Power and freedom

Joe Nye posted on his blog about China and soft power. His post gave me an opportunity to reflect on the value, and lack thereof, of that concern.

The Olympics and China's Soft Power

"As the flags are lowered over the 2008 Olympic games, China is basking in the achievement of a major objective -- an increase of its soft power. Not only in terms of gold medals won by Chinese athletes, but by the successful staging of the games, China hopes to have advanced its prestige and attraction to other countries.

Power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes you want. One can affect their behavior in three main ways: threats of coercion ('sticks'); inducements or payments ('carrots') and attraction that makes others want what you want. A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. 'Soft power' has now entered China's official language. In his keynote speech to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on October 15, 2007, Hu Jintao stated that the CPC must 'enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country to better guarantee the people's basic cultural rights and interests.'

China has always had an attractive traditional culture, but now it is entering the realm of global popular culture as well. Yao Ming, the Chinese star of the National Basketball Association's Houston Rockets, could become another Michael Jordan, and while China lost to the U.S. in basketball, Yao was one of the stars of the Beijing Olympics. The enrollment of foreign students in China has tripled from 36,000 to 110,000 over the past decade, and the number of foreign tourists has also increased dramatically to 17 million per year even before the Olympics. In addition, China has created some 200 Confucius Institutes around the world to teach its language and culture, and while the Voice of America's was cutting its Chinese broadcasts from 19 to 14 hours a day, China Radio International was increasing its broadcasts in English to 24 hours a day.

But just as China's economic and military power does not yet match that of the United States, China's soft power still has a long way to go. China does not have cultural industries like Hollywood, and its universities are not yet the equal of America's. It lacks the many non-governmental organizations that generate much of America's soft power. Politically, China suffers from corruption, inequality, and a lack of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. While that may make Beijing attractive in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian developing countries, it undercuts China's soft power in the West. Given the domestic problems that China must still overcome, there are limits to China's ability to attract others, but one would be foolish to ignore the gains it is making. The Beijing Olympics were an important part of China's strategy to increase its soft power."

This is the line that stuck with me:

"Politically, China suffers from corruption, inequality, and a lack of democracy, human rights and the rule of law."

I keep reading that assertion - that China lacks the rule of law - over and over again, and I have to say that it is something that I find kind of amusing.

Last time I checked, China has a Byzantine array of laws and a pretty powerful commitment to enforcement of the rule of law, as evidenced by their enforcement of bans on political protest and free expression.

The truth is that China has laws that, for good reason, we do not like because they trample on the freedoms of Chinese citizens and foreigners within their jurisdiction. It is the lack of freedom that we are concerned about, when we are honest, not the lack of the rule of law, the latter be quite abundant since it has been a necessary requisite to limit freedoms in repressive countries and cultures since the beginning of civilization and earlier. The rule of law has been present in likely every repressive and authoritarian government in the history of humanity. It was one of the most powerful weapons of the Nazi and Communist regimes. Which is why its presence is hardly any assurance of honest, decent, or good government. Our confusion on the matter has not only romanticized law and led to a fairly bankrupt notion of progress for liberal democracies in the 21st century, it has rationalized the repression of authoritarian regimes around the world, from Beijing to Harare, all of whom can look to their own application of the rule of law to justify their power.

China's lack of democracy is the most concerning fact we and the Chinese people face, largely because its absence also limits those freedoms that Joe mentions and many, many more that Chinese citizens, not to mention Taiwanese, Tibetan, and Hong Kong's citizens, deserve to enjoy. I very highly doubt that you would find Chinese, Taiwanese, Tibetan, or Hong Kong's citizens telling us that they want more application of Chinese rule of law. I very seriously bet that they would tell us that they yearn for freedom and independence, or, if they are attempting to be more modest in their claims for the sake of political expediency, more freedom and autonomy. Somehow I very seriously doubt that we would be reassured by a Chinese commitment to enforce the rule of law anymore than the Chinese would. They enforce their laws regularly now. That's the problem.

What China needs is more of the values that liberal democratic citizens take more seriously than the rule of law: freedom and democracy. These two principles are valued most in liberal democracies for good reason, illustrated well by the case of Chinese law. People, like nations, need freedom and self-determination to lead better lives and to make independent judgments about what such better lives entail. The entire history of liberal democracy and Western civilization is based on this commitment as the basis for progress, not the rule of law which has been with us throughout our more repressive, authoritarian, and brutal past. The rule of law is a neutral code which is either used to advance causes like freedom and democracy or causes like totalitarian or authoritarian rule. It is not a value in and of itself. Except to those who covet power. And it is those characters that those more honestly committed to freedom and democracy have always and should always be wary of.

What China should be concerned with is the welfare of Chinese citizens, not its soft power. And that welfare is advanced with freedom and democracy not soft, hard, or any other form of power. Power can be used in the course of advancing these clearly more important priorities and principles or it can be used to undermine them. But it these values, and not China's soft power, which should be China's and the world's concern. I, nor the Chinese people, have any inherent interest in China's soft power except insofar as it advances freedom and democracy for the Chinese people, and honest commitment to to those principles in the form of independence for the peoples of Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong. Everything else is power gambles by those whom neither I nor the Chinese people have any real interest in supporting.

And the first commenter is right. America's soft power and, therefore, our capacity for engaging credibly our hard power, is eroding quickly, also for good reason. Insofar as Americans make such gambles in the name of their own power and not genuinely in the interests of their fellow Americans or people who their policies impact, the more their power is undermined. It is a hard lesson that American leaders of all ideological stripes will have to learn during this political period. And they will learn it - or someone else will - because to not learn it is to undermine their capacity for leadership and their credible use of power, altogether.

The Chinese will face the same dilemma as long as the people of China, Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong yearn for freedom and the right to determine their own lives. Which will be till the end of time. It is a necessary requisite for modern life and for a life of dignity and mature independence in any period of human history.

The power of the American government and the Chinese government will forever be a function of that kind of power - the power of citizens to determine and improve their own lives - from now until the end of human existence. And no amount of soft power will ever be able to compensate for that more fundamental fact of humanity.