State department report slams China on human rights
By Josh Rogin, The Cable @ Foreignpolicy.com, April 8, 2011 - 7:47 PM

The Obama administration has occasionally been accused of being soft on the issue of human rights in China. But the State Department pulled no punches in criticizing China's ever-worsening behavior on human rights in a new report issued on Friday.....

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton singled out China in her remarks unveiling the report. "In China, we've seen negative trends that are appearing to worsen in the first part of 2011," she said.

Clinton criticized the arrest of artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who disappeared Apr. 3 after being picked up by authorities at the Beijing airport. Clinton also called on China to allow peaceful protests and end its jailing of political critics.

"Such detention is contrary to the rule of law," she said referring to Ai. "And we urge China to release all of those who have been detained for exercising their internationally recognized right to free expression and to respect the fundamental freedoms and human rights of all of the citizens of China."

Clinton also announced the launch of a new website to consolidate information about human rights, called humanrights.gov

Assistant secretary of State for Democracy Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner said that the administration will continue to raise Ai's case with Chinese authorities, as well as the cases of Gao Zhisheng, the Chinese human rights lawyer who disappeared last April, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.....

The Obama administration had avoided criticism of the Chinese government's human rights practices in order to focus on advancing the broader strategic agenda. But in mid-2010, the administration changed tactics....

Cowering before a sunflower seed: Why China is not a great power
By David Rothkopf, Foreignpolicy.com, April 7, 2011

...But one unfailingly good indicator of a nation's real strength is the nature of the enemies or adversaries it fears. Truly great powers do not fear small threats or, if they come to, they diminish themselves and lift up the small. The United States has illustrated this phenomenon well as it reorganized its entire national security apparatus to respond to the threat of hundreds or perhaps a few thousands of largely disorganized terrorists of limited capabilities, extreme views, and little geopolitical traction.

But however egregious America's over-reaction to the terrorist threat was and however grotesquely it led to the perversion of our values and the undermining of our international standing, it seems positively rational and even ennobling compared to the degree to which China cowers in the presence of old men, artists, religious sects, and even words. In this, China joins the ranks of other seemingly "great" powers from Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia that signaled their fundamental weakness even as they bulked up their armies and posed and postured on the world stage. Great states and great men do not fear the little guy so much that they demonize him, outlaw the expression of his views, or throw him in prison.

Yet that is just what is happening again in China as the whiff of jasmine from the Middle East wafts through its society. The Chinese were so afraid of words like "demonstration" and "protest" and even "jasmine" that they monitored and censored them on the web. They turned out police at the first signs of unrest. And they have rounded up dissidents....