means knocking down whatever symbolizes “Tibet” for the locals: after all, what do they care? They aren’t Tibetans. Some Tibetans may not care much for these “relics” either–and they might as well join in with the Chinese to share in the economic boon. Some Tibetans might care enough to resist–and of course, only Tibetans would care enough to resist this Chinese “incursion,” although not necessarily “all” Tibetans.
Chinese profiteering in Tibet may be unfair, corrupt, and dirty. Indeed, Chinese officialdom has always been famously corrupt–if somebody is willing to line their pockets, they will generally turn the other way. Even if somebody might not–their superiors, likely, will take a cut and order them to step aside. (This, of course, is another milennia old Chinese tradition–thanks to their super-practical nature.) Since their is profit to be made in what the Han Chinese (and their Tibetan friends) do and no profit in their (almost exclusively) Tibetan adversaries do, it’s easy to see which side will be favored by the Chinese officialdom–“unofficially,” of course. So the “Tibetans” get plowed under the wheel of “progress.”
I honestly don’t know whether this is “moral” or not. Regardless, the consequence of activities like this is that China is–and in some sense, has always been–a hyper-capitalist country (regardless of whatever they call themselves) where the sins people tend to associate with “the West” are far more endemic than any “Western” society. They go on, all the more so, because there are very few “crusaders” who are driven by “values” rather than “profit.” Certainly, there are no doubt many such “crusaders”–especially among those who wind up interacting with Westerners, even hundreds of thousands or millions of them. But a few million idealists are a drop in the bucket in the seas of one billion Chinese, especially since the practical hyper-capitalists looking out for profit-making opportunities for themselves and their friends dominate the Communist Party and all the levers of power (oh, the irony!), ironically, as they always have. I don’t see how anyone can who claims to despise the crassness of Western capitalism admire the Chinese one–which is a far more grotesque–from that perspective–caricature.
Posted by: kao-hsien-chih | Dec 18 2008 2:21 utc | 56
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