Democracy: US finds China a tough nut to crack

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Sixteen years after China's bloody Tiananmen massacre, the United States faces an uphill task pushing for democratic reforms in the world's most populous nation.

Washington once believed democracy would come hand-in-hand with economic progress in China but the human rights record of the communist-ruled country, according to annual State Department reports, had deteriorated since the June 4, 1989 crackdown.

On that day, the communist Chinese military gunned down hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed students and other protestors campaigning for democracy in central Beijing, culminating six weeks of demonstrations.

The gripping runup to the pre-dawn massacre was among the first major world news events watched live by Americans over cable television.

"The 16th Tiananmen anniversary is a grim reminder to the US administration that China is not going to get democratic by itself and has a totalitarian dictatorship with a rapidly expanding and rapidly modernizing military force," said John Tkacik, a China specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Until recently, he said, there was a sense within the Bush administration and in previous administrations that China would gradually embrace democratic reforms on the back of rapid economic growth and prosperity.

"I have to say that the administration is now going through a complete reassessment of its China policy to address this issue, with some saying: 'look, it's not going to get better by itself and we have to take some proactive measures that at the very least nudge China back on the path of being a status quo power in a stable geopolitical structure,'" Tkacik said.

"The dilemma the State Department, the White House and Pentagon face is not how to deal with a Soviet Union style superpower rival but rather how to deal with a new great power rival that is more like Japan or Germany of the 1920's and 1930's," he said.

Tkacik highlighted the often stated hypotheses that democratic states tend to put national expansion at the bottom of their priorty list, giving greater emphasis to jobs growth, health care and demographic dislocations.

President George W. Bush, who has placed the pursuit of democracy at the heart of his second term strategy, sounded far less effusive about the US-China partnership than he had been in the past, at a televised news conference this week.

He is reportedly disappointed China has not used its clout to reign in North Korea in its nuclear standoff with the United States.

"I believe we have an obligation to remind the Chinese that any hopeful society is one in which there's more than just economic freedom, that there's religious freedom and freedom of the press," Bush said, describing the bilateral relationship as "complex."

"And so I'll continue doing that so long as I'm the president, and at the same time help deal with this very complex relationship."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among the hawks in the Bush administration, warned of "tension" if China did not match economic progress with democratic reforms, noting especially its large spending on weapons.

Many had hoped that Beijing's new leadership under President Hu Jintao would "recognize that the greatest challenge to continued development comes from inflexibility, secretiveness, and a lack of democratic oversight," said a US Congress panel monitoring human rights in China.

"This type of change is possible in China, but many developments over the past year have given cause for concern," said the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Richard Baum, a political science professor with University of California, Los Angeles, said some US calls for greater political freedom in China stemmed from a fear of the Asian giant's rising influence under communist rule.

The university's center for Chinese studies, which Baum heads, organized this week a talk by Chinese labor activist, Han Dongfang, who had led workers in the Tiananmen demonstrations.

Based in Hong Kong, Han continues to promote workers rights in China, and is in contact via phone and e-mail with workers throughout the mainland.

Scores of Tiananmen dissidents have fled to the United States, using it as a launching pad for their Internet-based pro-democracy campaigns aimed at China.

One of them, Yang Jianli, a research fellow at Harvard University, was arrested when he entered China using a friend's passport since his had been denied of renewal by Beijing.

"The Chinese leadership fear the instability that they believe would come where they would have to give people a greater say in their own lives," said Jared Genser, the lawyer for Yang, who is languishing in prison on charges of espionage and illegal entry since his April 26, 2002 arrest.

"I think they need to have more faith in their own people."

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Source: "AFP".