China is too busy trying to get rich to bother with human rights

[My comment] Well this guy really doesn't care about being politically correct. Britain's got talent.

Jeremy Warner, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph, is one of Britain's leading business and economics commentators.

China is too busy trying to get rich to bother with human rights


Why is it that the BBC, in its reporting of David Cameron’s visit to China, keeps banging on about the supposed dilemma faced by the Prime Minister over whether to raise human rights abuse, and in particular the plight of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent Chinese dissident unable to collect his Nobel peace prize because he’s serving an 11 year sentence in a Chinese jail?

There’s no dilemma here at all – except in the vague terms already referred to by Mr Cameron, this is not an issue which needs to be explored at all on a visit which is meant to be wholly about trade. Only the BBC, would, in oblivious disregard for the national interest, keep on trying to make something out of it.

And I’m not arguing this point of view merely because Britain might lose potentially lucrative trade deals if Mr Cameron attempts to grand stand human rights. Any harm done in this regard is in any case unlikely to be permanent.

President Sarkozy’s refusal to take any nonsense from the Chinese in meeting the Dalai Lama a few years back doesn’t seem to have done France’s trading relationship with China any harm at all. Last week, French firms signed trade deals with China worth $20bn during a visit by Hu Jintao to Paris. In the end, Chinese trade relations are ruled by pragmatism. If they think it in their own commercial and economic interests, they’ll do it.

No, the real reason for steering clear of public complaint is that it will make no difference at all to human rights in China, and actually might make things worse. President George Bush’s admission that given the choice, he’d waterboard again, will only increase China’s determination to take no lectures from the West on human rights abuse.

True enough, these acts of torture are as nothing against the epic abuse of opponents that is still carried out on a routine basis in China today, but to attempt to judge China by contemporary Western standards is neither helpful nor justified. Neither the US nor the British government would take kindly to being told by the Chinese how to manage their internal, or even external, affairs; why, with advanced economies queuing round the block to take advantage of the trade opportunities afforded by Chinese growth, would they want to listen to us?

You don’t need to go far back in Western history to find similarly intolerant attitudes to political opposition, and as for the human rights agenda, well that’s a very recent addition indeed. As pointed out by the historian Michael Burleigh in his column for Standpoint magazine, the human rights industry really only started to gain traction from the 1970s onwards. Only in very recent years have human rights activists managed to subvert the law to this overarching end. Looking at a system which now demands that candles are provided for pagans practicing their dark arts at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and other such nonsenses, you can understand why the Chinese want none of it.

China has always put ideas of the collective good above those of individual liberty, and is therefore from an entirely different cultural tradition to that of Thomas Paine, the French revolutionaries, and the rights of man. Attempts to impose Western models and ideals on the Chinese political class are therefore not just futile, they are are culturally insulting.

I’m not seriously arguing against western libertarianism, but some might think, looking at the country’s relative lack of crime, that the Chinese system has much to commend it. The most important thing to understand about modern China, one eminent expert once told me, is that all actions of policy, justice and administration are wholly focused on just one goal – maintaining the Communist Party elite in power.

This gives the system a strange kind of democratic accountability. As long as the CP keeps delivering, it will continue to command popular support and is therefore safe. Officials know that the moment they fail, their end will by nasty, brutish and short. For the moment, there is little if any appetite in China for Tiananmen Square type protest. The Chinese are too busy trying to get rich to worry about human rights.

There are plenty of things Mr Cameron could usefully complain of while in China that are harmful to Western interests – currency manipulation, trade protections and theft of intellectual property rights being just three of them. But there is absolutely no point in lecturing the Chinese on human rights.