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 topics, 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 to account and challenge each other to uphold international norms on human rights. Indeed, both the United States and China are key members of the United Nations’ rules-based system intended to ensure respect for all people’s human rights.
But Trump and Xi are disregarding and dismantling that system.
Both men, in their own ways, have tried to co-opt the concept of human rights to promote their narrow economic and security interests, eliminate dissent domestically, and ignore human rights crises around the world – many of which their governments’ policies and practices have fueled.
We are thus about to see two perpetrators of grave violations meet, each one comfortable in the knowledge that the other won’t hold them accountable for their actions. If Trump’s pre-departure press conference is any indication, the gravity of human rights issues that should be on the table may be beyond the grasp of these leaders. When asked about political prisoner Jimmy Lai, Trump incomprehensively compared Lai to former FBI director James Comey, implicitly suggesting that it is excusable for leaders to imprison their critics.
