<!–[CDATA[Liu Shihui, human rights lawyer  |  China Change
This article was first published on ChinaChange web site on September 16, 2015
China Change asked those it often reports on to send messages to President Obama, addressing the upcoming summit. – The Editors

The Chinese stock market crashed again today (September 15), with multiple market indices reaching their yearly lows. As they plummeted, Xi Jinping’s dream of a heavy-handed market rescue was irreparably shattered.
As the economy enters a quagmire, Li Ka-shing (李嘉诚), the richest man in Asia, and many other tycoons are pulling their capital from China. Xi Jinping now has no means of restoring prosperity, and in the midst of internal and external pressure, the Party is trying to drive exports to Europe and America. The hope is that exports will inject some energy into the stagnant Chinese economy, stirring up modest signs of life.
At this point, the Chinese Communist Party isn’t feeling as confident as it was during the American subprime crisis in 2008. Back then, it was America asking for the help of the cashed-up Communist Party—now it’s the reverse: the American economy is marching along nicely, among the best in the world, and the U.S. Federal Reserve is about to raise interest rates, perhaps as soon as the end of this month. In this scenario, Xi Jinping’s visiting the U. S. feels to some extent like a trip to get help.
Inside China, the Party has not in the least slowed its pace of political repression—it’s kept up its campaign to suppress, crackdown, and annihilate those who fight for a liberal democratic society. Dark clouds loom above China, foreboding doom. The United States is the lighthouse of freedom and democracy for the world, but under the Obama administration it has been too accommodating, even appeasing, to the regimes that act like rogues and hoodlums in the international community. Almost the entire Western free world, including America, has been led by the nose by the Communist Party’s checkbook diplomacy. They’ve become weaker and weaker in defending human rights, and have become feeble in holding to and promoting their own values of freedom and democracy.
I recommend that in conducting great power diplomacy, the Obama government again take up the cause of freedom and democracy, look far ahead into the future, and don’t allow the glittery promises of wealth from a dictatorship muddle your priorities. Indulging a dictatorial regime and pursuing only profit may indeed bring near term benefit, but it’s a poisoned chalice, apt to harm both one’s own country and the other over the long term. In the end, it won’t be only the regular folk under the violent dictatorship that eat the bitter fruit of this union; the Western world will also find it hard to emerge unscathed.
The above remarks are my personal views. If they reached the Obama administration, I would be pleased beyond measure.
Liu Shihui (刘士辉) is a Guangdong-based lawyer who has taken on a number of prominent rights cases, including that of activist Guo Feixiong. Liu has had his license to practice law revoked for his activities, and in 2011 was detained and tortured for 108 days by security police.]]>