Chen
case exposes a shared
weakness By Benjamin A Shobert
Amid all the fury, conjecture and
confusion over what to make of blind legal
activist Chen Guangcheng's flight to the United
States Embassy in Beijing, it is impossible to
overlook the most simple and yet most compelling
insight his story has to offer about China: what
cannot last, will not.
During last week's
hearing by the Congressional Executive Commission
on China (CECC), congressman Chris Smith
(Republican - New Jersey) held a mobile phone
connecting Chen from his Beijing hospital room and
Pastor Bob Fu who was at the CECC hearing, so that
all those in attendance or watching via webcast
could hear, it was impossible to avoid the
realization that the status quo in China is simply
not sustainable.
For all the theorizing
about the implications to how China
attempts to manage
online discussions, limit access to politically
sensitive topics via the "Great Firewall", or
navigate the thousands of protests that occur
every year, seeing the most prominent Chinese
dissident of the moment speaking real-time during
a congressional hearing makes the point abundantly
clear: China's political reforms are disconnected
from how technology enables and empowers
dissenting voices to be heard from both within
China, as well as around the world.
China's leadership, amazingly successful
at driving economic growth that has directly
benefited its people, has lifted more of their own
citizens out of abject poverty than any other
modern government, yet Beijing remains
uncomfortable with the notion that it can allow
broader political freedoms and greater
participation without losing control and seeing
the country descend into chaos. This insecurity is
one the next generation of China's leaders would
do well to put behind it.
Frank Wolf
(Republican - Virginia) has long been one of the
most faithful advocates for, and protectors of,
Chinese dissidents. His one-sided view of
Beijing's real intentions makes for a bracing and
not always helpful alternative to conventional
logic about US-China relations.
Wolf
disagrees fundamentally with the real-politik
calculus that proposes engagement with China will
ultimately lead to political reform. His
faithfulness on this matter has on several
occasions led him to speak with vitriol about both
the American government's naivety about China's
real intentions as well as the Chinese
government's ruthlessness in suppressing dissent.
This was very much his assertion during
last week's hearing when he said of the Barack
Obama administration's efforts that the "most
generous reading is that the administration was
naive in accepting assurances from a government
with a history of brutally repressing its own
people".
Pastor Fu, founder and president
of ChinaAid Association, has long been one of
Chen's most essential connections to the American
community of human-rights' advocates. Fu shared
that, "According to my conversation with Chen ...
the US officials relayed to Chen the threats made
to his wife ... it was after learning of these
threats that he reluctantly left the embassy ...
much of the dispute over the State Department's
account and Chen's recount with the media was
around how to characterize this conversation on
May 2 before he left the embassy."
If Chen
did not leave, he would not be able to see his
family again; they would be returned to their home
city, a place that has been "a hell for this
family" according to Fu.
Amid questions
over what Chen understood about the position of
the American government, as well as the
commitments from China as he left the embassy, it
is important to be cautious in drawing specific
conclusions about whether Chen was sold down the
river in order to smooth things over in advance of
the Strategic Economic Dialogue in Beijing led by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner.
However, what
does appear impossible to overlook is that Chen's
situation was made worse by subsequent actions and
statements made by parts of China's government.
These parts might have been acting on their own,
and may well face punishment from higher powers
within the country in time, yet Chen's
back-pedaling make it impossible to overlook the
thuggish response by some parts of the country's
government during Chen's attempted reintegration.
Just as listening to Chen's surprisingly
resilient voice coming from Fu's mobile phone
during last week's hearing is an embarrassment to
Beijing, it is equally problematic for Washington.
It forces even the most balanced China policy
experts to directly defend a policy of engagement,
and thereby indirectly seem to be supporting an
oppressive Chinese government that is being shown
to act in ways fundamentally incompatible with
American values.
During last week's
congressional hearing, Dr Sophie Richardson, the
China Director for Human Rights Watch stated, "If
the Chinese government was really serious about
its commitments to human rights and the rule of
law we would not be having these conversations
again and again and again ... 30 years since the
opening of China and 20 years after [the Tiananmen
crackdown] the fact that we are still discussing
these issues is a powerful statement about the
choices the Chinese government has made." The
narrative that China would ultimately become "more
like us" has been adequate thus far during bumpy
periods between the two countries; but its
longevity may be coming to an end as voices like
Wolf's start to influence the views of more
middle-of-the-road American politicians who find
Beijing's treatment of Chen indefensible.
It can be easy to ignore critics like
Wolf; after all, he famously decried the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration for
partnering with their Chinese counterparts. During
a 2011 Congressional United States-China Economic
and Security Review Commission (USCC) hearing,
Wolf managed to argue against such a partnership
because, as he put it, "There will come a day when
the Chinese communist government will fall -
repressive, totalitarian regimes always do ... and
when that day comes, books will be written about
who helped sustain this government in their final
days. Will US companies feature in that narrative?
Will the US government?"
Wolf's passion
can make it easy to ignore his assertions until
something like Chen's situation presents itself,
at which time his point of view comes sharply into
focus within the American electorate and suddenly
seems legitimate, and to many, worth acting on.
Many think such a possibility strains
belief. They point back to past human-rights
events that specifically involved the American
Embassy, such as that of Fang Lizhi, as signs of
the elasticity of the US-China relationship. Fang
Lizhi was a Chinese astrophysicist and activist
whose ideas inspired the pro-democracy student
movement of 1986-87 and, finally, the Tiananmen
Square protests of 1989, at which time he sought
refuge in the US Embassy in Beijing and was
subsequently granted asylum.
If our
relationship could survive Tiananmen and Lizhi's
exile, then certainly Chen should pose an easily
surmountable problem. But is that an accurate
linkage to make? After all, just as the world
heading out of Tiananmen was a new world eager to
be built on the wreckage of the Soviet Union, when
it was fashionable to believe in the imminent
demise of authoritarian systems of government, the
world heading into the next year must confront the
potential that China's brand of authoritarian
political rule seems surprisingly resilient.
Consequently, this crisis seems laden with more
downside risk than upside potential.
Today, diplomatic crises between the two
countries must be navigated with an appreciation
of America's perceived weaknesses, and China's
perceived strengths. Whether China is as strong as
some would suggest, or America as weak, is less
important than how either feels, and how these
feelings influence the behavior of both during a
moment of intense disagreement like that Chen
finds himself in the midst of.
Popular
culture within the US contains a more testy
population as the economic collapse in the
eurozone and ongoing economic distress in the
United States continue. America could greet past
diplomatic crises with China from a position of
relative strength; this position has certainly
diminished, as has the confidence with which
America believes it can influence China.
In this sense, the Chen situation
highlights the American tendency to overappreciate
what the United States can do to fundamentally
change China's human-rights policies specifically,
or influence its internal politics more generally.
Clearly, the majority of those who
testified at last week's CECC hearing do not
believe this; rather, they believe America could
do much that it chooses not to that would put
additional pressure on China to evolve its
human-rights' practices. Most believe that the
Chen situation presents the United States with an
opportunity to do more than talk, but rather act
forcefully in a way that sends a clearer message
than dialogue ever has that America will not abide
Beijing's human-rights' practices, forever
choosing to see these concerns as a second
priority to economic matters.
Michael
Horowitz, a senior fellow with the Hudson
Institute, shared during last week's hearing that
"talk is not useful ... the Chinese interpret this
as for domestic political consumption only ... it
is time for action."
For those who
testified at the recent CECC hearing, the right
step would be to more forcefully act to ensure
Chen's right to immigrate to the United States.
Should Beijing act in any way to prevent this from
happening, it will be all but impossible to
prevent both a current deterioration of US-China
diplomatic relations, as well as future diplomatic
crises from escalating into much more serious
problems as dialogue gives way to what Horowitz
called a "time for action".
Regardless of
whether or how forcefully America chooses to act,
Beijing cannot forever stand in the way of further
political opening. The marriage of technology and
human needs means China faces a simple choice in
its immediate future: either find a way to more
gradually allow voices like those of Chen's to
speak freely, or push the dissent further
underground. The latter choice will likely only
make the final revolt that much more painful and
destabilizing.
Benjamin A
Shobert is the Managing Director of Rubicon
Strategy Group, a consulting firm specialized in
strategy analysis for companies looking to enter
emerging economies. He is the author of the
upcoming book Blame China and can be
followed at www.CrossTheRubiconBlog.com.
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