President Obama has been very savvy in his strategic communications with the Chinese people, treating them rhetorically as intelligent, sophisticated, freedom-loving people who are – unfortunately and temporarily — ruled by a one-party state. A public unfashionably wearing handcuffs. In his talks to college students during his 2009 trip to China, he deftly sidestepped questions about himself and his policies to ask them questions about the future role they intended to play to solve such worldwide problems as global warming and resource conservation. Of course, such students have very little power to move their government on any policy. Today. The viewpoint then and in other speeches was that the Chinese people were not passive victims of authoritarianism, and so lacking any power or freedom of thought, but rather people who needed to be persuaded to work with the United States because China is a rising power and it will someday be a more democratic society as well.
White House press secretary Jay Carney’s recent unsubstantiated accusation that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s (HKSAR) government caved in to pressure from Beijing in letting NSA leaker Edward Snowden fly to Moscow sounds a potential death knell to the previous Obama strategy of engaging respectfully the Chinese people as an emerging public. His words are likely to be seen as a slap in the face to people in both Hong Kong and the rest of Mainland China.
First, as polls in Hong Kong reveal, many Hong Kong citizens think Snowden is a dissident, and not a traitor to the U.S., and they do not think he should be extradited. In their minds, they most likely feel as many of our democratic allies do, as well as many Americans themselves, about opposing the behavior of the American government in curtailing civil liberties in recent years. The HK government has been gradually losing respect from its citizens for policies that acquiesce too frequently to Beijing, especially in protecting social services and living standards from too much immigration from the rest of the Mainland. That government is acquiescing to Washington as well would not make Hong Kong citizens any happier about the state of their democracy.
Unless Carney’s words are backed up with irrefutable evidence that Beijing meddled once again in Hong Kong, it is very likely the citizens of Hong Kong will feel they have been gratuitously insulted. The press secretary’s words seem to assume their own thoughts and protests and history of fighting for democracy are irrelevant. They also assume that the United States has the right to demand the extradition of a “dissident” from Hong Kong, when in fact European democracies have a long history of not extraditing people accused of similar crimes. Why should the U.S. government assume the Hong Kong people do not have the same right to oppose its policies, with respect?
Second, Mainland Chinese citizens who support more political freedom at home will also feel insulted. They view Hong Kong – and perhaps Taiwan – as the most democratic and liberal territory within China, as well as the city where the rule of law is the strongest. Unless the White House can provide such clear public evidence that Beijing coerced the HKSAR, and not that it simply mishandled the bureaucratic procedures for repatriation, it will look like the Obama administration does not respect either rule of law or even Chinese democracy in its only existing form. The Chinese government and supporters of authoritarian policies there will use the press secretary’s words to say, “You see, America will not even respect the rule of law and the will of the people in Hong Kong!”
This would be an excellent time for President Obama to speak up and set the record straight: the American people respect the political rights of the Chinese people, even if they do not want to return Americans they view as “political dissidents,” in the same way we respect the autonomy and intelligence of our democratic allies who refuse to do the same. Whatever Edward Snowden has done, and whatever information he carries with him, America needs a Chinese public that we can work with to solve increasingly important global problems. Gratuitously insulting them on this issue can only be counterproductive.
Steven W. Lewis is the Baker Institute’s C.V. Starr Transnational China Fellow and faculty adviser for the Jesse Jones Leadership Center Summer in D.C. Policy Research Internship Program. He is also a professor in the practice and an associate director of the Chao Center for Asian Studies, as well as an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Sociology at Rice University.