Despite risks, Obama ready to press China on human rights

[David Guyatt]

"Despite risks"? What awful spin.

Twitter, Wikileaks, and numerous other cases of suppression of free speech.

But Obarmy thinks he has the right to tick the Chinese off for lack of freedom of speech.

The sheer hypocrisy of it is what gets me. But par for today, I suppose.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...06907.html

Despite risks, Obama ready to press China on human rights

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 15, 2011

President Obama is planning to refocus attention on China's record of suppressing free speech and political freedom in the coming weeks, despite the risk of further destabilizing an important relationship after a contentious year.

Since elevating human rights as a guiding principle of his foreign policy at the United Nations last fall, Obama has been looking for ways to engage China's leaders on the issue without undermining his efforts to enlist their help in dealing with Iran and North Korea, and in reviving the world economy.

Senior administration officials say he is exploring ways to better reach Chinese citizens directly, perhaps by using technology unavailable to many of his predecessors.

He has also been seeking advice from Chinese dissidents and human rights advocates ahead of President Hu Jintao's state visit next week. On Thursday, Obama met for more than an hour at the White House with five advocates for human rights in China, the first time he has done so in that venue.

While economic and security issues are likely to be the focus of Hu's visit, how Obama manages the topic of human rights will help define his summit with Hu and provide clues to how the president intends to speak with China in the years ahead about political prisoners, an inconsistent rule of law and a repressed civil society.

Already, Obama is set to achieve the distinction of being the first U.S. president to host a head of state who is currently holding a Nobel Peace laureate in prison.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton began to set the tone on China with a speech Friday at the State Department.

"America will continue to speak out and press China when it censors bloggers and imprisons activists, when religious believers, particularly those in unregistered groups, are denied full freedom of worship, when lawyers and legal advocates are sent to prison simply for representing clients who challenge the government's positions," Clinton said.

"Many in China resent or reject our advocacy of human rights as an intrusion on their sovereignty," she said in a broad address outlining her views on the future of U.S.-China relations. "But as a founding member of the United Nations, China has committed to respecting the rights of all its citizens."

In his U.N. address, Obama criticized those who "put human rights aside for the promise of short-term stability or the false notion that economic growth can come at the expense of freedom" - a passage that was understood by many as a veiled criticism of China.

But overall the president has been criticized for what conservatives in particular say is an overly cautious approach to human rights. His more assertive stance now marks a change from early in his tenure, when Clinton questioned the usefulness of challenging China on human rights at a time of global economic crisis. His timing and tone have often stood in sharp contrast to that of the George W. Bush administration, which made the promotion of democracy, even at the point of a gun, a centerpiece of its foreign policy.

Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said it's important for Obama to "lay down a marker" in his conversations with Hu, even if doing so "does not help you win the contest of ideas all by itself."

MORE

[Magda Hassan]

What hypocrisy. Like letting Ted Bundy advise on child care issues.