Hillary Clinton previously came under withering criticism from rights groups and dissidents for her record on human rights in China, before receiving widespread praise in the media for recent tweets about detained feminist activists.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that Clinton, the former secretary of state and current Democratic presidential candidate, has a "complicated" relationship with China and its government. Clinton recently garnered headlines for tweeting that Chinese President Xi Jinping was "shameless" for speaking about women’s rights at the United Nations while he jailed and interrogated feminist activists at home. Her tweet elicited a "furious response" from Beijing’s state-run media, the Post noted.
Additionally, the Post highlighted her "landmark speech" at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where she famously said that, "women's rights are human rights" and criticized China’s family control policies of forced abortions and sterilizations without mentioning the country by name. China also considered the speech to be an "affront" at the time.
However, the Post did not report other prominent examples of rights activists who condemned Clinton’s lack of support for human rights in China. Chen Guangcheng, a former rights lawyer who sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing after fleeing house arrest, has said that Clinton’s State Department failed to work "in accordance with my requests" when he was under pressure from both governments to leave the embassy.
Chen, who eventually secured passage to the United States, wrote in his memoir that, "when negotiating with a government run by hooligans, the country that most consistently advocated for democracy, freedom, and universal human rights had simply given in."
Rights groups rebuked Clinton in 2009 when she said as secretary of state that raising human rights concerns with China "can't interfere" with other important issues such as "the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis." Amnesty International said her comments suggested "that human rights will not be a priority in her diplomatic engagement with China." Chinese state-run media, by contrast, praised her remarks and expressed the hope that her "realistic attitude could be followed by other Western leaders."
Critics have also assailed Clinton’s recent announcement that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade agreement that some lawmakers and analysts say could help to counter China’s expanding influence in the Asia-Pacific region. She previously called the deal the "gold standard" for trade agreements, fueling criticism that she has reversed several of her policy positions to secure support from liberal voters in the Democratic primary.