Neoliberal Civilization, the War on Terrorism, and the Case of China
Tina Chen and David Churchill
Fellow, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University
Assistant Professor of History, University of Manitoba
In the aftermath of September 11th commentators, journalists and scholars were
quick to opine that the world had changed, that the world had entered a new historical
moment and that our lives would never be the same. The material and symbolic evidence
of this new order was the burning collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center,
icons of the hegemony of American capital and the globalization of that capital. But what
are the contours of this new historical time? What is the vision of civilization that the
United States and its Western allies are advancing in the months that have followed the
WTC and Pentagon attacks? And what is the role of human rights in this vision? Because
the prosecution of the War on Terrorism is being conducted on numerous fronts and
through a variety of means, we argue that the current vision of civilization cannot be
understood outside the context of new legislation in the U.S. and other western countries
that dramatically curtails civil liberties and against the backdrop of the evolving
neoliberal economic order. As we see it, this legislation is not an aberration of liberal
polity but rather the domination and privileging of liberal economics over liberal rights
and individual freedoms, a privileging that is critical to neoliberal political order.
In the days before September 11th and in the week that followed another event of
material and symbolic importance was taking place. This was the final negotiation for the
entry of the People’s Republic of China to the World Trade Organization, ultimately
ratified in Qatar during November of 2001. The symbolism of the WTO meetings being
held in Qatar, a country that does not allow freedom of assembly or political
demonstration, as well as the accession of China to the WTO is profound. For decades
neoliberals have argued that the twin pillars of the so-called open society are expansive
individual rights and freedoms as well as unrestricted free markets.1 Over the past two
decades China challenged this framework as it asserted its place among the world’s
economic and political powers. As the very model for the disarticulation of political
reform from economic reform, a nation eager to take part in the global market place but
unwilling to adhere to the international system of human rights and the standards of
democratic reform, China’s entry into the WTO illustrates that open markets do not mean
open societies.2 Nor does the world require adherence to the principles of an open society
as long as there is secure and orderly access to the world’s potentially largest market.
These contradictions between principles and practice combine with the specific events of
September 11th to create present-day conditions under which civil liberties are curtailed
and dissident opinions silenced in order to shore up specific visions of civilization.
Through examination of neoliberalism in the United States and China, we draw
attention to the ways in which market, society, and state interact with a human rights
system to relegate human rights to a secondary position when threats to neoliberal
hegemony appear. We call attention to this dynamic because the substitution of elite
interests for universal human rights is characteristic of the neoliberal order and sits at the
basis of neoliberal rights norms. It is also the larger framework for current debates
concerning rights versus security that have arisen in conjunction with the War on
Terrorism. Rather than asking how and to what extent China participates in the human
2
rights regime, we foreground the relationship between neoliberalism as a central
component of the contemporary world and human rights. 3 Moving away from debates
concerning China as ‘taker’ or ‘shaper’ of human rights as well as debates pitting security
against rights in the post-September 11 period,4 we highlight the tenuous relationship
between neoliberalism and human rights in both liberal democratic societies and
authoritarian states. As such this article is a call for historically informed assessment of
the convergence of specific formulations of stability, security, and rights within
differently located but nonetheless intimately connected neoliberal regimes. Specifically,
we agree with Paul Bové that beginning with the Clinton administration the ideology of
human rights became a tool of U.S. neoliberal economic dominance and produced
neoliberal rights norms.5 This then begs the question, what are neoliberal rights norms?
And how have these norms, rather than universal human rights, become central to the
current vision of ‘civilization’ promoted by George W. Bush?
Neoliberalism and its History
How has this neoliberal hegemony taken shape and imposed itself so powerfully
on the modern world? From whence did it come and through what political and cultural
mechanisms did it take hold? Though neoliberalism has been a global phenomenon, it has
been disproportionately advanced and promoted by Western governments, corporations
and agencies through a constellation of Eurocentric cultural forms and practices.6 This
current neoliberal moment is characterized by the asymmetrical processes of American
modernity. By American Modernity we mean the instrumental operation of modern
American capital, technology, media and military power, as well as the ever-increasing
imposition of neoliberal economic order by international organizations such as the WTO,
3
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)
and the World Bank. Globalization may be a totalizing modern condition that is
collapsing time and space, and creating a world of quickening financial and material
mobility (though not necessarily the movement of people) but it is also a world in which
the United States of America is grossly advantaged, and where U.S. corporate and State
power remains ascendant.7
In the United States the term neoliberal has principally been consigned to the halls
of the academy and various scholarly journals and is not commonly used within public
and popular discourse. What in Europe would be called neoliberal is often termed
neoconservative by American commentators, journalists and politicians.8 Liberalism in
America, as historian Gary Gerstle has asserted, has a “protean character” a shifting and
changing meaning throughout the 20th century.9 Liberalism, the L-word of American
politics, has come to represent the reform and regulatory traditions of government. This
liberal political paradigm also includes the welfare and state modernization traditions that
emerged out of the Progressive Era and found full form in Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Liberal modernization, augmented by calls for
human rights and the right of self-determination in the wake of the Holocaust and in anticolonial independence struggles of the Third World, was an important source for the
social movement politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Together these elements sought civil
rights, fought against racial and sexual discrimination, and advocated for a variety of
causes such as environmentalism.10 In contrast neoliberalism harkens back to classical
liberal philosophy of the 19th century that works to limit the sovereignty of government
and the state’s role in economic markets. In the post-war decades neoliberalism emerged
4
as the most significant critique of the command economies of the Soviet Block as well
the Keynesian planned economies favored by Western democracies.11 Thus neoliberalism
sought to restrain state authority and regulation, to minimize government involvement in
the economy through a system of civil and property rights, market autonomy, and the
freedom to contract.
Neoliberalism in the United States was able to tap into the populist anti-taxation
tradition, a sentiment bolstered in the late 1970s and 1980s by the erosion of real earnings
due to high inflation and the postfordist economic restructuring which saw hundreds of
thousand of industrial workers lose their jobs. The so-called Reagan Revolution, matched
with its counterpart in the United Kingdom Thatcherism, saw a dramatic decline in state
social welfare spending coupled with dramatic cuts in the tax rates for individuals and
corporations.12 Privatization, individualization, de-regulation and comprehensive free
trade agreement terms were the hallmarks of Reaganomics, ultimately reaching the
position of bipartisan political consensus with President Bill Clinton’s declaration that the
“era of big government was over” during the 1995 State of the Union Address.13
The prosperity promised by decreased state involvement and increased open
markets has since been linked explicitly to the spread of human rights. At the
Organization of American States (OAS) Summit of the Americas held in Quebec City in
April of 2001 the leaders of North and South American governments, excluding Cuba’s
President Fidel Castro, elaborated on the relationship between prosperity and human
rights. The leaders’ joint communiqué stated the summit’s goals as:
…to renew our commitment to hemispheric integration and national and
collective responsibility for improving the economic well-being and security of
5
our people. We have adopted a Plan of Action to strengthen representative
democracy, promote good governance and protect human rights and fundamental
freedoms. We seek to create greater prosperity and expand economic
opportunities while fostering social justice and the realization of human
potential.14
This statement reflects the ways in which state leaders presently understand free trade as
a prerequisite for human rights. Integration of markets becomes the apriori condition for
the development of human rights in such a way that the former becomes the primary
focus, with the latter presumed logically to follow. Moreover, the phrasing demonstrates
the privileging of economic well-being and security while democracy, good governance,
and social justice reflect specifically EuroAmerican models. Finally, as the ‘realization of
human potential’ becomes intimately linked to this system of trade endorsed by state
leaders, the state occupies not a smaller role in a global martketplace (as the rhetoric of
neoliberalism suggests) but a central role. In particular, the right to protect this new order,
to stabilize and sustain the economy is buttressed by what Negri and Hardt term the
“right to police,” the neoliberal rationale that the use of state power, of force and security
is appropriate to preserve private property and maintain the efficacy of the market.15
“Within the discourse of globalization” as sociologist Paul Du Gay observes, “the pursuit
of national economic efficiency is the sine qua non of national security and well-being.”16
To disrupt this market is not merely to voice dissent but to challenge the foundations of
the modern nation. Similar argumentation regarding the need to delimit criticism of
neoliberalism informs Chinese responses to Western criticisms of the lack of political
reform and its human implications in China. Thus a central component to understanding
6
human rights in China and internationally is not the extent to which China internalizes
Western norms but the championing by both regimes of neoliberal rights at the expense
of universal human rights norms.
The Case of China
The historical relationship between neoliberalism and Chinese modernity provides
an alternative site through which to uncover the globally hegemomic tenets of
neoliberalism. The China of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin espouses many of the basic
assumptions of neoliberalism, specifically an emphasis on free market ideology and
disinterest in the inequalities created by international capital. Similar to the American
formulation, Chinese neoliberalism turns away from Keynesian economics (popular in
1980s China) and liberalism à la John Dewey and Harold Laski toward the classical
liberalism of F.A. Hayek, Karl Popper, and Thomas Jefferson (to name a few of the
liberal thinkers currently being translated into Chinese).17 Wang Hui, intellectual
historian and social critic, argues that since 1989 neoliberalism emerged as the dominant
discourse in China, undermining the power of alternative positions to be voiced in public
debate.18 Others such as Xudong Zhang and Wang Shaoguang date the ascendancy of
neoliberalism to 1992 with Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour.19 All three, however, agree
that 1989 marked a turning point toward a neoliberal approach that, by the early 1990s,
dominated official economics of the Chinese state as well as intellectual life. From this
perspective, China’s entry into the WTO is only the latest manifestation of a neoliberal
ascendancy in China.
Within the Chinese context, neoliberalism merges with a developmentalist
program for modernization that rejects social-democratic programs as well as
7
experiments of mass mobilization, specifically those associated with the Cultural
Revolution Decade, 1966-1976. Xudong Zhang views neoliberal discourse in China as an
endorsement of capitalist development and unequal distribution “while morally
capitalizing on the discourse’s championship of democracy and freedom.”20 Moreover,
Zhang asserts “[t]he socioeconomic and political reality in China today dictates that
neoliberalism cannot be anything but an elitist discourse; that its demand for “negative
freedom” means not withdrawal of the state from the social sphere, but its political
intervention in a different kind of sphere, namely, its selective and preferential protection
of the “fittest” in the market economy.”21
From one perspective, it is possible to apply an instrumentalist interpretation of
China’s embrace of neoliberalism in the realms of the economy and international
relations. Neoliberalism can and has been used to assert the primacy of the Chinese state
sovereignty that has informed old-fashioned power politics, while explicitly linking
national strength to the post-1978 emphasis on the primacy of capital and an
acknowledged secondary concern with human rights and social equality. From another
related perspective, Chinese neoliberal intellectuals and their counterparts in the state
apparatus participate in the articulation of new rights norms that converge with American
neoliberalism.
As we consider the extent to which the Chinese modernity of Deng Xiaoping and
Jiang Zemin now meets American modernity to consolidate a particular mode of
governance, it is necessary to consider briefly the genealogy of ‘chaos’ and ‘stability’ in
the People’s Republic of China. It is, after all, in contemporary conceptualizations of
these terms that the concomitant war on terrorism and China’s entry into the WTO
8
reinforce a particular world order, a world order that increasingly silences critical voices
and alternative modernities
In his famous 1957 speech “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions” Mao
Zedong reiterated his belief that contradictions were a prime mover of history.22 Mao
insisted that conflict was desirable and inevitable as he noted that the struggle between
capitalism and socialism had not been resolved by political revolution. Moreover, Mao
added to the list of contradictions that between ‘leadership and the led.’ He thereby
provided the rationale, later invoked at the outset of the Cultural Revolution, to question
the authority of the Leninist party as he advocated a theory of continuous revolution. This
theory shaped the latter half of both the 1950s and 1960s with Maoism reproaching the
status quo as a breeding ground for new elites, revisionism, and conservative policies.
The centrality of revolution and contradiction to this Maoist vision of history currently
comes under attack by neoliberals not only for the repressive political culture established
during the Cultural Revolution but also because revolutionary, social-democratic, and
populist alternatives are threats to neoliberal historical development.23
Because of its counter-revolutionary program, Chinese neoliberalism places great
emphasis on stability and security as cornerstones of historical progress. Contrary to the
Maoist insistence on political campaigns as essential to ensuring that economic
construction proceed along socialist lines, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin have insisted
that the economy must be managed by economic principles.24 By economic principles,
Deng and Jiang refer to a shift to private property, profit motive, and rationality.25 Class
struggle is anathema to this configuration of economics as it inserts unpredictable forces
into the economic equation; the paradigm shift now renders market order and security
9
essential to ‘socialist’ economic construction.26 The removal of class struggle from
Chinese politics began with the Third Plenum of the 11thc CCP Central Committee,
meeting in December 1978. By rendering class struggle something of the past, the CCP
Central Committee prepared the ideological and constitutional grounds for Deng’s “Four
Modernizations” and Jiang’s present day insistence on the interdependence of economic
development and political stability (rather than Maoist instability).27 While neither Deng
nor Jiang has been consistent on whether economic development begets political stability
or political stability begets economic development, they do not hesitate to point to the
example of the Soviet Union as evidence that rapid political reform is detrimental to both.
Moreover, Jiang’s repeated public declarations asserting political stability as the
precondition of economic development remind us that Jiang rose to his current leadership
position in the CCP as a result of his role in crushing the 1989 student-led
demonstrations.28 In their call for the “Fifth Modernization” (democracy) the students
embraced rights claims commensurate with the inheritance of political liberalization and
the open society. In contrast, Jiang supported the April 26th editorial that invoked the
official terms for the Cultural Revolution and labeled student demonstrations “an episode
of turmoil” and “chaos.” He thus aligned himself with those who equated political
stability with unquestioning support of the Chinese Communist Party. This editorial,
coupled with the political writings of Deng Xiaoping and later Jiang Zemin, reconfigured
the political landscape. Post-1978 China linked political activism to Maoist practices in
order to distance claims for political and civil rights from a newly valorized stability,
order, and capitalist economic growth.29
10
Jiang has shown himself adept at creating the very conditions under which
neoliberal economics can flourish. He has done this by demonstrating that rights to free
speech, association, and human life are ephemeral, disposable and inconvenient when
they dare to threaten Party authority, stability and rule. He has not hesitated to employ
rhetoric that combines neoliberalism, Party control, and Chinese particularlism. To this
end, political, legal, and environmental reforms either serve or take a backseat to
economic growth. On the legal front, the present regime is committed to strengthening
the rule of law for economic growth as it also understands, above all, law as an
instrument of social control. For instance, while substantial legal reform regarding trade
has been undertaken in conjunction with GATT and WTO applications, the 1997
amendments to the Criminal Law replaced the crime of counter-revolution with that of
‘endangering state security.’ This revision removed the intention requirement formally
necessary in charges of counter-revolution, opening the law to broader application.30 In
terms of Party reform, after an intense year of debate within China about Party structure,
one of the most fundamental reforms was the announcement on July 1, 2001 allowing
private businessmen membership in the Chinese Communist Party (a workers’ party
since its creation in 1921). The inclusion of youchan (those with property) in the CCP has
not redefined the role of the Party in society but rather formalizes the close relationship
between Party authority, private capital, and economic development.31
Jiang Zemin understands developmental authoritianism as the means through
which to avoid, in his words, the “socio-political chaos” of Indonesia, the Philippines,
and India, brought about in his assessment by the system of one-man, one-vote.32 The
system forged under Jiang’s leadership shares with neoliberalism the desire for stable
11
conditions to foster economic growth and recognition of the need for close ties with
capital. Despite the associated silencing of voices which caution unrest or agitate for
change,33 this promise of political and social order coupled with open markets
underpinned China’s accession to the WTO in September 2002.34 Accession to the WTO
marked the triumph of post-1989 political conservatism and deepening economic reforms
as China’s leadership demonstrated the commensurbility of post-1978 Chinese modernity
with international norms centered on neoliberal economics.35
Against this backdrop of the rise of socialist markets, communism with Chinese
characteristics, and bureaucratic capitalism, the topic of human rights has also emerged as
a component of the post-Maoist political landscape.36 During 1978-1980 and in the late
1980s, public debate on the topic of human rights emerged in China. These debates
included: first, the official view that championed the right of self-determination but not
“bourgeois human rights”; second, the late 1970s position that civil rights, although still
understood within a class framework, need to be fought for in the period of socialism;
and, third, in the 1980s the assertion that human rights could transcend class and
therefore individual rights were as important as collective economic, social and cultural
rights.37 The presence of human rights as a contested issue in post-1978 Chinese domestic
and foreign policy appears to lend support to the liberal claim that open markets and
rights discourse are twin pillars of modernity. However, if we consider how and when
human rights became a central issue it is evident that geopolitical struggles determined
the saliency of human rights at specific moments.38 That is, while pressure existed
(internally and externally) for reconsideration of the Maoist stance on human rights,
substantive reforms or demands for such reform were not forthcoming during the periods
12
of public debate. Western media and academic research discussed Chinese human rights
in the late 1970s. The U.S. State Department, however, did not include China in its
annual human rights report until 1979, despite American linking of human rights to
foreign policy throughout the 1970s and the formal integration of China into the human
rights regime with membership in the United Nations in 1971.39 Moreover, human rights
did not emerge as a significant issue until 1989, owing as much to the end of the Cold
War as to the Tiananmen Square massacre.40
But if 1989 taught us anything about the commitment of neoliberalism to rights, it
is that a separation exists between the rhetoric of rights and the practice of economics.
Even as the international community condemned the Tiananmen Square massacre, in the
1990s foreign investment in China increased and the Chinese economy flourished.41
Moreover, Beijing and the American business community both opposed efforts to link
human rights to trade status in 1993-4, and the combined force led to the delinking of
human rights and China’s most-favored-nation trading status by Bill Clinton in May
1994.42 This indicates that the Chinese state’s refusal to engage in human rights discourse
on a meaningful level has not proven detrimental to international acceptance.43 Rather,
the United States and the international community appear to have been persuaded that the
Chinese decision to promote economic development rights over political and civil rights
is, as both Deng and Jiang have claimed, the most pragmatic solution.44 International
irresolution on China’s human rights violations indicates that some international elites,
including Clinton, accepted a presumably temporary trade-off of human rights violations
for economic development. Importantly, with the rise of neoliberalism in the post-1989
period this formula appears to have forgotten Chinese human rights scholar Andrew
13
Nathan’s important reminder that “deprivations of freedom of speech and political action,
which may be considered necessary to keep political order – more often lead to
developmental mistakes than to developmental achievements.”45 Nathan and others
invoke the example of the famine of the Great Leap Forward as one of the most appalling
examples of the human costs of forced silence.46 Similarly, in the present era the ability
to articulate rights talk, to voice dissent amidst massive economic and social changes is
crucial to the efficacy of human rights and must not be regarded as a secondary or tertiary
stage of neoliberal teleology.
The so-called pragmatic approach to human rights, elaborated in Deng Xiaoping’s
speeches from 1982-1992, stressed economic development and welfare as prerequisites
for other rights. Deng’s position mobilized the language introduced into international
human rights by the Maoist insistence on collectivist and state-based norms. During the
initial period of UN membership (1971-1978) China asserted that human rights was an
issue for the Economic and Social Council, reflecting a division between these rights and
political and civil freedoms. Yet when Deng and Jiang call on this they do not invoke a
Maoist formulation of rights that is couched in critique of capitalism and individualism;
rather they utilize this language to promote economic development and elite freedoms
within a global marketplace. Such a position complements a conservative antirevolutionary understanding of political change as it defers political reform to the future.
Jiang Zemin’s developmental authoritarianism then derives authority from the
combination of a rhetorical privileging of collective needs (albeit understood through
neoliberal economic principles) and the power of the Party over individual rights.
14
On one hand, the triumph of collective rights over individual rights is antithetical
to the positioning of the individual at the center of the liberal polity. But on the other
hand, the deferred and secondary status accorded to political and civil rights in this
formulation echoes both neoliberal assumptions regarding open markets as well as the
rationale given for the suspension of civil rights in the war on terrorism. First, the
teleological conceptualization of progress that links economic rights to the slogan “to get
rich is glorious” resonates with neoliberal assumptions that economic development will
bring social equality.47 This line of reasoning requires that the inequalities that propel
capitalist development be overlooked on the fallacy that all will eventually prosper in this
system.48 This is the promise that the Chinese state makes to its citizens in exchange for
political loyalty, a promise many are willing to embrace. It is also the promise offered by
the U.S. government and its think tanks. Catharin Dalpino, visiting fellow at the
Brookings Institution and former US deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human
rights, and labour, sees ‘unprecedented personal freedom’ for ordinary Chinese citizens.
She attributes this freedom to ‘the effects of the economic reforms introduced in China in
the 1979, and more recently to rapid economic growth.”49 But for the hundreds of million
of unemployed, the tens of millions of rural dwellers living in poverty, the workers
denied unionization, and the large numbers of laid-off workers in the agricultural sector
since WTO entry, such claims made about the end of class struggle, international
capitalism as a social equalizer, and unprecedented personal freedom seem far removed
from their experience of this system.50
For those segments of the population who do not benefit from closer ties between
the CCP, national entrepreneurs, and transnational capital, rights appear on the national
15
political radar only when political stability is concerned. In a recent address to the sevenmember Politburo, Jiang Zemin expressed concern that the condition of poor farmers and
laid-off workers could spark instability. He stated that “all cadres in leading positions
must – from the vantage point of reinforcing the ruling position of the party – do more for
the public and help the poor.” Cadres must “promote social and economic development
and social stability.”51 The economic rights of the poor, however, entered politburo
discussion because of the fear of hordes of disillusioned unemployed contesting Party
authority and upsetting a stable market order.52 In other cases in which threats to stability
and Party rule cannot be as easily addressed via economic development, rights claims are
seen as divisive and therefore outside contemporary national, international, and
transnational needs. Those asserting rights in this context are China’s terrorists.
In recent years Beijing increased its efforts to control unrest and independence
movements in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous region.53 The ambitious western
development project used the tactic successfully implemented elsewhere of granting
economic freedom in exchange for political loyalty. These efforts have failed, however,
as the Muslim identity strengthens in the area. As a result Uighurs working against
Chinese state repression, forced cultural assimilation, and mass arrests of intellectuals,
dissidents, and supporters of self-determination have been labeled ‘terrorists.’ Even as
human rights organizations condemn Chinese state practices in Xinjiang, the Chinese
state underlines that as terrorists, fundamentalists, and/or extremists these people do not
have rights within the desired order. Those labeled terrorists and the attendant chaos they
create are dangerous to contemporary Chinese modernity. China has not been alone in
making this connection to terrorism: Russia, India, and Israel have made similar
16
statements regarding the conflicts over territorial sovereignty and self-determination in
Chechnya, Kashmir, and the Occupied Territories. In the present global war on terrorism
aspirants for political independence and geographic autonomy -- who in another era
might have been seen as “freedom fighters -- are now clearly seen a part of the larger
threat to global order and the operation of American modernity. It is in the present
situation that we see the convergence of Chinese and American conceptualizations of
world order arranged around ‘axes of evil’ and a defense of ‘civilization.’
September 11th and the War on Terrorism
One of the lessons of September 11 is that despite the argument put forward by
liberal democrats that protection of human rights has become a mark of the ‘civilized’
world,54 joining the civilized world does not entail acceptance of human rights as an
essential component of its new order.55 China’s accession to the WTO and participation
in the war on terrorism indicates as much. Economic reforms and free markets were to
lead to political reforms and free election but this clearly has not been the case. More
specifically, as the war on terrorism proceeds in the “civilized world,” with its denial of
basic rights to citizens and prisoners of war, we should reconsider the ways in which
China is part of the current “civilization.” In particular, China’s 2002 accession to the
WTO less than a week after September 11th gives new meaning to the May 2000
statement at the National Foreign Trade Council by Mike Moore, director-general of the
World Trade Organization, that “the WTO provides certainty in an uncertain world.”56
Certainty, stability, order are key concepts in the war on terrorism.
The most significant sign of Western democracies move toward a more restrictive
and authoritarian form of neoliberalism has been the enactment of legislation that has
17
restricted civil rights and suspended the usual protections of criminal procedure, allowing,
for example, the use of military tribunals to try foreign suspects despite the fact that no
official state of war exists in this so called war on terrorism. Since the terrorist attacks
some 1,200 individuals have been held in custody even though, as Yale Law Professor
Bruce Ackerman has observed, many of these individuals have languished in prison
without being publicly identified, a clear violation of due process.57 The massive USA
Patriot Act, which runs to a length well over three hundred pages, dramatically restricts
the legal protections of foreign nationals who can now be held without charge on the
suspicion of terrorism and again allows for the use of military tribunals. In Canada, Bills
C-35 and C-36 have strengthened the government’s powers of surveillance as well as
restricted demonstrations against foreign representatives at international meetings in an
attempt to further curtain anti-globalization activities. An anti-globalization protestor now
risks being designated a terrorist and thus subject to harsh official treatment and restricted
legal rights should a court find she interfered with foreign delegates at international
meetings. Similarly, in early February the European Parliament got rid of existing
extradition procedures and passed a member wide arrest warrant provision to allow for
quicker prosecution of suspected terrorists. All these bills and practices have informed
the vague and shifting treatment of Al Qaida and Taliban prisoners and their detention at
Guantanamo Bay, as well as the fierce debate among civil libertarians over the exclusion
of these individuals from the Geneva Conventions and their subsequent treatment at
Camp X-Ray.58 Moreover, these bills and practices raise other questions about who
potentially could be labeled a terrorist, and what sort of associations, forms of dissent,
and even viewpoints could be seen as threat to national and global security.
18
It is not just individual rights that have been eroded and curtailed since September
11th. Access to information, governmental transparency and openness also have come
under the veil of security and secrecy. According to a recent Washington Post article the
FBI and various other U.S. Federal Government Agencies have issued orders to destroy
and withhold previously available documents, reports and maps at university and public
libraries, as well as online documents from the Internet. As a consequence, materials
dealing with public works, utilities, industrial manufacturing, and nuclear plants have
been withdrawn from public scrutiny due to “public safety” concerns.59 Western
democracies have reacted to the threat of terrorism and challenge to public order with
language and legislation closely resembling that of China, a response that places order
ahead of rights, the state ahead of polity, control of information over access to
information. The supposed neoliberal promise of open society and small government is
thus deferred in favor of security and continuity of rule. Fifty years ago Von Hayek and
Popper advanced neoliberalism as a response to the authoritarian communitarianism of
the Soviet Union and German National Socialism. What has emerged instead at the
beginning of this new century is an authoritarian neoliberalism, in danger of becoming
commensurate with Jiang Zemin’s developmental authoritarianism, that privileges the
market over the body politic and property rights over human rights.
By placing the war on terrorism within the context of the WTO we can see how
the ascension of neoliberalism has brought supposedly clashing civilizations closer than
ever before.60 Distinctive American and Chinese modernities share a common rationale,
one seeking to cast new trade agreements, sign international commercial ventures and
above all maintain a secure and orderly market for the operation of international
19
capitalism. As Canadian legal scholar Joel Bakan has asserted, “Neoliberal premises
leave little room for political protest about economic policy. Neoliberal logic compels the
conclusion that protestors are ill-informed and irrational, driven by ideology and
ignorance rather than by reasoned understanding of economic science.”61 The Chinese
state chooses to portray Xinjiang Muslims, student demonstrators, and political dissidents
in this light. Likewise, George Bush’s government groups in the common category of
“enemy” those individuals responsible for the September 11th bombings, entire
populations living in the supposed “axis of evil” who insist upon alternative or at least
contrasting visions of “civilization”, and those of us who resist the subsuming of our
rights to defend America’s “civilization.” The war on terrorism has thus exacerbated the
tightening of security and control on the forms, types and venues of dissent characteristic
of neoliberal economic globalization. Rather than understand moves to curtail open
societies in the name of order and security to be the result of the war on terrorism, we
believe that these practices are components of the larger historical moment. What
September 11th uncovered is that we are now faced with the stark prospect that in the new
historical moment civilization means neoliberalism, and that the place of human and civil
rights is tenuous in both.
20
1
George Soros, “Toward a Global Open Society” The Atlantic January 1988. Soros’ views are deeply
indebted to the work of Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945).
2
Many, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton, argue that this is to be a ‘trickle down’ effect. For
Clinton, WTO for China represented “the most significant opportunity that we have had to create positive
change in China since the 1970s.” What these analysts seem to overlook, however, is that Chinese markets
have been open since1978 without effecting political democratic change in a substantive manner.
3
Ann Kent, China, The United Nations, and Human Rights, the Limits of Compliance (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); James V. Feinerman, “Chinese Participation in the International
Legal Order: Rogue Elephant or Team Player?” China Quarterly 141 (March 1995).
4
On China as ‘taker’ or ‘shaper’ of human rights see Andrew Nathan, “Human Rights in Chinese Foreign
Policy,” China Quarterly 139 (September 1994). On human rights after September 11th, see Michael
Ignatieff, “The Attack on Human Rights,” Foreign Affairs (November/December), 102-116.
5
Paul A. Bové, “Rights Discourse in the Age of U.S./China Trade,” New Literary History 33 (2002): 171-
187.
6
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming” Public
Culture 12.2 (2000): 291-343; Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993).
7
There has been an immense intellectual condensation around the concept of Globalization and attempts to
interpret and understand the modern world. We don’t pretend to have a diagnostic model – if such a thing is
possible – but we do endeavor to recognize certain trends and tendencies that characterize the operation of
global political economy. Arjun Appadurai ed., Globalization (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2001);
Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (New York: Columbia University Press,
1998); Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming”
Public Culture 12.2 (2000): 291-343; Fredrick Jameson and Masao Miyoshi eds., The Cultures of
21
Globalization (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1998); Saskia Sassen, Globalization and its
Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York: The Free Press, 1998); David
Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (New York: Routledge, 2001). On the
restrictions on the mobility of people see Jacqueline Bhabha, “Get Back to Where You Once Belonged’:
Identity, Citizenship and Exclusion in Europe,” Human Rights Quarterly 20.3 (1998): 592-627; Evelyn
Glenn, “Citizenship and Inequality: Historical Global Perspectives” Social Problems 47.1 (2000), 1-27.
Saskia Sassen observes that multilateral trade agreements regulate and accommodate the cross boarder
movement of professional and specialized workers at the same time they restrict the influx of other
immigrants. Sakia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents, 15-16. Once again Canada provides an
instructive example of this trend. Recent changes to Canadian Immigration policy make it much more
difficult for foreign nationals to become landed immigrants in Canada unless these individuals have high
levels of skills and education or capital.
8
Neoliberal thought was built on an intellectual foundation advanced by the so-called Vienna and Chicago
schools of economic thought as well liberal political theorists concerned with the emergence of modern
centralized states and the loss of individual autonomy. Friedrich Von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London:
Routledge, 1944); Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945); Robert
Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974). For a history of neoconservative
thought in the United States see Mark Gerson, The Neoconservative Vision: From the Cold War to the
Culture Wars (Lanham MD: Madison Books, 1996); Mary Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties (Chapel
Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided: The New
Left, The New Right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1999); Lisa McGirr,
Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001);
Jonathan Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001).
9
Gary Gerstle, “The Protean Character of American Liberalism” American Historical Review (October
1994): 1043-1073. Klaus Hansen, “The Liberal Tradition in America: A German View” Journal Of
American History 87.4 (March 2001), 1397-1408.
22
10
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Knopf,
1995); William Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II second edition (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991): James Paterson, Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996). On the impact decolonization on the American Left see: Van Gosse,
Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of the New Left (New York: Verso, 1993);
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and the Double Consciousness (Cambridge MA.: Harvard
University Press, 1993); Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and
Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Nacy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan,
Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963-1975 (New York: Owl Books, 1985).
11
For a sanguine overview of the history of neoliberalism and its emergence as the dominant model of
economic thought see: Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Commanding Heights: The Battle for the
World Economy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998); Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree:
Understanding Globalization (New York: Anchor Books, 2000). For more critical assessments see John
Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (New York: The New Press, 1998); Gary Teeple,
Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform (New York: Humanity Books, 2000).
12
Robert Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Post-War America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000); Steven Hayword, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 19641980 (Roseville CA: Forum/Prima, 2001); Peter Jenkins, Mrs. Thatcher’s Revolution: The Ending of the
Socialist Era (London: Pan Books, 1989); Gary Willis, Regan’s America: Innocents at Home (New York:
Penguin Books, 1988).
13
Richard Clayton and Jonas Pontusson, “Welfare State Retrenchment Revisited: Entitlement Cuts, Public
Sector Restructuring and Inegalitarian Trends in Advanced Capitalist Societies” World Politics 51.1 (1998),
67-98; Gary Teeple, Globalization and the Decline of Social Reform (New York: Humanity Books, 2000).
14
http://www.summit-americas.org/ (January 24, 2002).
15
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 17.
16
Paul Du Gay, “Representing ‘Globalization’: Notes on the Discursive Orderings of Economic Life” in
Paul Gilroy et al, eds., Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart Hall (London: Verso, 2000), 117.
17
Liu Junning, “Classical Liberalism Catches on in China,” Journal of Democracy 11:3 (July 2000), 48-57.
23
18
Wang Hui, “How Tiananmen Protests led to the New Market Economy,” Le Monde Diplomatique (April
2002).
19
Xudong Zhang, “The Making of the Post-Tiananmen Intellectual Field: A Critical Overview,” in Xudong
Zhang (ed), Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China (Durham: Duke University Press,
2001), 56.
20
Zhang, 26.
21
Zhang, 29.
22
Mao Zedong, “On Contradiction,” Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Zedong (Peking: Foreign
Languages Press, 1971), 85-132.
23
A good example of this type of thinking is expressed by Liu Junning. He states: “The history of China in
this century is characterized by its belated efforts to “catch up” to world trends. (Unfortunately, in the first
half of the twentieth century it caught the wave of communism, which was then on the rise worldwide.) In
the late 1980s, it attempted in vain to catch the third wave of democractization. Since today’s trend is the
decline of totalitarianism and authoritarianism and the rebirth of liberalism throughout the world, it would
be a tragedy if China once again missed the chance to join the mainstream of human civilization.” Liu
Junning, 51-52.
24
Michael Schoenhals, “Political Movements, Change, and Stability: The Chinese Communist Party in
Power,” in Richard Louis Edmonds (ed), The People’s Republic of China after 50 Years (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 33-43
25
This is periodized as the “three thought liberations,” centered around the 1978 debate of pragmatism
versus ideology, the 1992 debate of capitalism versus socialism, and the 1997 debate of private versus
public ownership. Ma Licheng and Ling Zhijun see the debates as efforts against leftists who blocked
Deng’s economic reforms. They view each as a successive erosion of the authority of key components of
the socialist economy: first, Mao; second, the planned economy; third, public ownership. Ma Licheng and
Ling Zhijun, Jiaofeng dangdai zhongguo sanci sixiang jiefang shilu [Clash: records of the three thought
liberations in modern China] (Beijing: Jinri zhongguo chubanshe, 1998).
26
For example, Li Changping, a township party secretary in Hubei province for 15 years and a
commentator on rural problems in China expressed unease at the nostalgia for the ‘good old days of Mao
24
Zedong’ among disillusioned farmers. He feels this nostalgia, if not addressed, is potentially a “dangerous
destabilising force.” Josephine Ma, “Squeezed Framers nostalgic for Mao era,” South China Morning Post
online edition, 28 January 2002.
27
Ironically, the communiqué of the Third Plenum also promised socialist democracy and socialist legality.
The subsequent 1979-80 Democracy Movement was suppressed, however. Then in his August 18, 1980
Party Politburo speech that initiated the Gengshen Reforms, Deng called for “the democratization of the
life of society as a whole.” This political reform movement – which included reinstitution of people’s
congresses and workers congresses with free election of delegates— was accompanied by the formal
abolishment from the constitution of the ‘four great freedoms’ (“the right to speak out freely, air views,
hold great debates and write big-character posters”). Maurice Meisner, The Deng Xiaoping Era, An Inquiry
into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996), chapter 7.
28
On the rise of Jiang Zemin see Bruce Gilley, Tiger on the Brink, Jiang Zemin and China’s New Elite
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). For a critique of Gilley’s (albeit qualified) acceptance of
Jiang’s developmental dictatorship, see Tina Mai Chen, Review of Bruce Gilley, Tiger on the Brink, left
history 7:1, 167-170.
29
On the significance of the April 26th editorial see Han Minzhu, Cries for Democracy, Writings and
Speeches from the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990);
Geremie Barme and Linda Jaivin (eds), New ghosts, old dreams : Chinese rebel voices (New York : Times
Books, 1992),; Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds), Popular protest and political culture in
modern China : learning from 1989 (Boulder : Westview Press, 1992).
30
Pitman Potter, “The Chinese Legal System: Continuing Commitment to State Power,” in Edmonds, 111-
121; Richard Louis Edmonds, “The Environment in the People’s Republic of China 50 Years On,” in
Edmonds, 78-87. Also Donald C. Clarke and James V. Feinerman, “Antagonistic Contradictions: Criminal
Law and Human Rights in China,” China Quarterly 141 (March 1995), 135-54.
31
The amendments to the constitution put forth for endorsement at the16th CCP Congress this year
transform the CCP into a party for all Chinese people. Entrepreneurs and intellectuals will have the same
status as the working class. The CCP asserts that the wuchan (class without property) is not being devalued
in this process and that the CCP simply wishes to include all citizens, including those with wealth. This
25
clearly contradicts Marxist principles and analysis of the power relations inherent in a capitalist system.
This party reform does not bode well for social equality or workers’ rights. From another perspective,
however, some analysts believe that it may redefine the role of the People’s Liberation Army because the
PLA no longer will be called upon to suppress anti-communist elements. This then alters the role of the
PLA from class struggle to national defence and, optimistically, would entail a transfer of the military from
a party to state organ. Less optimistically, the PLA will be called upon to suppress anti-capitalist forces, as
has been seen in the use of troops to quell labour unrest in factories.
32
Willy Wo-Lap Lam, “After 80 Years CCP looks to future,” CNN.com/WORLD, 13 June 2001. Jiang has
explicitly stated that he favors the elitist systems in Singapore and Malaysia.
33
For example, in December 2000 authorities distributed a list of 11 well-known scholars and instructed
Guangdong newspapers and journals not to carry their articles. The blacklist included a number of liberal
scholars including He Qinglian who presented an article at a Hong Kong academic conference that upset
the Chinese authorities. In this article she argued that as Chinese society changes social class conflicts will
worsen. China News Digest, “Authorities Order Ban on Publications of Liberal Scholars,” 17 December
2000.
34
The initial application for accession to the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade
Organization was submitted December 7, 1995.
35
On the relationship between International Human Rights and Trade Regimes see Caroline Dommen,
“Raising Human Rights Concerns in the World Trade Organization: Actors, Processes and Possible
Strategies,” Human Rights Quarterly 24 (2002), 1-50. Dommen outlines two different ways in which
human rights groups have attempted to integrate the WTO into an international human rights regime: one,
the use of WTO enforcement mechanisms to enforce Western human rights standards on other counties;
two, a focus on WTO rules and their application to limit states’ possibilities to provide the conditions for
realization of human rights. Dommen is primarily concerned with the second approach.
36
Some suggest that Mao Zedong also was concerned with human rights the term renquan is used
infrequently in the Maoist period. Mao’s conception of rights differs fundamentally from rights as
mobilized by Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and the international human rights community. Mao understood
human rights to be a product of the capitalist era of history and therefore linked to class struggle. Mao
26
argued that socialism was not about individual freedoms but about social and economic equality. In
practice, this meant the denial of basic human rights in various campaigns including the Anti-Rightist
campaign of 1957, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Also see Yuan-li Wu et al.,
Human Rights in the People’s Republic of China (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1988).
37
For a discussion of these debates see Ann Kent, China, the United Nations, and Human Rights, The
Limits of Compliance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), chapter one. Also Xiao
Weiyun, Luo Haocai, and Wu Xieying, “Makesi zhuyi zenmayang kan ‘renquan’ wenti,” (How Marxism
Views the Question of Human Rights), Hongqi (Red Flag) (1979) 5; Gongren ribao (Workers Daily) 22
March 1979.
38
This also is true of the post-1989 development of human rights theory in China. At the 1993 Bangkok
and Vienna Conferences, China adapted its position in order to assume leadership of the “Third World” at
Bangkok and “the developing world” at Vienna. See Kent, China, the United Nations, and Human Rights,
chapter 5.
39
Ming Wan, Human Rights and Chinese Foreign Relations, Defining and Defending National Interests
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).
40
Roberta Cohen, “People’s Republic of China, The Human Rights Exception,” 9 Human Rights Quarterly
(1987), 447-549.
41
Foreign investment slowly entered China in the 1980s and gained full force in the 1990s. Since 1993
China has been the second largest recipient in the world of foreign direct investment, behind only the
United States. By early 1999, foreign direct investment in joint ventures and wholly foreign-owned
companies exceeded one-quarter of a trillion US dollars. From 1980-89, China’s GDP increased at an
average annual rate of 9.7 percent. The recession of 1989 during which GNP declined to a growth rate of
3.9 percent from 11.2 percent in 1988 was due to the monetary policies of Zhao Ziyang introduced in late
1988. From 1990-94, average GDP growth was greater than 11 percent. World Development Report 1991
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), Ajit Singh, “The Plan, the Market, and Evolutionary
Economic Reform in China,” UNCTAD Discussion Papers, No. 76 (December 1993), Nicholas Lardy,
China’s WTO Membership Policy Brief #47 (April 1999), Brookings Institution.
42
Catharin E. Dalpino, “Human Rights in China,” Policy Brief #50 (June 1999), Brookings Institution.
27
43
Official human rights studies began in China in 1990 and resulted in the formation of the China Society
for Human Rights Studies (CSHRS) in 1993. While formerly a nongovernmental agency this group (with a
membership drawn from retired government officials, scholars, and members of the Xinhua News Agency)
acts primarily as an extension of the propaganda department of the state. The threefold mission of CSHRS
is communicating with foreign human rights NGOs, establishing Chinese theories of human rights, and
upholding Chinese sovereignty internationally. While human rights is the topic of numerous articles in the
official and nonofficial press, articles generally take one of three tactics: one, dismiss allegations of human
rights abuses; two, present human rights discourse as interference in domestic politics and a tool of Western
imperialism; and, three, counter with reports of human rights abuses in the United States and other Western
countries to demonstrate the superior record of China.
44
Kenneth Lieberthal includes among the six core premises guiding U.S.-China relations: one, “The United
States and Asia benefit from the type of stability that comes from China’s meeting the needs and demands
of its people. Major governmental breakdown in the People’s Republic of China would produce tragedy at
home and severe problems for the region and the United States.” Two, “Market-based economic
development – and the associated formation of a middle class and increased integration with the outside
world – will, over the long run, produce liberalizing effects in China.” U.S. Policy Toward China. Policy
Brief #72 (March 2001), Brookings Institute.
45
Andrew Nathan, China’s Transition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 252.
46
For example, Amartya Sen, “Human Rights and Economic Achievements,” in Joanne R. Bauer and
Daniel A. Bell (eds), The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 88-99.
47
For a summary and critique of this position see Yash Ghai, “Rights, Social Justice, and Globalization in
East Asia,” in Joanne R. Bauer and Daniel A. Bell (eds), The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 241-263. Michael Ignatieff cautions
against the critique that human rights acts as “the moral arm of global capitalism” because, he asserts, this
argument misunderstands the relationship between free market globalists and human rights internationalists.
We agree with Ignatieff that these two groups are often in conflict with each other as the former, when
concerned with rights, represents what we have called “neoliberal rights norms” and the latter an
28
international human rights regime. Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatory (Princeton
and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 71.
48
For a discussion of the labour rights abuses (understood as human rights abuses) that have arisen in
conjunction with economic development, see Anita Chan, “Labor Standards and Human Rights: The Case
of Chinese Workers under Market Socialism,” Human Rights Quarterly 20.4 (1998), 886-904.
49
Dalpino, 2.
50
Hu Angang, director of the Centre for Chinese Studies (run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences at
Tsinghua University), uses the phrase “one country, two systems, four societies” to refer to the large gaps
between urban and rural peoples. His four societies refer to farming, manufacturing, services, and
knowledge. Staff Reporter, “Society living in separate systems,” South China Morning Post online edition,
6 February 2002.
51
“Focus on agriculture as farms feel WTO pinch,” South China Morning Post online edition, 6 February
2002; Reuters (Beijing), “Jiang says helping poor key to stability,” South China Morning Post online
edition, 6 February 2002.
52
This fear was borne out in the Daqing Oilfield strikes of March of this year that involved up to 10,000
workers demanding unpaid wages and the resignations of officials. Clashes with police and casualties have
occurred. The Daqing Oil Company defends lay-offs by directly linking them to entry into the WTO and
the need to be competitive. Over the last three years approximately 86, 000 workers have been laid off (just
under 49% of the workforce).
53
Xinjiang has a population of approximately 17 million, including 8 million Muslim Uighurs. It borders
on Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Chinese Tibet.
54
Jack Donnelly, “Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization,” 74 International Affairs (1998): 1-24.
55
Rosemary Foot argues that China has been drawn into rights discourse, that Chinese identity is
increasingly linked to this discourse, and that we can be optimistic about shifts accompanying the
deepening of these discourses in China. Rights Beyond Borders: The Global Community and the Struggle
Over Human Rights in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
56
Mike Moore, The WTO and the new economy, 22 May 2000 (New York),
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm31_e.htm
29
57
Bruce Ackerman, “Don’t Panic” London Review of Books 24.3 (February 2002).
58
Mark A. Drumbl, “Judging the 11 September Terrorist Attack,” Human Rights Quarterly 24 (May 2002):
323-360.
59
Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Risks Prompt U.S. to Limit Access to Data: Security, Rights Advocates Clash
over Need to Know” Washington Post Sunday, February 24, 2002, A01.
60
This is clearly the message promoted by the Chinese press and propaganda department as seen in the
reporting on George W. Bush’s recent visit to Beijing and recent publications including the photo book
released February 2002, “30 Years of Sino-US Relations," compiled by the Information Office of the State
Council and co-published by the Xiyuan Publishing House and China Intercontinental Press.
61
Joel Bakan, in Wesley Pue ed., Pepper in Our Eye: The APEC Affair (Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 2000), 83.
30