NEW DELHI — With a Nobel Peace Prize to his credit, U.S. President Barack Obama was widely expected to advance universal values. Yet he has signaled that promotion of human rights is a tool to be used only against the small kids on the global block who hold no major economic benefits for the United States — the Burmas and the Belaruses.

In relation to the world's largest and oldest autocracy, China — which has intensified its crackdown on democracy activists, Internet freedom and ethnic minorities — Obama has only compounded the mistake of his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in 2009 said that the U.S. will not let the human-rights issue "interfere" with closer Sino-American relations.

Chinese President Hu Jintao's just-concluded U.S. tour was noteworthy not for his grudging admission that his country has a subpar human-rights record, with China's state-run media promptly expurgating his comment that "a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights." Rather the visit was notable for the manner Obama bent over backward at the joint news conference with Hu to virtually rationalize China's human-rights abuses.