From the Editor
Poor international Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. On April 25, he dropped all pretense that the Olympics are not political by hectoring the West not to hector China to honor its Olympic promises because “You don’t obtain anything in China with a loud voice.” The very same day, the Beijing regime bowed to international pressure to open talks with the Dalai Lama.
Somehow the myth has taken root that unlike other nations, the Middle Kingdom only responds to quiet backroom diplomacy. If anything the opposite has proven to be the case—China’s leaders are realists internationally who capitalize on national pride at home as a tool to forestall calls for democracy. Not surprisingly the myth of Chinese exceptionalism is nourished by the priesthood of “old friends of China,” who are jealous of their prerogative as intermediaries.
The result is that in the name of progress, many in the West have been successfully cowed into not articulating some unpleasant realities. Several of them are to be found in this month’s review. Beijing will have come to terms with the fact that playing an increasingly prominent role on the world stage means the spotlight will fall on the old taboos.
Chief among them is questioning the legitimacy of Beijing’s claims to Tibet and Xinjiang. Hong Kong lawyer Paul Harris was asked by the territory’s Law Society to draft a piece on this topic for its magazine, but the article was excised at the behest of an extraordinary meeting of the editorial board. We print a slightly shortened version of that article explaining how international treaties and covenants give Tibetans a strong claim to self-determination.
Another is the fact that far from moving in the right direction, China’s human rights have been regressing. In some ways, the political atmosphere was freer in the 1980s than today, as reflected in the Kafka-esque trial of dissident Hu Jia described by Jerome Cohen.
A China-based media entrepreneur who must remain anonymous for obvious reasons explains that internally the regime has honed its enforcement of shared values by a range of technical means, but the most effective measures are political, social and economic. Michael Ledeen writes that such interlocking institutions designed to promote a common national purpose and eliminate heterodoxy are a hallmark of classical fascism. The integration of the business elite into the ruling class of the Communist Party has secured stability for now. But history shows that such regimes seek to expand national power as far as the international community allows, and soft-voiced responses don’t work.
H.R.
