1. Historic review
Human right problem of China became a focal point to criticize China onlyafter the foundation of PRC. This was based on severe ideological conflict. When china became a rising power, the western countries consider China asa strong potential enemy. Human right becomes an important civil weapon against China.
2. Malicious strategy of the US
Since the iron curtain was established after the Second World War, the US started to lead the western party, fighting for its own global strategic profit against the communistic world. After the disassembly of USSR, China became the only remaining potential enemy power against American globalsupremacy. The US established a malicious strategy, putting china into adilemma.
First, the US wanted to repeat the victory against the USSR - to forceChina racing on armament. To achieve this, they apply deterrent (threatening) against china with extensive military pressure. China was forced to develop its economy and military force as fast as possible. China made his best to make economic and military wonder, but the price for thisultimate efficiency was the depression of social morality, unjust and severe environmental pollution.
Then, the US used the human rights as a moral weapon. In one aspect, thehuman right was an effective factor to establish solidarity all over theworld against china. In western world, the mentality was similar. Westernpeople tend to pay more attention on individual rights. With this method,the whole western world, from government to people, can be united againstChinese government. In another aspect, the overflow of the criticismagainst human rights in china can provoke the attention of the Chinese people on the accumulating unjust. This decreases the trust of people tothe government, accumulating the anti-governmental force.
The power of china is based on its united reign and stable social community. In Chinese history, none of the dynasties died because of being invaded.They died because of the unstable society, and the invasions were justcatalyst. If the anti-governmental force is strong enough, the current Chinese government will be undermined, and this biggest potential enemy will be turned into a new colony of western countries. This is proven by thehistory.
3. Popular psychology of western people
Western culture was based on nomad culture. A very dominant feature ofnomad culture is that when a tribe is strong enough, he will definitelyinvade other tribes to control more territories and more resources, becausethey will soon deplete their own resources in a limited time. This meansthat every rising power will be a future enemy. Actually, the history ofchina proved that china, based on agricultural culture, has never invadedother countries for more territories or resources. But as western peopledon't understand this because of the different basis of culture, severemisunderstanding exists.
Nomad cultures believe in jungle rule, while agricultural cultures don't.Based on this, the colonization history provides the western people animportant mentality: superiority over Chinese people (as well as almost all the asian people). Because of this superiority and arrogance, they don'twant to make effort to understand asian cultures.
But the rapid development of china challenges the superiority of westernpeople. The daily life of western people is largely dependent on China.The economy of western countries (especially Europe) is closely connectedwith China. Nowadays, China is independent of western countries on mosthigh technologies. If you don't sell a product to China, Chinese peoplewill make it (even better ones) in a short time. If you don't sell aresource to China, we can find enough in our huge territory. This kind ofasymmetrical dependence, i.e. western countries depend on China while Chinais relatively independent on western countries, raised huge panic of western people.
Because of the misunderstanding of Chinese culture, western people believethat china is no more a potential enemy, but a practical enemy, an enemyagainst their superiority. No one wants his enemy to live happily. However, the life of western people is highly dependent on China. They don't have enough ability to change the situation in the near future. So they darenot to see that China is already strong and prominent. They dare not toconfess that they are being exceeded by China. They dare not to confessthat any change on Chinese policy will deeply affect their life. They darenot to see that China is developing. In a word, they dare not to admit thefact that the former "lower class" China, is defeating them. So they have to filter out all the positive facts in China. They want to collect allthe dark side of China to persuade themselves that "China is still very bad". This ostrich psychology can only relieve themselves from panic for ashort while.
The best proof is that in the 1980s, when China is still very poor, and the ideological conflict was largely relieved, there were very less criticism on human rights problems in China. When the time flies, in 1990s, there weremore and more criticisms on human right problems.
4. Globalization: strike to the self-confidence of western people
It seems unbelievable, but it's true.
A couple of years ago, Hamburg lowered the salary standard of workers. Thereason was that some big companies wanted to move their factories to China,resulting tens of thousands of unemployment in Hamburg. Everyone knows that China is the world factory because we have cheaper workers. The Hamburg workers have to lower their salary in order to keep their job. This is just an example of the general lowering of salaries in all western countries.This is a natural result of globalization, because globalization makes thewhole world as an entire market. But lowering the salary means lowering the living standards. Of course the western people complain. It's verylikely that they believe that China is the reason why they live worse thanbefore.
Actually, the western companies in China make many serious human rightsproblems:
They force Chinese workers to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week.
They pollute the environment in China.
They give extremely less salary to the workers, without paying any socialinsurance.
They lower the protection of the workers, resulting many irreversibleindustrial diseases, but the companies refuse to be responsible for that.
Obviously, these problems are based on the greedy western capitalists, notChina. They want to make more money, but they cause serious human rights in China, and also cause problems in western countries. Of course, thesegreedy capitalists won't confess that they are guilty for that. In theirown country, they mislead the public opinion against China.
Since they have caused a lot of human rights problems in China, this is agood excuse to blame China.
Because of the historic and practical reasons, the western world, fromgovernment to people, would like to criticize China, especially on the human rights problems. Their aim of criticism is not to help Chinese people tolive happier, but to try to make China poorer, less stable, less efficient,less developed, less challenging, less competent, and so on.
5. Sovereignty is the basis of human rights
The very basic human rights are the rights of survive, the right ofdevelopment, and the right to keep his own dignity. The first line ofgerman constitution is "The dignity of human beings is protected."
Without these very basic human rights, the other human rights are just Utopia.
In a country without its own sovereignty, the people there don't have those very basic human rights. We see the real examples in the history:
The US said that they wanted to bring human rights to Kosovo and Iraq. TheUS defeated their government and controlled those areas. But in those areas, do the inhabitants get more rights? They worry if they will be robbed orkilled tomorrow. The US soldiers can torture man freely, rape women freely. That is the life without sovereignty.
If these areas are so far away from us, let's see the history of Germany in 1949-1950. An old german lady told me a story. After Germany was defeated, the French soldiers controlled her hometown. The germans didn't have any rights. If the French soldiers were unhappy, they can catch any germanfreely and torture him or her, just for fun. The French soldiers lived intheir beautiful house, and her family was driven into the small, cold andhumid basement. She got serious problems in all of her joints - arthritis, till now. The French soldiers robbed her food. So her family was veryoften starved. Her neighbor was even starved to death. No one cares. Till now, this lady is still afraid of fireworks, because this will revoke hertragic memory. That is the life without sovereignty.
Besides the French soldiers, the Soviet soldiers raped over 2 million german women, according to the incomplete statistics. That is the life withoutsovereignty.
China suffered this kind of tragedy 70 years ago. We never forget thatmiserable history, and we don't want that this tragedy happens again to us. We don't want to be the second Kosovo, the second Iraq, or the secondGermany, because we don't want a life without our own sovereignty.
Yes, you can write a long list, listing huge amount of cases that theindividual human rights were broken in China. But this is much better thanthe semi-colony period. At least, now we have our very basic rights. Ourrights to survive and rights of dignity are secured by our military force.
6. Force is everything
Basically, Chinese culture is based on agricultural culture. This basisdetermines that China won't be an invading country; China won't be anenemy against anyone, even when it's strong. But the western countriesforced us to join the game of their jungle rule. Just like Napoleon's famous sentence "China is a sleeping lion. Don't wake him up." Thewestern countries forced us to wake up. And this lion roars.
In this world, if we come to the international affairs, we clearly see thatthere is no virtue and morality. The only determinant is the force. Ofcourse, this force includes military, economy and culture. Now China isaccumulating strong force, and the other asian countries are also developing. The Asian power is rising in the world.
The US also has many serious human rights problems. They might be just alittle bit better than in China - if at all. Why the criticism against American human rights problems is so less in the world, comparing to thecriticisms against China? Very simple, because the US is very powerful,much more powerful than any other current power in the world. So, according to the western philosophy and history, the best way of China to get rid ofthe criticism is that we develop our country until we are much stronger than any western country. At that time, it's our turn to criticize the western countries on the human rights, and no one dares to criticize us.
Yes, we have problems. But we develop. Not like the western countries, wedon't have colonies all over the world. We have to accumulate every single cent by our effort. We will solve these problems, but not immediately, not under the pressure of western countries. We will solve these problems byourselves.
We live happily in Asia. We live happily without you western countries. We welcome the communication with good will, of course. But we have to keepour sovereignty, because this is the basis of all the other human rights. We have our own culture and we have our own standards. We don't have toaccept your standards. We have our own way to develop. We don't have tofollow your way. The history has proven many times: China is a very goodfriend to the friendly people, but will be definitely a nightmare to hostility.
If you really want to do something to help China to improve the human rights, please do three things:
1. Stop your prejudice and hostility. Throw away your arrogance.
2. Come to respect, understand and experience our culture deeply.
3. Make the US less hostile to China.
If you can't do these, you, the western countries, should better shut up.You won't make things better. This is none of your business.
Human right is not an issue to discuss. Human right is an issue to fight for.
