Xiaorong Li
The UN Summit on climate change ended in a non-binding agreement. China and the US, for different reasons, hail it as a victory. Toward the end of the negotiations, Politico reported that China's negotiators were pushing for "a short, noncommittal collective statement" rather than a full-fledged binding agreement. What came out of the summit is something that those monitor China’s human rights have predicted. China emerged as the central holdout, leading developing countries with high emission rates, which, they said, if they were mandated to lower, would slow down their economy and cost billions, which they wanted the industrialized countries to pay.
No one should be surprised to learn from Copenhagen that the last thing the Chinese government wants is a binding agreement, transparency of its actions in implementing it and any opportunity for international monitoring. Yet, China also wants to appear a key player in global efforts to combat climate change.
China also says it deserves being given “exception”. Now that sounds familiar! Chinese officials told the gathering of world leaders that China is still a developing country and should not be held responsible for its carbon emissions as a developed country should. But China has become a big industrial country and replaced the US in 2006 to become the largest greenhouse gases producer. Without firm commitment by China and the US to abide by an enforceable treaty, with measurable benchmarks, to cut down emission, there is little hope to slow down climate change.
Copenhagen accentuates the stark choices that the Chinese leaders must make sooner or later: Will China rise as a responsible, cooperative, and rule-binding world power, a force to do good in solving global problems? Or will China rise as a force to undermine international efforts, imposing its own political will, changing the rule of the game by swinging its sheer weight around on world stage?
While many have been charmed and seduced by China’s rapid rising power status, it is easy to turn blind eyes to the fact that the Chinese government rules above the law at home. It needs the law and uses it as its political tool. The Chinese leaders love rule by law, but they have kept rule of law at bay! The government has little transparency in its decision making. It is un-accountable to its people, even those who would be negatively affected by its decisions and policies. Such a power is naturally averse to any international monitoring and efforts at holding it accountable to binding rules constraining its exercise.
It is true that China has singed on to binding international rules. That is when there were enough pressure and incentives. In 1998, China signed and ratified the binding human rights treaty International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICSECR), and also signed (but has not ratified) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. At that time, China was eager to return to international stage with as a respectable power player. It still had to struggle to shed off bad reputations after it had bloodily butchered peaceful pro-democracy protesters on Tiananmen ten years back, in 1989.
The key to getting China to sign binding agreement on cutting emission, then, is making the government understand what is at stake for its own interest -- if climate change can’t be quickly contained. And monitoring is necessary if any quick effective emission cut is to be achieved.
Even if China had signed a binding international agreement in Copenhagen, it does not mean action. It is important to take seriously the lessons learnt from the way in which China evades its treaty obligations to international human rights law:
First, when ratifying an international treaty, China never fails to take reservations on key articles and opt not to accept optional protocols. Thus China took reservation on the article stipulating the right to form independent union in the ICSECR. It also took reservations on articles governing monitoring and refused to adopt the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. These moves practically exempted China from inspection by the Committee against Torture and prevented Chinese citizens from reporting individual cases to the Committee.
Secondly, international monitoring of China’s implementation of its treaty obligations and holding it accountable has been very difficult, if not impossible. Twenty-one years after China signed and ratified the Convention against Torture, the Chinese law has not yet been fully revised to conform to the treaty’s requirements, perpetrators have rarely been held criminally responsible, victims are hardly ever compensated, and torture remains rampant in detention centers, jails, and in law enforcement. (These are documented in the UN Committee against Torture’s 2008 “Concluding Observation & Recommendations” issued after its review of China’s own report on the implementation of this treaty in the past five years: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G08/457/10/PDF/G0845710.pdf?OpenElement)
Thirdly, even after a treaty is signed and ratified, China would resist very hard any monitoring efforts. China responded to the CAT “Observations” with a belligerent comment, denouncing its conclusions as “biased” and the sources it cited as “fabricated” by groups whose purpose was to “overthrow the Chinese government”. (See UN document CAT/C/CHN/CO/4/Add.1) At the UN Human Rights Council, where China lobbied hard and voluntarily pledged to promote human rights in order to get re-elected for a second term in 2009, it plays an aggressive role in trying to change the rules and practices that give the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms some teeth. E.g., China is trying to undo the UN practice of appointing independent experts to the Committee against Torture or to the positions of mandate holders of the Special Procedures monitoring different thematic issues of human rights or specific countries. China does not want the experts to do the job independently. If China has its way, the professors, lawyers, judges and NOG human rights advocates, who currently serve as volunteers in these posts will be replaced one day by diplomats and politicians from member states.
Taking these lessons seriously allows environmentalists and others who care about climate change to work more effectively toward their goals by, for instance, supporting efforts at democratic reform, rule of law changes, and improvement in protection of human rights in China.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
China’s Indictment of Liu Xiaobo: What Does It Say about the Obama Administration’s Human Rights Policy?
Xiaorong Li
The news came last Friday that Liu Xiaobo, the best known Chinese dissident intellectual who lives in Beijing, was indicted on December 10, 2009, “International Human Rights Day,” by the Beijing Procuratorate. This move seems rather provocative or defiant, considering that the US President Obama had just returned from his China trip, where he has, no matter clearly or opaquely – a subject of debate, made statements advocating freedom of expression and information.
The Chinese leaders’ defiance to Mr. Obama and his call for more freedom of expression at the Shanghai “town hall” meeting with students carefully handpicked by the Chinese officials cannot be more accentuated by the fact that Mr. Liu is indicted for “drafting Charter 08 with others”, which the prosecution said was a “serious crime.” This means that writing and expressing views urging democratic reform and improving human rights is officially “a serious crime” in China and people go to jail for doing that, like Mr. Liu Xiaobo has for the past year.
Many may have wondered why the Chinese authorities chose at this time to indict Mr. Liu. But why wouldn't they? What would they have been worried about? One interesting question is whether the Obama Administration would learn something about the diminishing effectiveness of quiet private engagement on human rights with a big and increasingly more powerful country like China – if such a policy ever had any effectiveness at all before.
From talking to many people inside China, including Mr. Liu’s close friends, supporters, and his lawyers, I have heard it said repeatedly, often passionately, that the move against Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08, after having detained him and harassed other signatories for an whole year, is the outcome of the US President’s timid appeal in China. They told me that Obama’s appeals for human rights, which came in the form of praising freedom of expression on the internet and in a statement about agreeing to disagree about human rights during the joint press conference with the Chinese President Hu Jintao, were too weak and too vague. This seems to signal green light for the Chinese leaders to take strong actions on detained democrats and human rights activists, whose fate had been put on hold, as if awaiting for Obama’s visit.
It now looks like that US officials handed a short list of prisoners of conscience to the Chinese officials and President Obama may have personally conveyed the US government’s concerns about the individuals on the list to Hu Jintao. It was a private, quiet effort, to the Administration’s credit. But precisely because it was quiet and private, the Chinese leaders could easily pretend that they didn’t know anything and feel not pressure to respond. If this laudable effort ends there, out of the public view, it practically re-assured the Chinese leaders that the US would not protest loudly if they refuse to release these individuals or improve their conditions. The Chinese leaders seem to have concluded, quite logically, that the Obama administration, coming to Beijing to ask for help on several issues of importance to the US -- constraining Iran and N. Korea’s nuclear programs, slowing climate change, and re-balancing the economy -- would be too distracted by its own problems and unwilling to offend China by exerting any real pressure if the Chinese government went ahead convicting Liu Xiaobo and accusing drafting Charter 08 a crime.
For the Charter 08 writers and signatories, it might be better to be acknowledged than ignored by the Chinese government, but being officially labeled as having committed “a serious crime” sends a chill through the community. Charter 08, a public petition calling for democratic reform and protection of human rights, was initially signed by 303 Chinese on its release day on Dec. 9, 2008. In the past 12 months, more than 10,000 people have signed the petition, including about 8,000 residing on mainland China.
During those 12 months, other than the initial arrests, summons, interrogations, raids of homes and confiscation of personal property, the government has only published articles in official media to denounce “universal values” and “multi-party democracy,” but officials have rarely responded directly to Charter 08 by naming its name and have refrained from calling it a criminal act. Coming out finally to label drafting Charter 08 “a serious crime” clarifies speculations that, within top ranks of the leadership, officials were divided and some reformist inclined officials might be sympathetic to the drive or might have seen this as an opportunity to consolidate their power in the high-level power struggle.
Calling drafting Charter 08 a “crime” sends a stern warning to those who wrote, edited, or promoted this text, about one hundred of people, I was told, and to the thousands who signed the petition. For being implicated in this “criminal” act, they too could face imprisonment. The Chinese authorities clearly want to put them in their place: stop them from voicing their political views and threaten them with legal punishment for engaging in any political organizing!
Once again, the Chinese leaders behaved like calculating maximizers of benefits. Since they see no costly consequences for locking up its most vocal critic, and on the contrary, feeling confident they have had other big world powers tied around their fingers, they no longer need to make concessions by making a soft landing on Mr. Liu’s case. There is no obstacle in their path: They revert to do what the nature of their power has always seduced them to do – silencing dissent, stamping out any civil society mobilization for political change. Being calculating, rational, does not make an authoritarian one-party regime less authoritarian.
Let’s face it, it would not be entirely fair to call Obama’s China trip the worst or least successful in comparison to previous US Presidents’ China visits on account of the lack of any deal on prisoners’ releases this time. China is almost a different country today and the US-China relations are in a very different place as compared to the days of the Clinton’s and the Bushes’ presidencies. But quiet private diplomacy, an old strategy that didn’t quite work under these former presidents, is less likely to work now as China sees little bargain in such deals and no real pressure for compliance.
Obama could still have done better at making clear, strong, and eloquent statements on human rights and democracy on his China trip. The outcome might not have been different, given the weakened position of the US vs. China. But even if that were the case, the President would have at least stood the ground of US values and made the American people proud. And more importantly, to many Chinese democrats and human rights advocates, he would not have let them down.
December 14, 2009
The news came last Friday that Liu Xiaobo, the best known Chinese dissident intellectual who lives in Beijing, was indicted on December 10, 2009, “International Human Rights Day,” by the Beijing Procuratorate. This move seems rather provocative or defiant, considering that the US President Obama had just returned from his China trip, where he has, no matter clearly or opaquely – a subject of debate, made statements advocating freedom of expression and information.
The Chinese leaders’ defiance to Mr. Obama and his call for more freedom of expression at the Shanghai “town hall” meeting with students carefully handpicked by the Chinese officials cannot be more accentuated by the fact that Mr. Liu is indicted for “drafting Charter 08 with others”, which the prosecution said was a “serious crime.” This means that writing and expressing views urging democratic reform and improving human rights is officially “a serious crime” in China and people go to jail for doing that, like Mr. Liu Xiaobo has for the past year.
Many may have wondered why the Chinese authorities chose at this time to indict Mr. Liu. But why wouldn't they? What would they have been worried about? One interesting question is whether the Obama Administration would learn something about the diminishing effectiveness of quiet private engagement on human rights with a big and increasingly more powerful country like China – if such a policy ever had any effectiveness at all before.
From talking to many people inside China, including Mr. Liu’s close friends, supporters, and his lawyers, I have heard it said repeatedly, often passionately, that the move against Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08, after having detained him and harassed other signatories for an whole year, is the outcome of the US President’s timid appeal in China. They told me that Obama’s appeals for human rights, which came in the form of praising freedom of expression on the internet and in a statement about agreeing to disagree about human rights during the joint press conference with the Chinese President Hu Jintao, were too weak and too vague. This seems to signal green light for the Chinese leaders to take strong actions on detained democrats and human rights activists, whose fate had been put on hold, as if awaiting for Obama’s visit.
It now looks like that US officials handed a short list of prisoners of conscience to the Chinese officials and President Obama may have personally conveyed the US government’s concerns about the individuals on the list to Hu Jintao. It was a private, quiet effort, to the Administration’s credit. But precisely because it was quiet and private, the Chinese leaders could easily pretend that they didn’t know anything and feel not pressure to respond. If this laudable effort ends there, out of the public view, it practically re-assured the Chinese leaders that the US would not protest loudly if they refuse to release these individuals or improve their conditions. The Chinese leaders seem to have concluded, quite logically, that the Obama administration, coming to Beijing to ask for help on several issues of importance to the US -- constraining Iran and N. Korea’s nuclear programs, slowing climate change, and re-balancing the economy -- would be too distracted by its own problems and unwilling to offend China by exerting any real pressure if the Chinese government went ahead convicting Liu Xiaobo and accusing drafting Charter 08 a crime.
For the Charter 08 writers and signatories, it might be better to be acknowledged than ignored by the Chinese government, but being officially labeled as having committed “a serious crime” sends a chill through the community. Charter 08, a public petition calling for democratic reform and protection of human rights, was initially signed by 303 Chinese on its release day on Dec. 9, 2008. In the past 12 months, more than 10,000 people have signed the petition, including about 8,000 residing on mainland China.
During those 12 months, other than the initial arrests, summons, interrogations, raids of homes and confiscation of personal property, the government has only published articles in official media to denounce “universal values” and “multi-party democracy,” but officials have rarely responded directly to Charter 08 by naming its name and have refrained from calling it a criminal act. Coming out finally to label drafting Charter 08 “a serious crime” clarifies speculations that, within top ranks of the leadership, officials were divided and some reformist inclined officials might be sympathetic to the drive or might have seen this as an opportunity to consolidate their power in the high-level power struggle.
Calling drafting Charter 08 a “crime” sends a stern warning to those who wrote, edited, or promoted this text, about one hundred of people, I was told, and to the thousands who signed the petition. For being implicated in this “criminal” act, they too could face imprisonment. The Chinese authorities clearly want to put them in their place: stop them from voicing their political views and threaten them with legal punishment for engaging in any political organizing!
Once again, the Chinese leaders behaved like calculating maximizers of benefits. Since they see no costly consequences for locking up its most vocal critic, and on the contrary, feeling confident they have had other big world powers tied around their fingers, they no longer need to make concessions by making a soft landing on Mr. Liu’s case. There is no obstacle in their path: They revert to do what the nature of their power has always seduced them to do – silencing dissent, stamping out any civil society mobilization for political change. Being calculating, rational, does not make an authoritarian one-party regime less authoritarian.
Let’s face it, it would not be entirely fair to call Obama’s China trip the worst or least successful in comparison to previous US Presidents’ China visits on account of the lack of any deal on prisoners’ releases this time. China is almost a different country today and the US-China relations are in a very different place as compared to the days of the Clinton’s and the Bushes’ presidencies. But quiet private diplomacy, an old strategy that didn’t quite work under these former presidents, is less likely to work now as China sees little bargain in such deals and no real pressure for compliance.
Obama could still have done better at making clear, strong, and eloquent statements on human rights and democracy on his China trip. The outcome might not have been different, given the weakened position of the US vs. China. But even if that were the case, the President would have at least stood the ground of US values and made the American people proud. And more importantly, to many Chinese democrats and human rights advocates, he would not have let them down.
December 14, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Speaking of Human Rights
Here's the speech President Obama should give when he meets President Hu Jintao
By Xiaorong Li
November 17, 2009
While President Barack Obama is in Beijing this week, he has an opportunity to address two key issues, climate change and human rights concerns, simultaneously. Here's the kind of speech the president should give:
"President Hu Jintao, ladies & gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to be in Beijing.
My administration has put climate change at the top of our diplomatic agenda. This is especially true when it comes to our relationship with China. Our two large nations share the title of top consumers of energy and the biggest polluters on earth. None of us can escape the impact of climate change. The security and stability of our nations and our peoples - our prosperity, our health, our safety - are in jeopardy.
Yet, we cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, including China, act together. The U.S., as one of the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our environment over the last century, has a responsibility to lead. China, as a rapidly developing nation that will produce a large share of global carbon emissions in the decades ahead, must do its part.
I am proud to say that my administration is actively pursuing its agenda to promote clean energy and reduce carbon emissions. President Hu, I urge you to build on what your government has already done to combat pollution and promote alternative energy.
I also want to express my admiration for the independent environmental activists who have sprung up across China. In my country, activists have played a vital role in mobilizing public opinion, blowing the whistle on polluters and developing energy-saving measures. I salute them as part of the solution to environmental problems.
For this reason, I am concerned that they still cannot express their views freely. One of this country's most vocal environmentalists is behind bars. Wu Lihong, a farmer, should be released from prison where he is serving a three-year sentence in retaliation for exposing the illegal dumping of industrial waste in the famous Tai Lake. Another hero, Sun Xiaodi, is currently serving two years in a labor camp. He fought for recognition of the health problems caused by nuclear contamination among workers in a plant in Gansu Province.
In 2008, a plant producing harmful waste was constructed in the densely populated city Chengdu. Residents held a protest march. One organizer, Chen Daojun, is now serving three years in prison for 'inciting subversion of the state.'
Your honor, you told the U.N. General Assembly in September that your government will take bold actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such an ambitious plan calls out for the active participation of members of Chinese civil society. Free expression is a key to civil society participation. People who post their opinions on the Internet, like the writer Liu Xiaobo, should not be behind bars for voicing their political views.
It is also crucial to hold polluting businesses accountable through a fair and just judicial process. That is why I am concerned that Chinese lawyers have been stripped of licenses or, as in the case of the Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng, imprisoned, tortured and made to 'disappear.'
The United States is willing to engage China as an ally and partner in finding solutions. The American people are flexible and pragmatic, but they hold dear to their hearts respect for liberty and human dignity. They will not give these ideals up for expediency's sake.
I look forward to working with you to achieve our common purpose: a world that is safer, cleaner and healthier than the one we found; and a future that is worthy of the children in China, in the United States, and in the world. Thank you."
Xiaorong Li is a research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park, who does consultant work for Chinese NGOs.
Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun
By Xiaorong Li
November 17, 2009
While President Barack Obama is in Beijing this week, he has an opportunity to address two key issues, climate change and human rights concerns, simultaneously. Here's the kind of speech the president should give:
"President Hu Jintao, ladies & gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to be in Beijing.
My administration has put climate change at the top of our diplomatic agenda. This is especially true when it comes to our relationship with China. Our two large nations share the title of top consumers of energy and the biggest polluters on earth. None of us can escape the impact of climate change. The security and stability of our nations and our peoples - our prosperity, our health, our safety - are in jeopardy.
Yet, we cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, including China, act together. The U.S., as one of the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our environment over the last century, has a responsibility to lead. China, as a rapidly developing nation that will produce a large share of global carbon emissions in the decades ahead, must do its part.
I am proud to say that my administration is actively pursuing its agenda to promote clean energy and reduce carbon emissions. President Hu, I urge you to build on what your government has already done to combat pollution and promote alternative energy.
I also want to express my admiration for the independent environmental activists who have sprung up across China. In my country, activists have played a vital role in mobilizing public opinion, blowing the whistle on polluters and developing energy-saving measures. I salute them as part of the solution to environmental problems.
For this reason, I am concerned that they still cannot express their views freely. One of this country's most vocal environmentalists is behind bars. Wu Lihong, a farmer, should be released from prison where he is serving a three-year sentence in retaliation for exposing the illegal dumping of industrial waste in the famous Tai Lake. Another hero, Sun Xiaodi, is currently serving two years in a labor camp. He fought for recognition of the health problems caused by nuclear contamination among workers in a plant in Gansu Province.
In 2008, a plant producing harmful waste was constructed in the densely populated city Chengdu. Residents held a protest march. One organizer, Chen Daojun, is now serving three years in prison for 'inciting subversion of the state.'
Your honor, you told the U.N. General Assembly in September that your government will take bold actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such an ambitious plan calls out for the active participation of members of Chinese civil society. Free expression is a key to civil society participation. People who post their opinions on the Internet, like the writer Liu Xiaobo, should not be behind bars for voicing their political views.
It is also crucial to hold polluting businesses accountable through a fair and just judicial process. That is why I am concerned that Chinese lawyers have been stripped of licenses or, as in the case of the Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng, imprisoned, tortured and made to 'disappear.'
The United States is willing to engage China as an ally and partner in finding solutions. The American people are flexible and pragmatic, but they hold dear to their hearts respect for liberty and human dignity. They will not give these ideals up for expediency's sake.
I look forward to working with you to achieve our common purpose: a world that is safer, cleaner and healthier than the one we found; and a future that is worthy of the children in China, in the United States, and in the world. Thank you."
Xiaorong Li is a research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park, who does consultant work for Chinese NGOs.
Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun
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