America's newfound readiness to face down Chinese pressure suggests it may finally have realised what China's leaders have privately feared for years: that runaway economic growth in China has helped conceal the mounting internal pressures on its leaders. America and Britain have both issued China with unusually stiff public rebukes over human rights concerns in recent weeks. Gordon Brown condemned the execution in China in December of a British citizen in "the strongest terms", saying he was "appalled" that the Chinese authorities had persistently ignored Britain's pleas for clemency.

More recently US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, spoke in similarly tough terms when demanding that China conduct an open investigation into claims by Google that Chinese officials had hacked into the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists: "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation."

President Obama has also signalled a change of tone in his China policy. The wooing of China that marked the first year of his presidency has been replaced by a more openly defiant stance in recent days: first he earned Chinese ire by signing off on a $6.4bn arms sale to Taiwan; then White House officials confirmed that the President fully intended to meet the Dalai Lama later this month. Such a move was bound to severely anger China which has warned that any meeting with the Dalai Lama would "seriously undermine" US-China relations.

Barack Obama meeting the Dalai Lama on 18 February 2010: White House photo

This newfound readiness to stand up to China signals a new and dramatic change in the mood music for both countries' relations with China. Only last year Mrs Clinton announced on a trip to Beijing that the US considered human rights concerns as secondary to more pressing concerns regarding global economic recovery. And for many years the British government has been practically silent in public on human rights abuses in China, preferring instead to address such concerns in a low-profile bilateral dialogue conducted behind closed doors. It is too early to tell whether both or either country has calculated that a more assertive strategy for engaging with China is more likely to deliver success in making progress on human rights as well as co-operation on a whole range of other bilateral issues.

But it is clear that attempts to curry favour with Beijing by muting human rights criticisms and wooing China on other issues has largely failed to secure both countries' professed objectives. Instead, timid diplomacy appears only to have emboldened China to push for ever more concessions whilst giving nothing in return. Last October President Obama was widely criticised for appearing to bow to Chinese wishes by declining to meet the Dalai Lama who was in the USA at the time. But China refused to reward the President for his troubles with any goodwill measures in return. There was no early release of dissidents during Obama's trip to Beijing just one month after he failed to meet the Dalai Lama. Nor has the US been able to secure China's effective co-operation on a range of other bilateral issues as a result of the administration's earlier downplaying of human rights issues. China, for example, has refused to respond to America's calls for sanctions on Iran in the UN's Permanent Security Council.

As for Britain, Beijing could hardly have been more dismissive of the UK's China's policy of "constructive engagement". In 2008 the UK presented China with a prized concession when it finally recognised Tibet "as part of the People's Republic of China". Up to that point, Britain had merely recognised China's "special interest" in Tibet. China's "thanks" for so momentous a concession?

The execution of a British citizen, followed by a very public slap on the wrists for the British government and sudden cancellation of a UK-China Human Rights Dialogue following British protests over the execution; the separate executions of two Tibetans in October 2009, just weeks after a British Foreign Office Minister had intervened on their behalf during a visit to Tibet; and belligerent Chinese negotiating tactics during the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit which effectively scuppered Britain's attempts to secure a legally-binding agreement on emissions-cuts. All of which begs the question: if there is so little to gain across the board from staying quiet on China's human rights record and being seen to bend to Beijing's wishes in general, what does the international community have to lose by being more assertive in pressing for human rights improvements as well as co-operation on other issues?

The situation in Tibet has worsened in recent years, as a state of de facto martial law has been in place

The question becomes more pertinent still if one pauses to consider just how much leverage China really has on the world stage. Up to now China has been able to trade off the global perception that it is unwise to antagonise Beijing's communist leaders given China's rampaging economy and growing military capability. But where the world sees Chinese strength in its fast-track growth, China's leaders worry about political fallout at home from runaway growth and the potential for the uncontrollable social unrest it could unleash. Their fears are well-founded. Foreign visitors may be impressed with soaring corporate headquarters in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, and the sight of affluent Chinese in the cities dotted along China's eastern seaboard.

But out of sight to the visitor 800-900 million Chinese languish in the impoverished countryside, excluded from the growth of the coastal cities. This is why, over the last thirty years, China has gone from being one of the world's most equal societies to one of the world's least equal societies. The dizzying speed at which the Chinese economy has grown is what has caught the world's attention; but it is the even faster rate at which income inequality has grown in China that may well become the more important factor in determining the long-term survival prospects of the Party and its leaders.

As noted China analyst Isabel Hilton has observed, millions of former workers in the old state enterprises have lost their jobs, healthcare and pensions as a result of the opening up of China's economy. And the Party has allowed its corrupt officials at the local level to tax "beyond endurable limits" the peasants, according to Hilton. No wonder resentment is simmering in China's impoverished regions: according to the Chinese government's own statistics, the number of protests throughout China in 1993 was 8700. By 2005 the number had rocketed tenfold to 87,000.

In other words, social unrest in China is growing because of economic growth that ha s spawned such glaring inequalities in Chinese society. The penalties for such protests can be severe. With no effective outlet for building unrest China is becoming a pressure-cooker.

(Top) Liu Xiaobo, Xu Zhiyong, Woeser, Hu Jia
(Bottom) Teng Biao, Chen Guangcheng, Bao Tong, Gao Zhisheng
All have challenged the Chinese government from within China

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

FEBRUARY 2010: President Obama shows strong support for Dalai Lama's political leadership
FEBRUARY 2010: Hundreds in Tibet celebrate Obama-Dalai Lama meeting
FEBRUARY 2010: Meeting with Dalai Lama signals US realisation that there is nothing to gain from kowtowing to China
FEBRUARY 2010: Hundreds of Tibetans mark start of new year with protest in Ngaba
JANUARY 2010: Hu JInato's hardline rhetoric ahead of Sino-Tibetan dialogue
NOVEMBER 2009: EU-China summit: time for EU leadership to forge a more co-ordinated Tibet policy
NOVEMBER 2009: China likens occupation of Tibet to Abraham Lincoln's struggle to end slavery
OCTOBER 2009: China's execution of Tibetans an outrage
OCTOBER 2009: Tibetans pushed to the margins 60 years after birth of People's Republic of China
NOVEMBER 2008: Britian rewrites history by claiming Tibet is part of China for the first time
Click here for the section on the US and Tibet

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