CHINA AND HUMAN RIGHTS

A SHIFT ON CHINA

The Washington Post, January 18, 2011

THE OBAMA administration's policy toward China shows signs of a significant adjustment on the eve of a state visit to Washington by President Hu Jintao. The potential change was embedded in a major speech on U.S.-Chinese relations delivered Friday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. It was Ms. Clinton who disastrously declared early in the administration's tenure that human rights concerns would not be allowed to "interfere" with U.S.-Chinese relations. In her latest speech she addressed the issue at length, making the case that "the longer China represses freedoms, the longer . . . empty chairs in Oslo will remain a symbol of a great nation's unrealized potential and unfulfilled promise."

Ms. Clinton also spoke of the economic agenda with Beijing and the need for China to revalue its currency and enforce intellectual property laws - matters addressed in separate speeches last week by the Treasury and Commerce secretaries. She covered the often difficult U.S.-China dialogue over North Korea, which lately appears to have achieved convergence on a strategy of supporting improved relations between North Korea and South Korea.

But the novelty in the secretary's speech was the introduction of China's repression of peaceful dissent and its unjust and cruel treatment of political prisoners as a major theme in the administration's public diplomacy toward China. Ms. Clinton specifically cited Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner prevented from attending the prize ceremony in Oslo, and Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who has been illegally held incommunicado since last April. Ms. Clinton argued that "those who advocate peacefully for reform within the constitution . . . should not be harassed or prosecuted" and that liberalization of freedom of expression and civil society would "help address some of China's most pressing issues."

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