Trickle-Down Human Rights

In the last 20 years, the concept of human rights as a yardstick for U.S. diplomatic relations has gone in and out of favor. In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger practiced a cynical realpolitik, on the one hand bombing Vietnamese and Cambodian peasants in the name of anticommunism and on the other opening doors to communist behemoths China and the Soviet Union. President Jimmy Carter made human rights his foreign policy linchpin, while Ronald Reagan made it his whipping boy.

George Bush has learned lessons from his predecessors. He speaks the language of human rights, while cozying up to some of the world's worst rights abusers when it fits his goals. Despots in Syria and Saudi Arabia become trusted coalition partners to wage war in the Gulf. Repressive regimes in South Korea and El Salvador are touted as cradles of democracy, receiving millions in American aid while muzzling, if not destroying, voices of opposition.

The most pointed example of Bush's hypocrisy around human rights was dramatized this spring when it came time to renew or revoke China's most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status. In a telling coincidence of timing, Bush's decision on the annual MFN renewal was by law due June 3 -- the day before the second anniversary of the brutal massacre in Tiananmen Square. At stake in the decision: billions of dollars worth of tariff exemptions for products from mainland China. Bush, a former envoy to the People's Republic, declared the Chinese favored for another year.

If American rhetoric about respect for human rights means anything, the United States should immediately stop buoying up business with Beijing, and not just because of China's continuing repression of its pro-democracy dissenters (which reached its most severe level in several years during the first six months of 1991). Here are five other good reasons to withdraw U.S. economic support for the world's largest autocratic state:

Tibet. Forty years ago, the Chinese invaded the Himalayan mountain nation and have forcibly occupied it since. More than a million Tibetans -- one-sixth of the population -- have died in China's attempt to wipe the memory and the reality of Tibet from the world's consciousness. But the Tibetan nation refuses to roll over and stay dead. This spring, despite tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers in the streets of the capital city of Lhasa, anti-government protests broke out in three sections of the city.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled leader and the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, met this spring with President Bush and urged U.S. support for Tibetan freedom. Bush's meeting with the Tibetan leader showed some unexpected backbone on the president's part -- American officials in the past have avoided meeting the Dalai Lama for fear of offending Beijing -- but Bush seemed to have expended his courage to stand up to China with that one gesture, if the MFN decision is any indication.

Arms Sales. China is attempting to fill the void created as the Soviet Union and the former Eastern-bloc nations pull back from the international weapons market, even as Western nations attempt to curtail some of the worst abuses of the rampant arms trade. The Chinese army, despite frowns from the Bush administration, plans to sell new medium-range missiles to Pakistan and Syria. A launcher for the new missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads into neighboring India has already been constructed in Pakistan. And if the sales to Syria go through as expected, Hafez Assad will have the ability to loft warheads virtually anywhere in the Middle East, including Israel, with much better accuracy than the Iraqi Scuds.

Beijing has scoffed at Bush's disapproval of the missile sales. After all, the Chinese pointed out, the United States -- as the world's leading arms merchant -- has little moral ground from which to oppose China's carving for itself a piece of the lucrative arms-trade pie.

Slave Labor. The American media has paid some needed attention in recent months to the fact that a good percentage of China's export production comes from prison camp inmates -- illegal under U.S. law, and grounds in itself for revoking the favored trade status. But the problem goes much deeper. Virtually all Chinese workers, outside a few "free enterprise zones," have no bargaining rights at all. Wages and what benefits they receive are fixed by the state, and workers have no right to challenge government decisions. Not only is it immoral to support such exploitative conditions, under the MFN status American workers are being asked to compete with slave laborers.

Cambodia. In the speech announcing his decision to renew most-favored-nation status, President Bush praised China for its "central role" in working for a peaceful settlement in Cambodia. Unfortunately, China's role has been to arm the murderous Khmer Rouge, who have been responsible for the deaths of a quarter of Cambodia's population in the last 15 years -- and continue to vie for power thanks to China's backing.

Religious Persecution. The Chinese government has renewed pressure on all religions. Catholics have been singled out for particularly harsh treatment, according to Asia Watch, because they have refused to renounce allegiance to the pope. The U.S.-based human rights group reported 141 cases of arrests of Catholics since December 1990, most of them assigned to "study camps" for unspecified periods.

MOST OUTSIDE observers, from across the political spectrum, agree that human rights are routinely and systematically abused in today's China. The disagreement over trade status revolves around how reform can best be encouraged. Members of Congress, who can override Bush's decision, have proposed a conditional approval of MFN, dependent on reforms within China -- conditions the Chinese have vehemently rejected.

Some, including President Bush, have argued that open trade with China spurs economic liberalization, which in turn will promote a political opening. The two years since the slaughter in Tiananmen Square have shown that this theory of "trickle-down human rights" is little more than a dangerous illusion. The Chinese leadership, by action and word, has demonstrated a zealous lack of repentance for the 1989 massacre and subsequent repression. Prime Minister Li Peng recently told reporters that the "resolute measures" taken by the government against pro-democracy supporters -- including arbitrary arrests, kangaroo-court trials, harsh prison terms, and executions -- "will increasingly be proven correct" as history unfolds.

Beijing insists that U.S. concern about human rights in China is inappropriate intrusion into "internal" matters. Such intervention, the rulers say, violates the sacred principle of national sovereignty.

The Chinese policy of systematic desecration of human rights requires a determined response. As a principle, support for human values takes precedence over national sovereignty, and the nonviolent means of economic sanctions is a wholly appropriate alternative to Bush's policy of "constructive engagement" with the autocrats in Beijing.

The bottom line is that the Chinese have become dependent on doing business with the United States, which last year became China's number one trading partner. Denying them the lucrative U.S. market could cost the Chinese as much as $15 billion in lost exports -- a price they are extremely reluctant to pay.

China needs trade with the United States far more than the United States needs trade with China -- and that fact makes most-favored-nation status a powerful lever that could be effectively used to encourage reform. Without that reform, American money serves to help prop up an aging, authoritarian regime that does not deserve our support.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.