CHINA'S RISE ERODES WESTERN BARGAINING POWER: OBSERVERS
Robert Saiget
AFP, December 31, 2009
BEIJING — Surging economic and diplomatic clout has given China the confidence to ignore old world powers like Britain, which failed to halt its first execution of a European since the 1950s, experts say.
In recent weeks, Beijing has jailed a prominent dissident for 11 years for subversion despite a Western outcry, taken a firm line that led to a tepid global climate change pact and refused to budge on the value of the yuan.
"We've entered a new phase, a phase in which there is less leverage for foreign governments to exert on China in the area of human rights," Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong-based manager of rights group Dui Hua, told AFP.
"In the past, China would make concessions on human rights when it needed something from the West... now more often than not, it is the foreign governments that need something from China."
In the past, China conceded on rights issues as a trade-off to secure its membership of the World Trade Organisation, the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games and gain greater international recognition on the whole, Rosenzweig said.
Robert Saiget
AFP, December 31, 2009
BEIJING — Surging economic and diplomatic clout has given China the confidence to ignore old world powers like Britain, which failed to halt its first execution of a European since the 1950s, experts say.
In recent weeks, Beijing has jailed a prominent dissident for 11 years for subversion despite a Western outcry, taken a firm line that led to a tepid global climate change pact and refused to budge on the value of the yuan.
"We've entered a new phase, a phase in which there is less leverage for foreign governments to exert on China in the area of human rights," Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong-based manager of rights group Dui Hua, told AFP.
"In the past, China would make concessions on human rights when it needed something from the West... now more often than not, it is the foreign governments that need something from China."
In the past, China conceded on rights issues as a trade-off to secure its membership of the World Trade Organisation, the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games and gain greater international recognition on the whole, Rosenzweig said.
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