WOATICILIAL
If these trends hold good they will all bring more attention to bear on China's human rights performance and force the Chinese to say and show more clearly where they stand. They will also require us (and the West generally) to define our own attitude, and not only on Tibet.
4.
The West has let China off lightly on this issue in the past, compared with other communist countries and indeed with extreme right-wing regimes. This is partly due to historical chance. Until recent years, the world's limited access to Ching and China's refusal to have much to do with the world left little scope for dialogue on the matter. China was not linked to any "Western" power by civilisation or by strategic/ political alliance in a way that would make the former feel co-responsible for and committed to improve its human rights performance. Nor has it been like most other communist states, party to a detailed negotiation with the West in which human rights are discussed and linked to the development of other forms of cooperation. Chinese communities abroad have never become, like Polish or Jewish ones for example, ready-made lobbies for human rights. And until recently at least, there were no individual dissidents or movements prominent and long-lasting enough to capture the foreign imagination.
have
Other reasons which, consciously or unconsciously, led Western countries to play down the human rights issue possess rather more substance. First, we have been influenced by a feeling of relief after the end of the Cultural Revolution, whose horrors seemed to cast any residual human rights problem in the shade a feeling incidentally shared by, and still potent among, the great mass of Chinese within this country. Secondly, there is a genuine difference between our own and China's traditions and socio-political make-up. M Clark brings out the key points: no history in China of the legal definition and protection of individual rights; problems of maintaining central control by anything other than direct and uncompromising means; need for strong government in a period of rapid economic modernisation. One might add that there is no religious tradition in China emphasising the worth of each individual an equal in the eyes of God. All this has not necessarily removed the locus for outsiders to address the Chinese on human rights, but it has made it hard to find the right context and language for getting results.
AS M5 Ularx also points out, However, China today is changing in ways which should be starting to narrow this gap. China's return into the international community and ambitions for growing world influence have forced the Chinese to recognise the importance of the theme of rights in modern international life. They have made positive play with the idea of economic and social rights and have modified their condemnation of
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