Despite Beijing’s promise that this summer’s Olympic Games would
lead the People’s Republic of China to better live up to its name,
the human rights situation has deteriorated. Freedom House warns
that the recent crackdown in Tibet “is part of a larger pattern of
government repression as the Olympics approach.”
The organization points to “Harassment and detention of human
rights defenders,” including several activists who were advocating
that the PRC improve its behavior. The Beijing government also has
tightened its already stringent web controls. Human rights activist
Hu Jia was put on trial for alleged subversion because of his
Internet writings.
Moreover, Freedom House reports, “Increased restrictions on
private religious practice,” particularly evangelical house
churches. The organization rates China as “Not Free” with a
bottom-scoring 7 in political rights and near bottom rating of 6 in
civil liberties.
The bad news is obvious. But there is good news, hard as that
might seem to believe. We should remember what China was like when
it really was Communist China.
Jean-Louis Margolin of the University of Provence wrote in
The Black Book of Communism that, even excluding
casualties from the country’s civil war, “it is clear that there
were between 6 million and 10 million deaths as a direct result of
the Communist actions, including hundreds of thousands of Tibetans.
In addition, tens of millions of ‘counterrevolutionaries’ passed
long periods of their lives inside the prison system, with perhaps
20 million dying there. To that total should be added the
staggering number of deaths during the ill-named Great Leap Forward
— estimates range from 20 million to 43 million dead for the years
1959-1961 — all victims of a famine caused by the misguided
projects of a single man, Mao Zedong, and his criminal obstinacy in
refusing to admit his mistake and to allow measures to be taken to
rectify the disastrous effects.”
Today’s China is not Mao Zedong’s China. The deaths in the
recent Tibet crackdown as well as the crushing of the Tiananmen
Square demonstrations, while horrid and tragic, were of a very
different magnitude.
This year’s Olympics will not be a replay of the 1936 Berlin
Games, because the PRC is not Nazi Germany. Perversely, China’s
latest repressions reveal a country far freer than two decades
ago.
THAT PROGRESS DOESN’T, however, mean the West should be complacent
about Beijing’s human rights practices or hosting of the Games or
have any illusions about just how bad things are.
True, the State Department recently removed the PRC from the
list of the top ten human rights abusers, but only because Chinese
officials have agreed to a dialogue over their practices.
Thankfully, the Department didn’t pull any other punches, which
makes its latest survey depressing reading indeed.
We read, for starters, that the PRC’s “overall human rights
record remained poor.” Jonathan Farrar, acting assistant secretary
of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, explained at a
press conference that in China “the democratic political reform has
not kept pace” with the economic changes.
That’s putting it mildly. Some of the “serious human rights
abuses” detailed in the Report include “extrajudicial killings,
torture, and coerced confessions of prisoners, and the use of
forced labor, including prison labor. The government continued to
monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison journalists, writers,
activists, and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom
were seeking to exercise their rights under law.”
The courts remain under government control, with little due
process. Religious liberty is restricted. Moreover, “The government
continued its coercive birth limitation policy, in some cases
resulting in forced abortion and sterilization.”
The State Department assessment spends 37
pages detailing Chinese misbehavior. The starting
point is the failure to respect “the integrity of the Person.”
According to the Department, with or without trial, some Chinese
are subjected to the “arbitrary or unlawful deprivation
of life.”
Activists, ranging from human rights campaigners to angry
farmers, sometimes just disappear. Those imprisoned often face
“torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or
punishment,” including sexual abuse.
The government routinely uses house arrest as a “nonjudicial
punishment and control measure against dissidents, former political
prisoners, family members of political prisoners, petitioners,
underground religious figures, and others it deemed politically
sensitive.”
Although the authorities claim to hold no political prisoners,
the State Department finds that claim laughable. The Report
explains, “Tens of thousands of political
prisoners remained incarcerated, some in prisons and others in
reeducation-through-labor camps or administrative detention.”
Naturally, the government monitors all forms of communication
and “generally did not respect” the free speech rights of citizens,
academic freedom at universities, or right of association by most
anyone — and insists on strict controls on the Internet.
Political freedoms also are de minimis. Village
elections are allowed, but do not undermine the iron grip of
China’s one-party state. “Corruption remained an endemic problem,”
notes the Department, which “plagued courts, law enforcement
agencies, and other government agencies.”
Moreover, “in practice workers were not free to organize or join
unions of their own choosing.” Collective bargaining exists in
theory rather than in reality; there is no legally-guaranteed right
to strike.
Chinese rule is particularly harsh in Tibet, which helps explain
the recent unrest. In contrast, Beijing largely respected the
rights of residents of Hong Kong and Macau, though neither
territory has implemented robust democratic rule.
THIS IS A RECORD that has gone from worse to bad. That the PRC has
escaped its former Maoist madness is laudable but the country’s
present condition is disappointing and tragic and doesn’t have to
remain that way.
The PRC’s current repressive condition presents two challenges:
one for China’s elites and one for the rest of the world.
China’s rulers have yet to learn that a government has no more
fundamental duty than to respect the lives and liberties of its
citizens. The issue goes beyond basic morality. If China aspires to
global leadership — and it does — then it will have to
demonstrate that it is worthy of the world’s trust. That will occur
only when the PRC acts in the interests of the Chinese people
rather Communist Party apparatchiks.
Many people in the West look at the suffering of the Chinese
people and advocate all kinds of actions by our governments: from a
boycott of the Olympics to economic sanctions to treating China as
an enemy. These “solutions” range from the merely bad to the truly
awful, but they also miss the most important point.
The most effective thing Washington can do about China’s human
rights atrocities is to publicize them, as through the latest State
Department report. Citizens of the West can act too. We can
organizing letter-writing campaigns, protests, and boycotts; refuse
to shut up about Chinese misbehavior; and counter brutal repression
by denying it the shelter of euphemism.
The Olympic Games and assorted celebrations should be used as an
opportunity to highlight human rights violations. And those going
to the Olympics should look at their time there as an opportunity
to meet Chinese citizens and tell them the truth about Western
freedoms, in the great hope that these will one day be Chinese
freedoms as well.
