Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo and David Cameron's Poppy
Résumé
This article discusses and interrogates the ethics and modalities of ‘Western’ powers' intervention in the management of human rights in their broadest sense in China. While recognizing China's poor record and the salutary effect extra-Chinese exposure of human rights abuses may have, the author disputes the ahistorical, arrogant and insensitive interventionism of former colonial powers who fail to account for their own human rights since the rise of nation-state colonialism. The British government's, and the BBC's, unbalanced criticism of China fails to account for the historical crimes committed by Britain from the Opium Wars onwards, and leaves unaddressed the historical memory of Britain in China that is lodged in the Chinese people's imaginary. The author calls for a new approach to achieving world human rights which would necessarily take account of the colonial wrongs committed in the name of ‘civilization’.