Farewell My Trade Status?

By Bruce W. Nelan

"History has already proven that it is futile to apply pressure against China." Though the words evoked the decrees issued by once proud dynasties that long ago turned to dust, they had a particular bite last Saturday as intoned in Beijing by Premier Li Peng. "China will never accept U.S.-style human rights," he said after an afternoon of chilly talks with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. But what if Washington revokes China's most- favored-nation trade status? What if America restrains trade? The Chinese leader sniffed, "China can live without it." He noted that the Chinese expect to import $1 trillion worth of goods annually by the year 2000. If America wants to opt out, he said, "the U.S. will suffer no less than China."

The Chinese have always bristled at Washington's threat of revoking MFN, but last week Beijing insisted more emphatically than before that it did not care . if the U.S. used trade as a weapon. Beijing contended that the entire human- rights argument was an unjust cultural ploy to put China on the defensive. Said a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry: "The Chinese government cares deeply about human rights. There are no saviors on the question of human rights. The Chinese people will save themselves." The Americans disagreed. "It's not a matter of talking about American values or Chinese values," said Winston Lord, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. "We're not telling China to be like America. We're talking about universal rights. And arbitrary arrests or torture. It's got nothing to do with normality. There are universal rights in the U.N. charter."

Human rights are not an abstract notion to Wang Dan. He risked death when he stood up for them in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and then spent 43 months in prison for his leadership role in the pro-democracy movement. Undaunted and unrepentant, the student activist was released last year. Two weeks ago, the police were back: they picked him up, questioned him for 24 hours and told him to get out of Beijing. Wang ignored them, and last week he was hauled in again. Police warned him that his political activities were antisocialist and illegal.

Wang responded by publishing an open letter to the National People's Congress, the parliament that assembled last week for its annual two-week session. He assured the NPC that "a democracy movement is not a movement to overthrow the government," and he called on parliamentarians to debate "the protection of individual political rights and innate human rights." Wang says he will begin investigating rights abuses, and is prepared "even to be arrested and sentenced."

That could easily happen now that Beijing is in the midst of a pre-emptive crackdown on anyone who it deems is out to embarrass China. It is almost routine for security police to take leading activists out of circulation when high-visibility political events are scheduled, and last week there were two of them: the opening of the NPC and Christopher's arrival. During the Secretary of State's visit, the Chinese posted uniformed and plainclothes police around the homes of dissidents and their sympathizers.

The current crackdown, however, displays more than the usual steely vigilance. Authorities swept up at least 16 well-known dissidents over the past two weeks. Hundreds of others are under close surveillance. Beijing is reacting to the first stirrings of a revived democracy movement. Not only are dissidents seeking public attention during a period in which the U.S. is demanding that China improve its human-rights record and Deng Xiaoping, China's senior leader, is fading, but the hard-line government fears a newfound boldness among the activists. The men in power detect signs that their real nightmare -- an alliance of workers and intellectuals along the lines of Poland's Solidarity that could bring together a popular force mighty enough to topple them -- may be taking shape. After all, the increasing number of workers who supported the students in Tiananmen played an important role in Beijing's decision to send in the tanks.

Last week petitions circulated in many parts of the country urging the creation of worker and peasant unions and demanding the right to strike. Dissidents also distributed a draft charter for a League for the Protection of the Rights of the Working People of China. Liu Nianchun, a labor activist, defiantly applied for formal registration of the unofficial league, claiming 120 founding members. At least one of them, Yuan Hongbing, was arrested. These organizing efforts are still small, but they worry the Chinese leadership because they could ignite major unrest, especially among urban workers. Inflation is running at 23% in the big cities, and the economic reforms that will privatize huge state-owned industries will add to the unemployment rolls. The last thing China's leaders want to face is a newly militant labor movement, even if it is interested primarily in job security.

No doubt the Chinese would have preferred not to move against rights campaigners on the eve of Christopher's visit, but they went ahead anyway. The Secretary of State arrived in Beijing Friday night with an unequivocal message: China must improve its human-rights record or lose the low-tariff benefits of most-favored-nation trading status. President Bill Clinton had vowed that he would not renew MFN -- a boon that allowed China to roll up a $23 billion trade surplus with the U.S. last year -- if Beijing did not demonstrate tangible improvement by June, when the decision on extending MFN comes due. Nor did roundups like those of last week help China's fading prospects for support in Congress. Beijing's bosses obviously place a higher priority on maintaining the country's stability -- by which they mean doing whatever it takes to hold on to political power.

When Premier Li Peng opened the parliamentary session last week, he told the 2,800 delegates that balanced economic development was the government's top priority and said that "social stability is an indispensable prerequisite for economic development." He conceded that a "dialogue" with other countries on human rights was possible "on the basis of mutual equality" but warned that China "will never allow anyone to interfere in its internal affairs under any pretext."

Christopher spoke out more sharply than usual on the dissident arrests. "It would be hard to overstate the strong distaste we all feel over the recent detentions and hostile measures taken by the Chinese," he said. The moves would certainly "have a negative effect on my trip to China." A Foreign Ministry statement responded that the government had full authority to take in ex-convicts for questioning and that no foreigners have "the right to make irresponsible remarks or interfere."

Chinese authorities insisted that relations between Washington and Beijing were on the mend until Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck met with dissident Wei Jingsheng two weeks ago. Last week Christopher was unapologetic. "We cannot accept any restrictions on meetings between our diplomats and officials and Chinese citizens who are not accused of crimes," he said through a spokesman. "We cannot accept punishment and intimidation of those Chinese who choose to meet with us."

Washington was mildly encouraged two months ago when President Jiang Zemin told a visiting U.S. congressional delegation that China would "make an effort" to deal with American concerns on human rights. But, as the monitors of Asia Watch reported last month, "political repression is increasing, not decreasing, and it extends to virtually every province in China." Unofficial political and religious activity is illegal, and thousands are in prison for vaguely defined "counterrevolutionary" crimes like subverting the government or splitting the motherland. Detainees are held in prolonged isolation, and many are mistreated or tortured to force confessions.

Some Western analysts believed that Beijing would come down hard on the resurgent activists only to relent by the June deadline to demonstrate enough improvement to merit renewal of MFN. Or, the experts said, the tough old communists expect Clinton to back down and compromise. Either way, they are making it extremely difficult for themselves to meet the U.S. demand for % "overall significant progress." Last week they were not even trying.

With reporting by Sandra Burton/Hong Kong, Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing, and Ann M. Simmons with Christopher