China Stands Up at the UN, cont.

There's an interesting article in the NYT Magazine about China's growing role at the UN, particularly China's role in blocking any sanctions on Sudan for the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

While the article is generally very good, the author - as is common for American analysis of Chinese diplomacy - largely discounts the modern-day relevance of China's history.

James Traub, in explaining China's stubborn refusal to allow Security Council sanctions against Sudan, writes:

And in China, where memory of “the century of humiliation” at the hands of Western imperialists runs deep — and where the state’s right to abuse its own citizens is not to be questioned — sovereignty has long been a fighting word. During the 90’s, the Chinese abstained on, or publicly criticized, key resolutions authorizing the use of force to dislodge Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and establishing or fortifying peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Haiti. China is now more flexible in practice, but the doctrine of absolute sovereign rights remains central to its foreign policy.

Now, obviously, there's a certain amount of cynical self-preservation at work when China objects to international enforcement of human rights. Nevertheless, I think it's crucial to understand that for the Chinese leadership, this is also very much a matter of principle. But to understand this, we need to have a bit of a better picture of modern Chinese history.

After the Opium Wars with England, China (as well as other Asian countries) was forced to sign the first of what would be many Unequal Treaties. These treaties eventually would rob the Qing Dynasty of various powers such as tariff collection, criminal prosecution, and generally anything that got in the way of western economic interests.

Needless to say, these treaties were all signed at the barrel of many guns. All of the major European powers at the time (Germany, England, France especially) extracted spheres of influence in China. In particular, the diplomatic concept of "extraterritoriality" was imposed on the Chinese. This forbade the Chinese government from prosecuting westerners for crimes committed in China, because it was said that Chinese law and governance was not "civlized" enough to try westerners.

The point of all this is to say that for the Chinese government, the idea of multinational forces invading and imposing their own self-serving economic interests, all the while wrapping their conquest up in the florid language of "human rights" isn't a paranoid fantasy, but a historical fact.

How relevant is this today? Very. It is often (mistakenly) said that China has replaced dogmatic Maoism with a more pugnacious form of nationalism. This misses an obvious point - Chinese Communism was always mostly about national self-determination. The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party today see themselves as the inheritors to not just Mao, but also Sun Yat-sen. Not only do the Communists see China's national sovereignty as something to be protected at all costs, but it is also a crucial aspect of the Communist Party's continuing legitimacy.

As I said at the beginning, there is undoubtedly a certain cynicism to China's maneuverings at the UN, but the Chinese leadership gives every indication of sincerely believing what it says, and China's history gives them good reason to. If America is going to have to deal with China - as it manifestly needs to today - then the US needs to understand why China is doing what it does.