Washington Post: The Business of Hu

[strider@xxxxxxxxxxx]

/* Written  2:35 pm  May  9, 1994 by davidto@xxxxxx in igc:bitl.seasia */
/* ---------- "Washington Post: The Business of Hu" ---------- */
[The following trade vs. human rights article was published last month
in the Washington Post.  Even though the article focuses on China, I
think the issue is relevant to other countries in SEASIA as well, and
thus should be posted to this list.]

----------

THE BUSINESS OF HUMAN RIGHTS   4/94

by Mary McGrory of The Washington Post

        Is the policy of human rights dead? The question arises in the
wake of the manhandling Secretary of State Warren Christopher suffered
lately in Beijing. He was stomped on by the Chinese, who received
on-site assistance from a death squad of U.S. businessmen who seemed
as incensed about calling China on the carpet about human rights as
the Chinese themselves.

        Two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson had this to say about
businessmen: "Merchants have no country. The mere spot on which they
stand does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which
they draw their gains." Time has only improved his prescient
description of today's CEOs.

        When Christopher got back, the pounding continued. Three
former secretaries of state opened withering fire on the obsolete
notion that a country that oppresses its people, employs slave labor
and occupies and persecutes its neighbor, Tibet, should expect to pay
a price levied by the world's greatest democracy and lose its most
favored nation (MFN) trading status.

        Henry A. Kissinger and Lawrence Eagleburger were givens in
such a situation. They have always been dragon-coddlers, and they now
have rich clients doing business in China. Kissinger's only principle
is pragmatic.

        But the third critic, Cyrus C. Vance, who was present at the
creation of human rights in the Carter administration, was something
of a surprise. Disappointed human rights advocates could only conclude
that he has been won over to the sophistry so strenuously peddled by
the New China lobby: that expanded trade will lead inevitably to a
decline in human rights abuses. Why anyone thinks that the Chinese
will be more humane once richer is not clear.

        The director of the Washington office of Amnesty
International, John O'Dea, asks the question that exposes the fallacy,
"Did NAFTA make human rights better for Mexico?" The recent revolution
says no.

        As spinners, the Chinese are more brazen than our most
preposterous practitioners. They are saying still (Vice Premier Li
Lanqing in Time magazine) that "not a single person was actually
killed at Tiananmen Square" and that they got along very well without
our trade (Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in the New York Times) and can
do so again.

        The joke here is that we buy $23 billion more of their goods
than they do of ours. They should be down on their knees pleading for
an extension of MFN under a law which President Clinton signed last
year, forbidding extension unless by June, China has mended its ways
on human rights.

        The Chinese have made a bold calculation. They figured it was
safe to spit in Christopher's eye. They guessed that Clinton would
cave under pressure. It is precisely  the conclusion reached by Lt.
Gen. Raoul Cedras and Lt. Col. Michel Francois, the bullies who rule
Haiti and defy the U.S. president's demand that they make way for the
return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It is the conclusion reached by the
Kim Il Sung, the dictator of North Korea, who will not show his
nuclear cards. Their Americanologists tell all three that the
politician in the White House wants jobs, hates showdowns, is swift to
compromise and flees anything that would complicate his health care
reform.

        Human rights groups don't entirely blame the Chinese for their
intransigence. they have been getting mixed messages from the Clinton
administration, whose long suit is not coordination. Wires got
crossed. Officials from the Treasury and Commerce departments have
been streaming through China beating the drums for more trade.

        By the time John Shattuck, the State Department's assistant
secretary for human rights, got there to explain that we are serious
about getting people out of dungeons and letting them have their say,
China thought that on the eve of Christopher's arrival, they could
safely lock up some prominent dissidents.

        Rep. Frank R. Wolf (Va.), a Republican advocate of human
rights, points out the hypocrisy of China's huffy claim that we have
no business poking our noses into its internal affairs: Tibet is not
their country, and the most egregious abuses continue there. Religious
freedom has been wiped out, cultural genocide has been intensified and
torture is routine.

        Wolf, like many, thinks that human rights is hanging by a
thread.

        It's up to Clinton. It's obviously not easy. No one ever
thought  it would be. But Congress said a year ago that human rights
took precedence over jobs and trade. Will they stand firm? Will the
president? Or will they collapse under the pressure from businessmen?
It's too much to hope the CEOs will change and try to convince their
Chinese customers that it would be better business all around if they
started acting like human beings.