How Bad Is China?

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At the moment, those playing the emotive chords have captured the debate. Clinton's fairly cogent defense of his policies in a speech two weeks ago would never fit on a bumper sticker, though the bombast of a lot of critics allowed him to cast the terms as a choice between foolish isolation and practical engagement. No one who knows foreign policy thinks the U.S. should turn China into a pariah state, and only a handful called for Clinton to cancel his trip.

So how bad is China? The simple answer is there is no simple answer, just ambiguous facts. Like dual-use exports for civilian or military purpose, China's behavior can be benign or malign, better or not good enough. There's plenty to worry about if you're worried about China.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The Clinton Administration repeats over and over to Beijing that its relations with the U.S. cannot reach "full potential" without "significant" improvement in human rights. For years, China's leaders turned a deaf ear, insisting that such issues as freedom of expression, due process, the imprisonment of dissidents, prison labor and religious tolerance were none of Washington's business. "We were talking to a wall," says a senior official. "Now we can, and we do, talk seriously about these matters."

Of such small steps is progress made. Beijing's leaders seem immune to bullying, but dogged dialogue and economic advancement are persuading them to allow more personal liberties. Chinese citizens today lead remarkably free lives, as masters of their own fates and fortunes. Satellite dishes and the Internet beam in unauthorized information undreamed of a few years ago. Beijing has slowly been enshrining into law such individual prerogatives as property protection and the right to sue. The Chinese can even mock their leaders and criticize government policies--in the privacy of their homes. Beijing, in theory, opened itself up to international monitoring when it signed one of two key U.N. covenants on human rights last October and pledged to sign the other soon. "The unanswered question is whether to take their commitments seriously," says Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of Human Rights Watch/Asia.

Although the record is improving glacially, Administration officials and human-rights observers agree it is still quite bad. "By world standards, they're woefully short," says a White House official. What is distorting the picture is the tendency of some activists to narrow the focus to the most sensational charges, like forced abortions. Human-rights experts in and out of government have found some anecdotal evidence that these abuses happen but no proof that the government promotes them.