[Viewpoint] Will the U.S. 'Human Rights Diplomacy' Toward China Succeed?

Lee Yong-jun, Former Ambassador for North Korean Nuclear Issues, Former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs

Last week, following U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's visits to South Korea and Japan, as well as the high-level U.S.-China talks in Alaska, the Biden administration's China policy revealed its concrete substance. As had been anticipated since the end of last year, the Biden administration is pursuing diplomacy that emphasizes pressure on China through the weapon of 'democracy and human rights' rather than the military and economic pressure used by the Trump administration.

At the 2+2 foreign and defense minister meetings held separately with South Korea and Japan, Secretary Blinken and Secretary Austin raised the necessity of allied cooperation to improve human rights in China and North Korea as a key agenda item. At the first meeting between the top U.S. and Chinese diplomats held in Alaska, a heated exchange took place over issues related to human rights abuses in Hong Kong and the Uyghur region.

The Democratic Party’s trump card of 'democracy and human rights' as a basis for foreign policy sometimes exerts greater influence than military pressure. While military pressure aims to collapse an adversary from the outside, pressure on human rights issues can undermine an adversary from within. Following the Helsinki Accords signed in 1975 among 35 countries from both Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War, the Western camp, including the U.S., gradually became deeply involved in human rights issues within the Soviet communist bloc. The resulting systemic instability was one of the reasons the Eastern bloc collapsed on its own without a shot being fired in the early 1990s. The reunification of East and West Germany was also possible because the West German government demanded improvements in human rights?such as the release of political prisoners, judicial reforms, and permission to listen to West German broadcasts?in exchange for economic aid to East Germany.

However, it is uncertain whether these past successes can be applied to China. China, well aware of the Soviet collapse process, is unlikely to tolerate U.S. involvement in its human rights issues. In the late Cold War period, the Soviet Union, suffering from severe economic difficulties, had no choice but to accept interference in human rights to obtain loans from the West. Currently, however, China’s economy is not in such a crisis. Even if China were to face extreme economic hardship in the future, it seems unlikely to tolerate human rights interventions that imply the risk of regime collapse. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether the Biden administration’s new strategy for hegemonic competition with China will be more effective than the Trump administration’s military and economic pressure strategy.

Machiavelli said, “An unarmed prophet will fail.” Ideologies or values advocated by policies only become effective when backed by power. The Carter administration’s loudly promoted 'human rights diplomacy' from 1977 was a dismal failure. Human rights are values and justifications, but they are not a power that can pressure other countries by themselves. U.S. human rights pressure on the Soviet Union began to take effect only when the Reagan administration, from 1981 for eight years, launched high-intensity military and economic pressure on the Soviet Union under the banner of “peace through strength.” As the Soviet Union, pushed into crisis by the arms race and economic failure, succumbed to demands for human rights improvements for economic survival, its regime collapsed from within.

The success of the Biden administration’s policy, which has chosen 'democracy and human rights' as the core means of hegemonic competition with China, depends on its willingness to concurrently employ strong military and economic pressure measures to support it. Without such backing, the Biden administration’s China policy will repeat the Carter administration’s 'failed human rights diplomacy' and may open the way for China to become a hegemonic power. Depending on the policy decisions made during the Biden administration’s four years, China may continue to close the gap in its pursuit of the hegemonic United States or may see its national power decline and completely abandon its hegemonic challenge. The U.S.-China hegemonic competition is a matter directly connected not only to the fate of the United States but also to the fate of the Korean Peninsula and the Republic of Korea. In the coming years, we must keep our eyes wide open, face this reality, and raise our own voice.