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Chapter 8 Human Rights and National Interest: From the Middle Powers Hong Kong is a domestic story for us. I sometimes feel like I could do the daily traffic reports in Hong Kong and it would get printed in my newspapers. —Jonathan Manthorpe, the Hong Kong-based Asian correspondent for Canada’s Southam News Why can’t our Communists be like that? —An Australian newspaper commenting on China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre, with reference to the events in Eastern and Central Europe Gone are the days when Australia does just what Washington and London want us to do. —Alexander Downer, Foreign Minister of Australia We come to Hong Kong to make a profit. —Sankei Shimbun, quoting a Japanese businessman, June 24, 1997 For almost 50 years the Cold War framework has provided an easy and simplified formula to look at the world. With the end of the Cold War, a veteran journalist contends that we have lost “the clarity of our coverage” and “the strategic imperative” (quoted in Freedom Forum, 1993: 47). According to Wallerstein (1993), the primary objective of the Cold War for the western alliance was to contain the Soviet Union, to maintain the unity of the free world and a united home front led by the United States, and to induct a steady, nonradical political and economic revolution of the Third World. Policy differences between western allies were downplayed for the sake of a larger common enemy. After the collapse of the Soviet camp, however, centralized dualism becomes decentralized pluralism. The junior partners in the western alliance may 151 find it easier to air their differences with the United States and see a different playing field without the staged East-West struggle. It is also getting more difficult for the United States to use the United Nations to cloak its own foreign policy and dress up the American initiative as multinational mandates. Can the western ideological united front survive? The rise of China, along with the handover of Hong Kong, would be an important test case. The Cold War is over, and it has been argued that the foreign policy of the United States is one of trade diplomacy. National interest consists of vital existence , special interests of friends and allies, and general interests of international order (Von Vorys, 1990). If national interest is defined in terms of ideological, territorial, and economic dimensions, then it seems clear that economic interests have risen to challenge the supremacy of ideological interests. In fact, economic interests of securing the best possible terms of exchange within the world economy may become a preeminent ideology. The nationstate is the most important instrument and agent of pursuing national interest. Touraine (1997) argues that if democracy is to survive in the post-Communist world, it must somehow protect the power of the nation-state at the same time as it limits that power, for only the state has sufficient means to counterbalance the global corporate wielders of money and information. When western ideology and national interest (principally but not limited to economic interest) clash, what would the media discourses be? Cohen (1963) paints the press as a watchdog, an independent observer, an active participant, and a catalyst of the U.S. foreign policy. Opposite to that is the view that the media are “no more than a pawn in the political game played by the powerful political authority and establishment in Washington” (Chang, 1993: 7). The media and policy makers sometimes form coalitions, and national news may very well reflect national policies, cultures, and institutional interests. For Ramaprasad (1983: 70), media diplomacy is “the role the press plays in the diplomatic practice between nations.” There is a strong incentive for the state to use the media to articulate and promote foreign policy, to promote national image, to “trial balloon,” to confer recognition, and to generate pressure on the opponent (Frederick, 1993). Herman and Chomsky (1988) even consider the media as a propaganda arm of the state. The handover of Hong Kong takes place in the post-Cold War context. Will the chill of the Cold War remain? Will the traditional Cold-War bipolar mode of thought and language—us versus them, good versus evil, winners versus losers—still dominate media narratives? To what extent will the three junior partners of the western camp––Canada, Australia, and Japan—cast China’s reclamation of Hong Kong in terms of the U.S.-style ideological tugof -war? To what extent will the redefined spheres...

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