An increasingly complex relationship

Whilst the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tian’amen Square 20 years ago still hover in the background, dialogue is much more likely these days to focus on trade, climate change and security, said Professor Dunne in a speech at the Danish Institute of International Studies.

He noted that America’s attitude towards China was set out during a recent visit from US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. She said that while human rights mattered to their China policy, they could not be allowed to ‘interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.’ 

Her statement received high praise from official media outlets who described it as a realistic attitude that other Western leaders ought to emulate. Human rights groups in China were less impressed and viewed her comments as appeasement. 

Professor Dunne explains, ‘The statement by Hilary Clinton suggests that human rights matter for the Obama presidency. But they do not matter enough to endanger their superordinate goals. Today, the United States could not afford to antagonise China. Jitters have already been created in Washington’s hearts and minds by statements about China’s concerns about its one trillion dollars worth of US treasury bonds.’

In March of this year, the Chinese Premier Wen Jinbao noted that they had lent ‘a huge amount of money to the US’ and that China was ‘concerned about the safety of our assets’.

The rise of China as an economic power means that it is increasingly risky for western governments to beat the drum of human rights, said Professor Dunne. At the same time, since the early 1990s the Chinese leadership has recognised that it cannot ignore all demands – internal and external – to improve its human rights record.

On certain indicators. China is moving rapidly up the human development league table. In 2006 one of the United Nations’ development programmes single out China as an exemplar for improving the standard of living of its people. According to the UNDP, since 1981 the estimated share of the population living on less than one dollar per day has been reduced from 64% to 16%. Or in more meaningful terms this improvement is the equivalent of lifting more than 400 million people out of absolute poverty.