At their summit in Beijing this week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will discuss trade, the war in Iran and other pressing issues, but one vital issue will undoubtedly be off the agenda: human rights.
This summit should be an opportunity for two of the world’s two most influential leaders to hold each other accountable and challenge each other to uphold international human rights standards. Indeed, the United States and China are key members of the United Nations rules-based system designed to ensure respect for the human rights of all.
But Trump and Xi are ignoring and dismantling this system.
Both men, in their own ways, attempted to co-opt the concept of human rights to promote their narrow economic and security interests, suppress dissent at home, and ignore human rights crises around the world – many of which were fueled by the policies and practices of their governments.
We are thus on the verge of seeing two perpetrators of serious violations meet, each knowing that the other will not hold them responsible for their actions. If Trump’s pre-departure news conference is any indication, the seriousness of the human rights issues that would need to be addressed may be beyond the reach of these leaders. When asked about political prisoner Jimmy Lai, Trump compared Lai exhaustively to former FBI Director James Comey, implicitly suggesting that it is excusable for leaders to imprison their critics.
The Trump administration is overseeing a mass deportation machine that tears apart families while empowering ICE agents who have targeted and killed activists. The U.S. military under Trump has kidnapped and killed foreign heads of state, rolled back years of work to minimize harm to civilians during war, and pledged to massacre on the high seas under the false guise of a war on drugs, and continued to send weapons to Israel while its government commits genocide.
Meanwhile, the Xi administration is completely stifling free speech, freedom of protest, and freedom of religion, while pledging to crimes against humanity against minority groups. Xi’s government has interned or disappeared more than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang and implemented draconian laws, including Hong Kong’s national security law, subjecting the population to indefensible state control.
His government seeks to extend its repression across borders by monitoring, threatening and awarding bounties to activists abroad, while pressuring other governments to close spaces where critical opinions can be expressed. We have recently seen the bitter fruits of Beijing’s transnational repression with the Sudden “postponement” of RightsConthe world’s largest conference on technology and human rights this year.
Trump and Xi have openly and actively worked to undermine the international human rights system, thereby threatening the very foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Beijing has elevated its version of the “right to development” above all other rights, while preaching a vehement non-interference that subordinates any human rights concerns to commercial, economic and security interests.
The Trump administration has promoted its own concept of “natural rights” to distinguish the United States from global human rights standards, while gutting the State Department’s human rights teams and reporting system. The administration has sanctioned judges, prosecutors and even human rights groups supporting the International Criminal Court, launching devastating cuts in funding to global human rights bodies and international institutions, and fled the U.S. human rights review process with no intention of re-engaging – something no country has done before.
So we shouldn’t expect the next summit to be a place where either man talks about human rights. Instead, the meeting will be a striking demonstration of Trump and Xi’s anti-human rights shared vision of transactional geopolitics.
Other countries must unite and insist that Xi and Trump stop undermining ongoing efforts to implement and improve international human rights systems, which save lives, protect millions from persecution, advance the dignity of people around the world, and increase global prosperity and security. The United States and China are not above these systems, nor can their people thrive without them.
It is now up to our communities, civil society groups and individuals – both Chinese and American – to turn to other governments and UN member states to demand accountability that these leaders will not demand of each other.