Third, Kerry should know by now that, as a practical matter, no trade-off is possible with a militant communist regime such as the one run by the Communist Party of China.
So why is Kerry now in favor of trade-offs? For one thing, Beijing had told the Biden administration that relations were all or nothing, that there could be no “stove piping” issues as U.S. diplomats traditionally tried to do with their cooperate-where-we-can-and-oppose-where-we-must approach. Chinese leaders, knowing how much Biden wanted an enhanced climate deal, had said there would be no Chinese cooperation on climate without American cooperation across-the-board.
The critical question now is this: What, in addition to the human rights of China’s minorities, is the Biden administration willing to give up to get a climate deal with Beijing?
Democracies tend to deal with each other as Kerry evidently envisions, where cooperation on one issue can lead to warm relations and warm relations can lead to agreement in other areas.
Unfortunately, that is not the way communist states, especially China’s, operate. Kerry’s immediate predecessor as secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, found that out the hard way in February 2009.
China didn’t return Clinton’s gesture of cooperation. On the contrary, Beijing pressed the advantage and went on a bender. The following month, for instance, Chinese craft harassed the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessel, in international waters in the South China Sea and even attacked it, trying to sever its towed sonar array. The Victorious, Impeccable’s sister ship, was subject to extreme harassment in March and May 2009 in the Yellow Sea.
The lesson is clear. Even if one doesn’t care about human rights, it’s not productive to ignore China’s atrocities. Although these rights may not be important to Clinton or Kerry, the issue is critically important to an insecure regime like China’s.
China puts its brightest diplomats to work on human rights issues precisely because it knows it has no defense, especially now when Beijing is committing not only genocide but also other crimes against humanity. Mass rape, slavery, torture, and killing of minorities are impossible to justify. When the Biden administration doesn’t talk about these crimes, it relieves great pressure on the Chinese regime.
Kerry is reinforcing that dangerous Chinese mindset by not talking about human rights. He is surrendering the most important leverage the United States has over China. Even if he thinks he should try to obtain China’s cooperation on climate—a debatable goal—he is going about it the wrong way.
If you want to get Chinese communists to do something, you have to impose great costs. That gives them an incentive to do something to relieve the pain. Offers of cooperation never work for long. Unfortunately, Beijing believes signals of friendship show American weakness.
What makes the Chinese regime such a human rights abuser at home makes it an irresponsible power abroad. By defending the human rights of the Chinese people, Americans are, in a very real sense, also defending their national security.