11:38 am
Reindeer Games: Bush, Human Rights, and China
I know I’m a little behind on this, but I just read in the papertubes that Dubya gave a speech about human rights in China . And that the ChiComs are not happy about it.
My first instinct was to applaud him for speaking out. After his appearance before the foreign press last week, during which he set a new personal record for inanity, obsequiousness, and malapropisms, I was sure that he would be so busy begging Hu “Is Lying Now” Jintao not to liquidate China’s dollar holdings that he wouldn’t dare talk about human rights or democracy. So reports that he did, and that the Chinese got mad as a result, came as a pleasant surprise.
Then I read the speech.
The first thing I noticed was that he gave it in Thailand. Not at the Embassy dedication in Beijing, not during his visit to the Olympics, but in Bangkok. He might as well have given it in Timbuktu.
The second I noticed was that he does not mention human rights in China until the twenty-sixth paragraph — out of twenty-nine total. It comes only after he’s praised the Chinese for their economic achievements, highlighted their role in the six-party talks on North Korea, begged them not to foreclose on our economy, and reiterated America’s belief in a “one China” policy.
It also comes after he wishes the Queen of Thailand a happy birthday, praises the economic achievments of Thailand and other countries in the region, invokes the threat of terrorism, discusses North Korea, and gives a shout out to his wife for her work on Burma. (That’s right, of all the people working on Burma in this world, he chose to praise Laura.)
The actual criticism takes up two paragraphs of twenty-nine. They look almost like an afterthought. And they include the following sentence:
Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions.
I just ran that little gem through the Diplospeak Translator, and this is what came out:
DIPLOSPEAK TRANSLATOR: We’re not really serious about this, but Congress and those whiny human rights organizations back home will kick my butt for the rest of my term if I don’t pretend to care. Please please please please don’t be mad at me.
What nonsense. And the ChiComs got in a lather over this? Here’s what the Foreign Ministry said in response:
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang admonished Bush, saying “We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues.” He also said the Chinese government is dedicated to promoting basic rights, and that “Chinese citizens have freedom of religion.These are indisputable facts.”
This isn’t foreign policy. It’s Chinese Opera. I don’t know which I find more distressing.
- The fact that the White House is spinning this as courage;
- The fact that the Chinese have gotten their collective Communist capitalist noses out of joint for such innocuous language; or
- That the Western media bought the whole thing as a real controversy.
The games have started, Bush will forget about his admonition, the Chinese will welcome him, and everyone will enjoy the spectacle and the athleticism. Nothing else will happen.
There’s a term my summer camp friends used to have for such hypocrisy: Reindeer Games, which we defined as pretending to care about something when you really didn’t give a damn what happened. I think that pretty much summarizes the situation here. All posturing, no content.
Related posts
| posted in foreign policy, global economy, politics, pop culture, world at home | 0 Comments
Loading ...