China puts the brakes on torture of suspects, witnesses

News that China had issued new rules discouraging the use of torture to encourage suspects to confess or witnesses to testify in court is a great development for the criminal justice system there, but should be a giant stop sign for western governments trying to open trade routes to the world's most populous country. Sure, the new regulations announced Sunday bring China more in line with western ideas of justice and human rights, and are welcome, but they are long overdue. China executes more people -- 1,700 a year is Amnesty International's estimate -- than the rest of the world's countries combined, according to the New York Times. Mistreatment of suspects and, sometimes, of reluctant witnesses is common in China, the Times said. What that says about Western companies and governments doing business with China is not good, since they are supporting a terrible system. Apparently, the central government's previous attempts to liberalize the system have met with mixed results, the Times said. So, the latest pronouncement by top Chinese law enforcement and judicial bodies, while positive on the surface, will only mean improvement if enforced nationwide. The new regulations, which bar the use of confessions obtained by torture and require police officers to testify in court if a defendant alleges mistreatment, were issued a few weeks after a farmer was released from prison after 10 years after he was convicted using a confession obtained through torture. The case came to light after the alleged victim turned up alive, and caused an uproar in the normally closed society -- a huge concern for the government in Beijing, which puts a premium on social order. “Judicial practice in recent years shows that slack and improper methods have been used to gather, examine and exclude evidence in various cases, especially those involving the death penalty,” the central government said in a statement, the Times said. Legal observers in China were optimistic over the new rules. “They have come just in time because the necessity is so great,” said Zhang Xingshui, a Chinese defense lawyer. “It is a good cure for loopholes, because legal workers are often under so much pressure to get cases closed no matter what it takes.” A professor at the government-owned Chinese People's Public Security University in Beijing told the Times that the provision requiring police to testify in court was revolutionary for China. “This may be common practice for police in the West or in Hong Kong, but it is a new thing for Chinese policemen to testify in court,” Cui Min said. “We have to cultivate a new mindset, one that accepts the idea of possibly setting free a criminal over wrongfully convicting an innocent man.” Of course, it would have been a lot better if Western countries had insisted on major reforms in China before opening their markets and integrating Beijing into the world economic system. But China appears to have fully embraced the idea that there is more to be gained from peaceful relations with the rest of the world than from aggressive isolation, even if it means liberalizing how the Communist Party runs the country. And that is very good news.

Secretary of State says massive debt threatens U.S. security

In Washington, sometimes, the truth comes out when everybody least expects it, like when they're looking for something else. That seems to be what happened Thursday when, testifying before Congress on the U.S. State Department's request for additional funding, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated outright that the country's burgeoning deficit -- $1.4 trillion and growing -- threatened the country's security. Gee, you think? "We have to address this deficit and the debt of the United States as a matter of national security, not only as a matter of economics," Clinton told lawmakers on various committees, according to the Reuters international news service. "I do not like to be in a position where the United States is a debtor nation to the extent that we are." And, as if that wasn't obvious enough, Clinton added that debt to other nations hinders "our ability to protect our security, to manage difficult problems and to show the leadership that we deserve." So, was she talking to ordinary citizens who don't have advanced degrees in economics but still are able to understand what's going on, or to the Washington political elite who have the sheepskins but still seem unable to get it? Continuing deficits are the result of deliberate decision-making -- it's possible to make mistakes in the short term but by the time it's the long term, the term "mistake" doesn't cover it. Of particular concern to Washington is China's ownership of nearly $800 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, Reuters said, and the possibility of Beijing trying to force changes in policy as a result. "The moment of reckoning cannot be put off forever," Clinton said. Of course, the value of China's holdings are directly related to the continued vibrancy of the U.S. economy, so Beijing has a strong interest in not forcing it to derail. But why doesn't the Congress have that same interest? What did they think would be the result of cutting taxes by billions of dollars at the same time they were authorizing the spending of hundreds of billions on an offensive war in Iraq? The $4.9 billion increase in the State Department budget is to pay for diplomatic and development work in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Clinton said. "We are now assuming so many of the post-conflict responsibilities, and that is the bulk of our increase," she said.

China says cooperation with United States threatened by proposed arms sale to Taiwan

Word from Beijing is that China is "strongly indignant" and threatening to disrupt ties if the United States goes ahead with a planned $6.4 billion sale of advanced armaments to Taiwan. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said Saturday that Beijing considers the proposed sale of Black Hawk helicopters, advanced Patriot missiles and other equipment to be "crude interference in China's domestic affairs and seriously harm China's national security," according to the Reuters international news service. "The United States' announcement of the planned weapons sales to Taiwan will have a seriously negative impact on many important areas of exchanges and cooperation between the two countries," He said in remarks given to the U.S. ambassador and published on the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Web site. "This will lead to repercussions that neither side wishes to see." China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province, but Western nations know it is where the Nationalist Chinese fled after being defeated by the Communist Chinese in 1949, and is now a democratic nation of 23 million. But it has been a source of friction between the China and the United States for 60 years, since Beijing wants to incorporate it into the mainland and the United States has pledged to defend its independence. In fact, the United States refused to recognize the People's Republic of China until 1979, eight years after Beijing replaced Taiwan at the United Nations. U.S. officials said Taiwan needed the advanced armaments to strengthen its position in negotiations with China, particularly since a "thaw" in relations that began in 2008, Reuters said. Despite all the rhetoric, it is difficult to see how the sale of arms to Taiwan affects the relationship between China and United States, except to make Beijing a little uncomfortable. In 2008, when Washington sold $6.5 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, and Beijing reacted by delaying a meeting on military cooperation with the United States. But Washington and Beijing are too intertwined economically to let even this do more than perhaps delay their burgeoning cooperation in financial and military sectors. There are simply too many advantages to such cooperation to turn back now.

What's going on with Google and China?

Is Google doing the bidding of the U.S. government by threatening to leave China, ostensibly in a dispute over Beijing's efforts to censor content on the Internet? It might as well be, since last week's surprise announcement by the Internet search giant suggests many of the responsibilities the United States expects China to voluntarily accept as a world superpower. Of course, the most important among them is to stop jailing political opponents and otherwise mistreating its citizenry. Good luck with that, right? But it does demonstrate to China the urgency and complexity of good world citizenship. Google's threat -- so far not implemented -- already has affected relations between China and the United States, and not in a good way, according to the Reuters international news service. Top officials in the Obama administration called Google's announcement "a big deal," Reuters said. China has not commented officially on Google's threat, which the company said was in reaction to censorship of its Web sites from Beijing and to a series of cyber attacks emanating from China. But Google and other U.S. companies have done Beijing's bidding for years, even allowing the Chinese government to use their servers to track down dissidents. And the U.S. government has seemingly gone along with it. But now, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke called Google's concerns about Internet security in China "troubling." "The administration encourages the government of China to work with Google and other U.S. companies to ensure a climate for secure commercial operations in the Chinese market," Locke said. Of course, the new U.S. focus could be due to the change of administrations in Washington, even though Obama government officials spent last year trying to make Beijing comfortable with lending $800 billion to Washington. Lately, however, the United States has angered China by agreeing to sell sophisticated weaponry to Taiwan, agreeing to meet with the Dalai Lama and putting tariffs on some of China's exports. Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom group that had criticized Google in the past for complying with Beijing's demands, applauded the Silicon Valley company for what it called "standing up to the Chinese authorities."

Obama admits failure at climate change conference

Well, at least we know they don't believe their own fantastic rhetoric. We're speaking, of course, of U.S. President Barack Obama's statement today that he understands why people view the just-concluded climate change summit in Copenhagen as a failure. "I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen," Obama said in an interview with PBS Newshour, according to the Reuters international news service. The conference ended with a nonbinding agreement to limit carbon emissions blamed for global warming, far short of a 50 percent reduction that was the stated goal of industrialized nations at the summit. But Obama, who was instrumental in overcoming sharp differences with China and India just to arrive at a nonbinding deal, said the fact that any agreement was reached at all was an important step. "Rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in whcih nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were," Obama said. "We were able to at least agree on non-legally binding targets for all countries -- not just the United States, not just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting forward, are going to be the world's largest emitters." Developing economic powers China, India, Brazil and South Africa, which were resistant to any deal that could limit their growth, signed on to the agreement at the last minute after Obama's personal intervention. "At a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody's screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed," Obama said. But many European participants had far less positive evaluations of the final agreement, however. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the deal "flawed and chaotic" and Sweden called it a disaster for the environment, Reuters said. British Environment Minister Ed Miliband told the Guardian newspaper on Monday that China had "hijacked" emission-reduction efforts, but Beijing accused England of trying to drive a wedge between developing nations to force them into an unfavorable agreement, Reuters said.

Human Rights Watch report raises troubling questions about China

If it is indeed true that China's government is permitting local authorities to operate secret jails in Beijing where citizens are mistreated, it's time for the United States to re-evaluate trade relations with the world's most populous nation. Of course, we're not talking about returning to the days of complete non-engagement -- the U.S. and China are far too interdependent economically for that. Rather, it is because we are so tied together economically that China would be likely to respect and comply with reasonable demands to restrain its totalitarian tendencies. Beijing certainly understood that its decision to become part of the world economy meant unprecedented scrutiny of its internal affairs and, as a result, an obligation to conduct itself in a more transparent and civilized manner. That's why Thursday's report from the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch is so troubling. The report alleges that the government in Beijing permits local governments to operate a system of secret prisons in which prisoners are routinely mistreated, according to the New York Times. Abuse is routine even in detention centers run by the national government but is even worse in the unofficial jails, the report said. "We're talking about a country with torture in formal detention centers, and the black jails are 10 floors down" in terms of treatment of detainees, said Sophie Richardson, the group's advocacy director for Asia. Richardson said abuses that were widespread in China’s official prison system, which has some judicial supervision, were even worse in unofficial jails, which have no oversight. But China denies that the unofficial detention system exists. “There are no black jails in China,” Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in Beijing on Thursday, the Times said. “If citizens have complaints and suggestions about government work, they can convey them to the relevant authorities through legitimate and normal channels.” But Human Rights Watch said China's system for protecting detainees was being subverted by local officials, who had an incentive to block such complaints from reaching national officials. The issue is considered serious enough by the U.S. government for President Barack Obama to raise when he meets next week in Beijing with Chinese President Hu Jintao, according to National Security Council official Jeffrey Bader, the Times said.

China can't keep its totalitarian hands off Tibet

As long as China and the United States are committed to prosperous relations and treating each other with due respect, it's time for Washington to convince Beijing to back away from its domination of Tibet. What brings this to mind today is news from Shanghai that Chinese police detained 95 people in an alleged attack on a police station in predominately Tibetan region of northern China. According to the New York Times, Chinese state media reported that nearly 100 monks from Quinghai Province led the attack, which began Saturday over rumors about someone being taken into custody for advocating Tibetan independence. The reports could not be independently verified. But it's certainly believable, given the behavior of Chinese authorities in the recent past. Even Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has been forced to live in exile since 1959. Yet it looks as if Tibet was an independent country before the Chinese communists took over in 1950. Tibetans say hundreds were killed after the government cracked down on pro-independence demonstrations last March. But if Tibetans want to be independent, why can't they be? China apparently still has a lot to learn about being a modern country.

United States and China have too much to lose

It may well be that the economic and military power of the United States and the rising power of China are on an inevitable collision course, but nothing unforgettable is going to happen now. The two powerhouses need each other too much and get along too well to allow that to happen, particularly with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton due to arrive in China on Wednesday. So, Monday's incident involving a U.S. naval survey vessel and five Chinese military ships in the South China Sea cannot be anything serious, despite the rising level of rancor emanating from Washington and Beijing. China accused the United States of violating its exclusive economic zone, while U.S. officials accused the Chinese of "harassment," according to the Reuters international news service. Dennis Blair, the new U.S. National Intelligence Director, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington that the incident reflected "a trend" in Chinese policies toward "military, aggressive" behavior. He called the incident the gravest between the two countries since the 2001 collision between a Chinese military plane and a U.S. surveillance plane off Hainan in 2001, Reuters said. That is probably true. But the 2001 incident was resolved peacefully even though China probably had a right to be upset about spying. Beijing has a key military base on the island.