Chinese scholars endorse assertive stance on human rights talks

As the OECD has said in a recent report that China is set to become the world's largest economy as early as 2016, overseas observers are keeping a watchful eye on what they claim has been a more assertive stance from China when carrying out human rights dialogues with Western countries.

Chinese analysts, however, argue that the country should improve human rights at the country's own pace without heeding politically-driven stances from overseas.

China started having human rights talks with Western countries as well as Japan in 1991. Over a period of more than 20 years, similar talks have been held with more than 20 countries. But in recent years, the Chinese government has shown a changing attitude towards the talks.

On April 16, China scrapped a scheduled human rights dialogue with the UK, just a week after the UK had released a report criticizing the human rights situation in China. Some observers claimed this was evidence of a more assertive stance.

Inflammatory remarks

In a human rights report released on April 10, the UK listed China as a "country of concern," among 27 others, saying that there were cases of suppression of freedom of expression and assembly in 2013. The report also cited China's Tibet and Xinjiang regions as having repression of ethnic activities.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to the criticism by asking the UK to stop interfering in China's domestic politics. Spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a routine press conference on April 15 that China is strongly dissatisfied with the remarks and firmly opposes them.

"The spirit and principle that guide people-to-people and state-to-state dialogue and exchanges are equality and mutual respect … but what we have seen is that the UK released a so-called Human Rights and Democracy 2013-14 [report], making irresponsible remarks about the political system of China, slandering and criticizing China's human rights situation," she said.

Chinese and British officials had been scheduled to hold a round of the Human Rights Dialogue in London on April 16. But in response to the criticism, the Chinese government canceled the talks.

Aside from canceling bilateral talks with other governments, China has also prevented certain meetings between foreign officials and locals from taking place on Chinese soil.

Sigmar Gabriel, the minister for economic affairs and energy and vice chancellor of Germany, had planned to meet with a small group of people at the German Embassy on April 22 when he visited Beijing, but most of them didn't attend the meeting.

Confrontation back and forth

Speculation has been swirling that China will use its growing power to wield greater clout over other countries.

John Kamm, the director of the human rights organization The Dui Hua Foundation, was quoted by online magazine The Diplomat at a recent talk in Washington as saying the Chinese government has begun to refuse to provide prisoner lists during bilateral human rights dialogues. It may also insist in the coming years to work fully within the UN framework to address human rights, rather than engage individual nations bilaterally on the sidelines, he said.

According to the Guardian, the bilateral talks between China and the UK have been canceled before. In May 2012, when British Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama, the talks were canceled and not resumed until December last year, when Cameron visited China.

Mo Shaoping, a human rights lawyer who has worked on many sensitive cases, told the Global Times that he feels that the government's attitude is becoming more and more assertive, and that it doesn't care that much about negative views from the outside, at least not as much as it used to.

"In my opinion, the Chinese government feels the country is stronger than before, especially in terms of economic development. The democratic countries have also run into some issues such as financial crises, but China's GDP is coming to the top of the world. So the government is no longer minding criticism from international society, especially on human rights," he said.

He noted that in the past this wasn't the case. The Chinese government has made compromises in the past for individual cases concerning human rights.

Hu Xingdou, a political science professor with the Beijing Institute of Technology, told the Global Times that the bilateral talks between China and the West started as a strategy and a practical need.

When there are diplomatic standoffs with foreign countries, "joining the human rights talk was a way of keeping contact with Western countries," he said. Western countries also use human rights dialogue as a leverage in negotiations over trade.

For example, the US restored China's Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) status in 1980, a trading agreement between the two countries giving lower customs duties of US imports from China. This status needs to be renewed annually.