Nations must learn how not to catch a tiger by its tail
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How can we talk about Tibet without referring to the region's sorry feudal past, interventionist US and British political machinations, CIA funding of the Dalai Lama and so on?
How can we talk about US arms sales to Taiwan without referring to a half-century of US weapon sales, set in motion by a well-oiled anti-China lobby, without considering its divisive influence, not to mention the corruption and military profiteering involved?
On the question of Iraq, China proved to be on the right side of history. China did not join the trumped up "Coalition of the Willing" that cheered the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, setting in motion a long, dirty war based on lies, deception, vendettas and opportunism.
Given the precedent of Iraq, how can the US and Britain chastise China for not chastising Iran when the US and British have a documented history of meddling both in Iraq and Iran, including the overthrow of governments, installation of pro-West puppet governments and exploitation of oil?
How can the US State Department and NSA, in cooperation with Google, assume the high-ground in complaints about mail-prying and information control in China when Google itself has become one of the world's biggest invaders of personal privacy and human rights with its Orwellian surveillance capabilities, aggressive data-mining and creation of individual files and advertising profiles, based in large part on the science of reading other people's mail?
How can the US lecture China on the proper way to handle militant Muslims in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, when it is bombing and shooting militant Muslims on a daily basis in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
What about human rights? History shows that every nation has at times been callous in its treatment of its people. There are human rights problems and judicial injustices both in China and the US that need to be addressed.
But the US, which incarcerates more people for longer prison terms than any other country in the world, including jail for non-violent offences, is not in a good position to do the talking. Nor do anti-communist agitators and National Endowment of Democracy funded groups promote honest dialogue. Instead, the neo-conservative noisemakers use their phony high-dudgeon righteousness as a needle to prod China.
But human rights is important, and independent groups not attached to the US government such as Amnesty International and Duihua, as well as lawyers and lawmakers in China, have a role to play. More to the point, over-aggressive policing and unfair judicial decisions, whether in the US or China, are national problems, even a matter of national shame, but not true bilateral issues.
Good foreign policy, like a good human rights policy, starts at home. The US and China both would be well advised to engage in some introspection and reflection, attending first and foremost to problems of their own making, problems in their own backyards, before pointing fingers at one another and spoiling the peace and prosperity that so many worked so hard at so much cost to achieve.
The author is professor of media studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Doshisha University, Japan.
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