There are some things, regardless of the final outcome of the implementation, but the initial intention and enthusiasm of the participants at the beginning can always make people be moved in retrospect. Now that the U.S.-China relationship is entering this state where both sides have a thousand knots in their hearts, where China is aggressive and the U.S. is holding the line of defense of strategic patience, I feel this way when I look back at the original intentions of the U.S. legal assistance program to China.
A past event that was very exciting for the Chinese intellectual community
In May 2000, I visited the United States for the first time as a U.S. international visitor and spent a total of five days in Washington, D.C., during which I visited the NED. When I entered the office building, a plaque with the words “Rule of Law” in gold letters on a red background was placed at the reception desk at the entrance. Isn’t this the slogan of the Chinese government? Does the United States approve of the rule of law in China, which is characterized by the rule of man? I asked the NED executive who received me at that time with a question. He explained very seriously the idea of the U.S. government: China’s rule by law is Rule by law, while the U.S. wants to promote the rule of law (Rule of Law), which is the same as “rule by law”, but the actual connotation is completely different. Although I felt that it was a play on words at that time, I nodded my head and said “I understand” because I could not understand English and I was a guest, but I always had doubts. It was not until 20 years later, when the U.S. advancement of the rule of law in China had become a fizzle, that I discussed the matter with Mr. Bao Tong on Twitter and he told me that even Mr. Li Shenzhi, a respected “American”, had truly believed in the difference between the two, and only then did I stop blaming myself for being naive.
Legal aid programs are intended to promote the rule of law in China
There may be hundreds of human rights lawyers or human rights professionals in China today, but some of them may not know that the birth of this group benefited from former President Clinton’s signing of the United States-China Relations Act of 2000 on October 10, 2000. (2000), which refers to promoting human rights improvements in China and specifically to helping China build the rule of law. However, the Chinese government sees this as a condition attached to the U.S. allowing China to join the WTO, and Beijing only cares about one thing: the Act ends Most Favored Nation (MFN) status, which was previously approved by the U.S. Congress every year, and the U.S. and China will enter permanent normal trade relations (NTR) status.
It is important to note that the bill specifically establishes the U.S. Congressional and Executive Commission on China to ensure that China complies with internationally recognized human rights laws, meets labor standards and allows freedom of religion, and establishes a task force to prohibit the importation of Chinese products manufactured in reeducation-through-labor camps or prisons. The bill also includes so-called “anti-dumping” measures designed to prevent an influx of cheap Chinese goods into the United States that could harm U.S. industries that make the same goods. It allows for new tariffs and restrictions on Chinese imports that “threaten to cause market disruption to U.S. producers of similar or directly competitive products.
This was the original intent of the U.S. in supporting China’s WTO membership in the first place, and as for the subsequent results, we all know what happened.
All the results of legal aid have become smoke and mirrors
U.S. legal aid to China was put into practice in 2003, giving birth to the aforementioned group of human rights lawyers and a number of professional human rights defenders, in addition to more than 1,000 foreign NGOs that landed in China. Soon after its birth, the group of human rights lawyers encountered continuous repression, and after the 709 incident in 2015, the group had no room to operate in China at all under the brutal pressure of the Chinese government, which increased year by year.
The crackdown on foreign NGOs is much more complicated, and there is a history involved here. In order to join the WTO, China had accepted a decade-long legal aid program for China from the U.S. Clinton administration, which was put into practice in 2003. At the time, the United States hoped that legal cooperation between China and the United States would promote the rule of law in China and, ultimately, its democratization. (See the United States-China Relations Act of 2000, signed by President Clinton.) China, then headed by Jiang Zemin, decided to “bend the rules” in order to achieve its goal of joining the WTO. In order to achieve the goal of WTO accession, Jiang Zemin decided to “compromise” by saying within the Party that he would “take foreigners’ money to do our own work”, but set some conditions that required these NGOs to register and operate in China only with government agencies, universities, and research departments as partners, and that all their activities would be under the strict supervision of state security. These foreign NGOs are allowed to register and operate in China only as partners with government agencies, universities and research departments. These foreign NGOs are allowed to set up offices in China, have fixed premises, familiar long-term partners, and continuous operational programs. With the exception of a very small number of AIDS-related civil society organizations that have partnerships with foreign NGOs, the funds brought into China by foreign NGOs (between $100 million and $200 million in recent years) are mainly used to fund the three types of organizations mentioned above. By the time officials began publicly proclaiming the prevention of color revolutions, there were reportedly “1,000 foreign NGOs laying the groundwork in China. (“1,000 Foreign NGOs Lay Groundwork in China,” China News Service, August 31, 2006)
After more than a decade of China’s “peaceful rise”, in 2005 (Hu Wen’s first term) he publicly stated that “foreign NGOs in China are a tool for the U.S. to promote color revolutions in China”. This round of denunciations of “foreign NGOs as tools of foreign forces to subvert China” was represented by the article “Some Foreign NGOs Destabilize Politics” published in the Study Times of the Central Party School in August 2006, and finally by the time Xi Jinping took over as General Secretary of the CCP, foreign NGOs finally withdrew from China in 2013-2014. I have written several articles about this process.
Expectations and Reviews of U.S. Think Tanks at Different Times
Today, all the additional efforts of the United States to promote China’s WTO accession – to promote China’s democratization, to promote China’s rule of law – have become a thing of the past, but the benefits for China are very real: China officially joined the WTO in December 2001, with a total GDP of $1.34 trillion, or 4 percent of the world’s GDP. 4%; 18 years later in 2019 (an epidemic in China in 2020), China’s GDP totaled $14.28 trillion, or about 16.3% of the world’s total GDP, and the nurturing of China’s national power can be clearly perceived from this figure.
The process of increasing China’s national power is the process of China’s transition from being begged by the U.S. and willing to be on par with the international community to being disliked and rejected by foreigners who have nothing better to do than to tell China what to do. Faced with the wolf’s teeth bared by the Chinese war wolf, American think-tankers began to reflect. The RAND Corporation, a leading U.S. think tank, released a report in September 2020, “The “Lost Generation” in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Decline and Rescue of American Influence,” arguing that U.S. international success has declined sharply over the past two decades. During the three presidencies of George W. Bush Jr. and Barack Obama to Donald Trump, this generation of Americans has been characterized by more foreign policy regression than policy progress. According to the criteria established in the report: shaping global norms, building international institutions, deterring aggression, reducing the risk of nuclear conflict, galvanizing global public opinion and promoting broad-based economic growth. The presidents of this century, George W. Bush (43rd), Barack Obama and Donald Trump, each had five such accomplishments, far fewer than any other president since 1945. These three presidents have been categorized as “the ‘lost generation’ in U.S. foreign policy,” but none of their policies toward China are included in their list of successes or failures, with only Trump’s trade war with China, which began in 2018, categorized as ” Impact yet to be assessed” item. That is, despite the fact that relations with China are the most important U.S. foreign relationship, the three presidents in the last 20 years have not achieved anything worthy of recognition in this regard in the RAND report’s assessment. More interestingly, however, even President Clinton, who had eight diplomatic accomplishments, did not include any China policy among his achievements, which is completely different from the Clinton administration’s self-assessment and different from that of the Chinese government.
I was recently researching the evolution of U.S. policy toward China, and two of the most significant achievements of the Clinton administration’s China policy (at least according to the U.S. government at the time) were its support for China’s accession to the WTO and its human rights diplomacy with China. In the course of my research, I read a book by Paul Gewirtz, the director of the Legal Aid Project and a professor of law at Yale University. Paul Gewirtz, the director of the Legal Aid Project and a professor of law at Yale University, made a statement in 2002 about his expectations for the project. In this statement of expectation and vision, he said that he had always had the idea that U.S. foreign policy should pay more attention to legal reform in other countries. The rationale was that a range of U.S. foreign policy could enhance the benefits if the legal systems of other countries could be improved: legal reform could support economic development. This idea impressed President Clinton’s team, and he was given a special position at the State Department, where he temporarily left Yale Law School from 1997 to 1998 to work at the State Department in Washington, D.C. The achievement was, of course, the promotion of the rule of law in China, as later provided for in the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000, specifically, the legal assistance program to China that officially began in 2003. Specifically, the legal assistance program to China, which officially began in 2003. Although the rule of law that was so meaningful and highly anticipated by the Chinese is now a fizzle, I was moved by the sincerity of this speech.
In 2014, I wrote an article entitled “External Forces” in the History of China’s “Rule by Law”, detailing how, in the 17-year history of the Communist Party’s “Rule by Law”, the U.S., an “external force”, had The story of the “external forces” that played a significant leading role in the 17-year history of the Communist Party’s “rule by law” is outlined in detail. Today, when I revisit the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 and the RAND 2020 report, and look at Sino-U.S. relations today, I am moved by the efforts of the United States to promote the rule of law in China, even though the Western proverb “sow the dragon’s seed and reap the fleas” comes to mind; even though I know that in the long history and the grand narrative of history, the United States has played a significant role in the rule of law. I know that in the grand narrative of history, this little episode will probably not be mentioned again.
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