Press China to Live Up to Human Rights Standards: From Tibet to cracking down on democracy and religious freedom activists, China has failed to live up to international standards of human rights. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe the United States has to be frank with the Chinese about such failings and will press them to respect human rights.

– fact sheet distributed by the Obama campaign during the 2008 campaign.

[Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] went out of her way to downgrade human rights, placing economic, environmental and security relations above the abuse of countless individuals under Chinese rule — members of minority and religious groups who are systematically repressed, detainees and prisoners who are tortured, human rights and civil society activists arbitrarily detained, women and children routinely subjected to violence and discrimination and tens of thousands without recourse to an effective justice system, as well as widespread censorship.
Clinton’s language and the Chinese reaction were reminiscent of the Cold War, when there was a rigid hierarchy of foreign policy interests and human rights was readily traded off for more tangible goals.
The Chinese response said it all. The Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, expressed a willingness to engage in dialogue with the United States “on the premise of mutual respect and noninterference in each other’s internal affairs.

– Sonia Cardenas, associate professor of political science and director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Connecticut, writing in the International Herald Tribune, February 24, 2009.

Once again, remember the disclaimer: All statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date. All of them.