China’s Human Rights and US Markets (part 2)
Submitted by Bill Belew on Wednesday, 10 May 2006No Comment
About two thirds to seventy percent of the general public and opinion leaders think that the US markets should be linked to China’s Human Rights Record.
25-33% of the general public and opinion leaders somewhat or strongly disagree with this.
My bet is that in this second group are the ones who already have business ties with China.
What do you think?
I wrote a short post once asking whether we are complicit if we stay silent.
I think we are … and even more horribly complicit if we do business without becoming familar with the country we are trading with.
I have no business ties to China. And our blog has been relentlessly critical of the repressive regime. On top of this, I view China as a rising imperial power and potentially serious threat to the US.
Having said this, I am against linking trade and investment with human rights, except in extreme cases–i.e. genocide–where a break in diplomatic relations and inernational intervention is justified.
The US global crusade for democracy is at best misguided and at worst itself imperialist–according to the classical political realist definition of an imperialist policy, which is one aimed at altering the status quo, changing the balance of power. The Iraq war is imperialist–openly so–because the objective, obviously, was not to protect the national security of the US, but to politically transform a country in accord with a loony reverse domino theory that this in turn would transform the entire Middle East.
The US should do business with China, trade and invest. At the same time, it should use diplomacy–still the best peace-making, war-preventing tool there is–to manage the political relationship. In short, the US should respect–and suspect–China, but avoid threats and insults that are only likely to increase tensions and scare the rest of the world.
It is time to return to basics. The US does not have a divine mission to transform the world. It should lead by example, intervene militarily overseas only when absolutely necessary to protect its national security.
US foreign policy should serve the national interest, which should be defined first and foremost in terms of national security and perhaps secondly also in terms of protecting American business–not any individual company, mind you, not even Halliburton or giant ExxonMobil, but the American system of business, if you will, which, for all its sins and faults, is arguably the most progressive and efficient business system on earth and certainly the engine of America’s material progress.
Di,
We might be considered complicit only when we know of wrongdoing and say nothing. There is a lot going on that I am sure I don’t know about.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
China Confidential,
Those are excellent thoughts and worthy of its own posting. I wish others could read and respond.
I heard former Secretary of State Albright speak a couple of days ago. Her sentiments are very similar to yours.
I have written a couple of posts about it.
Thanks again for your good thoughts.
BTW, how are your reads for the CCTV exclusive?
Thank you. The CCTV article received a lot of attention, including your mention and link, which we appreciate. But the article was ignored by mainstream media–and they have the resources to follow up. I suspect the big media companies are reluctant to needlessly antagonize Beijing because of the potential for sharing in the booming Chinese media market. Even though the government has cracked down on foreign co-ventures, the big foreign companies cling to the hope that the situation will soon change.
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