csua.org/u/fpj -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042101738.html
More China's Unsavory Friends By Gary J Bass Sunday, April 23, 2006; Page B05 In years past, the Chinese government's poor human rights record was only a problem for you if you happened to be Chinese. But as China's power and influence in Asia grow, its hostility toward human rights is becoming a problem for non-Chinese, too. Propelled mostly by economic opportunism, China is fast becoming the friend of last resort for some of the world's most isolated dictators and bad guys -- in Asia and beyond. On May 13, 2005, thousands of Uzbeks rallied in the city of Andijan, including some armed people who had led a jailbreak as well as unarmed people protesting the repressive government of President Islam Karimov. In response, Karimov's security forces fired indiscriminately into the crowds, in what Human Rights Watch has called a massacre of hundreds of people. "We consistently staunchly support the Uzbekistan government's striking at the three forces, which are terrorism, splittism and extremism," declared the Chinese foreign ministry.
On May 25, Chinese President Hu Jintao welcomed Karimov on a state visit to Beijing, complete with a 21-gun salute. While in China, Karimov inked a $600 million deal for a joint Chinese-Uzbek venture to develop Uzbekistan's oil fields. Then, in July, China joined Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in requesting a timetable for US military withdrawal from Central Asia. After America criticized the bloodshed and the United Nations airlifted to safety Uzbek refugees from the Andijan crackdown, Karimov kicked American troops out of the strategic Karshi-Khanabad base. In Sudan, the government continues to sponsor the slaughter and dispossession of tribes in the western region of Darfur. But Sudan's oil supplies are irresistible to China, the world's fastest-growing oil consumer. is a big investor in Sudan's oil fields and owns most of an oil field in southern Darfur. China also is a major arms supplier to Sudan and has used its UN Security Council clout to protect Sudan from global pressure and weaken threats of oil sanctions. As Robert Mugabe continues to strangle Zimbabwe, he relies on China to break his international isolation, in what he calls his "Look East" policy. Last July, Mugabe arrived in Beijing for six days of cozy talks, including a meeting with Hu, who referred to him as "an old friend." At the same time, the United Nations was blasting Mugabe for a campaign of demolishing the homes of the urban poor, leaving some 700,000 people homeless -- payback for urban support of Mugabe's opponents in elections in March 2005. In July, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) pushed Burma's isolated ruling junta into giving up its turn at chairing the organization in the coming year -- a slap from the usually meek and inclusive body. But Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing cushioned the blow by pulling out of the ASEAN summit in Laos and flying to Burma to meet with the military rulers of what he called "a friendly country." Soe Win, the Burmese prime minister, met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. According to China's official Xinhua news service, Soe Win hailed China's "resolute support and selfless assistance." After meetings with Hu and Li, Soe Win later claimed that China -- the junta's most loyal ally -- would block attempts to put Burma on the UN Security Council's agenda. Much of the Chinese government's support for bad guys is driven by its need for energy. In addition to Sudan and Uzbekistan, China is hunting for energy resources in other pariah countries such as Iran, Angola and Cuba. Hugo Chavez, the leftist president of oil-rich Venezuela, has also reached out to China. Without mentioning oil, I once asked an influential retired Chinese general about China's relationships with so many dictatorships. He replied that China picked its allies not by likes or dislikes but by practical necessity, and that China was a developing country seeking energy independence. Chinese leaders worry about US hegemony, particularly when it's coupled with rhetoric about human rights and democratization. As a matter of principle, the Chinese government is deeply skeptical of military interventions to protect human rights-- doubly so since NATO bombed China's embassy in Belgrade in May 1999. When a UN summit in September approved the ideal of an international "responsibility to protect" civilians when their own governments do not, Li, the Chinese foreign minister, warned that the UN Security Council had to approve such steps. "We are against any willful intervention on the ground of rash conclusion that a nation is unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens," Li said. In his recent Beijing meeting with Soe Win, the Chinese premier Wen gingerly suggested that China would welcome more "domestic reconciliation" in Burma, but, according to Xinhua, he "stressed that Myanmar's internal affairs should be resolved through consultation by the government and people of Myanmar on their own." Joshua Cooper Ramo, a former Time journalist who teaches at Tsinghua University in Beijing, has suggested that China is offering the world an alternative to the "Washington consensus" model of development. The Beijing Consensus, he writes, includes technological innovation, economic development based on equality and sustainability, and, most important for the bad guys, national sovereignty -- championing non-interference and opposing foreign meddling. In September 1999, then-Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan called NATO's airstrikes to protect the Kosovars an "ominous precedent" and warned of "the rampage of hegemonism." Tang added: "When the sovereignty of a country is put in jeopardy, its human rights can hardly be protected effectively." Of course, an emerging China is hardly a new Soviet Union. China wants to participate in the world order, not overturn it. It does not encourage democracy but is not out to destroy it, either. China participates in many international institutions, even sending judges to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Many Chinese officials fear their recent choice of friends is short-sighted: This rogues' gallery of unstable allies hardly matches China's own image of itself as a confident rising great power. In a speech in September that received lots of attention in Beijing, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert B Zoellick encouraged China to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system, gaining respect and stature as well as raw power. Backing pariah regimes hardly qualifies -- not least because Zoellick has been the point man on US efforts to help Darfur. He noted that during his morning jogs in Khartoum, he saw Chinese doing tai chi, and said: "China should take more than oil from Sudan -- it should take some responsibility for resolving Sudan's human crisis." In the longer run, the strategy of cozying up to dictators at the expense of their peoples is self-defeating. America has learned this lesson the hard way in such places as Pakistan and Egypt, where the price of friendship with the regime has been a deep and popular anti-Americanism. Convenient as the bad guys may seem right now, China would be wise to avoid the same mistake.
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