China and Human Rights

This blog post will significantly depart from the topic of the previous ones, as yesterday, I attended a presentation my several practitioners of Falun Gong. Falun Gong is notable as it is a major religious group in China, and one that has been severely persecuted. Even if one allows for the reports to be grossly exaggerated, these persecutions would still be a terrible human rights issue.

Unfortunately, as much as I wish we could, there seems to be little we can do about this issue. While the United States could impose sanctions, or attempt to use other economic methods, we need China as much or more as they need us. Furthermore, they hold huge amount of US treasury Debt, and you have to assume, that they would use these as an economic weapon against us. The United Nations would seem to be another non-starter as far as dealing with China is concerned as, China holds a security counsel veto, meaning it would be able to prevent any resolutions against itself. And even if the situation were bad enough to warrant military action, something I believe is not true, the US, even with NATO support, would most likely be unable to defeat China in a conventional war, especially with all of our other military commitments. Therefore, I must conclude that there is very little that the world can do to influence China, on this or other internal policies.

With that in mind, the only real solution seems to be an internal one. In my opinion, the solution seems to lie in the resource often followed by the oppressed, civil disobedience. Saint Augustine said that "An unjust law is no law at all," and this has been the guiding tenet of civil disobedience since. In the 1920s and 1930s, Gandhi used civil disobedience to push for Indian independence, a goal that he ultimately achieved. Other examples include Martin Luthor King Jr. and the American civil rights movement and Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. It is my hope that these techniques may also be applied in this case, though they may prove less effective in communist controlled China than in the democratic nations that these movements have previously been used in.

In conclusion, China's human rights practices are terrible, Falun Gong's treatment is only one element of a wide problem. However, the international community, including the United States, seems to have little leverage to affect this situation, though that should not stop us from using what we have. Thus the majority of the solution mus come from inside China, and the best hope for that is civil disobedience.