LAGO FUTALAUFQUEN:

concern and as an acceptable term of reference for Chinese politics, rather than continuing to insist that China does not have human rights problems. It has also declared that the Chinese human rights situation may be discussed both at home and abroad. For example, it had received two Australian Human Rights Delegations by November 1992. The Chinese government has even allowed the establishment of a “non-governmental” human rights organisation, “The Chinese Society for the Study of Human Rights”, headed by the former Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Youth League. In addition, and most significantly, the Chinese government has drawn up an elaborate human rights theory of its own. As illustrated above, the line of argumentation in this theory is based on cultural relativism and China’s status as a developing country. It portrays China’s human rights situation as one of a developing country with its own unique culture and identifies China as only one of those developing countries facing the Western nations’ unfair treatment on the issue of human rights. China’s image, as created in the theory, is far from one of a communist country confronting the bourgeois West in a life-and-death ideological battle.

As far as China is concerned, it is indeed a clever move to base its human rights theory on its status as a developing country with its own unique culture. The Chinese communist regime is aware that it would be only further isolated should it fight “peaceful evolution” by resorting to traditional communist doctrines,3 9 and/or by

In the process of formulating Chinese official theory of human rights, traditional communist doctrines about human rights were proposed, but did

not prevail. See Guangming Ribao (Enlightenment Daily, hereafter G R J ,

forging outright ideological alliance(s) with whatever is left of the communist world to confront the “old system” head-on. Ideological isolation could reinforce China’s isolation in international relations caused by the end of its critical role in superpower relations. The regime has instead seen the wisdom of turning an otherwise holy war between the two social systems into part of the open-ended wrangling between the developing and developed countries over human rights. By so doing, it intends to strengthen its position in its encounters with the West and distract the Chinese people’s attention away from the existing political system. Indeed, since early 1992 the Chinese government has behaved as if it is a leading spokesman for the whole developing world on the issue of human rights, sparing no energy in criticising Western nations’ unfair policies towards human rights issues in the developing countries.40

China’s realism in its anti-”peaceful evolution” strategy has determined that in Southeast Asia, China would rather enthusiastically associate itself with capitalist ASEAN on the issue of human rights, as to be seen in the following section, than ally itself with the communist regime in Vietnam to put up a last-ditch ideological fight against “international imperialists”. With the end of the Cold War, Vietnam has also had to fight “peaceful evolution”. Calling China’s attention to their ideological commonality, Vietnam had suggested that bilateral relations be improved quickly on this

See the Chinese representatives’ speeches at international forums on human rights, as reported in R R . February 7, 1992, p7. See also R R . February 3, 1992, p7; and R R . June 5, 1992, p5.

b asis.41 Indeed, some of Vietnam’s leaders had even counted on this commonality to give Vietnam some respite in the Spratly d isp u te.42 However, the Chinese communist regime has neither publicly emphasised this commonality, nor tried to forge an ideological partnership with its former comrade-cum-brother, with whom China formed an alliance “as close as lips and teeth” - in Mao’s words - in fighting the American imperialists, to counter “peaceful evolution”. In fact, the process of normalisation of Sino- Vietnam relations started to gain strong momentum from as late as the end of 1991. During the negotiations on normalisation, China repeatedly demanded that Vietnam become “reasonable” in its attitudes towards the Cambodian and Spratly issues. Michael Yahuda observed that when Vietnamese Party and State leaders Do Muoi and Vo Van Kiet visited China in November 1991, the Vietnamese media sought to identify common ground with China on the basis of resistance to “peaceful evolution”. However, the Chinese side studiously refrained from mentioning the issue in public. The tone of the Chinese media on the visit was strictly business-like, with the communique on restoring relations describing the atmosphere of their talks as no more than “friendly and candid”.4 3 At least until the end of 1992, among all the regional countries having sovereignty claims over the Spratlys, it was Vietnam, rather than Malaysia and the Philippines, which suffered most under China’s assertive Spratly policy, as described in Chapter Four.

41 Zhu Zhenming, “Yuenan duiwai zhengce de tiaozhen he duiwai guanxi de

bianhua (Readjustment o f Vietnam ’s foreign policy and changes of

Vietnam’s foreign relations)”, D Y . No. 1, 1991, p29, p31.

42 Nayan Chanda, "Treacherous shoals", FEER. 13 August 1992, p i7.

43 Michael Yahuda, “China: Will It Strengthen or Weaken the Region?” p38.

There is a serious risk for the CCP in its human rights theory. Previously, the CCP claimed that its one-party dictatorship, or the system of “ socialist dem ocratic centralism ” , represented the ultimately best form of democracy for the people, and was far superior to Western democracy. Thus there was absolutely no need to change “dow nw ard” . For exam ple, when the C arter administration embarked on a human rights foreign policy, Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua claimed at a gathering of senior Chinese diplomats in 1977 that China’s socialist system granted maximum democratic rights to over ninety percent of the populace while necessarily denying a handful of class enemies political freedom, whereas Western governments, representing the interests of the bourgeoisie, could not possibly vest rights in the people.4 4 However, the CCP’s new human rights theory has dangerously broadened the scope of theoretical m anoeuvrability for pro­ democracy activists both at home and in the West. They can now argue, for example, that Chinese culture is not incompatible with liberal democracy, as seen in Taiwan’s political democratisation, that current human rights policy in China does not represent a good balance between international standards and Chinese realities, and even that universal human rights standards should not be compromised by China’s cultural and economic conditions. This reminds one of the process of democratization of Taiwanese politics. When the KMT imposed its one-party dictatorship in Taiwan, it claimed that this was compelled by certain necessities, especially

4^ “Huang Hua’s Report on the World Situation”, IS., Vol. XIV, No. 2, February 1978, pp81 -82.

that of dealing with the communist threat from China. Thus KMT itself laid a theoretical foundation for future bargaining from pro­ democracy forces both within and outside KMT. The problem for the CCP is that it has no better option.

So far as ASEAN is concerned, since early 1991 human rights has become a more irritating issue in its relations with the West. During the Cold War, wider political and strategic interests shaped the objectives of Western diplomacy in Southeast Asia. The governments of the ASEAN countries aligned themselves squarely with, or at least supported, the USA against the Soviet expansion in the region. The problem between ASEAN and the West on the issue of human rights was manifested largely in occasional criticisms made by the US Congress and State Department of some aspects of the authoritarian politics of some ASEAN members, such as the arbitrary arrest and detention of political opponents in Marcos’ Philippines and Indonesia. A telling example of the West’s lukewarm attitude towards human rights abuses committed by an ASEAN country was its indifference towards the massacres of alleged Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members following the abortive September 30 coup of 1965 in Indonesia. Another example was Australia's remarkably ambiguous approach toward the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1976, which violated the principle of self-determination of the people of East Timor and saw indiscriminate violations of human rights committed by the occupying Indonesian armed forces.4 5

45 Ian Russell, “Australia’s Human Rights Policy: From Evatt to Evans”, in Ian Russell, Peter Van Ness, Beng-Huat Chua, eds., Australia’s Human Rights

With the end of the Cold War, the ASEAN countries have borne the brunt of Western assertiveness on the issue of human rights. As one Malaysian scholar has pointed out, with the triumph of liberal democracy over communism and the victory of Western forces against Iraq in the Gulf, Western nations have been convinced even more of the superiority and morality of their values and systems, and have now sought to more aggressively assert them over the rest of the world.46 Western nations have increased their criticism of human rights situations in the ASEAN countries and attempted to conditionalise their economic assistance to observance of human rights. For example, Indonesia has been condemned by Western nations for human rights violations in East Timor. In response to the Dili killings in November 1991, the US Congress in October 1992 forced suspension of US aid to Indonesia for military education and training, the Netherlands cut its economic aid to Indonesia, and Portugal vetoed a new ASEAN-EC economic cooperation agreement. In March 1993, the Clinton administration joined Portugal in a UN Human Rights Commission resolution condemning Indonesia’s human rights violations in East Timor. The USA has also started to consider whether Indonesia, accused by Western critics of violating

D ip lo m a cy (Department of International Relations, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1992), pp24-25.

46 Mohamed Jawhar, "Southeast Asia in the nineties: Challenges and

Response", paper submitted to the Asian Peace Research Association

Conference 1992 on Peace and Security in the Asia Pacific Region: post cold

war problems and prospects (University of Canterbury: Christchurch, New

workers’ rights, should be deprived of preferential tariff treatment under the US generalised scheme of preferences.4 7

Amongst the ASEAN countries, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore feel most vulnerable to the Western human rights crusade. Generally, into the 1990s, human rights violations - by Western standards - in these three countries are more serious than in the Philippines and Thailand, with Indonesia representing the worst case of human rights abuses in non-communist East Asia. In Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, severe restrictions on individual political freedoms are a function of the ruling doctrines, and the governments themselves are the major violators of basic human rights. However, in the Philippines and Thailand, particularly in the former, human rights violations are not justified by the governing doctrines per se and in most cases are not committed by governments. Human rights have strong constituencies and various non-governmental human rights organisations are allowed to function legally in the two countries. Thus while the short-lived Thai junta was toppled immediately after it brutally suppressed student protesters in 1992, the Suharto regime has easily got away with the Dili massacre.

Clearly, in the post-Cold War era, the issue of human rights has become one that Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore cannot avoid. There has emerged an urgent need for them to articulate their policy approaches and responses to human rights. Without a pro-