Human rights: is the glass half full or half empty?

The decision by Steven Spielberg to pull out of the Beijing Olympic Games because of its lack of action in Dafur has put the human rights discussion right again at the middle of the international discussion, and NGO's like Human Right Watch grab the opportunity to broaden the scope of Spielberg's action.
What I like about Spielberg's action is that he focuses on one very concrete issue that truly needs international attention. Unfortunately, that is seldom the case. See here:

Human Rights Watch has urged that sponsors not only press China’s government to end its support of governments such as Sudan and Burma that commit massive abuses but also that they encourage Beijing to improve deplorable human rights conditions in China itself.

By not including the huge achievements China has made in the field of human rights, organizations paint a picture of China that is to a large degree a false one. It is based on a wrong idea on what is happening in China and what kind of push the central government needs to go on the route it has already chosen. The classic official answer is to point at the 600 million Chinese citizens that have been lifted out of poverty. While that is of course true, it would never justify gross infringements of the human rights in other fields. But there is more to say about this subject.
On major areas dramatic progress has been made:

• The central government has changed the rules for capital punishment, putting it in the hands of the highest court and limiting the freedom of provinces to set their own standards for executions.
• New laws have created tools for workers and trade unions to fight more effectively for their legal rights.
• Arbitrary detention has come under scrutiny and is not longer happening on the scale it happened in the past.

Of course: the glass is only half full. China still executes more people than all other countries together, despite the major changes. Putting new labor laws in place does not automatically mean labor abuses will go away. Arbitrary detention still happens, although it might not be as common as it used to be.
But by not identifying those major improvements human right organizations not only give a false picture of what is happening in China. They also fail to understand what forces in China would need support in getting those reforms faster and effectively in place. In the long run it would also rob the human rights organizations of their moral authority in scrutinizing cases of human rights abuses.
Traditional media need a simple messages and NGO's have been training for decades on their Pavlov-reaction when they want to reach those old-style media. But as it becomes easier to understand the processes taking place in China, the cliches of the past should erode. The time for simple messages is over.

Update: Nice, a translation of my entry.