Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:22:42.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chinese Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: A Realist Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Lowell Dittmer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article focuses on the function of human rights as a foreign policy ideal in American foreign policy, particularly since the end of the Cold War. China became a challenging target of U.S. human rights policy after Tiananmen. Human rights as an ideal may be defended either by idealist or by realist means. Whereas the former are logically consistent with the ends, only the latter promises immediate results. The Clinton administration thus began with an attempt to manipulate trade policy to pressure China into improving its human rights policies. The administration then shifted to idealist means more consistent with idealist ends, including the resort to international organization sanctions. But here Washington failed even more conspicuously. The article concludes that human rights did not turn out to be a politically suitable ideal to orient U.S. foreign policy. The impact on China was fierce resentment. But human rights have improved.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , Summer 2001 , pp. 421 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. See Mearsheimer, John J., “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” International Security, vol. 15, no. 1 (Summer 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the ensuing rejoinders carried in ibid., fall and winter issues. With specific reference to the collapse of the Soviet bloc, see Jowitt, Ken,New World Disorder (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

2. From 1990 through early 1993 the United States imposed unilateral sanctions in only one case (against Russia and India over a sale of missile technology) and expanded sanctions in another (Cuba). The UN, in contrast, has since 1990 sponsored sanctions in many parts of the world, including Haiti (now lifted), Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia. Lopez, George A. and Cortright, David, “Toward Ethical Economic Sanctions,” America 183 (25 11 2000): 18–41Google Scholar; Elliott, Kimberley Ann, “The Sanctions Glass: Half Full or Half Empty,” International Security 23 (Summer 1998): 50–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Cullen, Robert, “Rights and Foreign Policy: Collective Rights and Nationalism,” Current, no. 353 (06 1993), pp. 28–33Google Scholar.

4. For perceptive overviews of the role of the issue in foreign policy, see Baehr, Peter R., The Role of Human Rights in Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Korey, William, The Promises We Keep; Human Rights, the Helsinki Process, and American ForeignPolicy (New York: St. Martin's, 1993)Google Scholar; Forsythe, David P., ed.,Human Rights and Comparative Foreign Policy (New York: United Nations University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Steinmetz, Sara, Democratic Transition and Human Rights: Perspectives of US Foreign Policy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

5. Office of Public Information, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: United Nations, 1963)Google Scholar; see also EideAsbjorn, , ed., The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. The other key treaties were the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

6. We would suggest two modest revisions: freedom of worship is parochially Judeo-Christian, and might better be termed freedom of conscience or freedom of thought. Freedom from fear, which Roosevelt defined in terms of international disarmanent, might more relevantly be understood under current circumstances in terms of freedom from an arbitrary, intrusive police presence.

7. Weissbrodt, David, “Human Rights Mission,” Human Rights Quarterly 10 (1988)Google Scholar, as quoted in Turner, Bryan S., “Outline of a Theory of Human Rights,” Sociology 27:3 (1993): 489–513CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Pease, Kelly Kate & Forsythe, David P., “Human Rights, Humanitarian Intervention, and World Politics,” Human Rights Quarterly 15:2 (1993): 290–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. See Connolly, William E., The Terms of Discourse, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; also Mason, Andrew, “On Explaining Political Disagreement,” Inquiry 33:1 (1990): 81–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. On this dispute, see Carothers, Thomas, “Enlarging Democracy: Democracy and Human Rights,” Current, no. 367 (11, 1994), pp. 17–24Google Scholar; also Neier, Aryeh, “Asia's Unacceptable Standard,” Foreign Policy 92 (1993): 42–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whereas the political and socioeconomic dimensions of human rights are clearly alternatives in terms of relative policy priority, current empirical research indicates that they are complementary in their effects:“democratization decreases governments′ use of coercion to abuse the human rights of private citizens.” Poe, Steven C. and Tate, C. Neal, “Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s:A Global Analysis,” American Political Science Review 88 (1994): 853–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Fraser, Elvis E., “Reconciling Conceptual and Measurement Problems in the Comparative Study of Human Rights,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 35:1–2 (1994): 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Yew, Lee Kuan, “EastAsia is NorthAmerica's Economic Locomotive,” New Perspectives Quarterly 10:2 (1993): 24–30Google Scholar; the most perceptive philosophical analysis of the issue remains that of Moody, Peter R. Jr, “Asian Values,” Journal of International Affairs 5, no. 1 (1996): 166–93Google Scholar; also see Fukuyama, Francis, “Asian Values and the Asian Crisis,” Commentary 105, no. 2 (1998): 23–28Google Scholar. To concede that China and other Confucian cultures have a distinctive gloss on human rights is not at all to deny a long interest and distinguished bibliography on the topic. See Muehlhahn, Klaus, “China, the West and the Question of Human Rights: A Historical Perspective,” asien afrika lateinamerika, 24 (1996): 287–303Google Scholar.

12. E.g., Amnesty International received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977; Helsinki Watch (now part of Human Rights Watch), the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and other associations were founded during this period.

13. For an analysis encompassing many of these criticisms, see Haas, E. B., Global Evangelism Rides Again: How to Protect Human Rights Without Really Trying (Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley, Policy Papers in International Affairs, No. 5,1978)Google Scholar.

14. It has also been argued that the goals as well as the means of containment were realist, e.g., by such analysts as Glenn Paige, Thomas Schelling, or Glenn Snyder. From this perspective the gains at stake were at the margins of the bipolar system and of such minor strategic importance that they could only be deemed significant as parts of a coalition, the loss of which might damage the credibility of the losing side. To be sure, strategic value also varied: the geopolitical locus of South Korea (a “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan,” as it was then phrased) gave it greater weight than, say, Vietnam or Chile.

15. Also, the jus ad bellum prohibits use of force in international affairs except for self-defense. Pease, and Forsythe, , “Human Rights”, pp. 310–313Google Scholar.

16. On the use of sanctions to motivate improved human rights performance, see Haass, Richard N. and O'Sullivan, Meghan L., eds., Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions and Foreign Policy (Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Selden, Zachary, Economic Sanctions as Instruments of American Foreign Policy (Westport CT: Praeger, 1999)Google Scholar; and Shambaugh, George E., States, Firms and Bureaucrats: Successful Sanctions in US Foreign Policy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999)Google Scholar, inter alia.

17. According to the most comprehensive recent analysis, in cases where sanctions were successful, the average decline in GNP was about 2.5 percent; the shortest average duration of successful sanctions was 14 months, the longest five years. Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, Schott, Jeffrey J., and Elliott, Kimberly Ann, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990), p. 93Google Scholar.

18. Including the most deprived and helpless segments of the population; see Henderson, Zerika Petic, “The Cruel Weapon—Food,” Human Ecology Forum 22: 3 (1994): 4Google Scholar; and Christiansen, Drew and Powers, Gerald F., “Unintended Consequences,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49: 9 (1993): 41–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. The most clear-cut recent example involved the Reagan administration's 1982 attempt to implement sanctions blocking Soviet construction of a natural gas pipeline to deliver fuel from Siberia to Western Europe, in order to punish the USSR for Jaruzelski's December 1981 imposition of martial law in Poland. European (and even some American) corporations refused to cancel lucrative equipment orders involved in that project, and the blockade failed so ignominiously that it stimulated theorizing that during “hegemonic decline” the former hegemon loses control of multinational corporations. Comparative empirical research indicates that such a conclusion, while not entirely specious, goes too far. See Rodman, Kenneth A., “Sanctions at Bay? Hegemonic Decline, Multinational Corporations, and US Economic Sanctions since the Pipeline Case,” International Organization 49: 1 (1995): 105–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Martin, Lisa L., “Credibility, Costs, and Institutions: Cooperation on Economic Sanctions,” World Politics 45: 3 (1993): 406–433CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. The sanctions against Iraq were of unprecedented scope, adopted with near-universal support and implemented with the most effective enforcement yet put in place, and they had a severe effect on the postwar economy (inflation reached 4,000 percent in early 1992). Yet by mid-1993 Iraq had rebuilt 80 percent of its military manufacturing capability and restored its army to 80 percent of its prewar strength, with 2,500 tanks and 400 combat aircraft. The sanctions have however succeeded in forestalling Iraq's development of nuclear weaponry. See Dowty, Alan, “Sanctioning Iraq: The Limits of the New World Order,” Washington Quarterly 17: 3 (1994): 179–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. According to Hufbauer, , Schott, and Elliott, , Sanctions ReconsideredGoogle Scholar, sanctions have been “successful” in about 34 percent of the 115 cases studied. In 52 percent of the cases, sanctions were successful in destabilizing small and shaky governments, but only when augmented by covert action and other measures. Sanctions involving more modest goals, such as bringing about prisoner release, discouraging support for terrorism, or nuclear nonproliferation, succeeded about a third of the time.

22. South Africa experienced little in the way of economic development in the 1980s: whereas annual GNP growth during the 1960s and 1970s averaged 4.5 percent (sometimes topping 5.5 percent), it dropped to an average of 1.3 percent in the 1980s and slipped into negative numbers in 1990, 1991 and 1992; unemployment rose from 26 to 43 percent from 1980 to 1991 (with the total number of unemployed rising from 2.5 million to nearly 6 million persons), well above the U.S. figure in the great depression. Of course, sanctions were not the sole reason for the economic downturn—other factors included falling diamond and gold prices, drought, and continuing unrest in the townships. Davis, , “Squeezing,” The Economist, 20 03 1993, p. 4.Google Scholar

23. See Price, Robert M., The Apartheid State in Crisis: Political Transformation in South Africa, 1975–1990 (New York: Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar.

24. See Schweizer, Peter, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994)Google Scholar. Aside from selected Communist bloc countries, denial of MFN has been rarely used: as of 1994 MFN was enjoyed by 182 U.S. trade partners, as opposed to only 9 lacking it. (Time, 30 05 1994, p. 41.Google Scholar)

25. For more extended considerations of Chinese human rights policy, see Edwards, R. Randle, Henkin, Louis, and Nathan, Andrew J., Human Rights in Contemporary China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Copper, John F., Michael, Franz, and Wu, Yuan-li, Human Rights in Post-Mao China (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985)Google Scholar

26. Dietrich, John W., “Interest Groups and Foreign Policy: Clinton and the China MFN Debates,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, no. 2 (1999): 280 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. “Report to the Congress on Most-Favored-Nation Trade Status for China.” (Pres. Bill Clinton's Speech, 28 May 1993) (Transcript) Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 29: 21 (31 05 1993): 9–14.Google Scholar

28. See Kausikan, Bilahari, “Asia's Different Standard,” Foreign Policy 92 (1993): 24–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Yew's, Lee Kuan interview in New Perspectives Quarterly, Winter 1992Google Scholar.

29. Information Office of the State Council, Human Rights in China [“Zhongguo di renchuan zhuangkuang”] (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

30. Shortly before the 1993 MFN deadline, a visiting Chinese delegation purchased U.S.$200 million of oil drilling equipment in Texas and Louisiana, $160 million of automobiles in Detroit, and $800 million of aircraft (from Boeing) in Seattle. Hence nearly 300 corporate leaders, representing companies that exported $7.5 billion to China in 1992, sent an open letter to Clinton opposing “withdrawing or placing further conditions on MFN.” Bernstein and Dicker, “Human Rights First.”

31. Greenberger, Robert S. and Frisby, Michael K., “Clinton's Renewal of Trade Status for China Followed Cabinet Debates, Congress's Sea Change,” Wall Street Journal, 31 05 1994, p. A18Google Scholar, as cited in Lampton, David M., “America's China Policy in the Age of the Finance Minister: Clinton Ends Linkage,” China Quarterly 139 (1994): 597–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Lampton's, Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing US-China Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

32. For example, at a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing in February 1994, one corporate representative after another warned of the “devastating consequences” if MFN were revoked. Typical of the testimony was Mattell Vice President Fermin Guza. Many American importers “would be quickly forced out” of business, he said. “Higher tariffs would hike retail prices by about 25 percent, at a minimum, also putting at risk many of the 32,000 U.S. jobs in the U.S. toy industry.” Barlett, Donald J. and Stack, James, “Most Favored Lobby,” Washington Monthly 28, no. 12 (1996): 18–23Google Scholar.

33. See Stremlau, John, “Clinton's Dollar Diplomacy,” Foreign Policy 97 (1994): 18–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The other “BEMs” include India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, South Korea, South Africa, Poland, and Argentina; by the end of the decade U.S. trade with these “regional economic drivers” was to exceed trade with Europe or Japan.

34. For example, during Secretary of State Warren Christopher's March 1994 visit to Beijing, local business leaders met with him and overwhelmingly advocated extension of MFN and a future delinking of human rights issues from foreign trade, and the CEOs of seven of the biggest American companies doing business with China signed a letter to the President estimating that “in ten years our cumulative sales to China will reach $158 billion, assuming normal relations.” Time, 30 05 1994, pp. 40–44Google Scholar.

35. Cyrus Vance and Henry Kissinger wrote a letter on Council of Foreign Relations stationery calling on Clinton to sever the tie between human rights and trade in China's case. Neier, Aryeh, “Watching Rights,” Nation 259:9 (26 09 1994), pp. 299 ffGoogle Scholar.

36. Lampton, “America's China Policy.”

37. For transparent reasons: in view of mushrooming overseas Chinese investment in southern China, revocation of MFN for China would deal a serious setback to the economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other southeast Asian countries that had developed close ties with China. Taiwan's silence on the issue was also a striking contrast to its wonted anticommunism.

38. Fang Lizhi was among the few to take an unequivocal stand in favor of MFN revocation. Lizhi, Fang, “Call Beijing's Bluff on Human Rights,” New Perspectives Quarterly 11: 2 (1994): 62–64Google Scholar.

39. The President's News Conference (Pres. Bill Clinton, May 26, 1994) (Transcript) Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 30:21 (30 05 1994): 1––6Google Scholar

40. See Hendrickson, David C., “The Democratist Crusade,” World Policy Journal 11:4 (1994): 18–31Google Scholar.

41. These included a ban on imports of Chinese munitions, prohibition of TDA, OPIC and U.S.-AEP programs in China, opposition to non basic-human need loans to China by the World Bank and other multilateral agencies, suspension of weapons sales to China, and denial of export licenses for dual-use and munitions-list items. The administration also pledged to develop with American business leaders a “voluntary set of principles for business activity in China” similar to the Sullivan principles voluntarily invoked in South Africa.

42. The statutory requirement for MFN renewal since 1994 is a presidential determination that renewal will “substantially promote freedom of emigration in China.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry however protests against this as well. See Jiefang ribao [“liberation daily”], Shanghai, 7 06 1995, p. A4Google Scholar.

43. Vines, Stephen, “A Tale of Two Massacres,” The Asian Wall Street Journal, 16 06 2000, p. 10Google Scholar. It should be noted in this context that the number of political prisoners is low in comparison to the several hundred thousand in the class struggles of the Maoist era. See Seymour, James D. and Andersen, Richard, New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998)Google Scholar. In 2001, the government released four student activists early who had been involved in the 1989 protests, though only by a few weeks, presumably to influence the vote by the UN Human Rights Commission.

44. See The Economist 344, no. 8032 (30 08 1997): 27Google Scholar. The number of crimes in China punishable by death has risen from 21 in 1977 to nearly 70 in 1997. But at least political prisoners are no longer executed—with the sole exception of Xinjiang, where Uighur rebels are routinely condemned to death for terrorist activities. See Amnesty International, Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (London, 04 1999)Google Scholar.

45. Finn, James, “Limping Toward China,” Commonweal 124, no. 8 (25 04 1997): 11–14Google Scholar.

46. For a relatively comprehensive analysis of the politicization of the Ankang, or psychiatric institutions, see Munro, Robin, “Judicial Psychiatry in China and Its Political Abuses,” Columbia Journal of Asian Law 14:1 (2000): 3–118Google Scholar.

47. See Kent, Ann, “China and the International Human Rights Regime: A Case Study of Multilateral Monitoring, 1989–1994,” Human Rights Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1995): 1–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. Human Rights in China (09 1991);Google ScholarCriminal Reform in China (08 1992);Google ScholarTibet: Its Ownership and Human Rights Situation (09 1992);Google ScholarThe Taiwan Question and Reunification of China (08 1993);Google ScholarThe Situation of Chinese Women (06 1994);Google ScholarIntellectual Property Protection in China (06 1994);Google ScholarFamily Planning in China (08 1995);Google ScholarChina: Arms Control and Disarmament (09 1995);Google ScholarThe Progress of Human Rights in China (12 1995);Google ScholarThe Situation of Children in China (04 1996);Google ScholarEnvironmental Protection in China (06 1996);Google ScholarThe Grain Issue in China (10 1996);Google ScholarOn Sino-U.S. Trade Balance (03 1997);Google ScholarProgress in China's Human Rights Cause in 1996 (03 1997);Google ScholarFreedom of Religious Belief in China (10 1997).Google Scholar

49. E.g., Zhang Wenxian, a human rights scholar at the University of Liaoning in Jilin, has taken the position that only individual human beings can have “human” rights, not collective entities such as the nation-state. See Weatherley, Robert, The Discourse of Human Rights in China: Historical and Ideological Perspectives (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), last chapter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. China was already a party to the other four core human rights treaties: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as being a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights and the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. See Kent, Ann, China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), p. 45.Google Scholar

51. Lam, Willy Wo-Lap, The Era of Jiang Zemin (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1999), p. 114Google Scholar.

52. See Carney, Christopher P., “The (Not So) Long March? China's Pace of Change,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 25: 4 (1999): 236 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Montgomery, John D., “The American Pot and the Chinese Kettle,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 56, no. 3 (1997): 373–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. See Riskin, Carl, Renwei, Zhao and Shi, Li, eds., China's Retreat from Equality: Income Distribution and Economic Transition (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001)Google Scholar

55. Public opinion polls since the 1989 crackdown indicate that a majority of Chinese prefer social order and stability to freedom, on the implicit premise that freedom risks instability This does not necessarily imply that Chinese are indifferent to rights—indeed, there is increasing concern with property rights in particular. But the dominant trend is one of political conservatism combined with nationalist emotions. See Wan, Ming, “Chinese Opinion on Human Rights,” Orbis 42, no. 3 (1998): 361–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. In 1999, the United States conducted U.S.$94.9 billion trade with China, of which $81.8 billion was imports and a mere $13.1 billion exports. In 2000, the U.S. trade deficit with China was U.S.$83.8 billion, America's largest, for the first time surpassing Japan at $81.3 billion. It should be noted that the two sides differ over the size of the deficit (according to official PRC trade statistics China still enjoys a surplus but it is much smaller—$30.3 billion in 2000, for example), largely due to a disagreement as to whether Hong Kong should count as a trade destination or as an entrepot.

57. The strategic imbalance between a laissez faire system and one with strong doses of state intervention is explicated in strategic trade theory; e.g., see Krugman, Paul, Rethinking International Trade (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

58. See Elliott, Kimberley Ann, “A Look at the Record,” and Eland, Ivan, “Think Small,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49: 9 (1993): 32–36 and 36–41, respectivelyCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. The anti-apartheid movement seems to have been quite effective, making investors uncomfortable enough to have a substantial effect on DFI. From 1964–74, DFI contributed 8 percent of South Africa's gross domestic investment. Foreign investment averaged 14 percent during the first half of the 1970s and peaked at 24.5 percent in 1975–76. It dropped to 2 percent during the unrest after Steve Biko's murder in 1977; by the end of the decade, companies were seeking to ward off public pressure by adopting a code of corporate behavior—the Sullivan principles. By 1982, more than 30 colleges and universities had withdrawn more than $100 million from banks and corporations operating in South Africa, while legislatures in Massachusetts, Michigan, Connecticut; and the cities of Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Grand Rapids, had approved measures to withdraw amounts up to $300 million. Davis, Jennifer, “Squeezing Apartheid,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49:9 (1993): 16–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.