Jiang is on the hot seat. Before Taiwan’s polls, his party’s propaganda howled that a Chen victory “means war.” Beijing had hoped to scare Taiwan, but Jiang is now trying to step back from the brink. Many Chinese took the rhetoric seriously, especially military hard-liners and nationalistic youth, who urge more saber rattling–or worse. So far Jiang has merely stressed Taiwan must return to the “one China” fold. Further bellicosity could bruise Sino-U.S. relations. Washington is making its own jitters known through a handful of cabinet-level delegations. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke got a friendly greeting last week. (Jiang: “You’ve been to China many more times than I’ve been to the U.S.” Holbrooke: “But your English is better than my Chinese.”) After a two-hour meeting with Jiang, Holbrooke said he was “mildly encouraged” by the fact that Beijing and Taipei “have reacted to the new circumstances with prudence and caution.”
Jiang has little choice. In May, the U.S. Congress should make a decision crucial to China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. The debate focuses on Washington’s granting permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) to Beijing. Renewed jingoism or bad news on the human-rights front would fuel efforts by China’s critics to scuttle the deal. Last week in an apparent move to head off confrontation, Beijing released information on eight Chinese political prisoners to the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation.
Beijing’s balancing act–how to be firm on Taiwan without upsetting Sino-U.S. ties–was the focus of a rash of emergency government meetings last week. The message: stick to the party line, no unscripted attacks against Chen. Party propagandists told mainstream newspaper editors not only which words to run when Chen won (China will “wait and see”) but where to run them (front page, bottom right).
As if Jiang doesn’t have enough to worry about, Chinese have begun musing about what Taiwan’s election means for democracy. Political dissident Ren Wanding wrote Jiang an open letter saying the election would “go down in the annals of [China’s] development of democracy.” Online, one Netizen asked Beijing to “find a democratic way suitable for China–no matter what you call it.” He added a warning: “If people become totally disappointed, great turmoil and treason will follow.” In the face of such pressures, it won’t be easy for Jiang to keep his balance.
title: “A Delicate Balance” ShowToc: true date: “2023-02-01” author: “Paul Hardy”
Now the suggestion that science may be able to extract usable stem cells from early embryos without destroying them offers a technological answer to this ethical puzzle, and exposes some tensions within the pro-life movement.
In the reported experiment, every embryo was killed to extract their stem cells, a fact not likely to encourage enthusiasm in the pro-life community. But the growth of viable stem-cell lines from very early cells raises the prospect that these cells could be collected in more ethical ways, through existing fertility technologies that test for disease without ending a life. This method, as it stands, is still questionable, but it is testable.
And there is another hurdle, written into law. The Dickey amendment prohibits federal funding for research in which human embryos are “knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero.” Children who underwent an embryo biopsy during in vitro fertilization (there are, perhaps, a couple of thousand) don’t report genetic problems. But the data on their health is slight, and the procedure is relatively new. Yet assuming this technology works, and assuming it doesn’t expose the embryo to greater risk, this approach would pass the standard set by the president, and fulfill the letter of the law.
It is not, however, likely to meet the standard of Roman Catholic teaching, and this exposes a division within the pro-life community. Catholic teaching is not only concerned about harm to the embryo, it also asserts an unbreakable connection between reproduction, sexuality and family life, which makes it critical of most fertility technologies, including IVF. This is not the fight the president has chosen. But it is fair to say that most pro-life people would view this new technology as an improvement over the destruction of embryos.
Two conclusions: First, the president’s policy has been useful, giving scientists the time and incentive to pursue a number of alternatives to the wholesale destruction of embryos. Second, all this research and debate concerning a small clump of cells is an encouraging sign that American conscience remains on duty. They reveal an intuition, even among people who consider themselves pro-choice, that this clump is different from a hangnail or a tumor. It is genetically distinct, biologically alive and undeniably human. And when this life ends, like a snowflake in a warm hand, we know that something irreplaceable has been lost.
