Leave it to the hypocrisy and double standards that govern international relations to make even Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi seem sympathetic. For, given the way Western leaders are lining up to condemn and sanction him for his crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, you’d think he had committed the worst human rights abuses since the Holocaust.
Hell, Senator John Kerry, the very influential chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even declared yesterday that Western leaders cannot stand by and allow Gaddafi to squash the democratic aspirations of his people, intimating that they have a moral duty to stop him by any means necessary.
Whereas, in fact, even if reports of Gaddafi’s most egregious abuses turn out to be true, I suspect they will still pale in comparison to those Chinese leaders not only committed during their brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, but are committing today in their continual vigilance to attack any sign of democratic expression as if it were the plague.
As a matter of fact, China has not been immune to the Tunisian-inspired protests that are sweeping across the Middle East; but you’d never know it given scant reports in Western media and nary a peep from Western leaders.
Anyway, the Chinese are so venal and amoral in their repression of democratic activists that they had no compunction about incarcerating the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, under circumstances that made the incarceration of Nelson Mandela by the Apartheid government of South Africa seem benign.
Yet, instead of issuing condemnations and imposing sanctions, Western leaders are acting as if the human rights abuses the Chinese commit are pursuant to political and cultural norms that are sacrosanct. Even worse they are lining up to pay homage to and curry favor with Chinese leaders the way one assumes the Indians did when seemingly rich and invincible Europeans first came to the Americas.
But I’m cynical enough to assert that the way our leaders exorcise their guilt over standing by and allowing the Chinese to squash the democratic aspirations of their people is by venting moral indignation at relatively hapless abusers like Gaddafi, Castro, and Mugabe. So the next time you hear Western politicians beating their chest about getting tough on Libya, just bear in mind what pusillanimous hypocrites they are.
Which brings me to the real point of this commentary: raining on China’s parade to replace the U.S. as the richest and most influential country in the world.
This episode of naked bullying should serve as a warning to all countries around the world that are not just lapping up China’s largesse, but are heralding it as a more worthy superpower than the United States. After all, China is spitting imperious and vindictive fire at the rich and mighty United States over a relatively insignificant matter like meeting with the Dalai Lama. Therefore, just imagine what it would do to a poor and weak country in a conflict over a truly significant matter.
I anticipated that the Chinese would be every bit as arrogant in the use of their power as the Americans. But I never thought they would use it for such an irrational and plainly unwinnable cause.
(World beware: China calling in loan-sharking debts, The iPINIONS Journal, February 3, 2010)
This quote reflects only one of the many times I felt moved to rain on China’s parade in recent years. I did so in each case because, as much as I admire the economic juggernaut it has become, I have grave concerns about the way it wield its power, as well as abiding doubts about the presumed inevitability of it eclipsing the U.S. as a superpower … in any respect.
Of course, with so many people holding themselves out as experts on China these days, I appreciate that many may question what qualifies me to speak so authoritatively on the subject.
Therefore, I am exceedingly pleased to share an excerpt from an interview Charlie Rose conducted on Monday on his eponymous talk show with Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called “the foremost expert on the substance, diversity, uses, and, abuses of power.”
Here is what Nye said about the rise of China as a superpower:
Americans go through cycles of declinism every 10 to 20 years: after sputnik the Russians were 10 feet tall; and then the Japanese were 10 feet tall; now the Chinese are 10 feet tall after the recession of 2008. We usually outgrow this. But the reason that it’s important is when you misunderstand what power relations are really like it can do two things: it can make us too fearful and it can make other countries like the Chinese (sic) have hubris which makes them push in a way which is unproductive and they get into trouble…
If they have that feeling that we’re going down, they’re growing up, this can lead to miscalculations. In fact Chinese foreign policy has had a bad year or so: they’ve antagonized the U.S., they’ve antagonized India; they’ve antagonized Japan; they’ve antagonized Vietnam. So this sort of hubris is not good for China…
Unlike Britain where the rise of Germany created fear in Britain and led to WWI… There’s another 20 years or so before China catches up with us, if then… If you look at per capita income, which is a better measure of the sophistication of an economy they won’t be equal until something like 2040. There’s a huge gap. And so we shouldn’t get too nervous or too overwrought about China… we don’t have to overreact out of fear and the Chinese need to be careful not to react on their side….
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And Nye did not even mention the internal conflicts, which preceded the Tunisian-inspired protests, that may cause China to implode long before 2030:
Unprecedented urban development, at mach speed, cannot be fueled by rice farming. Moreover, where limited energy resources are likely to cause the relatively stable American economy to contract in due course, fuel shortages compounded by widespread rebellion amongst poor, gentrified and disaffected farmers are clearly sowing the seeds of China’s economic destruction.
(Gap between rich and poor in China sowing seeds of terminal unrest, The iPINIONS Journal, December 22, 2005)
In any event, further to this hypocrisy and double standards, prosecutors from the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced today that they will be investigating Gaddafi and his inner circle, including his sons, for committing crimes against humanity in their crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
Yet, despite all of the reports about the human rights abuses Chinese leaders have committed over the years (including since the ICC was founded in 1998), none of them have ever been investigated.
By the same token, it’s arguable the human rights abuses Gaddafi is committing against Libyans today are not nearly as inhumane as those American leaders committed against blacks during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement or more recently against innocent Iraqis (remember Abu Ghraib?) and Afghans.
Yet I doubt prosecutors from any international tribunal have ever even thought about prosecuting any American leader for any crime against humanity. Talk about selective prosecution.
Related commentaries:
World beware: China…
Gap between rich and poor in China