Chinese-American Foreign Policy over Human Rights

Image Illustration: Manny Francisco

As a species, we are neglectful of logical thought when the most basic of human needs and compassion has to be fulfilled where it is needed most. It is not a fact that we are not able to think this way; it is rather a truth of priority, self interests and circumstance that blatantly comes first.

Such is the case with the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America where both countries follow different ideologies of government systems, both aspire to be models to these systems to influence the world for living standards yet both have a track record of human rights violations.

What is even more alarming is the fact that, both are mutually tied to each other economically for mutual benefit and gains, but at the same time perceive each other as a national threat.

The confusion then lies within American foreign policy makers that point fingers to China as being violators of human rights and abuse within its own sovereign boundaries. Yet, at the same time, there are heavy investments into Chinese businesses by American investors that import Chinese goods, and add to the consumption of products in the U.S.

So this basically identifies that the practice of economic mutual benefit is more important than moral issues surrounding human rights violations for both states.

So is China getting affected economically at all by the United States due to pressure to change its foreign policies? Is America still the leading hegemonic power to force human right issues to other states while it is a hypocrite to its own?
In discussion to this, most of the focus will be on negatively impacting the economic development of China and discussing how America is heavily vested in this bilateral relationship, where they could pressure China to change its policies by limiting or cutting off trade.

Image Illustration: Kaltoons

China engages in a host of systemic human rights abuses, including suppression of religious freedom, free speech, censoring of the internet, the use of slave labor, the torture of prisoners and the forced relocation of millions of people for public works projects that are not in tune to democratic principles.

Then how should a nation state with a poor track record of human rights, with civil liberties being denied to its citizens be treated? And how is that agenda achieved?

Seeing how intertwined the US and PRC are in world politics, would trade barriers be more advantageous or would economic sanctions on China play a larger role? How would these economic strategies affect the United States since China is now a member of the World Trade Organization? What about further bilateral talks?

Since the end of the Cold War, Non-Governmental Organizations have been pushing foreign ministry officials and security advisors to take this topic more seriously. The groups of NGO’s include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House… individual journalists and government reports (like the annual Department of State country reports) have provided enough information to start policy debates.

However, when one formulates an idea on how to implement an effective human rights policy, then they have to be focused around the security and economic aspects as well.

Image Illustration: Mike Luckovich

Due to America’s and China’s common realist ideologies, further portrayed by the policies of former president George Bush and now Barack Obama; analysts suggest that both of these countries are headed towards a “strategic confrontation”; and because of this “a new cold war” can ensue since both countries invest heavily into their militaries and their technological programs.

Because of different political ideologies and traditions, such a confrontation can be very easily materialized, however, no countries including themselves would really benefit from this. So it would be better to come down to an actual dialogue between the two major powers and find a common ground in regards to human rights that they can both specifically agree upon.

Resulting from an accumulated trade surplus with the US, China now holds 1.25+ trillion dollars worth of US debt instruments (including US Treasury bills) which means that it has the capability to considerably disarray international currency markets.

The US dollar would plunge to even lower levels, were China to sell off its dollar denominated debt holdings begging to the point of how much can the US really influence China to take things seriously without hurting their own economy.

China’s insertion into the structures of global trade, investment, finance and intellectual property rights under the World Trade Organization is absolutely crucial to the western markets as well.

Picture Illustration: Adam Zyris

On top of that China also plays an essential task in the international economy and financial structure, by providing a wide range of manufactured goods for consumption in the household. This means that western retail outlets such as Wal-Mart are dependent on the continued and uninterrupted flow of cheap labor industrial commodities from China.

This is due to the manufacturing decline in the U.S. where these same investors have jumped ship to China’s cheap labor economy and produce billions of dollars of profit where imported goods from China are sold at up to ten times their factory worth.

The irony of this is that usually the produce of these exports come from forced labour and prisoners cast off into slavery, which also include political exiles sent off to labor camps for offenses that might have not even existed; they are forced to labor unpaid in prison workshops and assembly lines which should not be tolerated by the international community, much or less just by Americans who actually consume the produce.

This sends a positive message for enslavement and encourages more human rights violations which are exactly against democratic principles.

However, one has to remember that there is no ethical relativism or a moral code in foreign affairs. Nations states have always been hypocritical in this conduct and China can adversely point fingers at U.S.’s own blunders by mentioning Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and its extraordinary rendition of foreign terrorist suspects as examples of US double standards.

Image Illustration: Stout

Abu Ghraib in Afghanistan also comes in mind that could be another major point for the Chinese to hold on to. This further proposes that nation states will undermine certain aspects of international atrocities while caring about others if they serve national interest purposes. Even then, how ready are American policy makers to hurt their own economy by banning trade?

Furthermore, the US should also recognize that because of their investments of goods in China they support human rights abuses in another way. Joint ventures with state-owned companies free up other Chinese government money to be spent on their systems of control and oppression.

The United States is less inclined to change policies for China as it is more self-dependant for having the largest import market in the world, so why not just boycott China to declare its economic supremacy?

Without an entry into this huge market, and also access to US technical expertise and investment, China will not be able to sustain its rapid economic growth. The communist regime use this principle to heighten their authority, but if sanctions were in place then it would trickle their economy down to unemployment which should then lead to protests finally leading to political change.

Why not leverage the opportunity to embargo China and pressure them to press towards human rights improvements?

Fact is that China is a regional power as well due to its geo-political standing and trades with other sanctioned countries such as Iran, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Sudan, and does not need to deal with the USA to retain its economic progress therefore human rights violations will still be rampant due to its ability to extend its hands into other nation states.

Image Illustration: Kaltoons

This is also the only way how U.S. can even term its values within China through trading, as this gives a chance for American standards of liberty, democracy and human rights to be promoted within the country. The US media provides most of the brunt of these products such as films, music, magazines and computer games, all found to be popular within the economic consumption of the Chinese people.

This pattern of bilateral understanding can also be understood between the constant personal meetings with Chinese individuals through business meetings, tourism industry and even education since thousands of Chinese university students study in the U.S. every year.

This probably does affect the regime in a very minimal way, but the fact is this would also severely reduce any kind of advancement between both nations to come to a common understanding.

Another point to bring forth is that by investing into China, the U.S. itself helps them achieve new military technologies and trample upon other sovereign nations such as Tibet and Taiwan while even oppressing citizens on its own domestic grounds (Tiananmen Square particularly comes into mind).

China also has its own sovereign political agendas and ideologies, but in regards to this issue, America falls short and enters the same double standards for economic benefits; it would much rather fight an arms race proxy war since it is an ally with Taiwan.

It is possible that Chinese military development risks war in the South China Sea between it and Taiwan… there is then a possibility that the United States could then be sucked into direct conflict with China. By cutting down trade with China, it could at least cut down its superpower status quo so it does not wage unnecessary wars with other states.

The record demonstrates clearly that by themselves sanctions are seldom able to roll back military aggression even though sanctions are a great alternative to not going to war as it is less deadly and more focused on the effort of reasoning and bargaining.

War has its more risky side in terms of losing substantial strength in economy, maintaining costs and receiving tons of casualties including violation of human rights. This option also has its limitations as it can only be sustained for a certain period of time and also if the enemy is economically and militarily equal, then sanctions seem to be the better option.
It is also a substitute to go this route as the target nation sanctioned has not done something extraordinarily odd to upset the global opinion. But the Chinese hold a significant amount of US debt in the form of US Bonds and if any form of suppression of trade ensues then China could sell those bonds and somewhat wound the American economy (6.5% of the National Debt).

Harsh sanctions may also have opposite consequences of what was intended such as heightened sense of nationalism or ethos with individuals supporting their governments even if they were impartial to it before.

Such an example is the detonation of nuclear warheads in Pakistan which enticed many people to come out on the streets after sanctions were imposed to criticize the international community claiming the incident to be an issue of self interest, providing itself defense from India who also detonated warheads.

It tends to affect people more on a personal level than on a political scale, so why would it be any different for China?

China would also not hesitate using economic pressure against those who criticize their human rights practices, for example when the Bundestag adopted a resolution critical of China’s foreign policies on Tibet, Beijing cancelled a visit by foreign minister of Germany and threatened to take its business elsewhere.

The grueling task of now compiling information for human rights atrocities lie within the hands of the NGO’s who do provide detailed reports on a consistent basis.

In the current era, the U.S. is engaged on a very international agenda in regards to human rights, which is to fight extremism around the globe.

These are some of the values the U.S. is trying to instill within centers of the world that they are “fighting for freedom” and emphasize the values that make America the ‘land of the free’. This is a good step towards showing the world that America is consistent within its foreign policy by staying the course to fight “terrorism” while at the same time advocating human rights concepts and the meaning of democracy to be quite important.

The US-China relationship is critical to solving a host of international issues, including proliferation, terrorism, and above all, human rights.

China is now a permanent member of the UN Security Council and now has to adhere to some responsibility in regards to international affairs. China is key to appeasing the threat caused by North Korea (although that is also debatable) and can make or break US policy over terrorist sponsored states such as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

At this time, causing any kind of vulnerabilities between the two nation states would undermine U.S.’s global priorities. However, the U.S. has not really been that much of a good role model due to their own human rights blunders as mentioned earlier.

Image Illustration: Danziger

Furthermore the United States also runs on the prospects of free trade. China is now also part of the WTO. The United States had an opportunity to block Chinese membership of the WTO but chose not to object even though they had veto power, so if America went back on their foreign policy now then China would be angered and could potentially sue the American government for violations.

Before this the alternative was constructive engagement on democratic countries and even domestic businesses to make sanctions more effective instead. As democracies are likely to be careful in their foreign policies due to the costs associated with failure.

They could have had a formal declaration to advise that participating nations will be signing a legal contract to go on sanctions against China and hence the nations who originally advised to put sanctions will compensate for each other’s trading ties and lend more cooperation amongst each other.

They should then provide each other with whatever produce necessary and also look for other incentives to work co-operatively which could have been a befitting alternative to the WTO.

US sanctions entailed more co-operations, contributing to stronger trade linkages and higher costs and the rate of all successes rose from a quarter in the 1970’s to a third in the 1990’s as an example.

In fixing some of these problems, addressing hegemonic powers seem to show that they have open world markets enticing at least some monopoly. It would encourage allied nations some benefit by listening to them and be rewarded with a favorable world opinion including votes from own citizens as well.

Just for the sake of being democratic and defending issues concerning for a nation’s own values and interests would generate positive general opinion by the masses swaying towards the means of providing justice in their eyes, especially in regards to human rights morals.

Democracies are better than non democracies (debatable) to use economic sanctions as signals of resolve but this idea could not be effective for nation states that are sympathetic to the Chinese regime since for some countries, China is their lead import/export.

By discussing moral grounds in terms of human rights, the U.S. is not fulfilling its democratic duties and instead endorses and courts China’s oppression on the weak due to mutual benefits, this brings the case into light that the American’s belief in the concept of economics before moral values.

The fact here is that sanctioning or trade barriers which are also forms of foreign policy, will affect China but in result produce collateral damage, hence the US does not want to take any risks as they are inclined to the Communist regime, as much as China are to the U.S. for economic growth.

What it produces then is a paradoxical situation where two competing nations will one day have to face off against each other due to different ideologies, (they perceive each others as economic partners and a threat to national security) even though the consensus is ambiguous amongst analysts since China has entered the UN Security Council and the WTO.

A comparison illustration between the nation states (2011):

Source: Fortune 500 | DECO

America at this time under Obama’s and Trump's policies has stated its claim against China’s human rights issues as secondary to economic and security concerns. Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state of the U.S. said that our pressing on those issues can’t interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis bringing in the same double standard.

This comes to show that as long as the other nation states have enough power and pressure on even the hegemonic power, state interests will always prevail over morality and the world is none the less worst. Democracy, in this case, takes a backseat, while capitalism and human rights aggressors flourish and bask in their victory.

Chossudovsky, Michel. China and America: The Tibet Human Rights PsyOp.
Neier, Aryeh. “The New Double Standard.” Foreign Policy Vol. 11.
Robert A. Hart, “Democracy and the Successful Use of Economic Sanctions”, Political Research Quarterly.
Van Ness, Peter. Addressing the human rights issue in Sino-America relations. Journal of International Affairs.
Spencer, Richard. “Hillary Clinton: Chinese human rights secondary to economic survival.”
Dorn, James. “Improving Human Rights in China.” CATO Institute. Center for Trade Policy Studies.
Ketsdever, Nathan. “China Human Rights Abuses, U.S. Trade Barriers.” IDEA. International Debate Education Association.