{"id":407035,"date":"2011-04-29T02:48:44","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T02:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/"},"modified":"2011-04-29T02:48:44","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T02:48:44","slug":"u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. challenges China&#8217;s &#8216;serious backsliding&#8217; on human rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"123.042060086\">\n<p>U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner speaks during a press conference following the United States&#8217; first review before the U.N. Human Rights Council, on November 5 in Geneva.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>STORY HIGHLIGHTS<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>U.S. diplomats pressed China on missing activists<\/li>\n<li>Chinese and American officials end two days of talks<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Our disagreements are profound,&#8221; a U.S. diplomat says<\/li>\n<li>The two nations talk again next month<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Beijing (CNN)<\/strong> &#8212; Talks between China and the United States about human rights issues, including missing Chinese activists, ended Thursday with little progress and many unanswered questions, a U.S. diplomat said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was a tough set of discussions,&#8221; said Michael Posner, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. &#8220;Our disagreements are profound.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Beijing meetings came at a particularly frosty time in U.S-China relations, with diplomatic sparring between the two countries.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In recent months, we&#8217;ve seen a serious backsliding in human rights,&#8221; Posner said.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said she was &#8220;deeply concerned&#8221; about the arrests of dozens of activists in China.<\/p>\n<p>Both sides engaged &#8220;frankly and candidly&#8221; in the meetings, which focused largely on the status of dozens of recently detained activists and a series of disappearances.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The dialogue was respectful in tone and based on the facts,&#8221; Posner said. &#8220;And the facts are not good.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Beijing has been silent on a long string of detentions and arrests of activists and lawyers in the aftermath of anonymous calls for a Middle East-style &#8220;Jasmine&#8221; revolution.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese government has responded with a wider crackdown on musicians, artists and religious groups in recent weeks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have been very concerned that dozens people have been arrested and disappeared with no regard to legal measures,&#8221; Posner said at a Beijing news conference at the end of the talks Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Posner said the U.S. delegation inquired about several missing Chinese activists, including lawyers Teng Biao, Chen Guangcheng and Gao Zhisheng. Police took Gao in April 2010, and his family hasn&#8217;t seen him since.<\/p>\n<p>Posner also filed a formal request to meet with Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. She&#8217;s been under house arrest without any formal charges since her husband won the prize last fall. A meeting has not been scheduled.<\/p>\n<p>Posner called Liu Xiaobo&#8217;s 11-year prison sentence &#8220;unacceptable and a violation of the right to basic free speech.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The status of artist and critic Ai Weiwei, who has been detained without being charged since April 3, also remains a mystery, Posner said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We certainly did not get answers that satisfied,&#8221; he told journalists. &#8220;There was no comfort in the response or rather lack of response.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Chinese officials had little to say about the human rights dialogue.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We oppose any country interfering in China&#8217;s internal affairs under the pretext of human rights issues,&#8221; Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a news briefing Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The editorial pages of Chinese state-run media called the U.S. diplomats &#8220;aggressive&#8221; and &#8220;offensive in dialogue.&#8221; The same article, appearing in the Global Times, asserted most Chinese people &#8220;are disgusted with Western pressure on human rights.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>U.S. diplomats disagreed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Human rights are not about us, but about how Chinese citizens determine their own future,&#8221; Posner said. &#8220;We are reinforcing what Chinese people themselves are asking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Posner pointed to a tightening political climate as the root cause of China&#8217;s actions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There is no question the atmosphere is different,&#8221; Posner said. &#8220;Both sides recognized that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As for how it will affect the ever important U.S.-China relationship, Posner was cautious.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Protecting human rights is one essential feature of what we do as the United States,&#8221; Posner said. &#8220;When you have a deterioration as it has been here, it makes the relationship more difficult.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The tone of this week&#8217;s discussion are a far cry from Chinese leader Hu Jintao&#8217;s visit to Washington in January, where he publicly acknowledged &#8220;a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This session of the U.S.-China Human Rights dialogue is the 16th meeting of its kind.<\/p>\n<p>Posner told reporters that human rights topics would also be discussed in next month&#8217;s U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue to be held in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>Posner said a dialogue between Chinese and American legal experts, which was first proposed during Hu and Obama&#8217;s January meetings, will take place in June.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>[Read more here|Read the original here|Read more from the original source|Continued here|Read more|More here|View original post here|More|See more here|See original here|Originally posted here|Here is the original post|See the original post|The rest is here|Read the rest here|See the rest here|Go here to read the rest|Go here to see the original|See the original post here|Read the original post|Original post|Read the original|Link|Excerpt from|View post|Visit link|Follow this link|Continue reading here|See the article here|Read this article<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> U.S. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>U.S. challenges China&#039;s &#039;serious backsliding&#039; on human rights - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"U.S. challenges China&#039;s &#039;serious backsliding&#039; on human rights - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"U.S.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ghanamma\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ghanamma\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"\",\"@id\":\"\"},\"headline\":\"U.S. challenges China&#8217;s &#8216;serious backsliding&#8217; on human rights\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-29T02:48:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/\"},\"wordCount\":851,\"commentCount\":0,\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/\",\"name\":\"U.S. challenges China's 'serious backsliding' on human rights - Ghanamma.com\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-29T02:48:44+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/\",\"name\":\"Ghanamma.com\",\"description\":\"News In Ghana - Latest Ghana News Headlines\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"U.S. challenges China's 'serious backsliding' on human rights - Ghanamma.com","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"U.S. challenges China's 'serious backsliding' on human rights - Ghanamma.com","twitter_description":"U.S.","twitter_creator":"@ghanamma","twitter_site":"@ghanamma","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/"},"author":{"name":"","@id":""},"headline":"U.S. challenges China&#8217;s &#8216;serious backsliding&#8217; on human rights","datePublished":"2011-04-29T02:48:44+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/"},"wordCount":851,"commentCount":0,"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/","url":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/","name":"U.S. challenges China's 'serious backsliding' on human rights - Ghanamma.com","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-04-29T02:48:44+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/29\/u-s-challenges-chinas-serious-backsliding-on-human-rights\/"]}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/","name":"Ghanamma.com","description":"News In Ghana - Latest Ghana News Headlines","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}