China\u2019s President Xi Jinping visited Davos and the United Nations office in Geneva this month, portraying himself as a defender of global order on issues ranging from climate change to peace, as the world anticipates the new Trump administration. <\/p>\n
Maya Wang
China Researcher
\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bFEBRUARY 1, 2017 3:30PM EST<\/p>\n
China\u2019s President Xi Jinping visited Davos and the United Nations office in Geneva this month, portraying himself as a defender of global order on issues ranging from climate change to peace, as the world anticipates the new Trump administration. Some lapped up this latest \u201csoft power\u201d charm offensive: World Economic Forum President Klaus Schwab lauded Xi\u2019s \u201cresponsible and responsive leadership<\/a>,\u201d while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres praised China for being \u201ca central pillar of multilateralism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n It is true that the Chinese government can excel on important imperatives: Over decades it has drastically reduced maternal mortality<\/a>, and promoted mass literacy, to cite two examples. But in many realms it has been neither responsible nor responsive. This is largely because people across China have little say in public policies, and those who try to make their voices heard are punished\u2014leaving Beijing able to pursue policies that have had devastating human, economic, and political consequences.<\/p>\n China imposed the \u201cone-child\u201d policy in 1979 in response to a population boom, and despite considerable opposition, the draconian policy wasn\u2019t repealed until 2015. Its destructive legacy lives on: Apart from the trauma inflicted across society, it has left a skewed sex ratio, and a shrinking labor force to support an aging society. Even after the policy was dropped, the government of President Xi\u2014who often portrays himself as a global champion of women\u2019s rights\u2014still plays adeeply intrusive role<\/a> in women\u2019s reproductive choices and bodily autonomy, limiting both the number of children a couple can have and the intervals at which they can have them.<\/p>\n While President Xi vows to lead the world on climate change, his government\u2019s approach to tackling environmental issues at home is premised upon opacity and muzzling public discussion. The government first praised\u2014but then censored\u2014\u201cUnder the Dome,\u201d a documentary on pollution that became too popular in 2015. In February 2016, authorities responded to appalling air quality not by toughening its lax environmental enforcement<\/a>, but by raising the threshold for issuing the most serious \u201cred\u201d pollution warning in February 2016.<\/p>\n President Xi preached openness in Davos, but his domestic policies aggressively impose the opposite<\/a>. His government has tightened control over already very limited free speech across platforms from universities to the internet and the mass media. In 2013, the Chinese Communist Party issued \u201cDocument No.9<\/a>,\u201d warning party members against a whole range of \u201cWestern\u201d values including democracy, human rights, a free press, and even neo-liberalism. The Chinese government\u2019s hostility towards these values was once reiterated when its top justice, Zhou Qiang<\/a>, ardently opposed judicial independence in recent state press articles. Xi\u2019s government has also waged a nationwide crackdown on human rights activists and lawyers, torturing<\/a> and imprisoning<\/a> them, often labeling them as agents of \u201cforeign governments\u201d bent on subverting China.<\/p>\n President Xi appears to be hoping that his international audiences will simply be charmed into ignoring the fact that his claims of successful leadership rests at least in part on these serious, state-sponsored human rights violations.<\/p>\n But in addition to ignoring those abuses, some international actors appeared willing to enable them. The Swiss government curtailed protests by restricting their duration during Xi\u2019s visit to its capital, andarrested dozens<\/a> of Swiss nationals for defying them. The World Economic Forum organizers did not allow<\/a> anyone to ask President Xi questions during his appearance there. The same happened at the UN in Geneva\u2014where human rights are a central concern, and where the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is based\u2014Xi spoke at an invitation-only event in which no civil society representatives were allowed. The UN went as far as telling<\/a> many of its staff members to \u201cwork from home\u201d to \u201censure security.\u201d It\u2019s no wonder President Xi seemed to feel right at home in these venues\u2014for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n The unease felt by many around the world for President Trump\u2019s ascendency should not translate into complacency about Xi Jinping\u2019s China. Many of the solutions to global problems require strong human rights protections, and leaders like Trump and Xi<\/a> threaten to pay them little mind. As China takes the world stage, governments, institutions, and people around the world will need to push hard to challenge its pledges, not whitewash its abusive record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China\u2019s President Xi Jinping visited Davos and the United Nations office in Geneva this month, portraying himself as a defender of global order on issues ranging from climate change to peace, as the world anticipates the new Trump administration. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}