The Big Guys and the Little Guys

By Rick Horowitz

I know, I know: You've got plenty on your plate already. The job's got you running in circles and the house is coming apart at the seams. The kids are sticking jewelry in places jewelry oughtn't be stuck, and you've got this thing behind your ear you're sure you didn't have last week.

So -- correct me if I'm wrong here -- you probably haven't given much thought to the China-Denmark crisis. In fact, the odds are pretty good you didn't know there was a China-Denmark crisis.

Isn't that just like us? (Americans, that is.) Being an international superpower and all, we just naturally assume that the only relations that matter are:

1. our relations with other superpowers (or superpower wannabes); or

2. our relations with anybody else.

Clinton meets with Yeltsin, Clinton meets with Netanyahu, Gore spills champagne all over China -- we keep track of things like that. But when another country, even an enormous other country like China, gets into it with another other country, it doesn't make a dent. And when -- no offense here -- that other other country is little old Denmark...

Let's put it this way: China has a billion people, more or less. Denmark had Hamlet, Victor Borge and the raisin Danish.

So what's all the fussing about? All the fussing is about human rights. China doesn't like them. Denmark isn't pleased. Seems that every year since the Tiananmen Square massacre back in 1989, the European Union offers up to the United Nations Human Rights Commission a resolution condemning China for various human rights abuses. And every year, China manages to block the resolution. It's not exactly progress, but it sends a message.

This year, it's different. This year, some of Europe's leading lights -- Germany, Italy, Spain and now France -- decided not to endorse the resolution in the first place.

"Dialogue," said France. We need dialogue, not confrontation. France didn't say "Airbus" -- not out loud, anyway, although some tiny-minded cynics figured that France's sudden conversion may have had something to do with China's recent $2 billion order for Airbus passenger jets. Does France build parts of the Airbus? Quelle coincidence!

Anyway: You've got the less-than-edifying sight of the big guys backing off, while the little guys -- Denmark, the Netherlands -- try to stand for something. Denmark insists it'll sponsor the resolution even if the European Union won't go along as a group. Now it's China that isn't pleased.

"We hope that they will think further about the consequences," the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry warned Denmark just the other day. If Denmark continues to push its campaign, the spokesman threatened, "China-Denmark relations will be seriously damaged."

And you didn't even know there were any "China-Denmark relations," did you? Apparently there are -- political, economic and trade contacts -- and to hear the spokesman tell it, China is perfectly willing to pull the plug on all of them.

Denmark isn't impressed. Of course, where human rights are concerned, Denmark has stood up to pressure before. Wasn't it Denmark that managed, even while under German occupation during World War II, not to pass any legislation discriminating against Danish Jews or appropriating their property? And when they got wind of German plans to round up the Jews for deportation, didn't the Danes organize a nationwide effort to hide them, and then ferry them to safety in Sweden?

Compared to which, telling China to clean up its act is an easy one; Denmark says it won't back down. Now comes word that Denmark will have some support at the Human Rights Commission, from none other than the U.S. of A. It probably won't be enough to pass the resolution, but it's something.

See? We're involved in this one after all, so you're allowed to pay a little attention.

And call the doctor about that ear thing, OK?

4/8/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.