Moral Courage
Mark Godges 高勉正
December 22nd, 2020
Even if it saves lives, doing the right thing will usually not win you friends or popular opinion, in life or in politics. Many times people will argue over what “right” even is, thereby cutting off the debate before it starts. It is no wonder then why over the past few years we have heard a lot of rhetoric on Human Rights as a way for politicians from multiple nations to finger-point and inflate their egos. At the same time, they are not taking concrete steps to improve the safety, lives, and dignity of marginalized communities. In this essay I seek to analyze human rights abuse as a key wedge issue of US-China relations. If both nations would create mutual commitments which center marginalized communities, maybe less people would get rich, but more people would be free. These issues have and will continue to come to the forefront of collective consciousness in a Post-Covid world, and it’s up to us to make the discussion constructive.
Therefore, it is necessary to create a constructive US-china Dialogue on violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since both American and Chinese leaders blame each other before correcting their own mistakes, neither nation is improving their records on human rights. From a social, economic, and environmental perspective, the blame game has taught the two most powerful countries to compete in growing rich rather than compete in growing more compassionate. In this essay I seek to analyze four cases of globally perceived and ongoing human rights abuse, two in the United States and two in China — The institutional backlash to the Civil Rights Movement (United States), the War on Terror (United States), the institutional backlash to and censorship of the feminist movement (China), and the Xinjiang issue (China). From there, I will present my argument for why solving these and other human rights issues is not only the right thing to do, but also in the economic interests of both nations. It is especially pertinent to study the links of struggles for human dignity in the United States and China when looking at parallel struggles. Institutionally the backlash to the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the Feminist movement in China have been very similar, as have the struggles for the dignity of Muslim citizens resisting both countries in areas rich in natural resources, like Iraq or Xinjiang.
The first major globally perceived and ongoing human rights abuse I seek to analyze is the backlash to the civil rights movement in the United States. In both major institutional movements to grant human, civil and voting rights to Black Americans, first after 1865 and then after 1965, there was major institutional resistance to these reforms, which sometimes came in the form of strengthening repression. Henry Louis Gates Jr. investigates this theory in the beginning of his book “Stony Road”, saying, “As David Blight reports, ‘At least ten percent of Black Members of constitutional conventions in the south in 1867–68 became victims of Klan violence, including seven who were murdered..’…President Johnson, predictably, voiced his opposition to black access to the franchise early on. Johnson — who said of Abraham Lincoln’s friend Frederick Douglass, after a meeting at the White House on February 7, 1866, that “he’s just like. Any n****r, & he could sooner cut a white man’s throat than not” — declared that “the Negroes have not asked for the privilege of voting; [and the vast majority of them have no idea what it means.” (Louis Gates Jr., 26) The social and political culture in the south that came out of the destruction of reconstruction paved the way for the Jim Crow south and apartheid in the United States.
The second wave of the civil rights movement for Black Americans from 1964–68 sought to dismantle this very system. Once again, there was a political backlash that was first capitalized on by Richard Nixon, and then by Ronald Reagan. Anthony Cook goes into detail in one specific instance in his essay “The Ghosts of 1964”. Specifically in the case of Ronald Reagan’s campaign kickoff speech, he explains, “A Mississippi National Republican Committee member suggested Reagan launch his post- convention campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, contending that this setting would be a good way to win over George Wallace voters. The Neshoba County Fairgrounds, near Philadelphia, Mississippi, were in the county where the three civil rights workers, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, were murdered during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Reagan delivered the speech just a few miles from the earthen dam in which the bodies were buried after being beaten and shot to death” (Cook, 89) The speech’s location and context underlies a deeper pattern and battle in American politics that has occurred since the election of Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War.
In many ways, Americans live in two different countries simultaneously: one which views life through the lens of the inherent dignity of all living beings, and the other which values freedom and tradition, even at the expense of others. Cook continues saying that, “The context of the speech unlocks the meaning of the coded language, “states’ rights….we now see the term as being conscripted into service as a covert operative in a war between past and future, a secret courier conveying coded messages of hope to a beleaguered southern culture fighting to dismantle the latest version of northern aggression: America’s Second Reconstruction.” (Cook, 90) The backlash which occurred in the aftermath of both Civil Rights movements in 1865 and 1965 is an ongoing struggle, as we are yet to see whether we can weather backlash to the current and third major mass movement for Black lives in the United States. An era of redlining and housing discrimination in the 1970’s allowed for disinvestment and mass incarceration of Black communities. In this way many American’s can see them as a separate nation, thus desensitizing the American populace to the suffering of those who are not “citizens”.
Hence, the second major globally perceived and ongoing human rights abuse I seek to analyze is the “War on Terror” in the United States. After the September 11th attacks in New York City, the Administration of President George W. Bush easily turned the War on Terror into something completely different — a war on Muslim Americans and Muslims. Although he has said different, the actions of sanctioning crimes in the name of “security” have desensitized the American people to death and destruction — much of which has been at the expense of Muslim civilians who are not terrorists, both at home and abroad. James Forman, Jr. expands on this dynamic when explaining that, “By pursuing certain policies and using particular rhetoric domestically, I suggest, we have rendered thinkable what would otherwise have been unthinkable. Moreover, as the world’s largest jailer, we are increasingly desensitized to the harsh treatment of criminals. We have come to accept such excesses as casualties of war-whether on crime, drugs, or terror…” (Forman, Jr., 333) When Forman analyzes how the American populace is trained and conditioned to see those who are labeled as “criminals” as less than human, he is illustrating that when criminalizing people of different identities, the criminalization can bleed into others who hold this identity or nationality, even if they are irrelevant to or even victims of the issue — in this case the issue being terrorism.
Jordan Paust examines how dehumanization works in “Civil Liability of Bush, Cheney, et al., for Torture, Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment and Forced Disappearance” when describing that “It is well beyond reasonable doubt that during an admitted “pro-gram” of serial criminality designed to use secret detention and coercive interrogation of human beings from the waning months of 2001 until 2009, former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, and several other members of the Bush Administration authorized, ordered, and/or abetted the forced disappearance of persons (a crime against humani- ty and war crime), other war crimes (including torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of human beings and the transfer of non-prisoners of war out of occupied territory), and other serious international crimes implicating universal jurisdiction and a universal responsibility aut dedere aut judicare (i.e., to hand over or to initiate prosecution of those reasonably accused).’ By foregoing the laws, norms, treaties and institutions of the United States Constitution, the Bush/Cheney regime set up a perfect excuse for Chairman Xi and his allies to behave the same way. And because there have been no consequences to their actions, it also makes it that much harder for the United States to hold other nations accountable to UN standards. A clear example of this is when in 2016, the “Feminist Five” and the feminist movement got major attention in China, with then-candidate Hillary Clinton expressing support. However, it cannot be overstated the damage that Donald Trump has done to international institutional norms regarding respecting women. In many ways the censorship and repression around it mirrors the ongoing backlash to the third century wave for the rights of Black people America.
Therefore, the third major globally perceived and ongoing human rights abuse I seek to analyze is the backlash to the feminist movement in China. The feminist movement in China has quickly accelerated in ways not possible before media or technology. Due to “The Great Firewall” it is nearly impossible for foreign media to gain traction inside of China’s borders. With a growing chokehold on social society under the Xi administration, feminists are encountering a new dynamic of how to maneuver an increasingly less free Chinese political culture. Jun Li and Xiaoqun Li go deeper into this, specifically saying, “In other words, the veteran generation of feminists adopted the attitude of media criticism, while the new generation tries hard to create news events and work closely with the market oriented media. Issues of gender discrimination in the labor market and in education, which are a major focus of young feminist movements, have existed ever since China began to embrace the than news events. The strategy of young feminists is to use “performance art” to turn social problems into news stories.” (Li, 9) By utilizing mainstream media, modern feminists can change culture and discourse by making feminism itself an acceptable topic in the mainstream subconscious. They further explain in their research that “For feminists, the first and foremost function of media coverage is to legitimize their behavior and the relevant issues. This function can be viewed from another perspective: the feminists interviewed in this study revealed that domestic media were their first choice because overseas media cannot reach masses in China, nor could they interact with the government in a positive way because of their “anti-china” tags. (Interviewee 010, 015).” (Li, 10) The feminist movement in China must continuously operate around a state apparatus which values stability over progress or freedom.
Diana Fu and Greg Distelhorst examine the mechanics of repression in “Grassroots Participation and Repression under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping”, explaining, “Thus, proactive repression that aims to preempt organized contention is deemed critical to sustaining state power. The recent squelching of China’s burgeoning feminist movement is a prime example of proactive repression that targets activism supported by organizational backbone. The “feminist five” who had planned to hand out anti-sexual harassment pamphlets on public buses were preemptively detained before they could even distribute their literature. They were initially informally charged with “picking quarrels”, later changed to a charge of illegal assembly” (Fu & Distelhort, 112) Much like dynamics around masculinity and repression changed in the shift from Obama to Trump, the same dynamic occurred in the shift from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping. They continue to analyze this in a 2016 where, “In February of 2016, just one month prior to the arrest of the feminist five, China’s most influential women’s rights organization — Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling Services Center — was forced to close. In the Hu era, the Center had taken on a number of politically sensitive cases that attracted national media coverage and was a key proponent of China’s first domestic violence law which passed in 2015. ….Under Xi, the organization was shuttered completely.” (Fu & Distelhorst, 113) From an observer’s perspective, this shifting dynamic in administrative response in China could be attributed to the growing success or attention that the feminist movement has gotten in China, and the need to shut it down in the name of harmony or stability. The value of stability over justice of governments is a common thread in each of the four ongoing cases.
As such, the fourth major globally perceived and ongoing human rights abuse is the Xinjiang issue in China. After the Urumqi riots in 2009 and ongoing spurts of ethnic conflict since, the State Council has been invested in quelling the threat to stability in the region. However, since Chen Quanguo’s heavy handed policies have been implemented, the Politburo has become the very terrorists they claim to fight against. Earlier in the semester, Dr. Ma made clear that war is evil, as war seeks to eliminate an entire nation off of the face of the planet. In the same way President George W. Bush did so with portions of Iraq, thus creating ISIS, Chen’s policies also seek to attack entire nations in the name of “security”. We see this in a direct quote from Chen Quanguo in Party documents which leaked in 2019, where is says “The struggle against terror and to safeguard stability is a protracted war, and also a war of offense” (Chen, 17) In wars throughout history, prisoners of war have been subjected to forced labor, and if Chen Quanguo means what he says, then clearly Uyghur citizens in Xinjiang are no exception to this rule. In an analysis for the Congressional Executive Commission on China, Adrian Zenz speculates that because of forced labor already in practice in the future, “Soon, many or most products made in China that rely at least in part on low-skilled, labor-intensive manufacturing, could contain elements of involuntary ethnic minority labor from Xinjiang. Government documents blatantly boast about the fact that the labor supply from the vast internment camp network has been attracting many Chinese companies to set up production in Xinjiang, supporting the economic growth goals of the BRI.” (Zenz, 2) There is economic value for any country when people are seen as less human, because industries can profit off of the subjugation of a people.
Black Americans built the United States through the cotton and textile industries, and one must wonder if those in the Xi Administration believe they can build China into a superpower using the same inhumane methods. For the Center of Strategic and International Studies, Amy Lehr implicitly backs up the theory of hegemony-through-slavery when detailing that “..More specifically, China’s share of global exports includes 30.5 percent of apparel, 41.9 percent of textiles and rags, 46.7 percent of cotton fabrics, and 10.9 percent of cotton yarn.29 China is the world’s largest producer of yarn, textiles, and apparel, and one of the world’s two largest cotton producers. XUAR is one of the world’s largest cotton producers, and China’s critical role in apparel production is also well known.” (Lehr, 4) It also seems that Chairman Xi knows the world is watching, and yet refuses to change his behavior. When asked at a conference relating to Xinjiang if the trajectory of policies should change, he stated that “The whole party must treat the implementation of the Xinjiang strategy as a political task, and work hard to implement it completely and accurately to ensure that the Xinjiang work always maintains in the correct political direction. We must also continue the direction of Sinicizing Islam to achieve the healthy development of religion” (Xi, 2020 at Xinjiang conference) This conversation dynamic of open repression shows that despite certain things being hidden and denied, ultimately the Politburo’s behavior and partnership with other authoritarians shows an attack on Human Rights as a global norrm and institution, in an attempt to denormalize regulations that promote dignity if they halt economic growth. The United States has done nothing about this in the era of Trump, because Donald Trump behaves in a very similar way.
However, the incentive for the United States in leading by example with human rights is clear. It is clear because we have seen the alternative with the Trump administration, an administration which routinely violates the rights of women, LGBT people, Black people, and immigrants. This blatant disregard for norms is at least partly to blame for why we have lost a significant amount of our allies. The United States cannot criticize China for human rights abuses while maintaining a brutal immigration policy, not signing onto war crimes accountability or genocide prevention and accountability treaties, and treating LGBT people like second class citizens. In “Trump and the US Foreign Policy Crisis” Nazish Ahmood shows that in an attempt to clarify differences, “The US, thus, has injected the zero-sum equation into its bilateral relations with China. Such a confrontational attitude is a matter for concern for the US allies, too, who partly share long-term threats posed b Chinas global designs. However, the US allies will remain hesitant to buy into the declared US strategy towards China as it is coming from the US administration which itself has primarily attempted to rise fundamental elements of the prevalent international order: i. Questioned the value of NATO and other alliances; ii. Expressed support for authoritarian regimes; iii. Withdrawn from global climate negotiations; iv. Eroded the base of political, economic and military ties between Washington and its allies; v. And most importantly, seems to be grappling with the budgetary constraints at home.” (Mahmood, 13)
This being considered, it is not only international norms that are improved when the United States has a strong domestic human rights record. In closing the racial wealth gap and creating opportunity for more people, state and national economies also grow stronger, not weaker. In “The Business Case for Racial Equity”, Ani Turner and Beth Beaudin-Seiler explain that “By 2050, Mississippi stands to realize a $54 billion gain in economic output by closing the racial equity gap…….For example, in consumer spending alone, closing the racial equity gap in Mississippi would generate an additional $1 billion in spending on food, $2.7 billion on housing, $280 million on apparel, $1.4 billion on transportation, and $410 million on entertainment each year. An additional $880 million would be generated in state and local tax revenues.” (Turner & Beaudin-Seiler, 3) In this way not only is racial equity a moral imperative for the United States, but if the racial equity gap is not closed, then the United States will not be able to compete in the 21st century.
The incentives for China to clean up it’s domestic human rights record are similar. With the Beijing Olympics coming in 2022, the last thing the Party needs on it’s hand is a worldwide human rights scandal which they refuse to address just one year in advance. Looking at the economic boom from the 2008 Olympics, it becomes even clearer the risk that not changing course to more humane policies poses to China’s projected economic growth. Holger Preuss details the level of investment in the Olympics for China in “Signaling Growth: China’s Major Benefit from hosting the Olympics in Beijing 2008”, saying, “The Olympic Games require specific structures, such as sports arenas, media facilities, and high security standards. All of these that are kept and maintained following the Games change the quality of location factors and therefore impact the destination. It is not the short-term economic impact that will benefit Beijing, but the change of its structural supply side. This can create long-term economic benefits if the improvement in the destination increases the productivity of Beijing.” (Preuss, 42) In order to fully implement a sustainable economic growth policy which includes retroactive justice for subjugated people, officials in Beijing must engage in a culture of corporate responsibility. In the case of forced labor, many American companies will bribe foreign officials and use cheap labor, and it is up to mid-level officials in China to be courageous. Ans Kolk, Pan Hong, and Willemjin van Dolen reference this in their essay “Corporate Social Responsibility in China, an Analysis of Domestic and Foreign Retailers’ Sustainability dimensions” where they excerpt says “For Chinese companies, the challenge of finding a good balance between home and host CSR practices (and expectations targeted at foreign companies in non-Chinese settings) will become more important as well with their growing international presence; the assistant ministry of commerce even labelled CSR as “necessary for Chinese companies to compete internationally” (Yi, 2005) Often times this is less profitable, and may make enemies for those who want short term gratification. However, those who believe corporate social responsibility can save lives will make the necessary sacrifices. There is no statistical analysis for moral courage. Regarding the movements for Human Rights movements in both China and the United States, policy makers must make choices to trust economic and national growth can come because of inclusion, not despite or at the expense of it. Without this level of trust, I do not see the US-China relationship improving.
A concept well known in China but not well known in the United States is the idea of “关系” (guan-xi). Guan-xi emphasizes the importance of relationships in order to succeed, prosper, and live. What this class and this semester has taught me is that although business and life relationships are important, sometimes we cannot sacrifice our values to keep our relationships, despite guanxi being a concept some of us live and die by. There comes a point where we must make decisions to stand up for economic, social and environmental justice, and it’s up to policy makers in China and the United States to decide where that point is. For citizens, the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us we must make decisions every day to keep people safe, even if it is inconvenient or painful. Much like the decision for human liberation, these sacrifices are an act of love. I trust that in the same way so many citizens have sacrificed their freedom and sanity for each other, politicians will be able to sacrifice the money of lobbyists for the sanctity of human life.
https://www.law.ua.edu/acrcl/files/2017/04/the_ghosts_of_1964.pdf
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/694299
https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/read-the-china-cables-documents/
