Download - Chinese Human Rights Abuses Paper
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
Adams, Vincanne. “Suffering the Winds of Lhasa: Politicized Bodies, Human Rights,
Cultural Difference, and Humanism in Tibet.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly
12 (1998): 74-102. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.
Chan, Chak Kwan, and Zhaiwen Peng. “From Iron Rice Bowl to the World’s Biggest
Sweatshop: Globalization, Institutional Constraints, and the Rights of Chinese
Workers.” Social Service Review 85 (2011): JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.
Dittmer, Lowell. “Chinese Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: A Realist
Approach.” Review of Politics 63 (2001): 421-459. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.
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.