President Joe Biden returns to the White House from Michigan on Feb. 19.
President Biden recently spoke about his call with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, claiming that “in different cultures, each country’s leaders have to follow different norms. The comment was met with fire from U.S. lawmakers and the media. The U.S. media criticized it as the rhetoric used by autocrats and dictators since World War II to justify themselves.
Biden revealed his recent phone conversation with Xi at a town hall meeting hosted by CNN on Tuesday (16). He said, “Xi’s core principle is that there must be a unified, tightly controlled China. His rationale for doing things is all based on that.”
Biden went on to say that he and Xi spoke about what the Chinese Communist Party has done in Hong Kong, what it has done to the Uighurs in western China and its attempts to end the cross-strait status quo through a “strong-arm approach.
Biden told Xi that any U.S. president who does not embody American values cannot sustain his or her position as president.
Biden concluded, “Culturally, every country and their leaders have to follow different norms.”
U.S. media outlet The Hill criticized Biden’s remarks as seemingly a delivery to Xi that he was raising the issue of human rights only to meet the expectations of American voters. Worse, with these words, Biden endorsed the CCP’s concept of “human rights with Chinese characteristics. Under this concept, the CCP can define what human rights are and who is entitled to them. The concept of “universal human rights” means that human rights are not given to citizens by the state, but are inherent and inalienable. No law can take away these rights.
At a meeting of the Republican Study Committee, a congressional caucus, last Thursday, former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster criticized Biden for ” made a big mistake,” he said. He said that “different cultures have different norms” is “bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity.
The Hill commented that Biden’s comments appeared to undermine the administration’s announced plans to uphold international norms and seemed inconsistent with Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s remarks. The latter said that the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uighur people amounted to genocide and that the United States would stand up for human rights and democratic values in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
Biden appears to be signaling that he will not let human rights issues stand in the way of the U.S. government’s cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. The Hill article argues that Biden wants to engage with the CCP and therefore seeks to avoid offending Xi Jinping, and that the losers in doing so are the Chinese people and the principles of human rights.
In this regard, Biden has shown himself to be no different from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel, as the current helmsman of the European Union, signed the Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CIA) with the Chinese Communist Party on December 30, apparently prepared to ignore human rights issues in order to serve the interests of German and European business.
Biden’s comments are also reminiscent of how Hillary Clinton, when she first approached the CCP in 2009, endorsed the CCP’s rhetoric that job growth signaled progress in human rights. Biden seems ready to put human rights on the back burner, as former President Barack Obama did with Iran and Cuba.
In 2009, Obama hung Iranian protesters out to dry and did not give strong support to their right to political freedom. He also undermined decades of U.S. human rights diplomacy by defining the Cuban regime’s communist human rights as state-provided social rights.
The Hill commented that Biden’s words show a complete denial of the universality of human rights. This message is pleasing to the ears of despots and dictators around the world, but deeply frustrating to those who hope that the United States will defend freedom.
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