China Scrapbook 2004 Trip on the Crystal Harmony 1 May: Reflections from Shanghai: Ten years ago every meeting between US and Chinese officials began with an American lecture on the superiority of human rights in our country and an admonition that legal transparency was the given right of each individual in any country. Sometimes the discussion referenced pictures of Chinese prisoners being humiliated, spread-eagled or killed/assassinated after closed trials. Now I note Americans have relieved Chinese officials of these reminders and the Chinese are too polite to return the practice to our behaviors. The flaws then on the Chinese side and now on ours are not so much those of individuals in the criminal justice business or the military. They are bored and feel superior to those in their charge (we see Iraq suspects whose crime seems to be their gender and age, hooded and bound as a normal preliminary to questioning...no obligatory reading of rights here) and become psychologically unbalanced. But the flaw that over-arches all the behavior and is the fix necessary, far more than punishment, is transparency. Let the journalists in, legal recourse for detainees, access to families....anything that provides sunlight to whatever behavior on our part and by the prisoners. Like the Chinese of a decade and more ago, we have become the model of unaccountability and on my next visit to China will suffer, as they did, the open lectures to us about our collective abuses of human rights. 24 April: First glimpse of China (written while passing through the Taiwanese Straits): 1. its move to invest in Euro and Asian bonds is an important anti-dollar diversification move. 2. China's growth figures of about 8% may be artificially reported lower than actual. 3. Growth engines have shifted from exports to domestic demand; from coastal to western provinces. 4. concern about inflation is early and will be successful. 5. expectation that China is becoming the world's number one economic power may be sooner than mid-century, with some big potholes, of course. 23 April: Hong Kong: One of the few populated cities less crowded now than five years ago. No traffic jams in Central, no crowds pushing to board the Star Ferry. No crowds in the massive family restaurants. No crush of ships waiting for pier space in the harbor What happened? Could be that China no longer needs a gateway to the West now that ports like Shanghai or even Shenzhen just across the "border" have opened. Some will say it is the tightening politics from Beijing but I doubt it. Hong Kong has always been a city that runs on money as fuel, rather like Las Vegas or Hollywood and it makes no difference what the politics is. |
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