Human Rights and China

Expecting Bill Clinton to do something about human rights in China is like expecting him to do something about campaign finance reform—what we will actually get is a flood of morally earnest talk followed by more morally earnest talk. At a January 28, 1997 press conference the president said, “[I] believe that the impulses of the society and the nature of the economic change will work together,” and clinched his argument with the inevitable metaphor: change in China is “in...