Thomas Jefferson in Beijing

By David Scott

President Clinton was quoting the author of the Declaration of Independence in Beijing: “We are convinced that certain rights are universal, that, as one of the heroes of our independence, Thomas Jefferson, wrote in his last letter 172 years ago: ‘All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man.’”

The president went on to spell out those rights—“to be treated with dignity, to give voice to their opinions, to choose their own leaders, to associate with whom they wish, to worship how, when and where they want.” These rights, he added, are “the birthrights of people everywhere.”

It was an ironic and telling choice of terms. Because omitted from the president’s list was the first of the “certain inalienable rights” that Jefferson said were given to all by the Creator—the “right to life”—the most basic of all and the right from which all other rights flow.

We recognize that there are diplomatic niceties that must be observed during state visits. And Beijing would rightly find a right-to-life sermon to be rank hypocrisy coming from President Clinton, one of the world’s most unyielding champions of abortion and population reduction.

But that is what made his nine-day visit to China seem so hollow. The repression in Tibet, the state-controlled churches and media—of all the shameless trammeling of human rights that goes on in China, perhaps the most insidious is the denial of the people’s right to bear children. And neither Clinton nor anybody else in his 1,200 man entourage had the courage to bring it up.

While Western countries have developed sophisticated cultural ways of persuading people that they are “better off” not having more children, in China they do it the old-fashioned way. The dictators decreed “one child per family” and have set up an elaborate network of mandarins, snitches, and thugs to enforce it.

Recently, a “planned birth” administrator escaped China to the U.S. Gao Xiao Duan’s testimony before a congressional committee last month was as stark and revealing about Chinese society as any pictures of tanks rolling over students in Tiananmen Square.

Gao detailed—complete with official documents she smuggled out of China—how the state monitors every woman, requiring most to be surgically implanted with birth-control devices. Women are branded as “birth-allowed” or “birth-not-allowed.” To be pregnant without permission means being seized and forced to undergo an abortion and sterilization.

Her testimony interrupted by her own sobbing, Gao told of personally supervising nighttime raids in villages, tearing down the homes of illegally pregnant women with sledgehammers and crowbars. If a woman escaped, her loved ones would be held hostage until she turned herself in and submitted to the abortion.

This is the real face of China, not the smiling Westernized urbanites with cell phones shown throughout the president’s visit. The real face of China is seen in those languishing in U.S. immigration jails, seeking asylum from a country that dictates the most intimate details of their lives, that neuters them like animals against their will.

If the president wants to teach China and the world about human rights, he would do well to hear their stories and the story of Gao Xiao Duan. That, and he should find an unabridged version of Jefferson.