Of all the world’s organizations with their many diverse aims, which might you most expect to support a discussion between Brussels and Beijing over topics like the treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans and refugees? Amnesty International? Human Rights Watch? The World Uyghur Congress, perhaps?
All good guesses. All totally wrong. Each of these organizations, along with others, has signed a blistering letter condemning the 39th Human Rights Dialogue between the European bloc and China, calling for its suspension. Not for the first time, they cite the lack of concrete objectives, the bright-as-day failure to deliver progress over at least the past decade and the bounty of more meaningful options, like examining ways to prosecute suspected proponents of crimes against humanity.
Yet the dialogue is more than just talk for talk’s sake. As pointed out by the former China director at Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson, it serves as an attempt “to keep human rights out of all other conversations” and thereby allow business as usual in other spheres. Both parties can now congratulate themselves on their mutual engagement, put aside any icky topics for another few months and discuss all the ways they can make money together instead.
This is in line with the logic that seems to currently prevail in the West: insulating conversations about trade and the green transition from the Chinese Communist Party’s mistreatment of the people under its rule, while deflecting criticism of the approach by claiming that it is important to work together with China on matters where we agree.
Hence, just as the 39th Human Rights Dialogue had wrapped up, the Fifth E.U.-China High Level Environment and Climate Dialogue was held on June 18. In Europe’s read out for the event, the sole nebulous allusion to the fact that, somewhere in the background, entire peoples are being subjugated, was “that while there are areas where EU and China do not see eye to eye, green should stay the colour of their cooperation.”
On the surface, the tactic looks sensible. Why create conflict at every turn when Rome literally burns and a moderate political future for democracies could depend on economic well being amid a resurgence of the far right? However, by siloing human rights from talks on other matters, the West both weakens its own bargaining position and threatens to derail its goals.
First up, there is little point in disconnecting the way people are treated from climate talks, because the Chinese Communist Party is just as terrified by the prospect of extreme weather as anybody else, perhaps even more so, and therefore has to cooperate.
Yes, as the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, its policies are hopelessly inconsistent, but one doesn’t even have to fully believe in global warming to fear it, and Chinese history has intimately informed the country’s government of the interplay between changing weather patterns and state instability, which is what really keeps its leaders awake at night. Especially if you keep reminding them.
With a population whose loyalty is far from guaranteed, masses of flood-prone infrastructure in need of maintenance, dictator vanity projects vulnerable to natural disasters, a looming food security deficit and a tanking economy that needs the rest of the world to take up its excess green goods, it is not in quite such an unassailable position to dictate the basis of climate collaboration as many think.
Moreover, until the forced labor and broadscale environmental implications of Beijing’s renewable energy drive become central to climate change talks, humankind may only be exchanging an inequitable fossil fuel society with a fatal heating problem for one characterized by slavery dependence and ecosystem collapse. If that argument is not convincing for why rights are inextricable from energy discussions, then the fact that Beijing censors the climate debate for nearly 20% of the Earth’s population really ought to be.
And it is not just rising temperatures where topics like the dark side of supply chains should be seen as negotiation aids rather than encumbrances. The E.U. has opened a host of inquiries into unfair trade practices in a wide range of sectors including rail, solar, tinplate steel, wind turbines and electric vehicles, arguing that the Chinese government is subsidizing companies and thereby rendering European firms unable to compete. Rights rarely seem to be highlighted in the conversation, however.
This is a mistake not only because some subsidies are paid for labor transfers involving Turkic peoples who reportedly have little choice in the matter, but because low prices are also derived from coercively heaving people out of their homes in places like Tibet and East Turkestan (Xinjiang) and then raiding the ancestral lands they leave behind for cheap materials and energy sources.
The E.U. hamstrings itself by not bringing this matter to the fore. While China can easily root around Europe to find counterexamples of state aid for companies and strike fear of reprisals into politically powerful lobbies like the French brandy industry if Brussels raises tariffs too high on Chinese goods, it cannot credibly go toe-to-toe with Europe on basic rights, despite some of the latter’s members not exactly being unblemished in that regard.
A competition-leveling tax could be raised on imports from China on the basis of the opacity of the sourcing for their components, labor conditions and extractive policies in locations where people lack self-determination, a move that would signal greater fairness towards those who actually make the items that Europeans consume and compel the Chinese government towards the enablement of credible supply-chain auditing.
So, when the European Union plays China’s game of walling human rights off from other issues, it both diminishes the power of the millions who need its support to be able to speak up for themselves in a safe environment and renders its own strongest negotiating cards obsolete.
Far away in her jail cell, as a leading voice of the Chinese #MeToo movement, Sophia Huang Xueqin (黃雪琴) certainly knows there is no such thing as an appropriate or inappropriate time to talk about ongoing mass injustice. Thus, the joint Human Rights Dialogue between Brussels and Beijing is superfluous. Presently, every conversation with China should be about human rights.
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