Ahead of the talks between presidents Obama and Hu Jintao, Simon Tisdall has some advice for the former:
White House aides say Obama... plans to publicly step up pressure on human rights.
.....
The problem with America's exhortatory approach to human rights and other issues is that it rarely works. Clinton admitted that Beijing resented such interventions as an infringement of sovereignty...
... [T]he US must stop trying to tell China what to do. The time for that has passed. China is too big to be bullied, too canny to be conned, too complicated to be changed from without... Some self-awareness, a focus on practical, mutually beneficial measures, and a little circumspection would ultimately work better to stop a war of words turning into something worse. That's not to say human rights abuses can be ignored. But grandstanding will not help.
No doubt there are diplomatic protocols here with the nuances and niceties of which I'm unfamiliar. The language of inter-state criticism from one leader to another must need careful thought. However, in so far as Tisdall is urging self-restraint upon Obama, I would question three particular things he says.
First, how does he claim to know that speaking out forthrightly about human rights rarely works? The lines of causation in any struggle for human rights are multiple and complex, and there's not much evidence that 'outsiders' to any given struggle make an effective contribution just by shutting up. How much influence one has when speaking critically or in condemnation may be hard to determine, but it's usually a better bet than saying nothing.
Second, China may regard critical comment on its internal affairs as an infringement of sovereignty, but I wonder if we're bound to accept this. Let's see. Bombing Chinese infrastructure would be an infringement of sovereignty; merely thinking about China while munching on a KitKat wouldn't be an infringement of sovereignty. Where, between these two - on which side of the breaching/not-breaching of sovereignty line - does speaking words of criticism lie? I'll go for its being on the same side as thinking etc while munching on a KitKat. Consider, in this very same connection, criticisms of the US over Guantánamo.
Third, if Tisdall doesn't want 'to say human rights abuses can be ignored', as he professes not to, he owes his readers some attempt to delineate what he thinks Obama should do in the way of not ignoring them at the same time as not being too exhortatory.
Compare the concluding paragraphs from this leader in another liberal newspaper. Compare, also, this.