Human Rights in China and Amnesty International

by Bill Willmott

Amnesty International has been fearless and effective in bringing world attention to individual victims of human rights abuse in many countries, a form of campaign for which it was founded and which involved thousands of people in personal action. More recently, it has moved into generic campaigns against governments it defines as delinquent. This year it has taken advantage of the global focus on China to launch a campaign around the Olympic Games in August, which involves public demonstrations and pressure on Olympic athletes to make statements about the lack of human rights in China.

These campaigns don't fit well with Amnesty's traditional role and pattern of activity. I find them rather distasteful and destructive of the positive spirit of peace and friendship the Olympics are intended to promote. Furthermore, they are uninformed about the situation in China today.

When we are judging human rights in China, I think it's important for us to keep in mind four points that Amnesty appears to ignore.

1. We in the West tend to think of human rights solely in political terms: human liberty, suffrage, and the rule of law. In particular, the West focuses on the right to dissent. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, New Zealand was among the few nations that insisted that social and economic rights should also be included: the right to health, education, livelihood, a decent standard of living, and equality for women. As a poor country, China gives these social and economic rights priority, and in these rights, China has made dramatic progress and continues to do so. For example, the first law passed by the People's Republic of China in 1950 was a marriage law outlawing forced marriage and giving women equal rights in property, divorce, and custody. Last year, an amended law provided wives increased protection from abusive or adulterous husbands. Just as important, poverty has been drastically reduced in China, especially in the last twenty years. Comparisons with other developing countries such as India indicate that the Chinese government has greatly advanced social and economic rights despite being a very poor country by world standards.

2. While the right to dissent in China is very weak by Western liberal democratic standards, it is better today than it has ever been throughout Chinese history. Even during the chaotic period of the Republic of China (1911-49), when a few urban intellectuals enjoyed freedom of speech, the vast majority of Chinese were illiterate, poor peasants with no rights whatsoever. China today is not like Uganda, Zimbabwe, or Burma, where human rights that previously were protected have been destroyed. In other words, the situation in China is not deteriorating but is actually improving year by year. For example, the National People's Congress (China's parliament) recently passed not only the marriage law but also a labour law that provides for collective bargaining on wages and working conditions. Furthermore, there is a growing legal culture and institutions to enforce these laws as more and more Chinese go to court to protect their rights. If we wish to comment on human rights in China, I think it behoves us to recognise the progress that is being made as well as the shortcomings that still exist.

3. China's industrial revolution has taken place in the last thirty years, before which China was an agrarian society much like 18th-century Europe. At a historically comparable time in England--say, 1840--there was no universal suffrage (only males who owned property could vote), women had no civil rights whatsoever, people were hanged for stealing a sheep and transported for far less, and slavery was just coming to an end. So when we chastise China for its human rights record, we are comparing it with a Western ideal that is the result of a centuries-long history of struggle. And we need to recognise that even in the West, there are times and places where these ideals are not realised. The current erosion of civil rights in America by the Patriot Act and intelligence agencies and comparable anti-rights moves in Australia and Britain are cases in point. Guantanamo and Iraq are Western horrors.

4. For 100 years (1840-1940), some of the countries now criticising China were exploiting her with no concern whatsoever for the miserable consequences of their actions, let alone for the human rights of the Chinese people. In the 19th century, Britain forced opium on China against the wishes of the Chinese government, and in the 20th century women and children working in factories in British Shanghai suffered far worse conditions than in factories today. Chinese are very aware of their history, and some of them feel the condemnation by Western countries, especially Britain and the USA, is grossly hypocritical in not acknowledging that their own record in China was dismal. And that exploitation continues today, evident in the strong lobbying against the new labour law by such major transnational companies as Wallmart, Phillips and the Shanghai American Chamber of Commerce.

For these reasons, I hope that we will be able to communicate our human rights concerns to the Chinese in ways that do not sound arrogant or uninformed. In my opinion, working through friendship rather than confrontation is a far more effective way to get our criticisms across. The very presence of New Zealand athletes in Beijing makes a fine statement. Let them not spoil it with anti-Olympic demonstrations or insulting slogans.

Emeritus Professor Bill Willmott CNZM was national president of the New Zealand China Friendship Society for ten years and was honoured by the Queen in 2002 "for services to New Zealand -China relations."