Human Rights in Economic Terms: Peasants, Not Activists, Are the Key : China: Development in trade zones is at the expense of the countryside. Reform requires responding to rural needs.

In all of the debate concerning the United States’ renewal of China’s most-favored-nation status in trade, two images have been dominant: a China that enjoys rapid economic growth and a China that refuses to improve its human-rights record. More specifically, while the success of special economic zones is praised as a symbol of China’s effort to move from a centrally planned economy to a capitalist free market, its continuous crackdown on political dissidents is denounced as evidence of the regime’s rigid adherence to communist dictatorship.

This oversimplification between an economically free China and a politically repressive China explains the inconsistency and awkwardness in the Administration’s China policy. However, such oversimplification can be broken down.

In today’s China, the most blatant and massive human-rights problems are in rural areas, and they involve not just a few political dissidents but millions of the unprivileged peasants. During a recent visit, I was shocked by the sharp contrast between the affluent urban centers in special economic zones on the coast and the poverty and neglect in the rural inland regions, where the working-class peasants seemed resigned to their fate.

The prosperity in Special Economic Zones has been made possible because they are granted the privilege by the government of taking up a disproportionately large portion of China’s natural and financial resources. Unfortunately, such a practice has spiraled: As government favoritism enabled the coastal areas to develop at a much faster pace than other parts of China, their economic advance has put them in a position to absorb even more of China’s resources. Consequently, the rich in the coastal cities are becoming richer, the poor in the inland rural areas poorer.

By pointing out the widening gap, I am not suggesting that China should return to the economic egalitarianism of the Mao era. But the unfair distribution of China’s natural and financial resources has encroached on the rights of the unprivileged peasants. Most Westerners have not realized that this is a human-rights issue that deserves their attention; they associate the core of the human-rights issue with political affairs. As Lianyan Ge, a China scholar at Indiana University, argues, such a definition is one of the lingering legacies of the Cold War era. In reality, the Western preoccupation with the well-being of a small group of political dissidents has created a de facto “special human rights zone” which, not unlike the economic zones, privileges the few over the many.

I am not saying that the fates of the Chinese political dissidents do not deserve our serious concern. Surely, they do. Just as special economic zones may have played a pivotal role in transforming China’s economic system, the “special human-rights zone” has been necessitated by the particular circumstances in Chinese society after the Tian An Men crackdown. But in the long run, both kinds of “special zones” have to be “despecialized” if the human rights of all the Chinese, not just a few, are to be respected. This may mean approaching China’s human-rights issue increasingly in economic and environmental terms. This may also prove to be a way for the Clinton Administration to get over its painful vacillation on the China dilemma and syncretize America’s business interests with moral commitment.

This, of course, does not mean giving up the hope for a free and democratic China. However, as the situation in Taiwan, South Korea and other East Asian nations shows, a viable democracy requires a long civic tradition and significant economic development. There is a misconception among Westerners that all the Chinese are enthusiastic about democracy. This is true among the educated elite in affluent coastal cities. But peasants in poor inland areas appear suspicious about democracy and may not want to go along with the urban intellectuals.

If the Russian lesson indicates that the collapse of communism is not necessarily followed by the universal triumph of democracy, then, according to what I have observed in rural China, a true political reform in Chinese society will not be possible unless the immediate economic concerns of peasants are adequately addressed. Otherwise, idealistic calls for democracy in China have a high chance of being self-defeating. Without economic improvement in rural areas, it will be difficult for the United States to make a positive impact on China’s future.