President Hu Jintao of China arrives in Washington on Wednesday for a highly anticipated meeting with President Barack Obama. Hu’s visit, which highlights the contentious but increasingly important relationship between the United States and China, will be the focus of attention around the world. Perhaps the most concerned observers will be Tibetans, the Uyghur ethnic group, Taiwan and democracy advocates, and members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement – all members of groups brutally repressed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Activists are hoping the Obama administration will follow through with its stated intentions to raise the politically sensitive issue of human rights abuses in China.
This week’s meeting between Hu and Obama comes amidst a series of growing disagreements between the two global superpowers. The U.S. is angry about allegations that China deliberately manipulates the value of its currency to gain an artificial advantage for its exports, as well as Beijing's disregard for U.S. policy regarding the nuclear proliferation problems that Iran and North Korea pose. U.S. leaders are also wary of Chinese territorial ambitions in both the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and a lack of transparency as China rapidly builds up its military.
Because of the strategic importance of China on the world stage, the Obama administration has taken a nuanced stand in the past with regard to human rights. In 2009, at the nadir of the global economic downturn, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled to China and made it clear to the CCP that human rights was a secondary issue for the United States. Clinton reasoned, “We have to continue to press them but our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises.”
Fortunately, that attitude appears to be changing.
Last Friday Clinton delivered a major speech on U.S.-China relations in which she publicly prodded Chinese authorities to embrace human rights. She suggested that by doing so China, would be pursuing “the long-term peace, stability, and prosperity of China.” She cited examples of this, such as the role of an impartial judicial system and the rule of law to ensure private property and guarantee the security of investors.
Clinton’s speech was widely hailed as an important preview of Obama’s message for President Hu Jintao that will be delivered this week. Last week he met privately with five advocates for human rights in China – an important step to thoroughly understand the human rights problems in China prior to this week’s encounter.
President Obama’s tougher stance on human rights abuses was also on display in his September address to the U.N. General Assembly. There, he emphasized the centrality of human rights in U.S. foreign policy and said economic growth cannot come at the expense of freedom. While China was not mentioned by name, the implication was clear.
This week a report issued by Human Rights Watch indicated that China’s human rights abuses are a continuing problem. The report cited the use of torture, illegal detention, censorship and other offenses. Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, called for Obama to "lay down a marker" in his conversations with Hu:
This is the first time in several decades that we have seen a great power that stands for and promotes an alternative vision of how states should relate to their people, and that poses a threat not just to political dissidents inside China but to a whole set of values and norms that underpin the international system the United States helped build.
Senior administration officials say Obama intends to both publicly and privately call for expanded civil liberties in China. However, one staffer told the Washington Post, "The president's style in talking about human rights is different than others have used. His convictions come through strongly, but he is not interested in hectoring or lecturing or embarrassing them. He's interested in affecting how people think."
When Obama sits down with Jintao at the White House, it will mark the first time the president of the United States hosts a head of state who is currently holding a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison. Will he be the first president to let that blight go unnoticed?
David Naglieri
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