Continued US/China Human Rights Clashes

Human rights violations for better or worse play a central role  in human history and are a fairly constant issue around the world.  Now and again these ethical challenges spill into the public view for long enough to earn the focus of news discussion for a bit.  The recent issues in the Middle East have provided a fairly lasting spotlight shifting from one nation to another as authoritarian leaders attempt to crack down on uprisings and dissent.   These uprisings set an interesting stage for the human rights discussions scheduled later this week between United States and China.  There are few subjects the two nations are more fiercely in disagreement over than human rights, each state makes quite the habit of critiquing the human rights abuses of the other, often muddying the issue of humanitarian concerns into one of political manipulation.  In either nation, no matter how you slice it, these are difficult times to preach human rights from a policy maker’s point of view.

It’s hard to imagine what all the two nations even have to discuss on the subject of human rights, or if anything productive can likely come from such exchange.  There’s little if any reason to believe that the government of China is likely to change domestic policy based on the desires the United States, or vice versa.  Is this an avenue where there’s much innate worth in public diplomacy then? Is the mere voicing of “concern” by one government or another enough to impact some eventual change?  As in other authoritarian states, China’s difficulties with human rights are marked here and there with minor successes and noteworthy gestures, painting a portrait of a government growing gradually more tolerant and even handed.  However much stories of prisoner releases are comforting, and however excellent it is for the people freed, there will always be other dissidents to imprison and or dispose of, and ultimately the goal must be to change the culture of government intolerance and the institutions which allow these abuses to continue.

Unfortunately there is plenty of merit to the arguments that we don’t stand on any moral high ground stable enough to advise other nations on human rights.  While the military actions taken against domestic civilians by rulers in the Middle East obviously strike us unacceptable, advising the more functional nations of the world such as China becomes difficult.  Per capita(1) we imprison more of our populace than any nation in the world, we’re one of the few countries continuing to accept execution as a means of punishment and our standard view prison is focused on punishment for negative actions rather than rehabilitation.  Coupled with these woes the United States government is a regular target of human rights activists given our popularized participation in extraordinary rendition and the difficult moral implications of our host of military actions and conflicts.  Ultimately I do believe our citizens are treated leagues better than those who live in many of the world’s authoritarian nations, the trouble is that human rights seems an exceptionally difficult subject to urge other nations “to do as I say, not as I do”.  At the same time, what real option is there?