Speaking Up About China

Editor's Note: For 37 years, Peacework was published by, but did not necessarily represent the views of, the American Friends Service Committee. Peacework's final printed issue (September 2009) focused on human rights violations and nonviolent activism in China. This issue was never posted to Peacework's previous AFSC-sponsored website. Since the print magazine was being closed down as part of budget cuts resulting from the financial meltdown, AFSC decided to spin Peacework off into a fully independent blogging platform, one not sponsored by AFSC. It was agreed that the contents of Peacework's archives, including the final issue, could be posted online by the newly independent Peacework. We are working to create that blog platform, and the following article is one of those from that last issue

    When Peacework reports on any country, we seek out the perspectives of the dissidents, the conscientious objectors, the social movements striving to transform the society under examination. All governments and widespread economic systems, including that of the United States, rely on abusive power and institutionalized violence to maintain privilege.

To evaluate and report on a country, we apply an ethical standard of applied nonviolence, rather than a pragmatic standard of short-term political possibility. In these pages, we are less likely to ask how far a government has come, than how nonviolent advocates today are pushing to move the society in a more peaceful, ecological, free, and socially just direction. We endeavor to put these struggles into a context that helps all of us understand these efforts better.

This approach was challenged last year in the run-up to the Olympics in Beijing. We had hoped to use that period of world attention on China to bring our readers a special issue of Peacework — seeking, as always, to promote peacemaking efforts by all actors and by the world community. Our issue would have highlighted the intensifying repression and violence being perpetrated by the Chinese government before the Olympics, but would also take a firm stand against racist or “demonized” representations of Chinese leaders. We would have focused not only on the suppression of independent labor unions in China but also on the complicity of US corporations in denying the rights of workers in both countries. While bringing readers’ attention to the danger of increasing militarism in China (including its role in providing military equipment to the Sudanese government), this issue of Peacework would also have pointed to the importance of stopping the number one exporter of arms in the world — the United States. We were excited to bring you the voices of Chinese dissidents and activists, some of them writing from imprisonment or exile, speaking up for the rights of Tibetans, women, bloggers, workers, prisoners, environmental campaigners, and others.

Not surprisingly, the balance we hoped to achieve left many still feeling uneasy. Colleagues in China asked us to hold the issue for the moment (in the climate of heightened pre-Olympics scrutiny, the safety of AFSC staff in China was potentially at risk) and to engage in a longer-term discussion about how Peacework should cover China in the future and how, more generally, to address the perennial tensions between human rights advocacy and humanitarian assistance.

China’s Government: Reformist Autocracy?

When a society has faced centuries of racist European-US colonialism and neo-colonialism, and made great strides away from endemic starvation and totalitarianism in recent decades, but its militaristic government continues routinely to imprison nonviolent critics, how ought we to describe it in the pages of Peacework?

Is the Chinese government since Mao’s death in 1976 a reforming force that has liberated literally hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants from centuries of hunger and curtailed its totalitarian control over every aspect of society? Or is it a corrupt, autocratic, one-party state that executes more of its citizens than any other country in the world*; imprisons its citizens at a rate that is most likely the second highest in the world**; bans independent trade unions, alternative political parties, and the free exercise of religion; and censors all media in an attempt to maintain control? The complication when describing China today is not that the truth lies somewhere in between the preceding two statements, it’s that each statement is both accurate and incomplete on its own.

Some observers compare the China of today with the China of Mao, who presided over the mass killings of 40-50 million Chinese***, and see, in comparison, today’s “Chinese Miracle.” Thirty years ago, the people of China could not travel outside their home towns without official permission, and virtually any public activity not organized through the work unit or some other official organization was banned. Since then, non-governmental organizations have proliferated, and the economic growth rate has been astounding. Average annual income for city-dwellers has increased by 3000% over the course of the last thirty years, and the average annual income for peasants has increased almost as quickly.****

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which publishes [Editor's note: "publishes" should now read "published"] Peacework, has for decades provided humanitarian assistance in China, and has witnessed these transformations. The recent focus of AFSC’s work in China has been on informing migrant workers of their rights, trying to encourage a peaceful dialogue between the US and Chinese governments, opposing belligerent moves by the US government, and, more recently, promoting conflict resolution approaches to resolving social issues. Many people both within and outside of AFSC believe that working within the Chinese system offers the best hope for the Chinese government’s support of humanitarian work by NGOs and for continuing progress on human rights and civil liberties.

In contrast, the thousands of writers, Chinese government officials, and dissidents in China who signed a statement called Charter 08 (including Liu Xiaobao, one of its primary authors, who has been detained since shortly after its release), argue that it is Chinese social activism that will best move China in nonviolent directions. These dissidents, and even Chinese civil society groups that attempt to work within the system, such as Gongmeng (The Open Constitution Initiative, please see the caption on page 6 of this issue for more information), appeal to both their own countryfolk and transnational allies to help create space for Chinese civil society, or at least to help obtain the release of imprisoned dissidents. The Dui Hua Foundation, for example, has helped obtain release or improvement in prison conditions for over 400 prisoners. According to National Public Radio, the labor leader Han Dongfang says he would have died in prison of tuberculosis if it hadn’t been for the international campaign for his release by Dui Hua and others.

When is the Right Time to Speak Out?

Some within AFSC argue that doing humanitarian work without speaking up about human rights, while at the same time encouraging dialogue with Party officials about less controversial issues, helps build bridges and keeps the door for future conversations open. They have a point.

The Red Cross has a policy of never speaking out about human rights issues, in an attempt to maximize its humanitarian access. On the other hand, Doctors Without Borders has stressed the opposite approach, splitting with the Red Cross in order to expose atrocities in Biafra and vowing that it will never stop speaking out about the causes of the wounds it is seeking to help bandage. This did result in Doctors Without Borders temporarily being thrown out of Ethiopia in 1985. Doctors Without Borders works in China, primarily on HIV-related issues, and continues to speak out, candidly both praising and critiquing China’s HIV policies.

Others argue that it is not humanitarian initiatives that trump the issue of human rights in the short term, but the importance of preventing a potentially cataclysmic war between China and the US. AFSC has exchanged visits with official delegations of Chinese intellectuals affiliated with the Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament in order to help foster a dialogue between the people of the two countries. The dialogues focused on how we can prevent dehumanization and encourage diplomatic alternatives to a military rivalry and military escalation. When such dialogues are at an early, tentative stage, some fear that raising prickly issues such as human rights would short-circuit this process.

But then, when is the right time to speak up about human rights? How can we have a true dialogue with government spokespeople if we don’t discuss honestly with each other our fundamental values? Certainly, our first responsibility is to speak truth to power at home, working to challenge and change injustices in our own society. But just as “nonviolence is not first for export,” neither can our nonviolent commitments stop at the water’s edge. At Peacework, we believe an important way to challenge dehumanizing and racist portrayals of the Chinese people is to highlight the inspiring and creative acts of conscience undertaken by China’s nonviolent dissidents.

When US peacemakers approach these topics in formal dialogues with “official” Chinese representatives, it is important to make clear that we criticize the human rights violations committed by all governments, especially our own; that we want to keep dialogue open; and that it would be unfortunate if honest representations resulted in a governmental decision to close down these openings.

An even higher priority, though, for advocates of nonviolence who are not part of formal diplomatic efforts, is to foster contacts, dialogue, and solidarity with activists who are taking great risks to work for nonviolent social change. Shouldn’t we prioritize dialogue with these activists of conscience over seminars with government leaders and official spokespeople?

Whichever approach we take, we in the US need to speak out for nonviolent social change in China because the nonviolent struggles of Chinese activists for democratic control over their economy and government parallel our own. We have much to learn from the brave practitioners of nonviolent resistance in China. We are all part of an increasingly globalized world. Borders drawn by governments do not stop the flow of corporate exploitation, cannot contain our moral concerns, should not constrain our commitment to nonviolence, and must not prevent us from acting in solidarity with nonviolent activists around the world.  

* The scale of the North Korean government’s executions, and the high percentage of prisoners who perish due to starvation and disease in camps every year, almost assuredly mean North Korea is the world’s worst executioner, but the figures are not known.

**According to prison rights activist Harry Wu of the Lao Gai Research Foundation (http://laogai.org), China’s prisons hold more than 20 million people. China’s incarceration rate is twice that of the astronomical rate in the US, which has the third highest incarceration rate in the world.

***More than 20 million people were starved to death during Mao’s Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960 alone (see http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm for the estimates).

**** In 1978, according to official statistics, the per capita urban income in China was 343.4 yuan. This increased to 10493 in 2005. Rural per capita income rose from 133.6 to 3255 yuan (see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1328998).

The official GINI coefficient, a measure of economic inequality, rose in the comparable time period from 30.2 to 43.8. China’s GINI has continued to rise in the last few years. According to the UN Development Program, income inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient in China in 2008 exceeded that of the US (46.9 compared to 40.8) http://hdrstats.undp.org/indicators/147.html.