Four months ago, this page awarded top honors in our 1997 Appease China Sweepstakes to Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California. She had proposed that China and America appoint a commission on human rights that ” would point out the successes and failures” of both sides, “both Tiananmen Square and Kent State.”
That’s pretty mind-boggling. But this week a competitor in the appeasement/moral equivalence sweepstakes emerged. In an article in the Business section of the Washington Post titled “Prison Labor: Can U.S. Point Finger at China?” Paul Blustein quotes James Feinerman, professor of Asian Legal Studies at Georgetown University. Feinerman thinks it is the ” height of hypocrisy to get on our high horse about China making its prisoners work due to the fact we do the same thing with our prisoners.” Of course, we don’t sentence people for speaking up for democracy, attempting to pray as they wish, or offending the political authorities. But Feinerman still asks, in the tradition of moral equivalizers everywhere, “Who are we to argue with their choices?” (The answer, incidentally: We live under a free and just regime; the Chinese don’t; and we should do what we can to help them achieve at least minimal levels of civil and political rights.)
But that wasn’t the end of a week filled with amazing comments about China. Two days later, Robert Novak’s syndicated column advised China to cut a deal with the Vatican in order to mute criticism of Chinese religious persecution by the U.S. Catholic Conference. Novak quotes his friend Jude Wanniski (described as “a staunch and vigorous friend of China” — a rare Novakian understatement) as advising the Chinese ambassador to tell his government to ” come to terms with Christianity.” Novak, joining Wanniski in the role of adviser to Beijing, in turn urged the Chinese government to sign “a concordat such as Mussolini negotiated with the Vatican in 1929.”
And speaking of “staunch and vigorous” friends of China, Henry Kissinger also weighed in this week. He testified Thursday before the Senate Commerce Committee in favor of most-favored-nation status for China, arguing that ” cooperation with China is an essential element of U.S. foreign policy in Asia. ” On the same day, in New York, Chinese dissident Harry Wu spoke powerfully against MFN, pointing out that the great bulk of the profit from foreign investment “benefits the Chinese government; very little goes to the people.”
We’re with Harry, not Henry — or Bob, or Jude — but we’re grateful that Novak has introduced the Mussolini analogy, which is all too apt. After all, remember how well constructive engagement worked back then? Which of China’s neighbors gets to be Abyssinia?
