News Analysis
Beneath the fanfare and upbeat tone expected at any summit, however, were obvious lowered expectations about the U.S. effecting change in the Chinese communist regime—among them, currency manipulation, subsidizing its industry, spying, and human rights violations.
“[Hu] comes to the States at a time of friction in the U.S.-China relations,” said John Pomfret at a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) teleconference, Jan. 17, which summed up the circumstances of the meetings on the day before the Chinese leader’s arrival.
Frustration was evident with the lack of improvement in China’s rule of law and human rights. The Obama administration has a new level of realism in dealing with the Chinese regime, as was evident leading up to the visit in speeches and comments by Defense Secretary Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, Treasury Secretary Geithner, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.
Change in China: Wishful Thinking
President Barack Obama tried to strike a positive, optimistic tone in his welcoming speech at the White House, when the communist chief arrived on Jan. 19. The president noted the importance of U.S. trade with China, and how the U.S. sells $100 billion of goods to China, which supports half a million American jobs.
With the recovery still lagging and unemployment high, Obama was obviously pleased to announce a $45 billion increase in exports to China that will add 235,000 jobs, many of which are in manufacturing.
Obama stressed to Hu “that there has to be a level playing field for American companies competing in China, that trade has to be fair,” adding that he “welcomed” Hu’s claim “that American companies will not be discriminated against when they compete for Chinese government procurement contracts.”
He went on to mention China’s undervalued currency, stating “there needs to be further adjustment in the exchange rate, and that this can be a powerful tool for China boosting domestic demand and lessening the inflationary pressures in their economy.”
The words of welcome to the White House seemed filled with hope that the Chinese regime would be reasonable. Using China’s past behavior as reference, however, the president’s words are wishful thinking.
Steven Dunaway, adjunct senior fellow for International Economics, CFR, stated that intellectual property rights, China’s innovation policy, and exchange rates are the “three key issues.”
“I think there’s increasing frustration, particularly on the exchange rate issue, with the pace at which the Chinese had advanced. And that has been reflected, I think, in a toughening of the stance of the administration over the past two years,” Dunaway said.
China’s behavior over the last years has made our allies and the administration apprehensive, according to a CFR teleconference with Elizabeth Economy, C.V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia Studies, CFR.
Unease began after Obama’s meeting with Chinese leader Hu Jintao last year in Beijing. Events over 2010 awakened doubts in the Chinese regime, among them Chinese hacking of Google e-mail accounts, disputes in the South China Sea, and its defense of North Korean aggression, according to Economy.
“All of these events have caused a kind of reappraisal of what China is ready to be in terms of a global power and the kind of stance the United States needs to take in order to work with China,” Economy said. She added that speeches by public leaders showed “a much more realistic sense of what’s going to be needed to bring China around to work cooperatively with the U.S.”
Next: Negotiating with a Repressive Regime
Negotiating with a Repressive Regime
The elephant in the room during Hu’s visit is China’s human rights record, and its worsening in recent years, of which the many protesters outside the White House served as a reminder.
“There is nothing wrong with positive diplomacy,” writes Michael J. Green and Daniel M. Kliman, in “What the U.S. and other democracies must make clear to China.” Since China has an authoritarian structure, however, it would be a mistake to assume China’s peaceful rise will come automatically from economic integration and diplomatic engagement, as “history shows that regime type matters,” they wrote.
During a Jan. 20 hearing on Capitol Hill, Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) noted the incongruity between the atrocities the Chinese communist regime has committed and the administration’s rhetoric on human rights.
“Last night, there was a State dinner toasting a man [Hu Jintao] who began his rise in Chinese politics by the brutal crackdown in Tibet that he oversaw, the killing of Buddhist nuns and monks, about three months before the Tiananmen Square [Massacre],” Smith said.
A handful of questions were permitted during a White House press conference on the first day of Hu’s state visit. Bob Feller of the Associated Press posed a question to both Obama and Hu. He asked Obama directly about his comments on human rights, asking him to “explain to the American people how the United States can be so allied with a country that is known for treating its people so poorly, for using censorship, and force to repress its people?”
Turning his questions to Hu, Feller asked, “How do you justify China’s record, and do you think that’s any of the business of the American people?”
The president acknowledged cultural differences and stages of development, and said that we may have to wait 30 years to see a China more to U.S. liking. But Obama still confronted his host on human rights and said that universal values of freedom of speech, religion, and assembly go beyond cultural differences.
Although Obama answered the question, Hu at first did not, and answered instead a softball question from China Central Television (CCTV), one of the regime’s state-run media. At the request of another Western reporter, the question was posed again. In his answer, Hu conceded, “A lot still needs to be done in China, in terms of human rights.”
Hu’s remark was not broadcast in China, because that part of the conference was censored, according to Zang Shan, editor-in-chief of New Epoch Times Magazine. Zang said that the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want the Chinese people to even know that the U.S. is interested in human rights in China.
For the protesters outside the press conference—Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and Christians—Hu’s concession did nothing to redress the problem.
The Falun Gong practitioners are the largest group persecuted in China and face the most severe repression, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center. The center issued 10 items to keep in mind during Hu’s visit, the second being an environment of impunity in China with regard to “extraordinary levels of violence” perpetrated upon the millions of Falun Gong practitioners.
The regime’s persecution includes “large-scale abductions, detention in concentration camps, extreme torture, rape, psychiatric abuse, and [routine] extrajudicial killings.” It adds that in addition to this, police and guards who kill or harm practitioners of Falun Gong “face no prospects of punishment” and are instead “encouraged” by the Chinese regime in their actions.
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