[Radix] Follow up & thanks on China disaster meeting

[T.G.Cannon at greenwich.ac.uk]

Dear RADIXers
This letter is mainly for those who responded to my call for advice on  
how to deal with the presentation I gave last week on the Chinese  
earthquake. The meeting was co-hosted by Fondation Madariaga and the  
Chinese embassy to the European Union, and the Chinese ambassador was  
there along with many other officials. Two Chinese disaster specialist  
also spoke. You can see the programme and presentations at:

http://www.madariaga.org/events/events-2008/46-2008/159-chinas-ability-to-cope-with-natural-disaster

and see my Powerpoint.

Because the issues are of general interest to RADIX, I am sharing  
these thoughts, but I do especially want to thank Ben Wisner, George  
Kent, Terry Jeggle, James Lewis and John Wiener for their substantial  
messages to me. (Apologies for not responding individually to you, and  
I hope I have not left anyone out).

It really helped to have your thoughts, though I think it would open  
up a very good if we were to discuss on RADIX the issue of how we deal  
with our approach to governments that have significant authoritarian  
tendencies. That is why I am sending my response to the list: this is  
a very general issue.

While I came to the view (as a result of most of the comments from the  
above) for this meeting that I should be ‘diplomatic’ and "engage"  
with the officials in Brussels, and that the approach should be one of  
supporting reform and reformers, I still have very serious doubts  
about whether that will actually have an effect.

I realise that part of the problem with the Chinese regime is that it  
does not respond to external pressure, seeing it (in a parallel way to  
Mugabe and some South African ANC ministers) as imperialist attacks.  
So how should outsiders comment on Chinese repression?

One of my approaches at the meeting was to make it quite clear that I  
am not criticising China in isolation from critical comments that  
could be made about many other countries. I started by talking about  
Hurricane Katrina as an example of bad government, and when I spoke of  
corruption (re schools that were not constructed properly) I  
emphasised that this has to be seen in much a wider context. For this  
I mentioned the recent global financial crisis as a product of (in  
effect) corrupt behaviour in western banks, the British Aerospace  
corruption (linked to the UK government) over arms sales, and the  
Common Agricultural Policy as an example of a policy designed to deny  
development to the poor and support the already rich – institutional  
corruption if you like.

When I mentioned rights, and the essential need for civil society to  
be enabled in relation to community-based disaster preparedness, I  
emphasised that this was in order to allow citizens to HELP the  
government to ensure that the government fulfils its remit of  
protecting its own citizens. Civil society can therefore be part of  
the process by which government achieves its goals against corruption  
at lower levels, rather than a threat to government.

All this came after a rather positive account of the emergency  
response effort of the Chinese government (AND ordinary people), so  
that it was in context.

I don’t share the optimism of most of my advisors that engagement is  
the best (or only) route. While many Chinese may themselves be  
uncomfortable about repression (including that related to the  
earthquake and other disasters), what has engagement achieved over the  
past two decades? See below on the Olympics; the doctor who blew the  
whistle on SARS has regularly been placed under house arrest around  
June 4 each year in case she makes some other kind of protest.

The bereaved parents who started a law case against local governments  
that oversaw school construction have had their case dismissed. The  
human rights lawyer Huang Qi who acted for some parents to make other  
claims was imprisoned last May, and is still in prison, accused of  
betraying state secrets (a catch all and indefensible accusation). He  
is seriously ill, and has been offered release only if he gives up his  
human rights activities.

(Relating to the Olympics, the government had agreed to improve its  
reputation to allow civil society activities during the Games. It  
designated four areas in Beijing parks for people to hold  
demonstrations – for which they had to make an application. As far as  
I know, none were ever permitted. Two women in their 70s who applied  
to hold a protest about the demolition of their homes were arrested  
and held without charge. Others were harassed.)

Some of my advisors argued that I should not make links between the  
collapse of schools and corruption and repression with other recent  
issues (toxic baby-milk, Amur river chemical discharge, SARS, AIDs  
scandals
). I understand that this approach would have made it  
difficult or impossible to make a supportive engagement to “work with  
reformers” in the system who also share these doubts. BUT the issues  
are all linked by the type of power that is operating in China, and I  
cannot see how we can avoid analysing and criticising this form of  
power and how it links to disasters.

Given that part of our role (our duty) in RADIX is to make such  
analysis, how should we then relate it to action (and words) to make  
the analysis have an effect? This for me is the key missing link, and  
I am not convinced that “engagement” is an effective translation of  
our analysis into action.

So this is where we need a debate on RADIX at least, to fathom out how  
we should do this.

I am not against the idea of engagement if it can be shown that it  
works, and that it is preferable to making loud critical remarks (in  
order to achieve reduced vulnerability). But I am far from convinced.  
Engagement and support to reform and reformers is very similar to the  
position of the British (and other western)government on countries  
like China, and in my view it is in danger of becoming a cop-out. Is  
there a RADIXal version of engagement?

At the end, the Ambassador commented that he enjoyed my presentation  
very much!

best wishes
Terry

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