Some Zhengyou are More Equal Than Other Zhengyou

"Unfazed by the growing diplomatic unrest, [Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd has told the Chinese in their own language there are 'significant human rights problems in Tibet'... Mr Rudd told the university students he came as a 'true friend' - zhengyou - not a critic..." (I'm saying it in plain Mandarin: fix Tibet, Phillip Coorey, SMH, 10/4/08

Judging by letters to the establishment press, Rudd's stocks as a statesman and supposed speaker of 'truth to power' have soared. There were, however, a handful of dissenters:-

"How dare Kevin Rudd tell the Chinese that there have been human rights violations in Tibet. Would he do the same and tell the Israelis that there are gross human rights violations in Palestine? On the contrary, at a recent dinner organised by an Australian Jewish organization, he went to great lengths to say that Australians and Israelis are the same type of people." Letter, Simon Chan, The Age, 11/4/08

"If Kevin Rudd thinks that his manufactured 'dispute' with China will convince Australians that he is anything other than a pro-Chinese apologist, then he should think again. To describe the events in Tibet as 'human rights problems' is a gross insult to the Tibetan people. Equally, why didn't he once mention democracy or freedom of speech in China? The silence was equally deafening about Hu Jia and Yang Chunlin, two dissidents recently jailed for 3 and 5 years respectively. Their 'crimes' were to criticise the Communist Party of China and 'incite subversion of state power'. It's obvious that the Prime minister's statements in China are designed for a domestic audience, not to actually effect change..." Letter, Jeremy C Browne, The Age, 11/4/08

"Kevin Rudd does not need to learn Hebrew to call on Israel to end its gross violations of Palestinian human rights. He can say it in plain English." Letter, Ali Kazak, The Australian, 12/4/08

Among the pundits, veteran SMH journalist Alan Ramsey, who only last month had castigated Rudd for kowtowing to the Israelis in federal parliament (See my posts, The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 1 & 5), was having second thoughts about the man: "To publicly stand up to the Chinese, in their own capital, in their own language, on an issue so sensitive to the planet's last great totalitarian state - and, since May last year, Australia's biggest (in dollars) trading partner - is something no visiting head of government, of any kind, has ever done, let alone one from this country. To say it took courage and no little risk only parrots the obvious. What it took was leadership of the most dramatic kind. In recent years, we have been force-fed national leadership, wrapped in the flag, that gloried in sticking its head up the backside of Washington and its dependent satellite in the Middle East. To have an Australian prime minister behave as Rudd has done in Beijing is to think that maybe he is different after all and not just another political control freak with a brain as big as his smile. The bloke is worth watching." (12/4/08)

Ramsey's otherwise polar opposite over at The Australian, Foreign Editor Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, was even more impressed, gushing : "...Kevin Rudd this week has produced his own cultural revolution... For Rudd has shown the world that it is possible to be a good friend of China and still speak to the Chinese leadership frankly and in public about its appalling human rights practices. This is a profound revolution.... it is a radical departure from the practice of John Howard, who preferred to concentrate on what he and the Chinese had in common... No Western leader, with the partial exception of US presidents, does what Rudd did this week: criticise the Chinese over human rights abuses in Tibet before he arrives, in fact in a joint press conference with US President George W Bush. Repeat the criticism in London. Absorb furious official Chinese protests in Beijing and Canberra, then go to China and repeat the offence in public, in front of a Chinese audience." (12/4/08)

Our pundits, it seems, are easily pleased - the dissenting letters are closer to the mark. If our supposedly fearless Australian Helmsman is really concerned about the human rights of downtrodden people, how is one to explain why, as a zhengyou of both China and Israel, he can say boo to the former about Tibetan human rights, but remain mum about Palestinian rights? And, not only not say boo, but host a parliamentary party for the buggers to boot! A partial answer must surely lie in the fact that the parliamentary wing of the Labor Party has not only not been captured by the China lobby, but that the latter, in so far as it even exists, has nowhere near the clout of the Israel lobby.

Author and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation Michael Lind's comparison of ethnic lobbies in the US may perhaps have some relevance here: "Most ethnic lobbies...have based their power on votes, not money... The influence of these lobbies has usually been confined to the cities and states in which particular ethnic groups have been concentrated... The Israel lobby, however, is not primarily a traditional ethnic voter machine; it is an ethnic donor machine. Unique among ethno-political machines in the US, the Israel lobby has emulated the techniques of national lobbies based on economic interests (both industry groups and unions) or social issues (the National Rifle Association, pro- and anti-abortion groups) . The lobby uses nationwide campaign donations, often funnelled through local 'astroturf' (phony grassroots) organizations... to influence members of Congress in areas where there are few Jewish voters. Stephen Steinlight [former director of national affairs at the American Jewish Committee], in an essay for the Center for Immigration Studies, describes how the Israel lobby uses donations to influence elected officials: 'Unless and until the triumph of campaign finance reform is complete...the great material wealth of the Jewish community will continue to give it significant advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by key figures in Congress. That power is exerted within the political system from the local to national levels through soft money, and especially the provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to Israel'. Steinlight adds: 'For perhaps another generation... the Jewish community is thus in a position to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas'." Distorting US Foreign Policy: The Israel Lobby & American Power, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 5/02

For Rudd to really be a zhengyou to the wretched of the earth, he'd need to be equally critical of China and the US (throw in Russia and a host of other international bovver boys here), with an understanding that both, in their own way, have essentially embraced the worldview of the Israeli right - what US author/activist Naomi Klein calls the Likud doctrine: "Common wisdom has it that after 9/11 a new era of geopolitics was ushered in, defined by what is usually called the Bush doctrine: pre-emptive wars, attacks on terrorist infrastructure (read: entire countries), an insistence that all the enemy understands is force. In fact, it would be more accurate to call this rigid worldview the Likud doctrine. What happened on September 11, 2001, is that the Likud doctrine, previously targeted against Palestinians, was picked up by the most powerful country on earth and applied on a global scale. Call it the Likudisation of the world: the real legacy of 9/11. On September 11 George Bush went looking for a political philosophy to guide him in his role as 'war president'. He found that philosophy in the Likud doctrine, handed to him ready-made by the ardent Likudniks ensconced in the White House. In the 3 years since [now 7], the Bush White House has applied this logic with chilling consistency to its global war on terror - complete with the pathologising of the 'Muslim mind'. It was the guiding philosophy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may well extend to Iran and Syria. Bush has cast the US in the same role in which Israel casts itself, facing the same threat. In this narrative the US is fighting a never-ending battle for its survival against irrational forces that seek its total extermination."(Beware the Likud doctrine, Guardian, 10/9/04)

It is the Likud doctrine, which allows every manifestation of resistance by the oppressed to be labelled terrorism by their oppressors, that has provided the rhetoric for China's crackdown on the Tibetans: "Far from heeding international calls for dialogue with the Dalai Lama, China has accused Tibet's exiled god-king of colluding with Muslim terrorists to destabilise the country before the Olympic Games... The People's Daily said that the Dalai Lama had never abandoned violence after fleeing China in 1959 after a failed revolt against Beijing. 'The Dalai Lama is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese Government to make concessions to Tibetan independence'. It also accused Tibet's spiritual leader of planning attacks with the aid of violent Uighur separatist groups seeking an independent East Turkestan for their largely Muslim people in the northwestern Xinjiang region of China. It said: 'The Dalai clique has also strengthened collusion with East Turkestan terror organizations and planned terror activities in Tibet'. " (China accuses Dalai Lama of being a terrorist, The Times, 24/3/08)

This talk of collusion with China's equally colonized, oppressed (and conveniently) Muslim Uighur population to the north of Tibet in East Turkestan (Xinjiang), is hardly coincidental, the whole point being that, post 9/11, once discreet movements of national resistance to colonial oppression, can now be lumped together and smeared, Israeli fashion, as generic Islamist terrorists bent on an irrational course of Dalek-like extermination of all we (and supposedly 'the Middle East's only democracy') hold dear. Simply slap on the convenient and durable Made-in-Israel 'War on Terror' label and all is forgiven, whether in the occupied Palestinian territories, Tibet, East Turkestan, Afghanistan, Iraq or Chechnya.

In being "passionately pro-Israel;"* in describing the US as an "overwhelming force for good in the world;"** and in swallowing the Likud doctrine all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq, Rudd is actually doing his bit to bury the hopes and aspirations of millions of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Uighers and Tibetans.

* Rudd outlines foreign policy vision, AM, Radio National, http://www.abc.net.au/, 27/3/08
** Kevin Rudd on the ALP and Israel, The Religion Report, Radio National, 3/11/04