BOOK REVIEW

Threat to the West or Model for the Rest?

by Randall Peerenboom
Oxford University Press, 432 pages, $35

December 2007

Reviewed by Nicholas Becquelin

Is China proving that developing countries are better off under an authoritarian regime that focuses on developing the economy, rather than under a democratic regime that gives emphasis to political participation? And if the enjoyment of human rights improves with economic prosperity, isn’t it wiser to restrict them in the short term and allow them only once income levels take off?

According to Randall Peerenboom, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles and the director of China programs for the Oxford Foundation of Law, Justice and Society, the answer is a resounding "yes" on both counts. World Bank and United Nations Development Program data, he says, show that China is doing better on health, education, women’s rights, and law and order compared to most countries at comparable income level, and in particular compared to countries that have democratized at a lower level of wealth, such as India, Indonesia or the Philippines. Economic disparities may have shot up, but this is normal and they will eventually come down (although this might take "several generations").

Civil and political rights might be curtailed, but this actually helps economic development and in any case these rights would not "magically solve" China’s developmental and human-rights problems. Further proof that political authoritarianism works best is to be found in the experience of other East Asian countries such as Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, whose course, says Mr. Peerenboom, China has largely been following so far, and may lead in the future to democratization also of the "elitist nonliberal type."

If China still enjoys a poor reputation for human rights despite these achievements, Mr. Peerenboom tells us, it is mainly because of a "bias" by Western countries against one-party states; a traditional emphasis on political and civil rights overlooks other indicators of human-rights development (and in particular the benefits of law and order for personal rights); the playing up of exceptional "heart wrenching" cases by human-rights organizations (whose work relies mostly on accounts of "disgruntled parties"); and sensationalist media editors who prefer to "sink one’s teeth in … reports of dissidents being arrested, newspaper editors being sacked, prisoners being tortured … as opposed to dry statistics about Gini coefficients."

In other words, China is held to a "double standard" on human rights. This is particularly hypocritical, Mr. Peerenboom asserts, since democracies themselves don’t have an immaculate human rights record (think of Guantanamo Bay) and "liberalism tends to benefit the more talented, smarter, or already well-off individuals in a society at the expense of the vast majority." Asians, who according to him have more of a "communitarian" ethos, favor stability more than individual freedoms. This is reflected in Chinese opinion polls showing high levels of satisfaction with the present government.

None of these arguments are particularly novel. In fact, they are largely the ones that the Chinese government makes itself, and are echoed by many in business and diplomatic circles. Mr. Peerenboom seems aware of this, and to avoid "the bogeyman of being accused of being an apologist for a repressive regime," he reassures the reader that he is nothing but a dispassionate, disinterested analyst: "As a white male with the resources and good fortune to attend decent schools … I stand more to gain personally from liberalism and the belief that we deserve all we can get." This noble stand is belied by the mention on the dust jacket that he is also "Of Counsel at one of China’s leading foreign investment firms." But this is a small detail compared to the fact that this 400-page, heavily footnoted book does actually little to convincingly demonstrate the arguments he advances.

Instead, the author’s approach seem to be to take whatever arguments come his way and throw them into the pot, without regards for consistency or relevance. Those that fit his prejudice are deemed pertinent and significant, and those that don’t are dismissed as uninformed, biased or, at best, inconclusive. There is no mention of the asymmetry of information between China and the countries it is compared to. The work of human rights organizations is used to support his denunciation of the shortcomings of countries with democratic institutions, but discounted when it brings to light uncomfortable facts about China.

Not that Mr. Peerenboom has actually taken the effort to read the work he takes offense with: Only one report by Human Rights Watch is cited, although it has been publishing reports on China for over two decades; Amnesty International’s comprehensive reports are left aside in favor of press communiques and yearly summaries for 2004 and 1993; there is no mention of publications from the Duihua Foundation, even though they are based on Chinese archives and reflect that most cases of political imprisonment never surface; only two reports by United Nation’s special rapporteurs are cited—to support the argument that their recommendations were impractical.

In fact, the book systematically avoids tackling what really stands in the way of the author’s argument, in favor of anecdotal or caricatured positions. The fairly uncontroversial observation that China has been actively trying to weaken human-rights mechanisms at the United Nations, for example, is reported as signifying that "we are, in short, heading for a ‘clash of civilization.’" Elsewhere, Mr. Peerenboom offers that given the accounts made by human-rights organizations and the media, "first time visitors to China are often bewildered when they don’t see machine-gun toting soldiers in military fatigues on every corner or find ominous-looking public-security agents in black trench coats lurking suspiciously in alleyways and Internet cafes." When the author acknowledges that, indeed, there are serious human-rights violations, this is only to rationalize them away or say that public-opinion polls reflect public support for the government. (That opinion polls in a one-party state without a free press might be questionable doesn’t seem to be worth a mention.)

While the author continues to cherry pick his way to demonstrate how enlightened and unjustly maligned the Chinese government is, the reader cannot but feel increasingly frustrated at the numerous repetitions, contradictions and digressions of a book that, despite a long publishing time-lag—the preface is dated July 2005— seems to have been hastily arranged from previous publications. (The author acknowledges as much in the preface when he thanks half a dozen journals and publishers for allowing him "to reprint passages from these works.")

A glaring contradiction in the author’s argument is his central claim that critics are subjecting China to a double standard on human rights, while in fact it is Mr. Peerenboom himself who argues that China should be held to a different standard on account of its stage of development and distinct culture. The need to acknowledge from time to time that there are indeed serious human-rights violations in China while trying at the same time to rationalize them away also leads to bizarre statements like "China outperforms the average country in its income class on most major indicators of human rights and well-being, with the notable exception of civil and political rights"—a proposition not dissimilar to a doctor saying that a patient is in perfect health, except for his heart not beating.

The thought that at least some Chinese people might disagree with the condescending views of the author is not given any consideration (in fact, the book doesn’t cite Chinese language material). Instead we are told that the Chinese government meets some ill-defined test of legitimacy and that China has a better international image than the U.S. or Japan. Leaving aside the issue of how one justifies political persecution, whether China’s record on economic, social and cultural rights is as rosy as Mr. Peerenboom advances is also debatable. The prohibition on independent organizing maintains the wages of millions of workers at artificially low levels, the previously free provision of education and health care has disappeared in favor of a user-paying system increasingly beyond the reach of the poorest, and China’s architectural heritage faces ever more rapid destruction.

More critically for a book that purports to analyze the relation between rights and development and the chances of China democratizing or not in the future, none of the ample scholarly literature on these subjects is deemed by the author worth engaging with. The work of the Nobel Prize economist Amartya Sen, for instance, is never mentioned. (Development as Freedom, his most famous book, seems to have been added in the bibliography as an afterthought.)

Mr. Sen’s theory, simply put, is that development has a lot to do with removing what he calls "un-freedoms"—barriers to natural human agency and economic transactions between individuals and communities. In fact, China’s recent history largely supports this idea. Once the Communist Party of China decided to lift the artificial restrictions it had imposed under the centrally planned economy, and started to free its citizens from the minute social control of the work-unit and to gradually allow the rural surplus workforce to move to urban areas, the economy took off, and China started to regain the rank it had occupied for many centuries as one of the largest economies in the world.

What comes next is hard to fathom, but here is what another authority that Mr. Peerenboom conveniently ignores, Max Weber, tells us: As a bourgeoisie develops (and by all accounts, that is what China’s "middle class" really is in comparison to the rest of the population), it will start to ask for a number of things, including a legal system that guarantees economic transaction, the effective protection of property rights and participation in the conduct of public affairs.

Another author, Jurgen Habermas (also ignored by Mr. Peerenboom if only for a derisive—and actually mistaken—remark) tells us how this is likely to happen: first citizens will develop a private sphere shielded from arbitrary intervention by the state; and then they will form a public sphere in which they discuss public matters. Expectation of rationality and legality of state actions will grow, political and administrative arbitrariness will become harder to justify by the state, ultimately giving way to a system where its power is legally constrained, often by a constitutional order.

So far, China is ticking all the checkmarks: Citizens are increasingly valuing privacy, private property is now guaranteed by law, traditional and digital media are relentlessly pushing the limits of discussion of public affairs, the middle class is becoming more assertive in defending its rights by the day and the Communist Party has promoted the legal system as "the main instrument to govern the country." Unfortunately, history tells us, there is nothing automatic about when and how authoritarian regimes embark on the political soft-landing phase. Numerous examples around the world demonstrate the dire consequences of authoritarian regimes keeping themselves in power at the expense of social expectations, and failed transitions to democracy also cripple economic development and possibilities for greater social justice.

Mr. Peerenboom’s advice on how human rights can be improved in essence for Chinese citizens to wait until the Party decides on its own volition to do so, and for the international community to appease, rather than criticize the government: "Government leaders might be more willing to revisit sensitive issues regarding free speech, religious freedoms and the rights of minorities if they felt their concerns [about national security] were taken more seriously," we are told. Maybe. But staying silent on human-rights abuses in China would mean considering Chinese people as somehow less worthy of the rights and freedoms that other nationals are entitled to enjoy. And that would be applying double standards.

Mr. Becquelin is researcher at the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. The views expressed here are his own.