Shared interests should override Sino-US differences over human rights and disputes should be resolved amicably

A new round of Sino-US dialogue on human rights is scheduled to be held in Washington on May 13-14.

The talks, to be chaired by Director-General of the Foreign Ministry's International Organization Chen Xu, and the US Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner, will be the first such session since May 2008.

The dialogue was originally scheduled for February-end but was delayed due to the strained ties between Washington and Beijing over arms sale to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama early this year.

The US has adopted varying approaches with regard to China on the human rights issue since the end of the Cold War, taking into account the changed bilateral relationship between the two countries.

The disintegration of the erstwhile Soviet Union in the early 1990s led many in the US to believe that Western-style democracy and values had achieved an overpowering victory over the Soviet-led Eastern camp.

Such a belief resulted in the evolution of the ideological factor in the US' China policy and the prevalence of the "China's collapse" tone in the US for a time.

At that time, it was a dominant belief among many American politicians that pressurizing China would help facilitate changes in the Asian nation's polices and even a change in its political landscape. The human rights issue was believed to be a key area where the US could effectively thrust its "high-handed policy" on China.

In a concrete move towards this purpose, Washington chose to link its most-favored nation treatment (MFNT) status for China to the Asian nation's human rights conditions. Against this backdrop, heated debates emerged within the US Congress and between the Congress and the White House from 1990 to 1992 as to whether such a treatment should be extended to Beijing at all.

The US administration of former President George Bush rebuffed Congress pressures by extending the treatment to China three times, which, together with efforts from Beijing, managed to prevent bilateral relations from sliding.

After he came to power in 1993, Bill Clinton once again decided to link the MFNT to China's human rights record. The move not only ran into strong opposition from China, but also ignited disagreements within the Clinton administration, the US Congress and American business circles.

Due to its unpopularity at home and abroad, the Clinton administration announced the de-linking of the MFNT from the human rights issue in 1994.

Despite great efforts made by the US Democratic administration since 1996 to maintain a stable relationship with China, Washington and Beijing still hold divergent views on the human rights issue.

The differences between the two were so sharp that the issue became a topic of heated debates between heads of the two countries during visits by their leaders in 1997 and 1998.

Bilateral debates on human rights also extended to international occasions. At the 46th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1990, the US concocted up a motion together with some European countries aimed at denouncing China on human rights.

Due to opposition from a number of other participating countries, the unpopular motion came to nothing. A similar proposal was submitted by the US to the UN commission 11 times in the following years, all to no avail.

Repeated failures, together with European countries' decision in 1998 not to co-sponsor a rights motion against China, prompted the US delegation to announce in 2005 that it would no longer make a similar move during the following sessions.

However, such a stance has not changed the US administration's finger pointing at China in its annual reports on the human rights conditions in other nations. The annual report has become the main saboteur of Sino-US relations.

The US has also sought a human rights dialogue with China even while exerting continual pressure on China. From 1990 to 2002, a total of 13 rounds of talks were held between the two countries on this issue.

The 14th round was held in Beijing in May 2008, in which the US delegation exhibited a positive tone towards China because of the huge advances made during the previous years towards a constructive cooperative partnership between the two countries.

At that dialogue, David Kramer, US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor praised China's progress in the field of human rights and commended highly Beijing's Wenchuan earthquake relief effort.

Over the past year, ever since the Obama administration has been at the helm, the US president and other administration officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of Sino-US relations and shown flexibility on the human rights issue.

The Obama administration's position is that mutual interest should override disputes between the two and that it would resort to dialogue to resolve bilateral disputes.

During a visit to Beijing in February, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the Obama administration's concern over the human rights issue, but she also reiterated that the human rights concerns would not "interfere" with US' cooperation with China on other issues such as fighting climate change and reviving the global economy.

Clinton's stance is an extension of the new US approach, embodied in a joint declaration issued during Obama's visit to China in November. In that declaration, both sides recognized bilateral differences on human rights issues but also vowed to handle disputes in the spirit of equality and mutual respect.

It is hoped that the US will make the first step towards implementing this spirit in the upcoming two-day human rights dialogue and open a new horizon for bilateral talks on this issue.

The author is a researcher with the Center for China-US Relations under Tsinghua University.

(China Daily 05/11/2010 page8)