"Can Words Set Xu Free?" by Gady Epstein, Forbes

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August 21, 2009

BEIJING -- Do words really matter?

Candidate Barack Obama famously told Hillary Clinton that they do, and now we are about to find out exactly how much the president and secretary of state's words--and those of the new U.S. ambassador to China--matter to the Chinese government on human rights.

The Chinese government is in the midst of its most repressive crackdown on lawyers in the seven years since Hu Jintao took the helm of the Communist Party, forcing Obama administration officials to confront an issue they would rather have kept in the background before the president's first visit to China in November.

This week police formally arrested Xu Zhiyong, a highly respected legal scholar and elected legislator from the mainstream of China's legal rights movement, on dubious tax-evasion charges related to his legal services non-governmental organization, Gongmeng, which the government also shut down.

In February, a more outspoken crusader, Gao Zhisheng, disappeared into the unacknowledged custody of security forces. Some human rights groups and diplomats fear he may have been killed.

Xu and Gao are the bookends of a whole range of activist attorneys--legal "rights defenders"--who are under increasingly intense pressure from the Chinese authorities. The government threatens their livelihoods, then their freedom, and finally their lives. As chilling and disturbing as Gao's case is (see "The Nonexistent Case Of The Missing Lawyer"), many in the legal reform movement told themselves he was a radical, an outlier.

No one can say that about Xu, who was proud of playing by the government's own rules to achieve progress.

The problem was that Xu was advancing a cause, rule of law, that Chinese authorities have long avowed in writing but deliberately thwarted in practice. With Xu's arrest, security forces have signalled China's cadre of rights defenders that they have pushed the Communist Party far enough.

Now the U.S. government needs to send a message that this crackdown has gone too far. That means Ambassador Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who has just arrived in Beijing, will not have the luxury of a long honeymoon with his new interlocutors.

There is no doubt Huntsman will bring up Xu's case very soon--the only question is whether he chooses to do so immediately, and risk spoiling the festive ceremonial atmosphere of the first meeting with his hosts.

Does it matter when Huntsman makes his point, and how he makes it?

Yes and no.

The problem in dealing with China on human rights is that diplomatic pressure typically yields results only on a case-by-case basis. No matter when and how the message is delivered, the U.S. cannot hope to persuade Beijing to reverse its crackdown. That is the realistic limitation, the "no" in response to whether words matter.

But in fact words do matter in diplomacy, both practically and symbolically. Words are the tools of diplomacy, and can do the job when said at the right time by the right person. They can help set Xu free in advance of Obama's visit, which the White House and State Department are already trying to use as leverage to help the lawyer's case.

And even if these words do not secure the releases of Xu or Gao, or of the self-taught attorney Chen Guangcheng, or of the activists Hu Jia and Liu Xiaobo and Tan Zuoren, we know from the experience of imprisoned Soviet dissidents that the knowledge that they had the attention of the free nations of the world was a solace to them in captivity, and blunted the dehumanizing efforts of the regime that imprisoned them.

A diplomat's words also set the tone in relations, defining for the other side a nation's priorities. During her visit to China in February, when other problems dominated everyone's attention, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said publicly that although the U.S. should apply pressure on human rights, "our pressing on these issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."

Clinton was speaking to the Chinese government then, not the people, but the people heard them. Her words certainly didn't change Chinese policy, didn't trigger or worsen the crackdown to come, but they remain disheartening to the people fighting for Xu's cause.

Now it is time for tougher words. Maybe not immediately--Huntsman's message will carry more weight if he doesn't come barreling through the front door with it--but very soon. Huntsman, Clinton and the president all should make clear how important Xu's case is to them.

They can't save all of China's lawyers with their words.

But they may be able to save one.