BEIJING TYRANNY

New York Times

in the International Herald Tribune

Friday, November 1, 1996

By sentencing the most prominent democratic activist of the Tiananmen Square generation to a new 11-year prison sentence on Wednesday China's authoritarian govemment once again demonstrated its intolerance of peaceful political dissent and its contempt for the United States. It is increasingly hard to see how Washington can move toward closer relations with a regime that so brazenly abuses human rights. After high tensions with China over Taiwan earlier this year, the Clinton administration has been trying to improve its relations with Beijing. If President Bill Clinton wins re-election, Secretary of State Warren Christopher plans to use a late November stop in Beijing to arrange an exchange of state visits between Presidents Clinton and Jiang Zemin. Those plans should be reconsidered. Wednesday's harsh sentencing of Wang Dan, which came just hours after a top State Department official completed talks in Beijing with Chinese leaders, was the latest move in a recent wave of repression.

Mr. Christopher will painfully recall that when he last visited Beijing, in 1994, China deliberately humiliated him by rounding up top democrats, including Wei Jingsheng, who had just met with State Department officials. There is no point in the Clinton administartion again exposing its top diplomat, or the president himself, to such ostile behaviour. Wang Dan, who is 27, has already spent most of his young adulthood as a political prisoner. The new sentence means that he will probably be incarcerated until he is nearly 40. Prosecutors absurdly argued that articles he wrote, including one for The New York Times, and a University of California correspondence course he took were part of an attempt to overthrow the Chinese government. Beijing seems to have designated Mr. Wang for the same kind of lifetime persecution it has inflicted on Wei Jingsheng, founder of China's modern democracy movement. Mr. Wei served 14 and a half years at hard labor for advocating political liberalization during the brief Democracy

Wall era of the 1970s. Shortly after his release he was rearrested and is now serving a new 14-year sentence. On Oct. 9, Beijing condemned Liu Xiaobo, a literary critic and Tiananmen Square veteran, to three years at hard labor for a petition criticizing President Jiang. In September it sentenced another former student leader, Guo Haifeng, to seven years for "hooliganism." China will not achieve political stability or an advanced economy by locking up those Chinese who call for open decision-making and liberty of thought. Nor will it develop warmer ties with American leaders by abusing the rights of its own people.