U.S. should stand up to China’s hard-liners

Liu Xiaobo, a moderate reformer in China, was sentenced Dec. 23 to 11 years in prison by the Chinese government for the mere act of organizing and signing a petition, Charter 08, calling for political reform and the basic human rights much of the world already enjoy.

FOR THE RECORD:
Human rights trial: A Jan. 1 Op-Ed article about the conviction of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo said that diplomats from Germany and Austria had been allowed to observe his trial. Foreign diplomats were not allowed to attend the trial. —

The message was clear for all those who sought restraint from a newly powerful China that now sits prominently at the tables of global governance: Because you made a fuss about releasing Liu after his arrest, we will punish him even more severely. In no uncertain terms, that will let you know that not only don’t we care what you think, we don’t have to care.

Though diplomats from Germany and Australia were among the two dozen people allowed to observe the “public trial,” the fact that no one from the American Embassy was admitted should be read as a particularly clear and open challenge to the United States.

We Chinese are intimately acquainted with this authoritarian arrogance.

During the eras of Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping, when I was jailed for 15 years for, among other charges, the “heinous crime” of putting up a wall poster, the Chinese government regarded international public opinion with this same attitude. If the Chinese people saw how the government blithely dismissed the concerns of powerful foreigners, the Communist Party rulers reasoned, they would also see they had no alternative but to submit to the overbearing authority of the government.

During Jiang Zemin’s time, there were some changes. In an effort to reduce international pressure and develop the economy under favorable trade conditions from the United States, the Chinese regime yielded. Among other actions, I was released from jail in 1997 and deported to the United States. That resulted in a strong backlash from the hard-liners inside the party despite the fact that, over the years, America’s huge trade deficit is what largely fueled China’s rapid growth.

Now that China’s leaders believe their prospering nation has emerged as a player in world history -- as America’s prestige has been weakened by the Iraq war and the recent financial meltdown -- the hard-liners have been able to wrest the upper hand again.

No doubt there is some truth in the notion that their revived arrogance is inspired by China’s role as America’s largest creditor. Surely this is one reason China’s leadership feels free to insult President Obama, as it did during his November visit to China, when it blocked broad news coverage of his public speech, and in December, when it sent lower-level officials to negotiate with him at the Copenhagen climate talks until the last minute, when Premier Wen Jiabao finally granted him an audience.

Beijing’s humiliation of Obama was not personal. It served to mark China’s power on the world stage. But more important, as under Mao and Deng, standing up to the American superpower is meant to stem growing internal opposition and cow China’s restless people into subservience under a one-party dictatorship. This is particularly critical as greater democracy in China would expose its own economic problems.

How Obama responds to this challenge is not just a matter of his own honor and position; it is a matter of defending the democratic values system of the West against a challenge for ideological leadership in the 21st century.

The case of Liu Xiaobo presents an opportunity for Obama to save face and stand up to the hard-liners’ untoward arrogance. As Liu’s case is appealed to a higher court, the U.S. and the rest of the West should insist that his sentence be suspended. Such a strong stance would weaken the hard-liners while strengthening the voices of peaceful reform within China. If the U.S. doesn’t push back, the hard-liners will push on -- with negative consequences across a whole spectrum of issues, from trade and currency valuations to global security and climate change.

The United States may owe a great deal of debt to China, but it owes a greater debt to its founding principles of freedom and human rights. If the West, led by the United States, does not counterbalance China’s new might in the world order, who will?

Wei Jingsheng, one of China’s best-known human rights activists, now lives in Washington and is the chairman of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition and president of the Wei Jingsheng Foundation.