Pattrick Smellie: Trade deal chance to combat rights abuse

A barely noticed but important meeting between senior Chinese and New Zealand diplomats took place in Queenstown in May.

The purpose of their get-together: the seventh round of negotiations towards the first full free trade agreement between a member of the OECD - the global rich countries' club - and the People's Republic of China.

"There are real advantages to being first in doing the agreement because we are setting the precedents," Prime Minister Helen Clark told the Herald in May last year. "We are mindful of that and the Chinese will be mindful of that.

"It's important to us it is a good quality agreement."

Amnesty International New Zealand agrees.

Though Amnesty holds no position on the rights and wrongs of free trade itself, hard evidence will be sought that trade agreements are designed to enhance rather than violate human rights.

While Chinese authorities continue to execute more of their fellow citizens annually than all other countries with death penalties put together, China is swiftly building a globally competitive economy.

From pervasive censorship of the internet and news media through to forced abortions and sterilisation, and the widespread use of child and unpaid prison labour in manufacturing, the People's Republic of China is experiencing appalling human rights violations on a massive scale.

Over 250,000 people are detained, without trial in labour camps, a practice known as "re-education through labour", for such crimes as posting articles on the internet or publishing poems deemed politically sensitive.

Torture is widespread, including beating, electric shocks, suspension by the arms and various deprivation techniques.

The Tibetan people, ethnic Uighur people and Falun Gong practitioners all face severe repression, with peaceful activists facing long prison sentences.

As an emerging economic superpower, hosting the Olympic Games in 2008, China knows it must make substantial progress on human rights and is to some extent seeking pressure from the outside world to help it do so.

Much of that pressure today comes from governments, and from commitments made to bodies such as the International Olympic Committee that the 2008 Beijing Games will lead to improving human rights in China.

Economic pressure is also being applied. An important new source of such pressure is the growing number of multi-national corporations who make profits in China but can less and less afford to be embarrassed by the low regard for human rights found there.

For evidence of this, look no further than the shaming in international media of Microsoft and Google for bowing to Chinese Government demands to censor their internet services, and by Yahoo's involvement in the wrongful imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao.

Trade agreements - especially agreements where both sides are trying to set precedents - are therefore important for their capacity to cement achievable human rights gains, especially in areas such as labour standards.

For example, China has very high rates of industrial accidents; enforced pregnancy testing in the workplace is common; there is poor or corrupt enforcement of legislated labour standards; and workers who try to organise unions are frequently assigned to "re-education through labour".

These cannot be acceptable practices for any OECD country trading with any country, let alone the emerging Asian superpower.

The Prime Minister correctly points out that New Zealand trades with many countries whose human rights records New Zealanders would deplore.

But that is all the more reason that any free trade agreement between New Zealand and China should strike a blow against such misrule.

Indeed, the fact that this agreement is the first of its kind makes it vital that New Zealand does the right thing here.

Let's face it, China is not pursuing this trade agreement because of the vast riches it will reap from doing business with New Zealand.

We are a tiny market and tariffs are too low even in the few areas where they remain to have much impact on the flow of low-cost imports from China.

Rather, China wants this agreement with New Zealand because we are a small, friendly, relatively neutral party with which to set the tone for trade agreements with the rest of the world. Whatever we agree to can become the template for other agreements.

For New Zealand, the gains are almost entirely economic.

The dairy industry is one of the most obvious beneficiaries of preferential market access to the increasingly affluent, health-conscious society emerging in China today.

We both get something we want. China takes gets our milk products and we give our stamp of approval.

Well, we should only give that approval if we can gain a trade agreement that reflects this country's record of respect for and advancement of global human rights.

Speaking last May, Helen Clark said: "Clearly the political system [in China] is one that would not be acceptable under any conditions in New Zealand, and there are a number of issues that are important to raise."

Important to raise, and important to settle, if free trade is not to supersede free people.

* Pattrick Smellie is a board member of Amnesty International New Zealand.