President Obama told a group of students at a townhall forum in Jamaica that he thinks human-rights violators should be publicly tsk-tsk’d, and in the next breath said the rise of China as a superpower is a fantastic thing for the world.
“Every society, as I said, is at a different phase in development, in their own history; they have different cultural traditions. And so the way I think about it is, is that the United States has certain core values and principles that we believe deeply in. And we don’t necessarily expect that every country will formulate how to secure those ideals and those principles,” Obama said. “…And that doesn’t mean that we won’t work with a country that doesn’t precisely abide by those principles, but we will still speak out.”
“There are times where a country is clearly engaging in activities that are so egregious that it’s not culturally specific; it typically has to do with a government wanting to exert control over people and oppress them. And in those instances, I think it is entirely appropriate for us to speak out forcibly and, in some cases, to not do business with them.”
He gave as an example North Korea.
“And then there are some issues that may be culturally specific, but you know what, I think they’re wrong. I won’t — we’re not going to try to force that country to change, but I may try to shame that country,” Obama said. “…There are times where we’ve got allies who are not observing all the human rights we would like, and there are times where there are countries that are adversaries of ours where they do some things quite well. And you can’t expect us, or any country, to be perfectly consistent in every circumstance.”
The president said he’ll “use different tools depending on what we think will bring about the most change.”
“In some cases, it will just be a diplomatic statement; in some cases, it may be serious enough that we will organize — try to organize the United Nations or other multilateral forums to speak out against certain practices. In some cases, it may be so egregious that we need to sanction them, and we will try to organize the international community in that way.”
If it gets so bad that genocide starts happening, Obama continued, we may “need to intervene because this government is so brutal and so unacceptable that we need to protect people.”
“But we do that in the context of an international conversation so that we’re not simply making these decisions — or we’re not so arrogant that we’re not paying attention to what the rest of the world community is saying,” he said.
Two questions later, Obama was asked about the rise of human-rights violator China.
“It is U.S. official policy and it is my strong belief that we should welcome China’s peaceful rise. What China has done in the last 20, 30 years is remarkable. More people have been lifted out of poverty in a shorter period of time than perhaps any time in human history,” Obama said of the communist behemoth. “And that’s good for the world. I mean, we should be more fearful of a poorer, collapsing China than a China that is participating in the world marketplace and trading and is getting along with its neighbors and part of the international order, because there are a really large number of Chinese people and we want them to be doing well.”
“So our policy is not to fear China’s peaceful rise. Where we get concerned with China is where it is not necessarily abiding by international norms and rules, and is using its size and muscle to force countries into subordinate positions. And that’s the concern we have around maritime issues.”
Human Rights Watch’s report on China stresses myriad continuing and often worsening conditions for those practicing free expression or worshipping as they choose. Forced abortions, communist “reprogramming,” and persecution of journalists and cyberdissidents continue unabated.
“China’s human rights activists often face imprisonment, detention, torture, commitment to psychiatric facilities, house arrest, and intimidation,” the group notes. One of those still in custody is Obama’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo.
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