Washingtonpost.com
Don’t Let China Off The Hook
By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, January 20, 2005; Page A25
What he did was weep, apologize and express sorrow as he
unsuccessfully begged peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators to go home.
Zhao knew but did not say that he had lost the argument in the
Politburo, which was preparing to send troops with shoot-to-kill orders
into the streets of Beijing rather than allow continuing public dissent.
That display of human feeling for others was probably seen as
Zhao’s unforgivable crime by Deng Xiaoping, the country’s paramount
leader and great friend of American presidents. Deng would allow no
weakening of the images of invincibility and historical inevitability
that the Leninist regime had cultivated as its greatest weapon of
control.
The European Union should pause in its determined march
to lift the arms embargo that it imposed against China for the
Tiananmen Square killings of 1989. Europe is set to prove the wrong
guys right about the world’s willingness to put aside outrage over
human rights atrocities when business beckons.
Don’t Let China Off The Hook
By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, January 20, 2005; Page A25
The European Union should pause in its determined march
to lift the arms embargo that it imposed against China for the
Tiananmen Square killings of 1989. Europe is set to prove the wrong
guys right about the world’s willingness to put aside outrage over
human rights atrocities when business beckons.
The 25-nation confederation also risks introducing new controversy
into European-American relations just as the Bush administration mounts
an "outreach" effort toward its E.U. and NATO partners. Rather than new
competition over global strategy, Washington and Brussels need a
coordinated approach to the still unstable conflict between China and
Taiwan.
The need for more reflection was underlined by the death in Beijing
this week of Zhao Ziyang, who did more to create a post-Mao modern
China than any other individual, and the fearful reaction of China’s
current rulers to Zhao’s demise in shameful conditions.
Zhao’s economic and political reforms in the 1980s began to free the
energies that have made China the world’s manufacturing hub and a
better place than it was. And yet his comrades and successors made Zhao
live, and die, in obscurity and detention rather than face the truth
about what they had done.
Their fear is a great tribute to the former general secretary of
the Chinese Communist Party. The severe restrictions that were
immediately imposed on news and comment about Zhao’s death and on
funeral arrangements demonstrate that what Zhao did in Tiananmen Square
in 1989 still matters.
What he did was weep, apologize and express sorrow as he
unsuccessfully begged peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators to go home.
Zhao knew but did not say that he had lost the argument in the
Politburo, which was preparing to send troops with shoot-to-kill orders
into the streets of Beijing rather than allow continuing public dissent.
That display of human feeling for others was probably seen as
Zhao’s unforgivable crime by Deng Xiaoping, the country’s paramount
leader and great friend of American presidents. Deng would allow no
weakening of the images of invincibility and historical inevitability
that the Leninist regime had cultivated as its greatest weapon of
control.
Deng calculated that the regime would pay relatively little abroad
for putting Zhao under house arrest (where he remained for 15 years),
killing thousands of peaceful demonstrators throughout China and
brazenly telling the world that the slaughter was necessary to protect
the country’s economic progress. The West will quickly forget, he told
the Politburo.
Europe challenged his cynicism by imposing an arms embargo and
severely criticizing Beijing. Back then it was the United States that
lent support to Deng’s amoral argument. Brent Scowcroft, President
George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser, dashed to Beijing in
secret a few weeks after the massacres to reassure the Chinese that
relations would not be disrupted.
For Bush 41 and Scowcroft, Deng was China’s hero, not Zhao, whom
they helped marginalize with their obsequious secret diplomacy.
Oblivious to the rapid collapse of the Soviet empire that was already
in motion, they subordinated human rights to a balance-of-power
strategy and a glorification of Deng that were both obsolete. The
Clinton administration followed that pattern.
Today it is the European Union that is tempted to prove Deng right,
as Germany’s chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, and others eye lucrative
infrastructure contracts that Beijing hints will be held hostage until
Europe drops its arms embargo. (The United States maintains a separate
embargo, which, like the European ban, springs leaks.)
A unilateral E.U. lifting would probably provoke sharp
congressional reaction, U.S. officials warned Javier Solana, the
union’s foreign minister, this month. This could complicate pending
U.S. legislation that would loosen technology transfers to Britain and
other allies.
Solana indicated that the ban would be lifted before June and said
that Washington should be able to live with that. European arms
manufacturers need new outlets, and restrictions on their ability to
compete in the U.S. market make China a logical and necessary
alternative, other European diplomats say.
There is room for a transatlantic understanding that would ease
U.S. restrictions on European defense firms operating in the United
States, facilitate technology transfers and establish coordinated
economic steps to respond if China reduces tensions with Taiwan and
moves to democratic rule.
But that accord should not be struck at the price of excluding
human rights considerations from dealing with China. That would betray
the humanistic legacy of Zhao, which may grow faint in the West but
which lives on vividly in China. The anxious silence of the Politburo
is proof enough of that.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 