By: Yang Jianli, Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government. President, Initiatives for China
I learned of the eleven year prison sentence given to Chinese intellectual, Liu Xiaobo, on Christmas morning as I was leaving DC for a flight to Tokyo’s Narita airport to see my old friend and fellow Chinese citizen, Mr. Feng Zhenghu. Feng, a human rights lawyer, has been stranded at Terminal One since November 3, 2009, when he was denied entry into Shanghai by Chinese authorities and forcibly put on a plane back to Japan. He has vowed to remain in the terminal area until the Chinese government concedes his right as a Chinese citizen to return home. These events follow last month’s execution of 9 Uhyghurs by the Chinese government and the deportation, earlier this month, of 20 other Uyghurs from Cambodia back to China where they face a similar fate.
All of these activities exceed the boundaries of internationally accepted behavior, Chinese law, and even the pretense of fair judicial proceedings. These actions were committed, not by some inconsequential nation, but by the government of China, America’s second largest trading partner, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and home to one quarter of the world’s human population. China took these actions in the wake of a visit by the President of the United States and leader of the free world.
Any reasonable person must ask why a government of such a great nation behaves so cruelly towards its own citizens. The answer is contained in one simple four letter word, fear.
A government does not put its best and brightest citizens in jail or prevent them from returning home because it has the confidence of its people. If it believed, for one moment, its party line that it rules over a harmonious and stable society, an enlightened government would not label minorities “terrorists’ and “subversives” and summarily execute them.
The Chinese government’s actions reveal fear and insecurity, not strength. It knows it has lost the confidence of its people. It sees, in the rear view mirror of history, the collapse of the Soviet Union and fears the same fate for itself. Its fear drives it to ever greater repression, further alienating itself from its people. This unchecked cycle of pleas for reform, followed by ever greater repression, can have only one outcome. That outcome will be cataclysmic for both the government of China, the Chinese people, and the international community. This is the message that landed this brave man, Liu Xiaobo, in prison. This is the message the world community needs to heed.
The Obama Administration needs to realize the fear behind the actions of the Chinese Communist Party. It must quickly conclude that its “pragmatic” approach to human rights in China is exacerbating the problem because the Chinese government translates “pragmatism” as“appeasement,” giving it encouragement to increase its repression. It is not coincidental that the Chinese government waited until after the visit of President Obama to sentence Liu Xiaobo. The visit allowed the Chinese leaders to size up the President and to conclude that he would not interfere.
The Administration would do well to heed the counsel of the noted Soviet era dissident, Andrei Sakharov, that the world community cannot rely on a government that does not rely on its own people. The best course of action is for the Obama Administration to assertively engage the Chinese government in a clear dialogue that sends the message that America cannot support a trading partner that holds a gun to its people. That the international community will no longer embrace a member that governs without the rule of law. It is only this message tied to specific actions and specific consequences that will save the Chinese government from itself and the world community from a future catastrophe.