Tag: Uyghurs

Human Rights, Hypocrisy, and the Beijing Olympics

The entire world is once again being treated to the wondrous spectacle of human potential and achievement at the 2022 Winter Olympic games in Beijing, China.

At the same time, American viewers are being mistreated by an accompanying display of jingoism, hypocrisy, and bias in the coverage of the games by its mainstream media (MSM).

They continually remind audiences that China is an “authoritarian regime” that disrespects human rights up to and including genocidal policies against Uyghur Muslims in China’s northwest. In taking that position, the media typically omit any critical reflection on U.S. human rights shortcomings that in many cases surpass any of those the media attributes to China.

In what follows, let me briefly address that duplicity. I’ll begin by summarizing China’s approach to human rights contrasted with that of the United States. Secondly, I’ll particularize those distinctions by comparing China’s approach to its “Muslim problem” with the way the U.S. deals with its own corresponding dilemma. I’ll finish by drawing some hopefully salutary conclusions.

Human Rights

To begin with, the media’s allusions to “human rights” violations by communists implicitly assume that respect for human rights is an all or nothing matter. In their constant critique of China’s system, the MSM even imply that (in contrast to China) human rights are universally recognized and respected within the national contexts the media spokespersons represent.

Nothing however could be further from the truth.

In fact, few (if any) nations on earth (socialist, capitalist, or any aspiring to communism) respect all human rights as elaborated in the U.N. Declaration. Instead, socialist systems like China’s respect some human rights on the U.N. list, while disrespecting others. The same holds true for the United States. It too respects some human rights, while disrespecting others, even to the extent of denying their validity. (For instance, the U.S. has refused to sign off on a whole host of treaties implementing human rights protocols accepted by most other countries in the world.)

The United States’ refusal is based on the fact that its system of political economy prioritizes human rights differently from that of countries like China.

More specifically, China, like other countries trying to implement socialism, prioritizes material rights to life, food, shelter, clothing, health care, education, dignified work, childcare, and comfortable retirement. All of those are recognized as rights by the U.N. Declaration.

Respect for the right to life is reflected in China’s unprecedented achievement of virtually eliminating extreme poverty within its borders. Since 1981, China has lifted nearly 1 billion people out of such conditions. At the end of last year, President Xi announced that the final cohort of 100 million mostly rural poor had been raised above extreme poverty levels. Such achievement in such a brief time represents a unique historical achievement in the field of human rights.

Additionally, the right to health is a human right enshrined in the UN declaration of human rights. In response, China’s universal health care system leads the world in minimizing its number of deaths due to COVID-19.

At the same time, the United States (alone in the developed world) has no universal health care system. With only 25% of China’s population, the U.S. leads the world in COVID deaths. Of course the U.S. record could be painted as an extreme violation of the UN’s recognition of health care as a human right.  

That violation goes unnoticed in the United States, because with its economy based on neoliberal “free enterprise,” its list of prioritized human rights does not begin with the right to life, health, food, shelter, clothing, and dignified work. Instead, it starts with the right to private property and to have contracts respected along with freedom of speech, press, assembly, voting and religion.

That is, for the United States, the right to private property is paramount. If that right is threatened, all others (including voting and religion) will be suspended — as shown by our government’s support of authoritarian regimes throughout the world.

Capitalist theoreticians regard rights such as to food, shelter, and clothing as “aspirational” and neither genuine nor enforceable. Hence, our country has refused to sign off on the human rights protocols mentioned earlier.

By way of contrast, under socialism, the rights prioritized by U.S. capitalists are far down their list. In fact, rights such as private property and religious expression (in the light of European weaponization of religion in the service of colonialism) are often seen as inimical to the rights that socialism seeks to guarantee.

Policies towards Muslims

This brings us to the subject of human rights violations. They represent a point of convergence between China’s system and our own.  

Sadly, both systems are comparatively unrestrained in their oppressive policies supporting the human rights they prioritize. This leads both to transgress the UN Declaration’s prohibition of torture and unfair detainment as well as the right to a free trial and to democracy.

Both forms of transgression (theirs and ours) are illustrated in the way the two systems deal with shared problems around Muslim dissidents, rebels, and terrorism.

China deals with those problems especially in its northwestern Xinjiang province by confining Uyghur Muslims to what they describe asl “re-education centers.” There, according to U.S. media, Muslims are said to be interned in desperate conditions. They’re forced to take propagandistic classes about the error of their ways. They’re also allegedly mistreated in manners, by the way, that would be familiar to blacks and Hispanics interned in the U.S. prison system and in the concentration camps at our southern border.

Apart from the general fact that the U.S. imprisons a greater percentage of its population than China, and that it maintains those just-mentioned concentration camps for refugees and asylum seekers, Americans deal with their Muslim problems by imprisoning them in detention centers such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and in “black sites” throughout the world. In extraterritorial locations like those, our government has unilaterally decided that human rights (even such as habeas corpus) enshrined in the western tradition since the Magna Carta, simply do not apply.

But detention centers are not the central element of U.S. strategies for dealing with Muslim dissidents and rebels. Killing them is. Since 9/11 2001, the U.S. has bombed and droned in many Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ethiopia. In Iraq alone, by some estimates, “America” has caused more than one million Muslim deaths. In contrast, Chinese apologists are quick to point out that the last time China bombed any foreign country was 40 years ago.

Conclusion

Thankfully, the 2021 Olympics in Beijing are providing us with a window onto China, its socio-economic system, culture, and values particularly as they impact human rights. Great effort however is required to see all that through the haze of the MSM’s anti-Chinese bias.

Those who make that effort can draw some perhaps salutary conclusions that include the following:  

  • (As if we needed reminding) the western MSM is biased and propagandistic.
  • It is particularly unbalanced in its approach to questions of human rights in China.
  • No nation observes all human rights.
  • Arguably, as a country emerging from Third World status, China’s prioritization of poverty elimination, education, housing, and health care makes more sense than adopting the preferences of the United States and Europe.
  • More China’s prioritization would be welcome even in the United States which (alone among industrialized nations) refuses to recognize universal health care as a human right. (In other words, it violates that right.)
  • China’s health care precautions are helping Americans see the life-saving effects and other benefits of a centralized and coordinated universal health care system.
  • In the process, thoughtful Americans might be moved to reconsider the meaning of the phrase “pro-life.” Discounting any connections with abortion, “pro-life” in China entails adoption of aggressive measures to eliminate poverty and to keep the number of deaths due to COVID as close to zero as possible.
  • Its achievements in doing so are remarkable to say the least. 
  • Somehow re-education of Muslim dissidents seems preferable to killing them.
  • The same might be said for the display of China’s human rights priorities. That is, the right to food, shelter, clothing, health care, and dignified retirement might be more important than those to private property and respect for contracts.

Postscript

For years I worked for a Latin American studies program in Costa Rica. It served evangelical students from the U.S. doing their term abroad in San Jose. Each semester we took them to Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Cuba.

Before going to Cuba, the topic of “human rights always came up.” I’d ask the students to define the term. Eventually, they’d get to an understanding that a human right is what’s due a person simply in virtue of being human.

I’d them ask them to share what they considered the most important human right. Many said “the right to life” – and they weren’t talking about abortion.  

I’d then ask about rights to what’s necessary to sustain human life. They’d agree that the right to life implies those to food, potable water, shelter, education, and decent clothing.

Never once did my students (conservative, liberal, or libertarian) say that the most important human right was that of owning property or of having contracts honored.

Hmm.

Random Notes from a Bunker against Fascism

  • Black Lives Matter may represent the largest social movement in American history. So, it has a lot of powerful very scared.
  • Over the Memorial Day weekend, I had a couple of discouraging encounters with “liberal” opponents of Black Lives Matter. They had vague issues with the organization’s “funding,” “corruption,” “hypocrisy,” and “policy” such as defunding the police.  
  • In one case, circumstances forced me to listen to a podcast of the type just mentioned. It was extremely critical of BLM – all in the name of independent thinking, balance, fairness, neutrality, and self-criticism. However, the liberals in question had no alternative to BLM. And so, in effect, they had joined forces with the right wing and status quo which gladly embrace such “fair-minded” liberals to keep blacks and browns in their place.
  • The syndrome is familiar. Any successful progressive organization or leader will be subject to such denigrations, personal attacks, “revelations,” and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They did it to King; they did it to Gandhi; they did it to Jesus. It’s all an ancient right-wing strategy defending the putrid way things are.
  • Progressives have got to decide which side we’re on. Are we on the side of the victims of white supremacy or not? (And yes, contrary to the official story, there are victims in this world — victims of “our” policy!)
  • The truth is that if we’re not with BLM, we are against it. Why give and comfort to the fascists and make the perfect the enemy of the good?
  • What on earth are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema thinking by resisting the voting reforms of HR1 and the Pro Act? They’re allowing Republicans to fix all future elections. Face it: Manchin and Sinema are really Republicans. Contrary to post-election happy talk, the Democrats really don’t have control of the Senate. Manchin and Sinema should be primaried.
  • What we studied as U.S. history in school was in reality Confederate history – no true account of slavery, labor movements, women’s struggle for the vote, or indigenous slaughter.
  • And those Confederate statues? Imagine what we’d think if Germany celebrated Nazism like that — statues of Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Eichmann. . . You won’t find monuments like those in Germany, but you will find their equivalents all over this great country of ours.
  • And what’s with all this anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda? Everything nefarious that happens especially in the fields of “cyber-attacks,” Covid-19, and election improprieties is “potentially” linked to China or Russia (and “reportedly” to their governments). Where’s the evidence? Don’t be fooled. It’s all CIA B.S.
  • Never forget what CIA head, Mike Pompeo, said about the CIA. He admitted that they lie, cheat, and steal all they time. The CIA offers its spooks entire courses on the topics. The CIA and its agents are not our friends. Never were.
  • Neither is the U.S. military. We shouldn’t be proud of it. Never forget what MLK said about our country. “It’s the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” Should we be proud that our children are part of such a gang? Yes, it’s a huge gang.
  • At last count, “we’re” now fighting seven wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Niger, Yemen, Somalia – and who knows where else?). Do any of us care? The people under our bombing attacks do.
  • Tell me: is it better to deal with terrorism by killing alleged terrorists in those countries just mentioned (along with their children) or with re-education camps like the ones our “leaders” are so outraged about in Northwest China? (Actually, we know nothing about those camps.) Think about that.
  • “We” maintain 800 military bases throughout the world. Do you know how many extra-territorial bases China has? One! One!!
  • We drop bombs on Muslims every day. China hasn’t dropped a bomb on another country in more than 40 years.
  • Why was apartheid in South Africa despicable, but not in Israel-Palestine?
  • The U.S. of A is exactly in the position that Hitler aspired to gain in the 1930s. We control the world by military might.
  • And long before Hitler, we had already sponsored our own Holocaust (slaughtering more than 100 million indigenous here). It started centuries before Hitler’s atrocious but small by comparison carnage.
  • Sad to say: it seems the world would be better off in so many ways without the U.S.of A.
  • Does the evidence show that the Sandinistas may well have been right in identifying us Yankees as the “enemy of mankind?”

Mad as Hell!

Don’t get too excited about Joe Biden and his pretense at boldness in the model of FDR.

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FDR? Don’t make me laugh. Biden doesn’t even measure up to Eisenhower’s liberalism!

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The man and his party have already surrendered to the fascist Republicans who are busy passing new Jim Crow laws to insure their continued minority rule. The Democrats could prevent that by passing the “For the People” Act (HR1). But that would insure continued Democratic rule. It would also require suspension of the Senate filibuster. Uncle Joe and the Dems tremble at the very thought.

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Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats just won’t play hard ball. Remember how the fascists refused to even consider Obama’s SCOTUS appointment, Merrick Garland? With the presidential election 11 months off, they said they wanted “the American People” to have a voice in the matter. Then the fascists turned around and rushed through the appointment of a right-wing fanatic Amy Coney Barrett – less than two weeks before the 2020 election!

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That and the appointments of sexual predators, Thomas and Kavanaugh, have rendered the SCOTUS absolutely corrupt. None of us should recognize the validity of its decisions.  

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Yes, Trump is gone for the moment. But enjoy the respite while you can. He’ll soon be back in one form or another – very likely worse than in his last incarnation. And the reason he’ll be back is because the Democrats are gutless wonders who don’t represent any of us. They represent only their rich donors.

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Think about it: “The American People” overwhelmingly support Medicare for all, $15 an hour minimum wage, free college, tuition debt forgiveness, gun control, and higher corporate taxes. But can we expect “our” elected officials to follow suit? Of course not! They don’t care what we want — only what their donors demand.

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Face it: we’re living in a failed state. Gridlock remains the order of the day. Nothing substantial is done for any of us ordinary people.

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Compare “our” government’s gridlock with China’s efficiency – which enjoys (according to U.S polls) the approval of 90% of its population. That sounds like democracy to me.

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Do you know how China solved its drunk driving problem? It decreed that a first offense would result in 2 weeks in jail. A second conviction leads to the permanent confiscation of one’s driver’s license! Problem solved.

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Last week, there was an extremely rare school shooting in Russia. Immediately, President Putin introduced new restrictions on gun ownership. Our country has mass shootings every week. How do our legislators respond? “Thoughts and prayers.”

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Biden’s foreign policy is virtually the same as Trump’s. Old Joe’s man, Tony Blinken says he’s worried about China, the Uyghurs, and the world’s “rules-based order.” But he won’t condemn Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, will he? He won’t even cut off funding of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince or call him the “killer” he is. Oh yes, “Putin’s a killer,” but not the man who had a Washington Post journalist murdered and dismembered.

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What rules-based order?

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And what about Cuba? And the Iran deal and old Joe’s continuance of the Donald’s crippling sanctions there? And Venezuela?

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And the Pro Act? There’ll be no protection of workers under the Biden Administration. Why? See my note above on filibuster.

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I hate to break the news, but it’s all smoke, mirrors, posturing and hypocrisy.

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We’re living in a failed state. Yes, Trump will be back.

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God help us!

A Debate on China: Competitor, Adversary or Enemy?

As noted frequently in these pages, China has gradually become the most prominent bete noire of American empire. As such it has displaced Russia which had successfully reprised that role for at least the previous four years.

China’s new status has raised the question for many: Is it truly an adversary of the U.S. — or even an enemy? Or is China simply America’s latest very challenging competitor?

Recently, Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist, Glen Greenwald attempted to answer those questions. He moderated a highly informative 90-minute debate on China between Matt Stoller and Kishore Madhubani.

Stoller presented a bill of particulars against China. He is a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and the author of Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.

Madhubani, on the other hand, described China in more sanguine terms. Madhubani is a Singaporean academic and former President of UN Security Council (2001-2004). He also served as Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. (1984-’89, 1998-2004). He’s the author of Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy.

What follows is a quick-and-easy outline of the arguments presented first by Stoller and secondly by Madhubani.  I conclude briefly with my own perspective that takes issue with both debaters. Each of them along with Glen Greenwald, erroneously accept without question the categorization of China as a violator of human rights. In reality, I argue, China is more a human rights champion than the United States itself.

I

Matt Stoller: China is Not Merely A Competitor 

A.    Though not exactly an enemy or adversary, China is a threatening bad actor. 
B.    Witness China’s Growing Economic Power Globally:
         1.     In a very short time has transitioned from a severely   underdeveloped country to the 2nd most powerful economy in the world.
         2.     It’s now the #1 trading partner of more than 100 countries.
         3.     It is a firm ally of the world’s economic elite from Wall Street to Brussels.
         4.     Its low wages and lack of worker protection have led U.S. and other international corporations to relocate American jobs to China. 
 
C.     Witness China’s Repression:
         1.     It does not share West’s values of free speech, free press,    freedom of religion, and democratic voting.
         2.     Since the 1980s China has been “hiding its power and biding its time,” but is now openly demonstrating its intention to export its oppression as shown in China’s:
            a)     Increased military spending
            b)     Building of a new centrally controlled internet architecture
            c)     Export of sophisticated surveillance systems
            d)     Undermining of international institutions such as the WHO
            e)     Retribution against those who even mention its oppression of Muslim minorities or its coverup of the Coronavirus outbreak 
            f)     Treatment of Uyghurs in concentration camps
            g)     Police violence vs. those seeking greater freedom in Hong Kong
            h)     Long-standing military threats against Taiwan
            i)     Building of artificial islands in the South China Sea beyond internationally recognized maritime borders
            j)     Installation of military weapons there
            k)     Bullying of Philippine fishing vessels
            l)     Naval forays into the Indian Ocean ostensibly to combat piracy, but really to expand its capacity for military operations
            m)     Buying up of newspapers serving the Chinese diaspora in order to eventually coerce and control its members too
 
D.    Witness the statements of Xi Jinping who has stated that:
        1.     Socialism with Chinese characteristics is “blazing a new trail” for other countries seeking to modernize, while preserving their own sovereignty.
        2.     China is seeking a future where it will “win the initiative and have the dominant position.”
 
E.     What to Do about the China Threat?
        1.     Re-appropriate the values we say we honor, viz. freedom of press, religion, speech, assembly
        2.     Break up the alliance between China and the international economic elite
        3.     Punish U.S. companies that offshore jobs
        4.     Diversify U.S. supply chains
        5.     Bring production back to the U.S. and to democratic countries
        6.      Work with China on collective problems such as climate change
        7.     Show by these reforms that our system is better than the Chinese alternative

II

Kishore Madhubani: China Is Neither Hostile nor A Bad Actor

A.    In General
      1.     Competitors are not enemies.
      2.     One should not insult competitors or even adversaries.
      3.     There is no reason to regard China as a hostile country or as a   threat to the United States.
      4.     China has 0% chance of conquering the United States which has 6000 nuclear weapons, while China has 300. The U.S. spends five times more on its military than China does.
      5.     The U.S. has 300 military bases throughout the world (some very close to China’s borders); China has no foreign bases and (unlike America) fights no wars outside its boundaries.
      6.      The post-WWII world order characterized by U.S. hegemony was highly artificial given the location and comparative size of the U.S. population.
      7.     China and India with their huge populations and ancient cultures are now assuming their normal, rightful places in the world.
      8.     Before WWII, both China and India had been prevented from adopting those positions chiefly by colonialism.
      9.      The Chinese government enjoys the support of the majority of its people. (Without that approval it would be impossible to control 1.4 billion people.)
      10.      In fact, 130 million Chinese leave China each year and then return home. There are no Chinese refugees.
 
B.    Chinese Ambitions:
      1.     Unlike the USSR under Khrushchev, China never boasts that its system will replace that of the U.S. or other countries.
      2.     Its leaders believe their system is good for China without claiming its aptitude for other contexts.
      3.     They just want China to be strong with its own population prospering in an external environment conducive to that end.
 
C.     What about Repression in Hong Kong?
      1.     It’s true that Chinese citizens do not have the same rights to free speech as Americans.
      2.     But they have more such freedom than previously.
      3.     Remember, that during 150 years of British colonialism, there was no democracy or freedom of speech in Hong Kong.
      4.     Chinese authorities are especially sensitive about Hong Kong because it’s a symbol of British oppression and of its having forced China to accept opium commerce centered there in 1842.
 
D.    What about Oppression of the Uyghurs?
      1.     Remember that the Muslim world is going through a major transformation – struggling to modernize and reinterpret relations between religion and politics.
      2.     Remember too that when the western countries came together in the UN to condemn the treatment of Muslims in China, not a single Muslim country supported the resolution, while a large number of those countries supported China.
      3.     Instead, Muslim countries agreed that the U.S. should:
          a)     Stop bombing Islamic countries (President Obama dropped 26,000 bombs on seven Muslim countries in one year).
          b)     Try to help the Chinese deradicalize and modernize the Uyghurs in China.
 
E.     What about Chinese threats to American labor?
      1.It’s true that China’s low wages, lack of labor protections, and absence of labor rights is attractive to American producers.
      2.However, it is a mistake to blame China for the loss of jobs.
      3.After all, China did not force U.S. manufacturers to move.
      4.China joined the WTO at the invitation of the United States.
      5.We must also remember that the relatively recent and sudden introduction of 200 million new workers into the system of globalized capitalism is only the latest expression of the “creative destruction” endemic to and celebrated by that system.
      6.Sweden and Germany saw the creative destruction coming. To prepare for it, they invested heavily in the retraining of their workforces to equip them for participation in the new economy. The U.S. did not.
 
F.     What the U.S. should do:
      1.Distinguish between defending America’s primacy and defending the American people; the two are quite different.
      2.Stop fighting wars in the Middle East and focus on the welfare of its own people.
      3.Remember that it is no paragon of respect for human rights. For instance, it is the 1st modern country to reintroduce torture.
      4.Keep in mind the figure “Six billion” – i.e. of the number of people who live outside both the United States & China. They’re much more sophisticated, well-informed, and nuanced in their understandings than previously. They don’t buy the American good guys/bad guys dichotomy.

III

Evaluation

My overall response to the Greenwald interview is one of deep appreciation. It brought together two very articulate, well-prepared, and authoritative proponents of comprehensive arguments most often advanced about the nature of China’s participation in the global community.

At the same time, I found myself disappointed that both Greenwald and Madhubani accepted right-wing framing of the position that China is a violator of human rights in contrast to westerners’ valuing free speech along with freedom of religion, press, assembly and the right to vote.

Certainly, there is no question about China’s repression in the areas of speech, religion, and press. But that does not deprive it of any possibility of claiming to be a champion of human rights.

The fact is that the UN Declaration of Human Rights as well as its other official statements present the world with a long list of such entitlements ranging from the ones just mentioned to the rights to jobs, food, shelter, clothing, health care, to children’s rights. 

Another fact is that no country in the world honors all human rights. Instead, all of them (according to whether they fancy themselves “capitalist” or “socialist”) prioritize human rights.

Capitalists accord first place to having commercial and legal contracts honored. They then list freedoms of speech, religion, press and the right to vote as their other preferences. However, if trade contracts are under threat, capitalists quickly dispense with all those other rights – as is demonstrated by their support of repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Brazil and the Philippines.

As for the rights to food, shelter, and clothing (as enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights) the United States has never recognized any of them as such (having refused to sign the enacting protocols). According to all U.S. administrations such “rights” are merely “aspirations.”

Priorities in socialist countries such as China and Cuba are different. For them the rights to food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, and jobs hold primacy of place.  Freedom of press, speech, and religion, as well as voting rights are dispensable as long as those preferred rights remain under siege.

I only wish Greenwald and Madhubani had made those distinctions. It would have helped the audience understand that indeed China does not respect human rights, while the United States does.

But (even more importantly for purposes of critical thinking in this country) listeners would also have understood that China indeed respects human rights while the United States does not. 

It is therefore unseemly for westerners to beat China with the human rights club. Too bad that Greenwald and Madhubani didn’t recognize that impropriety.