U.S. Support for China Would Yield Benefits

Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, “Why not?’” Bobby Kennedy proclaimed those words while out on the hustings during his 1968 bid for the presidency. The essence of that charge, delivered to a globalizing society, cannot be pigeonholed as quixotic; rather it must be allowed to renew the bedrock of America’s foreign policy, particularly its relationship with China.

This country has a profound opportunity to assist in the comprehensive development of China as a rising power, one that can only achieve prosperity in an interdependent and institutionalized system through the fostering of constructive criticism, not brash rebukes of the leadership in Beijing.

An American foreign policy toward China recognizing its socioeconomic growth will engender our government to espouse ideals without being perceived as politically expedient.

In fact, trends illustrate the Chinese language as having the feasibility to dominate Internet language, but that their 1.5 billion people may continue to be governed by authoritarians. Our response to this should be tempered by the notion that many of the sons and daughters of China’s leaders are educated in the United States and view our customs differently from current Chinese officials, who have yet to adopt any of our political institutions.

Nevertheless, State Department officials exhibited prudence as they recently scrutinized “proclamations” of a constitutionally democratizing China — which starkly contrasts their Communist Party Publicity Department’s sentencing the general manager and deputy editor of Southern Metropolis News (an independent Chinese newspaper headquartered in Beijing) to a 12-year prison term for speaking out against the government.

Hence, China’s White Paper heralding 2003 as a year when officials have safeguarded the individual rights of others to express themselves freely is being ridiculed as grotesquely inaccurate by many in the international community. However, when the United States publicly decries China’s decision to reform Hong Kong’s Basic Law without the advice of the city’s citizens, it only polarizes tensions between the two. But the question remains: how does a country of “Roman Empire status” confront estimations of a Chinese economy that will be equal to its own in 2020, if one compounds at 2 percent while the other extrapolates at a rate thrice that? Well, our country has begun to confront this revelation but has not done it in a way that is fully befitting a global guardian of democracy, freedom and equality for all. Edward Cody of The Washington Post tells us that the United States, toward the end of March, sought U.N. support for a Commission on Human Rights resolution “condemning China’s human rights record.” Conversely, the Chinese government responded in a steadfast manner, citing irritations with the Geneva resolution because of its failure to lament the progress the nation has made to uphold the civil liberties of its citizenry — thus far.

Our government is correct in underscoring China’s impregnable problems, issues which can only be reduced through cooperation and less hubristic declarations on our part. For instance, their repressive labor practices, Chinese manufacturing workers’ inability to organize independent labor unions, the ignominious rate of student suicides (12 deaths in Wuhan, a city in Central China, last year), the government’s misplaced fasciations on plastic surgery as opposed to providing adequate health care, and their suppression of some 90 million Christians (many worshipers in the city of Xiamen are prohibited from religious service); all these occurrences allow the United States to shadow this soon-to-be counterpart as not deserving a “premiering superpower” title.

However, the United States must not neglect to mention that the opening of China’s economy in the 1980s has led to a 9.1 percent growth rate, that trade is presently removing the shackles of poverty from millions, that the annual income per household is rising significantly, that life expectancy is increasing and that the literacy rate has dramatically improved as well. This points out, as Robert Samuelson wrote on the March 31 Op-Ed page of the Post, China has a long way to go especially when close to an astonishing 50 percent of China’s population “still had incomes of $2 or less a day in 2000.”

In the final analysis, if we are a government which postulates a legitimate and non-offensive goal to steadily improve these relations then we will quintessentially establish an ideal that envisions well-intended cooperation between the United States and China and ask, “Why not?”

Happy Johnson is a freshman in the College.