China: World’s Leading Defender of Human Rights?

By Kevin Kennedy

 “Your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogance … I don’t know where that comes from. This is totally unacceptable,” Was part of the translated response of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, at a recent press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion, when an iPolitics reporter audaciously asked why Canada is pursuing ties with a China which is ‘mistreating human rights advocates.’

CBC later released a scathing ‘analysis’ comparing President Xi to Chairman Mao, and citing Soros hit-squad Human Rights Watch saying, the regime “has unleashed an extraordinary assault on basic human rights and their defenders with a ferocity unseen in recent years …Senior Chinese leaders, perceiving a threat to their power, now explicitly reject the universality of human rights, characterizing these ideas as ‘foreign infiltration,’ and penalizing those who promote them.“

Many people complain about the ‘human rights record’ in China, and ask how someone can align with such an ‘undemocratic,’ ‘cruel and corrupt regime.’ Many of these people seem to have a prejudice and an unmalleable memory, which is either frozen, or stuck in a feedback loop from past eras. These same people can’t seem to figure out the difference between Stalin’s USSR and Putin’s Russia. These same people often also identify with the position of the imperial west, who are seen to them as great liberators, and purveyors of freedom and democracy around the globe. These views may be as naive as believing that Obama and Putin mean the same thing when they talk about fighting ISIS, or that Obama and Xi mean the same thing when they talk about ‘cleaning up the environment.’

What’s more important is not the snapshot, but the dynamic. China is moving in the right direction on human rights, especially in four areas that affect human rights the most. China is leading the world on human rights in the following four ways:

1) Poverty Reduction

According to the The Guardian, “China has lifted more people out of poverty than anywhere else in the world: its per capita income in increased fivefold between 1990 and 2000, from $200 to $1,000. Between 2000 and 2010, per capita income also rose by the same rate, from $1,000 to $5,000, moving China into the ranks of middle-income countries. Between 1990 and 2005, China’s progress accounted for more than three-quarters of global poverty reduction and is the reason why the world reached the UN millennium development goal of halving extreme poverty. This incredible success was delivered by a combination of a rapidly expanding labour market, driven by a protracted period of economic growth, and a series of government transfers such as the above urban subsidy, and the introduction of a rural pension.”

They will double their middle class to 600 million by 2020, and they will directly affect over two billion more with the One Belt One Road, also known as the New Silk Road, which is the number one national economic policy of China, as well as the BRICS development paradigm.

Perhaps the last great purveyor of economic freedom in the west, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said that, “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. – People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

So how can a China which is doing more towards these ends than any other nation, be at the same time, ‘crushing and suppressing’ it’s people?

China is even massively fighting pollution and corruption.  According to the Wall Street Journal; “In 2013, after Jinping’s rise to leadership, there were more than 182,000 corruption investigations on party members. The previous year had 20,000.”

Meanwhile, we in the west are moving in the wrong direction- look at the United States, which had the most prosperity to lose, and is in many ways being used as the model for other free market/monetarist countries, as they are increasingly subjugated by London/Wall Street/Troika money interests. Especially since the anti-American, singly continuous presidency of Bush/Cheney/Obama, the United States has torn up the constitution and the Bill of Rights.

As part of the “controlled disintegration” of the US economy and middle class, we see skyrocketing drug addiction(1), Overdoses(2), homelessness, joblessness, poverty, shortening life spans etc… We’re basically heading into a dark age full of doped up idiots who can’t seem think to save their lives, and won’t act in spite of a perilous threat exploding right in their drooling zombie faces (see appendix).  So where are we headed, and where are they(3) headed, and which ship would you want to be on if even half the above is true.

2) Infrastructure

China, through urbanization, has created a middle class(4) bigger  than the entire US population. The rural areas are still poor, but that can change with infrastructure like rail corridors. The New Silk Road as well as domestic projects have 100 km wide corridors that bring along the world’s best power plants, electricity & data transmission, oil, water, high speed rail, sub-networks to link in towns and villages, industrial agriculture, new cities including universities (5), hospitals, roads etc.. It will massively increase the living standards and connectivity of the underdeveloped regions and their peoples domestically and internationally, as well as many of the more remote and inland regions that had been ignored for a long time because they were inconvenient or lacking resources to loot.

The Chinese are building 330+ dams in 70+ countries, alleviating drought, flood, and hunger while only asking for fair repayment, and without imposing IMF-type ‘conditionalities’ such as; privatization, austerity, cancellation of food subsidies, mono-cropping, cash-cropping, cut-throat interest rates etc..

Also, China has universalized electrification in their country, and plans to eliminate poverty in their country by 2020.

3) Peace

What is more important than the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? What is more jeopardizing to those things than war? While NATO encircles Russia and China, intent on what Putin calls a “disarming instantaneous global strike”  with ABMs, Ohio Class subs, Bombers, and THAAD Missiles, each capable of delivering nuclear warheads to Russian and Chinese soil, China has reached out in cooperation to anyone willing to collaborate in win/win development deals, including the New Silk Road.

China is NOT threatening, or impeding anyone, they have only one foreign military base(6). They have no plans for imperial hegemony, despite being the quickly rising #2 economy in the world. In fact, Xi Jinping says “China does not accept the logic that a strong country is bound to become hegemonic, and neither hegemony nor militarism is in the Chinese DNA” […] “The notion of dominating international affairs belongs to a different age, and such attempts are doomed to failure,”

Here are a couple more telling quotes from the Chinese President

The Chinese Nation has always held such beliefs as “Peace is most precious”, “Harmony without uniformity” and “universal love and non-aggression”…”Six decades ago, in the course of decolonization that started at the end of the Second World War, the struggle for independence and liberation in Asia, Africa and Latin America surged. The newly independent countries longed for equality in international relations. Echoing this historical trend, China, India and Myanmar jointly initiated the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, namely, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” -Xi

Of course, it is only sane to want a peaceful co-existence in a world where any war between the super powers would almost assuredly escalate to a nuclear shootout, but China is actually leading the way out, by 3 times offering for the US, and ‘relevant countries’ to join the New Silk Road via the Bering Strait, as part of a new paradigm where development is put first, where instead of the “Clash of Civilizations” where it is ‘each against all’ fighting over control of a dwindling resource base, you can instead have a community of sovereign nations, voluntarily engaging in win/win agreements building “towards the common aims of mankind” and in the Westphalian spirit of “the benefit of the other”

4) Technology

China will graduate 2000 fusion engineers by 2020. They are currently preparing to mine the moon for Helium-3 (fusion fuel) of which there is enough on the moon to power the entire earth for 10,000 years at current usages. China is investing heavily in unlocking the keys of fusion, and recently made a huge breakthrough, achieving a plasma temperature of 90 million degrees for 102 seconds. Previous records were measured in the millionths or billionths of a second. Their goal is 180 million degrees for 10 minutes.

China wishes to share their discoveries in fusion research with the world. One example of this spirit is that they are participating in ITER, an international fusion research reactor.

There is a concrete pathway to commercial fusion energy. Scientists will tell you it is 100% possible if we commit to it. Please watch this 5 minute video on how we will get there, and why we haven’t yet.

Imagine if instead of fighting over artificially ‘scarce’ resources, we could desalinate all the ocean water we could ever need, we could give virtually free electricity to even the most remote peoples of the world, we could recycle every atom from every landfill and every kind of pollution in a fusion torch. we could explore the solar system and beyond. what about our ‘human rights’ to live as fully human, being capable, and free to explore our own creativity, and make a lasting contribution to the posterity of mankind? The forthcoming fusion economy makes this an attainable dream.

China is already heavily engaging their youth in their exploration of scientific frontiers like exploring (and detecting new cosmic rays) from the far side of the moon, and classical music. THAT is our future! Not fat brats on Ritalin and rock. If THEY inherit the world, there IS no future worth speaking of.

Far less important than the kind of rights that allow people to trample other peoples’ rights(7) and waste their lives on hedonistic indulgences, is the freedom to do good, and to contribute to the good, and to the future of mankind. This can lead to a future with abundance, which is a future without empire, and where war is unnecessary.

Do you think China would be better off if an Anglo-American color revolution accomplished it’s intended regime change, like most recently happened in Ukraine, Libya, and almost in Syria? How do those countries look as a result of “freedom and democracy”? That might not be YOUR idea for China, but what you should realize is that one-sided rants against them are only helping to destroy the beautiful future they, and the BRICS are leading the world towards, and would lead to the same disastrous, yet intended ‘democratic’ regimes as are emerging under the names of Libya, Brazil, Ukraine and the “Islamic State”

Can you hold an anti-Mao sign in Tienanmen square or on Social Media? I honestly don’t know. Let’s say you can’t. If that’s true today, I’ll bet it won’t be true in 5-10 years- as poverty lessens, and the empire collapses, and there is less chance of an uprising from the people who haven’t been reached yet by development, but have been reached by Soros’ twitter machine, or the CIA’s Facebook machine, or Google – who was caught helping Hillary Clinton to overthrow Assad. Google THAT!

However, on the other hand, if it’s true that you can speak freely in the US(8), UK or EU (you can’t) -or have honesty or integrity in our media (we don’t) or ‘human rights’ or economic justice- the fact is that we’re collapsing on all four fronts listed above, and China is improving greatly in all(9) fields. Are they perfect? Not at all. Are they moving in the right direction? I think I’ve proved that they are. Towards a ‘more perfect union.’

I think we need to follow the Chinese and Russian leadership, and accept their offer of mutual respect, trust, and prosperity and reject the false paradigm of scarcity, and conflict of the empire. I mean, in a nuclear armed world, that’s just common sense, isn’t it?

Footnotes

1. Heroine addiction is increasing by 50% per year
2. Now the leading cause of accidental death
3. China
4. Middle class- 1/3 of income or more is disposable
5. BRICS citizens can go to BRICS universities for free
6. For peacekeeping and dealing with pirates in Djibouti, near Somalia and the gulf of Aden, the
7. Like Americans mistakenly think their nation was founded on. “I can do whatever I want, I’m an American!” -was the battle cry of a disgruntled visitor, while tearing up our political sign IN CANADA!
8. Remember how Occupy Wall St. was broken up
9. The above

Appendix