The Emerging (Sanctions Fueled) Face of the Transnational Regulation of the Human Rights Effects of Economic Activity: The CECC Hearing on "Corporate Complicity: Subsidizing the PRC’s Human Rights Violations"

 

Pix Credit Larry Catá Backer ©2023 (Narrative Reliefs Angkor Wat 12th c (Berlin)

 

For at least a century, the United States has assumed the role of leadership core the leading forces of  state vanguardism, tasked with ensuring progress toward the perfection of a specific way of seeing the world and remaking all of its social relations in its image. These vanguard states, and their core of leadership, have been led, in turn, by sets of interlocking closed inner circles of those selected to incarnate (or shepherd) vanguard objectives towards whatever it is the vanguard believes is in its (and thus the nation's) best interests.  Long gone are the original principles on which the Republic was founded--the preservation (along Aristotelian lines) of the customs and traditions of society  protected and perfected  through the vanguard assuming roles as representatives of the people in the state apparatus created for that purpose.  The vanguard, however, remains. It has changed, though.  No longer feudal or pre-modern; it is now embodied in the powerful intellectual detritus of American progressivism. The caste element remains; the lifeworld tended by that caste, and its narrative, is now different. What also remains is the animating idea fueling social relations--that both the individual and their social relations can be perfected, and that journey to perfection can be defined and must be guided by the leading social forces of a collective.

Pix Credit Narrative Reliefs Angkor Wat

Indeed, in some respects, the American vanguard might be viewed as Leninist before Lenin roused himself from out of the torpor of late Russian imperial-praetorian-boyar-ethno-chauvinist-autocracy to propose a variant tied to the aspirations (as he and his circle understood it at the time) of European Marxism. Some might be tempted to argue that the American progressives--both as a self-constituted collective of social leading forces and as a caste of ethno-social groups bound by a specific ideology--were among the most successful in adhering to a philosophy of  the state as instruments to remake something (immigrants, optimal birth parents, social and ethno-religious-racial caste hierarchies, gender expectations and the like) and their anointed role in that (inevitable) progress. Their greatest success was not their ability to impose specific policies (though those were successful enough); it was in their success in reshaping the narratives around which the masses were induced to see themselves, their role and their obligation to be led by what later emerges in popular political culture as "brain trusts, experts, influencers, public intellectuals and those anointed through the validation of the assumptions in social relations, as a "leader class" because of their wealth, popularity, breeding, education, technical proficiency (in high status fields of knowledge) and the like. 

It is in this context that the quite significant work of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) (prior essays here: CECC) can be situated generally. More importantly for this post, it provides a useful framing analytics to consider the quite interesting narrative-enhancing hearings that CECC has just widely announced. Entitled "Corporate Complicity: Subsidizing the PRC’s Human Rights Violations," the hearings have several objectives that are worth considering.  

The first may be to align the China related work that is central to CECC's mandate to the emerging American policy strategies of recasting the management-regulation of the human rights effects of economic activity within sanctions regimes.  That is to leverage the specific objectives of US-China policy to the development of a broader sanctions-based policy narrative touching on the management of economic activity that focuses on business entities and their global operations.  In this sense, the CECC project enhances efforts elsewhere, for example to develop a revised US National Action Plan for Business and Human Rights. In this sense, CECC China policy cane be cast as enhancing US efforts to develop a coherent global narrative for business and human rights under which US policy initiatives may be coordinated.

The second  is to more closely enhance the emerging narrative strategies of sanctions-based human rights compliance-regulation.  This is meant to set off the US approach from that emerging from the business and human rights "motherland"  in Europe. More significantly, it is meant to underline the illegitimacy of the counter-narratives of Socialist business and human rights. While the Europeans continue the project of aligning regulatory sensibilities with the business of economic activity, the US remains aligned with its post-1945 vision of markets led and state supported systems for managing social relations within a framework of "level playing fields," equality of opportunity, the perfectibility of information for decision-making, and risk-incentivizing decision-making within broad parameters.  In that context, the role of the state is to define the boundaries within which it is possible for the market to lead--by suppressing markets for certain goods and services (drugs, etc.), and by regulating the baseline rules within which market stakeholders may arrange their own relations.

The third is to continue to develop an American narrative of complicity, one that aligns with the sanctions approach to the promotion of human rights protection in business activity. Complicity has assumed an increasingly larger role in the developing normative narratives of business compliance with human rights expectations.  It has been increasingly connected to sanctions based regimes since the start of the period of transformation of US-China relations after 2015 (touching on Xinjiang policy and also Hong Kong)  and in a more urgent manner with the start of the 2nd phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022.  See here, here, here, here, here, and here for prior discussion. In addition, notions of facilitation--especially of gross human rights and environmental degradation by states--has begun to further enlarge the range of risks (administrative-compliance or markets driven) of business activity (here, and here). For development of global elite consensus on complicity outside of the Marxist-Leninist, and developing state spheres, see eg here, here, here, here here, and here.

Pix Credit Angkor Wat

The fourth is to enhance leadership group solidarity (however that group is constituted) and legitimacy and to educate the masses, to develop a narrative that pushes forward the progressive (vanguard) consensus that focuses on the perfectibility of policy, and with it, of the social factors necessary to achieve that objective.  Here one thinks about complicit in a different way. All vanguard elements must be complicit in the sense of demonstrating fidelity to a consensus view and contributing to its production, enhancement, and diffusion within society, and then enforced against non-conforming elements to better meet the external challenges to which policy is directed. It is here that the CECC hearings will likely have greatest impact--no one is particularly interested in the abstract business of building ideologies and normalizing them within managed collectives.  Everyone loves stories--storytelling, popularizing, the social media of personalization--these are the core techniques of a vanguard's working style.  These enhance leadership solidarity (getting the story right and consistent) and are critical modalities of guiding mass opinion (especially those of engaged well educated masses and lower level influencers with transmitting legitimacy). 

It is in this context that the work of CECC assumes an importance that may be far larger than its role in pushing a singular and disciplined vanguard position on China. And that brings one back to the start of this short introduction--the cocktail of an unavoidable vanguardism, now expressed through and under the guidance of a contextually appropriate collective of leading forces, engaged in both the production of narrative and its application while educating the masses for more efficient internalization of principle and policy, in turn enhancing the leadership of a vanguard and pushing forward their work of perfecting society in accordance with their vision. None of this is necessarily bad, wrong, avoidable, or dangerous in itself.  But the process of development, implementation, and the politics of vanguard leadership can be all of those things, both within a vanguard and in contests among them.

 The hearings are planned for 11 July 2023. Hearings information follows below and may be accessed HERE.

Corporate Complicity: Subsidizing the PRC’s Human Rights Violations

 

Tuesday July 11, 2023

10:00 am-12:00 pm

2020 Rayburn House Office Building

 

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has benefited greatly from the international rules-based order, yet its growing economic power has allowed it to present a systemic alternative that subordinates universal human rights to the PRC’s political and ideological agenda. As a result, international businesses and corporations that seek to operate in the PRC or maintain access to the Chinese market often find themselves at risk of being complicit in human rights abuses—in China and globally. These abuses range from genocide, imports made with forced labor, forced organ harvesting, the creation of mass technological surveillance systems, internet censorship, and restrictions on free speech. 

 

This hearing will examine cases of complicity across various industries and explore options for U.S. policy. Witnesses will provide testimony on the range and scope of corporate complicity in human rights violations and the corruption of supply chains by forced labor, detail the threats to U.S. national interests, and offer recommendations for action by Congress and the Administration.

 

The hearing will be livestreamed on the CECC’s YouTube Channel.

 

Witnesses:

 

Panel 1

 

Robert Silvers, Under Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

 

Panel 2

 

Isaac Stone Fish, Visiting Fellow, Atlantic Council

Aynne Kokas, C.K. Yen Professor, Miller Center, University of Virginia

Shi Minglei, wife of Chinese human rights activist Cheng Yuan

Enes Kanter Freedom, human rights advocate & former NBA basketball player