Pressure With A Light Touch
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 11, 2008
KEVIN RUDD is giving China's leaders the message they are reluctant to hear. It takes some courage to point out its shortcomings on human rights - or anything else - to an emerging superpower, particularly one as sensitive to possible slights as China. Yet Mr Rudd has persisted, despite obvious signs of discontent from parts of the Chinese leadership. His stance does him credit. It may even do some good - though perhaps not as much as Australians hope.
Australia's Prime Minister is uniquely placed among contemporary world leaders to speak truth to Chinese power. As a middle-ranking nation, Australia presents no threat to China; the two countries are bound together by a mutually profitable trading relationship, as well as a shared desire for stability in the region. And Mr Rudd's is not megaphone diplomacy. His fluency in Mandarin and his Beijing experience show by implication his sympathy with China. If the response from students to his speech at Peking University is any guide, individual Chinese appreciate his knowledge and interest in their culture and language. They even appear to find his jokes funny. There is always a catch, and for Mr Rudd it is the obvious one: the People's Republic has banned reporting of his remarks on Tibet.But though his remarks may be little known outside China's elite, within it any criticism he expresses cannot be taken as a sign of hostility or ill-will. For that reason, it is likely to be far more effective than the demonstrations over the Olympic torch relay. There is no question that the demonstrators have every right to express their feelings about China's repression in Tibet and elsewhere. The Chinese leadership, which has unwisely tried to turn the Olympic Games into a propaganda device, is now watching that device blow up in its face. Mr Rudd has quite rightly barred China from deploying its security guards when the torch relay passes through Canberra. But the violence and the discordant note the demonstrations strike are unlikely to change opinion in China; ordinary Chinese, prompted by censored and slanted news reports, will remain sceptical of Tibetan activism, because it threatens Beijing's sovereignty over a long-held province of the empire. China's leaders have little to fear there. It is only pressure from other countries, deftly applied, that is likely to help Tibet. Mr Rudd is doing the best that he, and Australia, can.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald