Gabriel PassmorePOLS 366Foreign Policy ProcessResearch Paper4-22-2013

Chinese Human Rights Abuses

Human rights abuses have been occurring in China sense the early founding’s of the

country. The degree of abuses has fluctuated throughout the years depending on which

leader is in charge at the time. The international community has longed to see China

compete in the global arena as a democracy that allows its citizens to enjoy a vast array

of freedoms and liberties. Sadly, this concept has never become a reality because China

today remains an authoritarian country in which the government displays an arsenal of

human rights abuses towards its people for the sole reason of staying in power. The

United States can play a pivotal role in applying pressure towards the Chinese regime by

demanding that they stop abusing their citizens or face economic sanctions for their

misconduct. Embarrassingly, the United States has looked the other way when it comes

to dealing with China’s long history of human rights abuses.

Past and present U.S. leadership has talked a big talk on promoting human rights in

China, but no leader has yet to take a firm stance or initiate action towards China’s

dismal human rights record. The problem to do so has been plagued by money and greed.

Many American businesses would rather have the Chinese make their products for a

cheaper fraction of the profit so they can align their pockets with more cash because it

costs more to produce a product in the U.S. At the other end of the spectrum, due to stiff

regulations and high taxes, many U.S. companies do business with the Chinese to avoid

the bureaucratic burdens that foreshadow American businesses. These businesses and

politicians often turn their head away from the human rights abuses that are conduced in

order to produce America’s consumer goods. These actions are generated toward self-

empowerment instead of the concern for human life. In retrospect, the United States is

saying without words, we as American’s are going to be free, but the Chinese people are

not.

China’s historical relationship with the United States began under the leadership of

China’s Mao Zedong and U.S. President Richard Nixon. China, for the most part of its

existence had been isolated from the rest of the world. When Mao took power in the 1949

Chinese Revolution, he decided to cut China off from the outside world. Mao

transformed China into a totalitarian state driven towards ideological communist

extremism. In 1972 Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People’s

Republic of China. President Nixon met with Mao and other head Chinese officials to

discuss the importance of normalizing relations between the U.S. and China. The Chinese

agreed to a peace settlement in regards to Taiwan, who wanted their own independent

state apart from China. President Nixon also put forth the motion to open trade and

business contracts between the U.S. and China.

After Mao’s death in 1976 China’s economy was in shambles because of Mao’s

policies that involved the collectivization of land and private property that resulted in

widespread famine instead of economic stability. China’s new leader Deng Xiaoping

enacted economic reforms to increase productivity and bring China into a market-based

economy under one party rule. Deng abandoned agricultural collectivization and replaced

it with privatized farmlands with the intension of opening China up to foreign trade with

the United States. Ever sense these policies were put into action, China seemed like an

attractive place for the U.S. to conduct business with even while ignoring its human

rights record. By the year 2000 Congress approved that the U.S. would have permanent

normal trade relations with China. Both President Clinton and George W. Bush believed

that initiating free trade with China would gradually open the country up to democratic

reform.

Ultimately, the belief that free trade will bring democracy to China has simply not

happened. Of course modern day China is much more humane than it was when Mao

Zedong ruled the country. China has come a long way since the Great Leap Forward and

The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. The Chinese Communist Party has made a

pact with the people in order to maintain their credibility. The Chinese government

pronounces that they are going to continue to rule the country and do whatever they have

to do in order to stay in power. In return, the Chinese Communist Party shall ease

economic and religious freedoms so the Chinese people will not feel the urge to protest

the government. Throughout the years the Chinese regime has hosted a number of

different leaders who have been guilty of abusing human rights, some worse than others,

but equally charged with denying freedom.

The Chinese Communist Party uses their power to control the population in the form

of subjects for the continuation of the regime. The Chinese government harshly cracks

down on pro-democracy activists and outspoken critics of the regime by imprisoning

these individuals without a trial while using methods of torture in order to get them to

confess to crimes that the government views as unacceptable. Other human rights abuses

that the Chinese government is guilty of administering include the detention and

persecution of religious groups, forced labor, repression of women’s rights through

forced abortions, and restricting freedom of press and expression. The Chinese

government uses these human rights abuses in the form of fear in order to scare the

population and keep them in line so they will think twice about standing up to the

government and its visible corruption. The Chinese leadership is ever so fearful that the

regime will fall if the country opens up to full democracy. One event that challenged the

Chinese regime and sparked a wave of international outcry over its bloody crackdown

was the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Thousands of Chinese students mobilized into

Tiananmen Square protesting the government for its resistance to grant basic human

rights to its people. The Chinese government crushed the student movement by firing live

rounds at the crowds, killing hundreds of protesters.

Throughout the years the U.S. has had a mixed plan of action in regards to human

rights. During the Cold War the U.S. would often support non-communist authoritarian

regimes that had a dismal human rights record and condemned pro-communist

governments that embodied the same human rights abuses as the non-communist states.

Early on the U.S. had built an alliance with China during the Cold War in which the

Chinese were used to solicit cooperation in order to help contain a Soviet threat. In an

effort to bring human rights into the political spotlight, President Clinton imposed a host

of economic trade sanctions against the Chinese regime with the hopes that they would

clean up their human rights record and move towards more democratic reforms. Non-

Governmental Organizations continue to monitor China’s progress in restoring their

human rights record. These groups have found numerous inconsistencies in which China

has continued to commit human rights abuses even with sanctions in place while still

managing to thrive in the foreign market.

Today China is the number one trading partner of the United States despite the fact

that they continue to violate human rights on a regular basis. The question that arises

from the Chinese human rights abuses issue is how can the U.S. confront this problem

and make a different while China holds a large portion of U.S. debt and maintains a

strong trade agreement? A solution to this problem relies highly on strong U.S.

leadership. The U.S. must have leadership that is willing to aggressively and passionately

confront this issue and extort realistic pressure towards the country in violation of human

rights abuses. U.S. leadership must take a stronger stance against China and let them

know that America is serious about their human rights abuses especially when they are an

ally and trading partner. If these pressures are not carried out by effective leaders then

China will continue to abuse its people and make America look hypocritical as the leader

of the free world that supports and conducts trade relations with tyranny. Once the

productive leadership is in place, the U.S. can administer a degree of strategies that will

pressure the Chinese regime to give up the status quo on its human rights abuses and give

into enacting political reforms.

While confronting the problem concerning China’s human rights abuses, the U.S.

needs to think about the freedoms, liberties, morals, and values that it stands on and

understand that all counties should be able to pursue the same measures. China does not

covet American freedoms or values so the U.S. should not degrade itself to abiding to

China’s valueless standards when the U.S. upholds a much higher standard that the

Chinese regime can never seem to live up to. The U.S. should take a moral objective

towards China by stating that America no longer conducts business with tyranny.

America upholds principals and values that China is not aligned with and therefore if the

U.S. is still persuaded to have someone manufacture its products then have a democratic

country fill that void. The U.S. could find a democratic allied country that would be

willing to manufacture America’s products with the same or better quality from what

China does.

Latin America, Canada, Western Europe, and some parts of Africa and Asia are a few

of the places that the U.S. conducts trade with. Why not increase trade productivity in

allied countries that have a democracy and not monopolize trade relations with one

centralized country as what the U.S. has done in regards to China. It does not matter how

much free trade the U.S. conducts with China, they are not going to change their stance

on human rights. Conducting and investing in more trade with China actually props up

and empowers the dictatorship to a greater extent. Through more economic growth the

Chinese will have the funds to expand its military and security forces with the capabilities

to crush any dissent or uprisings that could pose a threat to the Chinese regime. The more

the U.S. invests in product manufacturing with China the more it hurts job growth in

America because a large portion of the blue-collar jobs are being occupied by the

Chinese.

The U.S. should seriously consider evaluating its trading partners based on their levels

of democratic governance and human rights instead of anticipating about how many

cheap products we can receive at half the cost. China produces cheap, poor quality goods

that are manufactured by low paid unskilled workers who are usually forced to work and

live in horrible conditions for long hours. The Chinese “companies failed to provide

workers with adequate protective equipment that exposed them to hazardous chemicals.

The workers slept in cramped rooms that are infested with ants and cockroaches with no

air conditioning. Chinese workers also have their salaries docked for offenses such as

eating, talking, or walking quickly”(Chan). These are abuses that the United States

should not be supporting. The U.S. should select democratic countries to conduct trade

with until China can get their human rights record under control.

Pulling out of trade with China would severely hurt their economy, which might be

enough pressure for them to start working on political reforms for their citizens. The U.S.

should align itself with a host of Non-Governmental Organizations that track and report

human rights violations in order to help spread factual information around the globe in

order to make people better aware of the abuses that are occurring in China on a daily

basis. Maybe if the U.S. takes a hard stand against China’s human rights abuses and

abandons its trade relations then other democratic countries will follow suit and not

conduct trade with China, which would apply even more pressure against the Chinese

regime to immediately follow through with political reforms if they want to remain an

economic superpower. Abandoning trade relations with China because of its human

rights abuses would take strong leadership that is not afraid to tackle tough issues. The

U.S. would have to set up trade agreements with other democratic countries to ensure the

continuation of American consumer goods. Each country that the U.S. conducts business

with should have a governmental department to review and monitor the process of trade

relations in order to make sure that human rights are being upheld to the highest

standards.

Abandoning China and pursuing trade with democratic countries ensures that the U.S.

is not supporting or empowering the Chinese regime to continue violating human rights.

Another strategy that the U.S. could use to pressure China to reform it human rights

record is to enforce a series of economic sanctions against the regime. Sometimes

economic sanctions can do more harm than good when administered. “If sanctions fail to

undermine the coercive capacity of the target elites and lead to more economic and

political disorder, the government will likely employ more repression”(Peksen). In order

to prevent further government repression resulting from an economic and political

backlash, the U.S. should propose a policy that would divest investments from companies

that conduct business with the Chinese regime and give tax incentives to companies who

invest in American businesses and goods.

A divestment policy “authorizes state and local governments to divest assets in

companies that conduct business operations”(Richards) with tyrannical/genocidal

governments. This policy would also prohibit U.S. government contracts with such

companies. Congress passed a similar measure in 2007 called the Sudan Accountability

and Divestment Act; the policy was aimed at deterring companies from funding the

ongoing genocide in Darfur through their business relationships with the Sudanese

government. The same can be said about China in which American business relationships

with the regime help fund and strengthen the Communist Party’s hold on power, which

enables them to keep abusing the Chinese people without any accountability. China has

been conducting its own form of genocide throughout the years that involves the Tibetan

people.

For years the Chinese government has been trying to eradicate the Tibetan people

from the region, which includes the use of cultural genocide. Cultural genocide involves

the routine use of torture on Tibetan civilians for “the illegitimacy of China’s sovereignty

in the region”(Adams). The Chinese government is systematically trying to eliminate all

traces of Tibetan culture by suppressing language and religion while subjecting women to

mandatory sterilizations and forced abortions. This is the Chinese government’s way of

reducing the Tibetan population and purifying the Chinese Han majority. It is apparent

that a divestment policy would help stop the genocide in Tibet as it did in the Darfur

region of Sudan.

A divestment policy for China is not the loss of investments, but instead it’s the

movement of investments. This means that investments would be withdrawn from

companies doing business with China and re-invested in those companies that are not.

There are a number of reasons that divestment from China is right for the U.S. First, it

serves as a fundamental moral duty that state funds should not be used to support

companies whose business interests support a government that engages in routine torture,

restrictions of free speech, forced labor and forced abortions. “State business is routinely

affected by moral concerns. This is clearly evident both in the social laws states regularly

pass and in the provisions they offer for their elderly and needy citizens”(Richards).

Second, the current divestment act towards Sudan was able to “soften Chinese

resistance in the U.N. Security Council to a peacekeeping mission in Sudan, where China

has extensive business and military interests”(Richards). If these measures were enough

to grab the attention of the Chinese and persuade them to come to the table for a

peacekeeping deal then they would surely respond with political reforms if a divestment

act was aimed at the regime for their human rights abuses. Thirdly, a divestment policy

for China would increase the security of the United States. In 2007 a “report to Congress

said that Chinese espionage activities in the United States comprise the single greatest

risk to the security of American technologies”(Wallechinsky). The consequences

involving a divestment policy towards China could possibly include higher prices for

American consumer goods resulting from the demand on U.S. companies and investors

overseas to require higher pay in order to produce a quality product. In regarding a

divestment policy, the American consumers will have to ask themselves a question. Are

they willing to pay more for a quality product that was made in a democratic country

under humane conditions or do they want to continue to invest their hard earned money

on cheap contaminated products that were made involving human rights abuses?

Sustaining trade relations and a divestment policy are two measures that the U.S. could

use in confronting China’s human rights abuses. Years of research has shown that China

is guilty of human rights abuses for which they should be held accountable for, both of

these policies would test America’s moral stance as the leader of the free world.

Work Cited

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Sweatshop: Globalization, Institutional Constraints, and the Rights of Chinese

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Human Rights Watch. World Report 2012: China. www.hrw.org Web. 21 Apr. 2013.

Peksen, Dursun. “Better or Worse?” The Effect of Economic Sanctions on Human

Rights.” Journal of Peace Research 46 (2009): JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.

Richards, David. “Divestment serves purpose.” Knoxville News Sentinel 29 March 2008,

B4. Print.

Wachman, Alan M. “Does the Diplomacy of Shame Promote Human Rights in China.”

Third World Quarterly 22 (2001): 257-281. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.

Wallenchinsky, David. “The World’s 10 Worst Dictators.” Parade Magazine 17

February 2008, Print.