Chapter 4 The Netherlands & the People's Republic of China
4.5 Case 4 -‐ Van Mierlo's Moralism (1997-‐1998)
At the end of his visit, Van den Broek's mentioned to China that 'human rights are the cornerstone of the Dutch Foreign Policy' but this was merely symbolic: also for the Netherlands the contracts decide the course of action. Li Peng responded by saying that
‘the world should respect China's own interpretations of human rights. Political reform has to go step by step. Otherwise China will end up in the same chaos as Eastern Europe’.
4.5 Case 4 - Van Mierlo's Moralism (1997-1998)
Also in the second half of the 1990s politics would stand in the way of economic relations between the Netherlands and China. It became clear that Dutch businesses, and to a lesser extend also the Ministry of Economics, were having objections against the foreign policy of the Netherlands towards China. This foreign policy was, with the appointment of the new Purple cabinet more ideological than ever before12. The words of the new Minister of Economics, Hans Wijers, in 1997, that not everything can be measured in economic terms, and more importantly, that doing business with China should be 'conducted within the framework of the political values that the cabinet stands for' said a lot about the moralistic principles of the new cabinet. According to Hellema (2010) Dutch business circles had a lot of complaints of how the politics from the Hague 'wasted' good business opportunities because of the 'political preaching' abroad about democracy and human rights.
But actually during the 1990s, the Netherlands was, just like the rest of the world, becoming less and less critical towards China. The communist leaders had already figured out that the foreign interests in China were so big that any minor political
12 "Purple" is the nickname of a coalition consisting of social democrats and liberals. It is derived from the combination of the colour of the social democrats (red) and liberals (blue). The two Purple cabinet of Prime
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resistance could easily be parried. Countries or companies that wanted to 'meddle in domestic affairs' - in practice meaning everything that China didn't want to hear any criticism about - were politically shut down.
That this sly attitude would profit the Chinese tremendously was not surprising.
No country wanted to be left behind. And who was still talking about Taiwan, Taiwan was only playing a role among the poorest nations in the world. In this period it seemed like all the trouble had disappeared from the stage of Sino-Dutch relations.
4.5.1 The moralism
In 1996, the Netherlands welcomed Qian Qichen on April 19th, and offered a stage in the hague for Qian and his American colleague Warren Christopher to discuss their different opinions about Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, human rights and trade. The KLM here aquired its permission to fly directly to Beijing. Dutch football players joined the national Chinese team, and businesses finally profited from the foreign policy (NRC Handelsblad, April 10, 1996).
But then the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs stood up. Van Mierlo received a beating at a general discussion with parliament that he had neglected human rights. And given the fact that Van Mierlo was a very ideological politician, that had hurt him personally. He thought that the Netherlands had a reputation to uphold and decided to use his chairmanship of the European Union, in 1997, to denounce the human rights violations in China. He did this during the annual meeting of the Human Rights commission of the United Nations in Gevena in March (Baehr, et. al., 2002).
In his speech, he paid special attention to the work of human rights defenders that were 'made speechless by their own government'. He referred to Moshood in Abiola in
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Nigeria, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, and Wei Jingsheng in China. The Chinese delegation interrupted immediately. The Chinese delegate argued that the Dutch minister was not in a position to intervene in internal Chinese affairs, especially not, because of the Dutch police actions in the former Dutch Indies, and because of the situation in the 'backyard of the Netherlands', referring to the fall of Srebrenica. At this time, the representatives of the member states of the EU had not complained about Van Mierlo’s courageous moralism, but when the common decision-making process for the draft resolution started, it appeared that first France and then Germany, Italy, and Spain had decided to withdraw their support for the draft. They were afraid that the signing of the draft would have economic consequences for their bilateral relation with China (Baehr, et. al., 2002). So, van Mierlo’s attacks on China were without any support from Europe.
4.5.2 The response
Immediately the visit to China of the minister Hans Weijers of Economic Affairs was postponed. The Dutch ambassador was summoned. The long-awaited visit of vice premier Zhu Rongji was cancelled. China wanted to set an example for anybody publicly criticizing China. The whole business world of the Netherlands attacked the minister (Van der Heijden, 2004, p. 231).
For the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs the upheaval was no surprise. Although there was a consensus within the European Union about the human rights position towards China, the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the French President Jacques Chirac decided to hold back their ministers. Confrontation with China is not of this time anymore, said Chirac. But Van Mierlo was not completely alone. Great-Brittain and
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Iran and Birma were hypocritical if China was not included in the list. 'I don't want the European Union to hold a double standard', said Van Mierlo. But what Van Mierlo did not realize was that a big part of Europe, and a majority of the member states of the UN, wanted to treat China nicely in order to cash tremendously.
Hans Blankert, the new chair of the employers' organization VNO-NCW reacted furiously. 'There is no understanding of the sensitivity that the Chinese feel towards open criticism, The damage done by the minister could be more than 800 million guilders'.
H.G. van Buren from the Dutch Center for Development of Trade was speaking of 'pure masochism':
To see that it's going wrong, but still go strong. If you know that the big countries don't want to participate, you should cool down as a small country. Also, you should actually stimulate trading with China. Trade leads to wealth, and wealth leads to a middle class, and a middle class will brings any authoritarian regime down.' (Baehr, et. al., 2002)
On the other hand, parliamentarian Maarten van Traa from the PvdA was speaking of 'courage language'. The damage done to the business world eventually would turn out to be not that bad, he predicted:
The often cited 'sensitivity' of the 'Eastern Chinese' that we should take in consideration is first of all a reverence for China's power, not for its sensitivities. I hear little about the sensitivities of Milosevic or the Burmese military, which we, completely justified, are criticizing openly (Van Traa, 1997).
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Also the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was disappointed :
In the past it was always possible for the Netherlands to maintain economic contacts and at the same time have a political dialogue about human rights. It's a shame that that's no longer possible (Blussé & van Luyn, 2008, p. 220).
At a meeting of Ampek, the Amsterdam-Beijing association of entrepreneurs in the capital city that was celebrating its tenth anniversary, Zhu Manli, the new Chinese ambassador in the Netherlands said:
China and the Netherlands have become important partners. (...) The economic cooperation was growing and that should continue that way. But differences in opinion can only be solved through a 'constructive and non-confrontational approach. (…) Because economic cooperation is not only in the interest of China.
(Reformatorisch Dagblad, 1997).
That's something the Dutch already discovered.
4.5.3 The silence
It took a year for the ties to recover again. That was celebrated with the visit of premier Li Peng in February 1998, the man that in the West was still associated with the repression of the demonstrations in 1989. The Dutch authorities, that in the month before tried really hard to prevent any shred of human rights to ruin the party. Premier Li Peng would be confronted as little as possible with 'normal Dutch people' (Verweij, 2010, p.
34). Also the press was prevented access in such a repressive manner that foreign
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'Demonstrations prevent our countries from having a harmonious relationship', said a Chinese official that was also aboard of the Mississippi Queen, the vessel on which Li drove through the harbor. The 'Release student leader Wang Dan' that demonstrators were shouting was already carried away by the wind (Berbers & Nysingh, February 14, 1998).
The Chinese Prime Minister didn't come to talk about politics, but to sign contracts. Namely, an agreement with Dutch Royal Shell for the construction of a petrochemical complex in Southern-China, worth of 9 billion guilders. This turned out to be the biggest foreign joint-venture in the history of China (Shell, 2004). Never so many captains of industry joined a Dutch minister, 120 in total. The offending H-word was not used again. The big damage to the economy, that was predicted by the VNO-NCW-chair Blankert, did not happen. The Netherlands was exactly in line with the European policy that decided that China would not openly be criticized anymore. According to the European Ministers of Foreign Affairs China would try to improve its human rights better than before (Trouw, February 28, 1998). How they were aiming to achieve this remained a mystery of course. Finally the long awaited visit of Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus could continue. Nothing stood in their way anymore and ten years after its initial planning, they could finally enjoy their visit in 1999.
4.6 Recent developments
In this chapter we have seen the historical development of the relation between the Netherlands and the People’s Republic of China with the four major moments of destability. In the year after the Van Mierlo’s incident, the two parties seemed to have found a balance between their mutual expectations. As long as China