China's rise erodes Western bargaining power

Surging economic and diplomatic clout has given China the confidence to ignore old world powers like Britain, which failed to halt its first execution of a European since the 1950s, experts say.

The death penalty meted out to Briton Akmal Shaikh for drug trafficking was only the latest example that China feels free to act without regard for global opinion on a wide range of issues including human rights, they say.

In recent weeks, Beijing has jailed a prominent dissident for 11 years for subversion despite a Western outcry, taken a firm line that led to a tepid global climate change pact and refused to budge on the value of the yuan.

"We've entered a new phase, a phase in which there is less leverage for foreign governments to exert on China in the area of human rights," Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong-based manager of rights group Dui Hua, told AFP.

"In the past, China would make concessions on human rights when it needed something from the West... now more often than not, it is the foreign governments that need something from China."

In the past, China conceded on rights issues as a trade-off to secure its membership of the World Trade Organisation, the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games and gain greater international recognition on the whole, Rosenzweig said.

Today, Western governments are calling on Beijing to help prop up the flailing world economy and resolve thorny diplomatic disputes such as the standoffs over the controversial nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea.

Already the third biggest economy on the planet, China is set to overtake Germany as the world's top exporter and also holds the largest foreign exchange reserves, at a whopping 2.27 trillion dollars, including 800 billion in US Treasury bonds.

"Chinese leaders are most reluctant to make concessions when they are seemingly being criticised or under open pressure," said Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science at the City University of Hong Kong. "This sensitivity has become strengthened probably due to the Chinese leadership's perception of its rising status in the world as well as domestic nationalism. These have prompted the Chinese authorities to stand firm and respond in a high-handed, hardline manner."

Repeated Western appeals for the release of the dissident Liu Xiaobo instead led to a tough jail sentence - and a stern rebuke from Beijing, which denounced the "gross interference" of foreign governments in its affairs. In the Shaikh case, Britain issued repeated top-level calls for clemency and asked that the condemned father-of-three, who reportedly had bipolar disorder, be reviewed.

But China executed the 53-year-old and defended capital punishment as a way to deter would-be drugs criminals.

It also warned Britain not to "create new obstacles" to their relationship, already frayed over the troubled Copenhagen climate talks, which a British minister said had been "hijacked" by Beijing.

Cheng said foreign governments should continue to voice their criticisms and demands to China but should be careful when making public pronouncements, especially at sensitive times.

"Immediate and open criticisms of China could backfire immediately," he said.

"But if such pressures are maintained consistently and are brought up in various dialogues with China in a low-key manner, persistence will yield results."

Rights activists also urged the global community to remain vocal in calling for improvements in China's human rights record, criticising Western governments for recently going too soft on Beijing.

"This demonstrates that the international community has really not been raising these issues at a sufficient level to impress on the Chinese government that this is an important concern," Roseann Rife, Asia Pacific deputy director for Amnesty International said after Shaikh's execution and Liu's jailing.

"Since the Beijing Olympics, they (China) have gotten away with increased repression of human rights defenders, they have gotten away with cracking down on freedom of expression.

"This is what happens if you don't raise your voice."

In an editorial this week in the New York Times, exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, who spent more than 15 years in prison in China, urged US President Barack Obama to stop soft-pedalling Beijing.

"The case of Liu Xiaobo presents an opportunity for President Obama to save face and stand up to the hardliners' untoward arrogance," Wei said.

"If the United States doesn't push back, the hardliners will push on, with negative consequences across the whole spectrum of issues, from trade and currency valuations to global security and climate change."

AFP