To Influence China Now, Study Changes Since Mao

When it comes to China, the debate in this country is ongoing as to what is the best approach: the quiet diplomacy of constructive engagement or the continuing pressure of human rights advocates and congressional critics.

While no one can definitively answer that, it is important to recognize some basic truths about China before making future policy choices. It is helpful to introduce some historical perspective into the human rights debate, particularly by acknowledging how China has changed since the Maoist period. As Jeffrey Wasserstrom noted in October in the Chronicle of Higher Education, prior to post-Mao reforms, millions of Chinese were deprived of their rights because they were, in effect, not considered human. Under Mao’s doctrine of class struggle, former landlords, rich peasants and capitalists, as well as their children, were subjected to a variety of discriminatory policies, reaching untold horrors of persecution during the “Cultural Revolution.”

While human rights violations are still deplorable, such persecution is no longer based on ascriptive attributes, which are beyond one’s control, but on one’s behavior. In contrast to the arbitrary nature of Maoist policies, the present government has sought to offer choices, at least making clear what is considered unacceptable behavior that could lead to arrest.

We also should realize that China has changed a great deal since 1989. When I traveled to university campuses throughout China during the 1980s, students routinely told me that they believed nothing the government told them, that they depended on the Voice of America and the BBC for reliable information. When the Chinese press reported that American streets were dirty, students said they assumed that streets in the U.S. must be extremely clean.

That attitude no longer exists. In addition to the influx of information students now have about the outside world, government propaganda has been surprisingly effective in convincing many Chinese youth that U.S. policy, including our support for human rights, is hypocritical and is premised on keeping China from challenging American hegemony in the world. Many Chinese still blame the U.S. for depriving Beijing of the honor of hosting the Olympics in 2000.

In this new environment, we must be concerned about how our policies are perceived by the Chinese public and avoid giving the government ready ammunition that can easily lead to counterproductive results from well-intentioned policies.

Finally, the Chinese government did learn something from 1989. The leaders sought to regain their lost legitimacy in three ways. They opened up the economy, increased the standard of living and removed the ceiling on wealth. Even those intellectuals who were active in the 1989 movement and thereby forfeited their professional lives were, again in contrast to the Mao years, given a way out. They were allowed to engage in business, which some have done with remarkable success.

The government introduced a more varied cultural life, albeit of a nonpolitical nature. Among other things, the Chinese can now indulge in conspicuous consumption of foreign designer goods. Beijing deemphasized Marxist ideology and replaced it with heavy doses of patriotic education. The goal was to make China rich and powerful, by whatever means, so that the country could take its rightful place in the world.

These policies have borne fruit. As one well-placed intellectual suggested to me, the big difference between China in the late 1980s and today is that back then everyone hated the government; now they merely dislike it.

U.S. policy must begin with a recognition that Maoist and pre-1989 China have been altered in important ways. Unlike the Maoist period, when little outside information reached the Chinese public, or the 1980s, when the outside world seemed like the promised land and we had an enormous propaganda advantage, we are now in a far more competitive struggle with a far more capable government to convince an increasingly sophisticated population. In this “game,” we gain little from demonizing China as a new evil empire or overly romanticizing the influence we have on events there. Only a nuanced, nonpatronizing approach that understands how far China has come will have any resonance with the Chinese public.