[Radix] Follow up & thanks on China disaster meeting
George Kent
kent at hawaii.edu
Wed Jan 28 12:33:07 PST 2009
I appreciate Terry’s January 27 email inviting further discussion on
the Chinese government’s response to events such as the Sichuan
earthquake.
I am uncomfortable with the suggestion that the question here is how
to deal with governments that have significant authoritarian
tendencies. All governments have those tendencies. I’m not convinced
that the guidelines for diplomacy differ for countries we label as
more authoritarian.
Similarly, I question the generalization that the Chinese regime does
not respond to external pressure, “seeing it (in a parallel way to
Mugabe and some South African ANC ministers) as imperialist attacks.”
Instead, I would begin with the assumption that disaster specialists
come together as technical experts, and therefore have common
interests and, to some extent, a shared culture. That could prove to
be wrong, but it is a healthy assumption to make at the outset.
Terry asks, “how should outsiders comment on Chinese repression?” I
would say that in a technical meeting, outsiders should not comment on
that. I say this partly based on my experience in going to
international human rights meetings, where it can be embarrassing to
be from the U.S. At those meetings, I don’t want to have to answer for
the government’s positions on issues not relevant to the current
meeting’s agenda.
I think it is useful to talk about bad governance (that is, bad
management) about a particular issue or episode, such as U.S. handling
of Hurricane Katrina, without extending that to generalizations about
bad government.
I particularly like Terry’s saying,
“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.”
This captures the all-important shift from viewing rights mainly in
terms of a national government’s obligations to submit to outsiders’
standards to instead seeing a system of rights as a tool through which
national governments can pursue their own goals more effectively. The
point is not to submit to outsiders’ standards for school
architecture, but to set your own, and to get ordinary people to
understand that they have the right and the means to insist that those
standards are met.
Terry says he doesn’t share the optimism that engagement is the best
route to reducing China’s repressiveness. It may not be the best, but
that doesn’t mean it is not worth doing. I think we should take every
opportunity to become engaged with Chinese counterparts on any of the
issues that interest us. What has engagement achieved of the past two
decades? I would say a lot—though certainly not everything.
Terry says, “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,” I think
that in technical meetings one should speak diplomatically. That means
not talking in ways that are likely to end discussions.
Terry summarizes as follows:
“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?”
This helps to clarify that Terry sees criticism as the alternative to
engagement. However, I would say the distinction is really not so
sharp, since criticism can be couched in more or less constructive
ways. My view is that it is a mistake to view these two as wholly
different, and an even bigger mistake to suggest that one must choose
one path or the other. Radix should be engaged in many ways, including
criticism, but this should be done in constructive ways, ways that
open new possibilities rather than closing them. Different kinds of
responses are appropriate in different kinds of forums. Let’s not
limit ourselves by insisting on choices where none needs to be made.
Terry has given several examples of China’s misbehavior. The US does
that regularly, in its annual report on the human rights performance
of other countries. See http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/ (Note
that it omits economic, political and cultural rights.) In a dance
that has now become very regular, China responds with an account of US
human rights failures, drawn from US media sources. Its report for
2007 is available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/13/content_7779839.htm
We might quarrel with the Chinese report, but even so, I think it
provides a healthy corrective to what otherwise might be a somewhat
unbalanced view on our part.
This Chinese report’s unremitting negativity is not helpful. This is
not what I would describe as constructive criticism. It is generally
useful to couple criticism to some serious, positive recommendations.
With regard to issues of corruption, for example, we could go beyond
railing against it and point out that there are now some well
developed methods for limiting it, as illustrated by the work of
Transparency International (www.transparency.org) and Tiri
(www.tiri.org).
To summarize, we should engage with the Chinese on these issues at
every opportunity, with approaches that are as constructive as
possible. Criticisms should generally be focused on the issues
immediately at hand, and they should be accompanied with serious
positive recommendations for action.
Aloha, George
On Jan 27, 2009, at 5:29 AM, T.G.Cannon at greenwich.ac.uk wrote:
> 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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