Chinese Whispers
Don't get me wrong, I find the concept of an 'axis of evil' as bonkers as the next person. The idea that the world could be divided into two - the good guys and the bad guys - sounds like something straight out of a cowboy movie (hmm).
But when I was giving a talk to Chinese civil servants this morning I was reminded of the fact that, while we are able to dismiss it as simplistic nonsense, this piece of rhetoric is influencing the way some Chinese view the West and the policies of the current US administration.
After the usual questions about think tanks - independence, funding, government influence - the penultimate questioner caught me off guard.
Did I, he asked, believe that the 'axis of evil' is actually an anti-Chinese policy in disguise?
Without further consideration you might think he's just as barmy as Bush. But, as he reminded me, a good number of the countries on that axis - notably Iran and South Korea - are firm allies of China. Is it, he wanted to know, just a way to squash a newly expansive China back into its box?
No, was clearly my answer. But it shows that even when you shout your message through a giant megaphone for all to hear, there's still no guarantee it won't get lost in translation.
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It's an attitude that I find very worrying for the future - a lot of the western criticism of China's human rights record seems spot on to me, but how to engage and drive change if ideas like human rights, which strive for universality, can simply be dismissed as part of a western plot?
Maybe we need to change the way we engage on these issues so they can't be so easily dismissed - leading by example might be a good first start. Hypocrisy is probably our greatest weakness on this front. Trade policies that encourage ethical behaviour might also help, I suppose.
But I think maybe it goes a little further than that too. Is it something more than hypocrisy when those core values are what is used to legitimise or justify that behaviour?
You mean when the West blatantly flouts international Human Rights conventions at least nominally in defence of those rights? (Read: Iraq) I think there is a legitimate complaint there too. Are non-Western nations right when they say that the international Rights Regime is used in the same context today as Christianity was in the colonial era - the almighty 'justification' for ulterior imperial aims? I believe the content of the declaration is not really at issue, but the hijacking of them is.
Why believe this recent embrace of the laudible aims of co-produced security is anything other than a means of trying to secure wider political and public support for government policies which a lot of people see as constitutive of the problem rather than solutions to it?
Such a seemingly disingenuous attitude makes information sharing on secuity incredibly problematic - there's such a massive credibility problem for the government.