Clinton’s China Pose Tough on human rights on Twitter but not as Secretary of State.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/clintons-china-pose-1443569160
Hillary Clinton posted on Twitter Sunday that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was “shameless” for presiding over a United Nations women’s rights meeting in New York while his regime persecutes feminists at home. She’s right, and Chinese state media condemnations of her “ignominious shenanigans” underscore Beijing’s sensitivity on the point. But where was this conviction when Mrs. Clinton was U.S. Secretary of State?
Hillary the presidential candidate wants to be seen as tough both on China and women’s rights. In April, after Chinese authorities detained five feminist activists during a political meeting in Beijing, she called the move “inexcusable.” The women were soon released on bail but remain under surveillance as “criminal suspects.”
In a June campaign video, Mrs. Clinton highlighted her tough 1995 speech at a U.N. conference in Beijing, the 20th anniversary of which was marked this weekend with Mr. Xi presiding. “It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food or drowned or suffocated simply because they are born girls,” Mrs. Clinton had said in 1995, referring to Beijing’s population-control measures. “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”
“Many people in our own government, in our own Congress, didn’t want me to go to Beijing,” Mrs. Clinton recalled in her video. “But you don’t shy away from confronting human-rights abuses.”
Yet that is precisely what she did as America’s chief diplomat. Before her first trip to China, she told reporters that human rights couldn’t be allowed to “interfere” with talks on the economy or the environment.
In ensuing months the Obama Administration was cool toward the Dalai Lama, who was photographed exiting from the White House back door past garbage bins. Mrs. Clinton also kept quiet about Beijing’s house arrest of Liu Xia, whose crime is being married to imprisoned democracy activist and Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Mrs. Clinton faced a personal test in the case of blind Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng, who suffered years of torture and imprisonment largely for defending women subjected to forced abortion. In April 2012, days before Mrs. Clinton was due in Beijing for a diplomatic summit, Mr. Chen escaped from rural house arrest and sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy.
Mrs. Clinton and her staff did “what Chen said he wanted every step of the way,” she wrote in her memoir last year, but Mr. Chen’s recent memoir says otherwise. “Negotiating with a government run by hooligans,” he writes, “the country that most consistently advocated for democracy, freedom, and universal human rights had simply given in.” Only after he appealed publicly to Congress and endured days of limbo did U.S. diplomats secure his ability to leave China for asylum in the U.S.
All of which suggests that a President Clinton would not be as tough on Chinese human-rights abuses as Candidate Clinton is suggesting. Highlighting China’s many unjust policies as a private citizen on Twitter is fine, but American voters should also examine her different record in government.
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