Gao Zhisheng is well known to readers of National Review. He is one of the great heroes of China, a human-rights lawyer who has been brutalized for more than ten years now. His family escaped to America in 2009. Last year, I interviewed his daughter, Grace (here).
On Friday, Radio Free Asia had a bulletin and an interview. “Gao Zhisheng, 54, disappeared just over a year ago from a remote cave dwelling in the northern province of Shaanxi, where he was being held under house arrest.” The interview was with Gao’s wife, Geng He, who has done all she can for her husband over these terrible years.
He has sacrificed his life “to expose the workings of the Chinese state,” she said.
What’s it like to be related to a dissident? Geng He gives just a hint: “My side of the family dare not even contact me, and they’ve told me not to call them. Relatives tell me that their ID cards have been confiscated, and they’re not allowed to leave town.” Etc.
Geng He further said, “I feel so low. Gao Zhisheng cared for so many people, so many human-rights cases, and now his own family doesn’t even know where he is.”
• On Friday, President Trump tweeted, “Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!”
Kim Jong-un is a murderous dictator who presides over a gulag state. It is the worst place in the world, possibly tied by Syria at the moment. I do not think an American president should send warmest regards and respect to Kim. I don’t think that Realpolitik demands it.
On Thursday, Trump spoke to Fox & Friends about his Singapore summit with Kim: “Nobody could believe I was able to do it. Obama couldn’t get a meeting. Clinton couldn’t get a meeting. Bush couldn’t get a meeting. Nobody could get a meeting.”
Did prior U.S. presidents seek meetings? Were they willing to do the North Korean dictator — whichever it was — the favor? Whatever you think of the Trump-Kim summit — whether you think it was in the U.S. interest or not — no wizardry was required of our president to obtain the meeting. The boon was to Kim, not us.
• The University of Salamanca is a very important university in Spain. (Beautiful, too.) It has an East Asian Studies program, of course. Last year, the university scheduled “Taiwan Cultural Days” — and then canceled them. Why?
It has now come to light. The Chinese embassy in Spain pressured the university. The university caved. For an article on the subject, go here. Taiwan’s ministry of foreign affairs wondered how China could affect academic freedom in “a sovereign and democratic state far from its shores.”
A really good question.
• One more word. Last Wednesday, President Trump tweeted, “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. ‘South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.’”
Last year, arriving in Saudi Arabia, Trump said, “We are not here to lecture — we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship.” (I wrote about this here.)
Okay. What are the rules? When does the U.S. president comment, or act, on the internal affairs of other countries and when does he not? If white farmers in South Africa are worthy of concern — what about Gao Zhisheng?
One of the best things President Trump has done, in my estimation, is hail Ji Seong-ho, the phenomenal North Korean escapee, at a State of the Union address. (This was when relations between Trump and Kim Jong-un were hostile.) Also, he once tweeted his support for a Venezuelan political prisoner, Leopoldo López.
This is all very selective — and it has ever been thus in our foreign policy, to one degree or another. But some rules of the road seem in order.