China, The United States,and Human Rights
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Expecting Bill Clinton to do something about human rights in China is like expecting him to do something about campaign finance reform— what we will actually get is a flood of morally earnest...
...Expecting Bill Clinton to do something about human rights in China is like expecting him to do something about campaign finance reform— what we will actually get is a flood of morally earnest talk followed by more morally earnest talk...
...SPRING • 1997 • 13...
...A concerted and well-publicized effort of American consumers refusing to buy items made by children might slowly begin to eradicate exploitation of the young...
...The pace will be swifter if all of us make it our business to pay attention to what we buy and where our dollars go...
...The decline and fall of the Soviet bloc provides mixed evidence...
...How about closing down Radio Marti and spending the money on Radio Free China...
...The Disney Corporation refused to be cowed by China's complaints about its forthcoming film on the Dalai Lama...
...He has written several important articles for Dissent...
...apparel companies to agree upon worldwide minimum labor standards in the factories they own or buy from could have an impact on labor practices in China...
...Or imag‘ ine what all those Hong Kong fax machines can do when they, too, become a part of China in July...
...It looks potentially more like its neighbor Singapore, which couples a booming capitalist economy with an oppressive political regime...
...All those instruments of communication—fax machines, copiers, and the Internet—that kept Central Europeans in touch with one another and the outside world could be instruments of freedom for the Chinese as well...
...we can press for change by threatening to shift the funds elsewhere...
...Perhaps this is the model that will be imposed on Hong Kong when it reverts to Chinese control...
...It hasn't happened yet, but it might...
...Can they provide alternative educational or social welfare services to their employees...
...The example of South Africa calls to mind the pressure that U.S...
...Court of Appeals and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S...
...American consumers could buy selectively: we should look at the labels before we buy those chinos, that new computer, or that exquisite vase...
...Kennedy, the editor of Reconstruction magazine, is a professor at the Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on contracts, freedom of expression, and the regulation of race relations...
...Free markets and the free exchange of ideas are not novel practices there...
...The embargo against South Africa may be the one sterling example of success: along with other factors—economic, cultural, and athletic (!)—isolation contributed to real political and moral change, a turn to equality and the end of apartheid...
...Economic sanctions, especially unilateral ones, also have a mixed record, as a recent essay in Commonweal shows ("War by Other Means: Criteria for the Use of Economic Sanctions," 12 • DISSENT Human Rights and China February 28, 1997...
...The argument against withdrawing mostfavorednation trading status from China or imposing economic sanctions has some truth: the decline of a command economy and the free movement of people and goods associated with a capitalist economy may bring in their wake political reforms, democracy, and civil liberties...
...Supreme Court...
...Political reform and democracy have come in those parts of Central Europe (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) where democratic governments have had previous tenure and which have had strong economic and cultural links to Western Europe...
...The free flow of information and ideas is central to any strategy meant to encourage political reform...
...China looks more like Russia than Poland or the Czech Republic...
...Multilateral sanctions against Serbia and Iraq have had mixed results politically, and the sanctions against Iraq, which have caused dire shortages of food and medicine, may themselves now constitute a form of human rights abuse, especially against children...
...sanctions have kept Cuba poor, but have not achieved their purpose: the downfall of the Castro regime...
...It is obvious that the development of political and civil liberties in China will take time...
...stockholders brought to bear on companies doing business there, if only by embarrassing them...
...The Berlin Wall may not be an entirely misleading metaphor—but the wall around China will have to come down in slow motion...
...What kind of pressures might work on China...
...Corporations and companies ought to be applauded for resisting China's monomaniacal efforts to control information...
...be scrutinized for investments in China...
...In a similar fashion, pension funds and individual pension accounts ought to WELCOME ABOARD Welcome to Randall Kennedy, who was elected to the Dissent editorial board at its winter meeting...
...Can they be persuaded to observe international labor standards in their factories...
...He was educated at Princeton University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School, and clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S...
...If governments, including our own, are unlikely to engage in punitive economic measures, are there other strategies...
...But a Rupert Murdoch-owned television station in Hong Kong pulled the BBC News Service after complaints from the Chinese government...
...How about sending a fax machine to your Chinese pen pal...
...At a January 28, 1997 press conference the president said, "[I] believe that the impulses of the society and the nature of the economic change will work together," and clinched his argument with the inevitable metaphor: change in China is "inevitable, just as inevitably the Berlin Wall fell...
...Then even Bill Clinton might do more than talk...
...Recent efforts of a presidential task force to get U.S...
...But in Russia and those satellite nations long tied to it, free markets seem to have brought the most destructive features of capitalism while preserving the most corrupting influences of communist political and civic life...
...Who's doing business with China...
Vol. 44 • April 1997 • No. 2
