With sentencing, China gives West a chill
Peter Terpstra
NY Times[Sunday, December 27, 2009 20:50]
By Andrew Jacobs
BEIJING — The harsh sentence handed down on Friday to Liu Xiaobo, one of
China’s most prominent campaigners for democracy and human rights, prompted
strong rebukes in the US and Europe, but it also raised fresh questions over
whether the West has much leverage over a government that is increasingly
self-assured on the world stage.
By sentencing Liu to 11 years in prison for subversion, the Chinese government
sent a chilling message to advocates of political reform and free speech. Liu,
53, a former literature professor who helped draft a manifesto last December
that demanded open elections and the rule of law, was convicted after a closed
two-hour trial on Wednesday in which his lawyers were allowed less than 20
minutes to state his case.
But many experts on Chinese politics said that Liu’s conviction on vague
charges of “incitement to subvert state power” through his writing was also an
unmistakable signal to the West that China would not yield to international
pressure when it came to human rights. During his visit to China last month,
President Barack Obama raised Liu’s case with President Hu Jintao. Leaders of
the EU have been pressing for his release.
But a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry described such pressure on
Tuesday as “gross interference in China’s judicial internal affairs.” The next
day, more than two dozen US and European diplomats who sought to observe the
trial were barred from the courthouse.
“If China’s Communist Party wanted to advertise to the world that they will do
anything to protect their power and use the judiciary to accomplish that, then
the persecution of Liu Xiaobo was a perfect vehicle,” Jerome Cohen, an expert
on China’s legal system and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, said on Friday.
The US State Department issued a statement on Friday calling on China to
release Liu, saying that the “persecution of individuals for the peaceful
expression of political views is inconsistent with internationally recognized
norms of human rights.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “dismayed” by the sentence. The
UN said Liu’s conviction had thrown “an ominous shadow” over China’s
commitments to human rights.
Such pointed criticisms are unlikely to have much effect, many China analysts
said. Hu assumed power in 2004 after a period of modest legal reforms. But
under his leadership, the government has presided over a tightening of
Internet restrictions, the repression of rights lawyers and the persecution of
intellectuals who call for greater transparency and an end to single-party
rule. Those who thought that the leadership might loosen its controls for the
Beijing Olympics last year were disheartened by the crackdown that took place
to prevent people who wanted to stage demonstrations.
Edward Friedman, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin
in Madison, said many people in the West had been clinging to the misguided
notion that China’s economic development would quickly lead to political
liberalization.
“It’s clear that what matters most to the Chinese Communist Party is the
survival of the regime and their monopoly on power,” he said.
Many human rights advocates partly blame Western political leaders for putting
up with China’s growing intolerance of domestic dissent. They contend that as
China’s economic power has expanded, the US and Europe have been softening
calls for human rights.
They were especially critical of US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton’s visit to Beijing last February, arguing that human rights took a
back seat to an agenda focused on economic concerns and efforts to gain
China’s cooperation in dealing with Iran and North Korea.
Many human rights advocates were also critical of Obama’s decision to put off
a meeting with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, shortly before
the president’s visit to Beijing. The move, they said, was designed to avoid
offending China.
The White House insists that it is committed to promoting freedom, but says
that it is trying to make its case without the public hectoring favored by the
Bush and Clinton administrations. Hillary Clinton has called the approach
“principled pragmatism.”
Phelim Kine, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said quiet
diplomacy was valuable at times, but that without real pressure from the US,
its largest trading partner, China had no incentive to improve its human
rights record.
“In the aftermath of the tragic conviction of Liu Xiaobo, we really need to
think about how the US is going to engage China and make sure that there are
real benchmarks for progress,” he said.
He and others maintain that the US and its allies must break free from a
mentality that fears the economic might of a rising China. The US can no
longer prod China on human rights through the annual battle over “most-favored
nation” trading status, because China is now a member of the WTO. But human
rights advocates say that the White House still has substantial leverage when
it comes to trade.
And while China may hold hundreds of billions of dollars of the US
government’s debt in the form of Treasury bonds and other Treasury securities,
some analysts play down concerns about the possibility of China retaliating
against US pressure over human rights by selling off its holdings. Gordon
Chang (章家敦), author of The Coming Collapse of China, said that the Chinese
government simply had nowhere else to park its swelling foreign reserves.
China’s huge trade imbalance with the US, Chang said, is a potential cudgel
that Washington should be prepared to use.
“President Obama can get on the phone with Hu Jintao and say these are the
things you need to do,” he said.
“We are extremely indulgent about irresponsible Chinese conduct when it comes
to human rights,” Chang added. “We are encouraging the very type of behavior
we’re trying to prevent.”
The Chinese leadership is still nervous about the potential for domestic
unrest that could threaten its power. Although not timid in its prosecution of
Liu, the authorities made sure that coverage of his trial stayed out of the
state-run news media.
Even as it questioned hundreds of people who put their signatures on Charter
08, the manifesto that Liu helped to draft, government censors made sure that
any mention of the document was quickly scrubbed from the Internet after it
became public a year ago.
There was one exception, however. On Friday, the English-language edition of
Xinhua, the official news agency, published a brief item about Liu’s
sentencing. The article said the court “had strictly followed the legal
procedures in this case and fully protected Liu’s litigation rights.”
The Chinese-language version of Xinhua, however, made no mention of the
verdict. Instead, it declared 2009 the “year of citizens’ rights.”
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+sentencing%2c+China+gives+West+a+chill