Maybe 2:00 am was too late to be watching a campaign speech. Maybe the still-lingering Taipei heat was toying with my mind. But at one point during Barack Obama’s dramatic Berlin appearance, I could have sworn I was listening to President George W. Bush.
To be fair, the setup was impressive: the warm-up dance, the crowd’s diversity, the setting sun’s rays perfectly illuminating Obama’s face, his confident eloquence, the way he blinks only when he turns his head from side to side.
But these aren’t the things that really matter to me when choosing the next president. Foreign policy matters to me, though, especially when it comes to China.
Having been arrested and beaten in Beijing for protesting the persecution of Falun Gong (this as a Caucasian), having interviewed dozens of Chinese who survived torture they could barely describe and witnessed their friends dying under electric batons, and having been to one empty press conference after another as our Western media turned its back, I agree it’s “time for change.”
But in Berlin Obama gave us more of the same. Yes, he mentioned Beijing early in his speech as a gross polluter. But when it came to human rights, the gross rights abuser, genocide accomplice, and all-time top murderer of innocent people through political campaigns—the Communist Party that still rules China—was left off the list.
Our incumbent president has exhibited this curious pattern: When mentioning the world’s people living without democracy and many of the basic freedoms we take for granted, President Bush consistently notes Iran, Syria, and North Korea, yet neglects to mention China, whose population is roughly 13 times that of the former three’s total.
The point is not whether China should democratize—that’s ultimately the Chinese people’s choice (though that in itself might be democratic thinking). Rather, it is that Obama is perpetuating the familiar “China exception.” As James Mann demonstrates in his book The China Fantasy, every American president since Nixon has found some excuse to justify side-stepping Chinese rights atrocities, even if this clashed with their otherwise pro-human rights (Carter) or anti-communist (Reagan) rhetoric.
In Berlin, Obama spoke like a president. He asked: “Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?”
Of course we should. But should we also stand for the human rights of the literally thousands of dissidents in China arrested just as we get revved up for the Olympics?
The courageous blogger in Iran is worth standing for, certainly. Oh, by the way, Reporters Without Borders lists 67 cyberdissidents jailed worldwide—50 of them in China. Will Obama stand for them? And will he stand up to American companies like CISCO whose Internet-monitoring technology likely landed these poor people in jail?
Or will he, like presidents Bush and Clinton before him, ultimately remain fairly quiet about the government that executes more people than the rest of the world combined and then sells their organs at high profits?
Clinton and Bush at least came in talking big. If, as a candidate, Obama is already sounding these lines, what are we to look forward to after he becomes president, is wooed by pro-business lobbyists, and enjoys the red carpet treatment in Beijing?
I therefore wonder, Senator Obama: Will you stand for the Tibetan monk forced to defecate over the Dalai Lama’s picture, and the woman who has an electric baton shoved up her because she refuses to renounce Falun Gong? Will you stand with the woman, seven months pregnant, who is injected with a shot that kills her second child? How about the lawyer imprisoned for seeking justice, the journalist arrested for reporting what he knows, the Christian who wants to worship at a local church, the mothers hoping to find peace for their sons - shot dead in the streets of Beijing?
Sure, not all voters are overly concerned with these issues. But citizens of America and citizens of the world are concerned about a host of critical issues that, as rightfully noted in the case of climate change, must be solved through Beijing.
If you want to stop genocide in Darfur, the wall surrounding Beijing-Khartoum arms deals cannot stand. If you want to help the dissident in Burma and the blogger in Iran, the wall of silence surrounding Beijing’s backing of the world’s most repugnant dictatorships cannot stand. If you want a world without nuclear weapons, if you want a sustainable future, if you want to rescue the global economy, tear down the wall of hypocrisy that confines too many leaders in their dealings with Beijing.
Senator Obama, it’s time for change that Americans, and the people of China, can believe in.
Leeshai Lemish has a Master’s degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He is a New York-based freelancer currently conducting human rights research in Asia. A day after drafting this piece, he was denied entry to Hong Kong and deported without explanation.
