KEY POINTS:
New Zealand is set to be the first developed country to negotiate a free trade agreement with the People's Republic of China. This remarkable diplomatic achievement should result in large amounts of economic benefit to New Zealand.
However, our jubilation is tempered by a strong flood of images of heavy-handed suppression and human rights abuses. If we were not about to greatly enhance our connection with the People's Republic of China we could turn a blind eye.
However, given that this trade initiative will be signed in our names, we do not possess that luxury. Accordingly, we must ask the question should we welcome closer economic relations with China?
The first issue is Tibet. The core question is whether it is part of China, or a sovereign nation which deserves independent statehood. Scholars on both sides of this debate will produce evidence that dates backs hundreds of years.
However, in 1951, a bilateral treaty did grant China sovereignty over Tibet. This also guaranteed Tibetan autonomy and certain fundamental rights.
Although the legal situation post 1951 looked clearer, the political situation fermented into a CIA-backed rebellion, which was violently crushed.
The Dalai Lama fled, and soon after several United Nations resolutions were passed which recognised that the citizens of Tibet had the right of self determination.
However, no country has publicly argued that Tibet should be an independent nation. Although many countries welcome the Dalai Lama, it is as a spiritual, not sovereign, leader.
This overt failure of recognition means that unless China decides to relax what it sees as its own territorial integrity, it is very unlikely that Tibet will ever break free of its overlord. As such, to reject a real free trade deal for the dream of a free Tibet is, at best, very premature.
However, to carefully weigh the merits of a free trade agreement against basic human rights is worth serious consideration. The human rights record of the People's Republic of China is near incomprehensible. The toll begins with between six to 10 million deaths as a direct result of Communist actions.
Perhaps 20 million counter-revolutionaries perished in prison camps and a further 20-43 million perished as the Great Leap Forward collided with the greatest famine in human history. The Cultural Revolution consumed a further million.
It is hoped that such numbers have become a thing of the past. Aside from the heavy-handed repression of the protesters in Tiananmen nearly 20 years ago the current administration of China has committed itself to improving its human rights record.
Despite evidence of progress in some areas, the record leaves much to be desired. For example, in 2007, Amnesty International said more lawyers and journalists were harassed, detained and jailed.
Thousands of people who pursued their faith outside officially sanctioned churches were subjected to harassment, detention and even imprisonment. The Government strengthened systems for blocking, filtering and monitoring the flow of information. The death penalty continued to be used to punish around 68 types of crime, including economic and non-violent crimes.
Many argue that to conclude a free trade agreement with such a regime is to become complicit in their crimes. As such, rather than enhance trade with China, we should restrict it as we did against South Africa. The difficulty is that China is not South Africa.
South Africa collapsed due to many reasons, of which economic embargoes were only one. The other essential factors were a near universal agreement through the United Nations that the South African regime was illegitimate, a clear recognition of an alternative government in waiting, and the fact that South Africa was a relatively open economy.
Failure to have such factors makes trade embargoes on human-rights violating countries pitiful.
Others have suggested that the best way to achieve greater respect for human rights is to create more trade opportunities between countries. This position is equally mistaken.
There is absolutely no guarantee that economic growth will result in the fulfillment of human rights. In some instances, economic growth linked to trade may be achieved at the expense of human rights. It is for such reasons that the large scale eclipse of human rights dialogue within the WTO has become so contentious.
The key, if there is to be one, is dialogue. If positive change is to be achieved it will be through the free flow of products and services, in addition to the free flow of ideas and the clear demonstration that a free market system is a better social choice with human rights at its core, than a controlled market system with human rights as an optional extra.
This dialogue will require a robust defence of human rights on the part of New Zealand, at both the bilateral level with China and at the global level with the WTO.
But here is the catch. Dialogue is much easier if the door is open. This free trade agreement opens the door to China, and will give New Zealand a greatly elevated platform. The open door lets us take a small step, on what will be a long journey. This step is in the right direction if we value an ethically justifiable foreign policy as highly as we value an economically robust one.
If this free trade agreement is linked to curtailing our speech and our defence of human rights, then the price is too high.
But if it allows us the chance to talk freely on matters of human rights, then the price is right.
We must use this platform to urge China to go beyond opening its markets to opening its jails, to move beyond easing restrictions on imported goods, to easing restrictions on the press and the internet, and to understand that protecting the rights of the sovereign is ethically meaningless without protecting the human rights of its citizens.
* Alexander Gillespie is a professor in the School of Law, University of Waikato.
