International Herald Tribune

February, Thursday, February 12, 1998

China Plays the Dissident

By Jonathan Mirsky

London - By releasing and deporting Chinese dissident Wang Bingzhang on Monday, Beijing showed that it has finally learned a lesson: Persecuting well-known political activists harms the image of a state that wants to be an international player.

Mr. Wang, who has been living in Canada and the United States since 1978 when he went abroad in the first wave of Students benefiting from Deng Xiaoping's reforms, has been a longtime critic of the Chinese government, especially through his New York-based magazine China Spring. Last month he sneaked back into China under an assumed name.

After contacting a few of the surviving band of dissidents, he was arrested, held for exactly a week, and expelled.

Several of those he met were arrested. One has reportedly been released, but the others are still detained.

For some time, Beijing has been playing the dissident card invented years ago by the Soviet Union, which used to gain brief international goodwill by occasionally freeing someone famous. This was always done to get something in return.

China's most recent example of this was the release in November of Wei Jingsheng. A deal done almost openly, it secured an all-stops-out White House welcome for President Jiang Zemin. Soon afterward came hints that Wang Dan, the second most famous political prisoner after Mr. Wei, might be freed in order to guarantee a Clinton retain visit to Beijing.

Other prisoners have been released, like Mr. Wei, for alleged medical treatment. Indeed, almost all of China's best known ex-political prisoners are now in the United States. .

Han Dongfang, the imprisoned leader of the free trade union movement during Tiananmen who was freed to fly to Boston for medical attention, attempted to enter China a few years ago was immediately caught, and was thrust across the border into Hong Kong, where he remains.

Harry Wu, the most famous activist of all, who spent many years in the gulag, also attempted to sneak in three years ago, was caught, heavily sentenced and immediately deported.

But Mr. Han had broken no law; he used his real name to reenter his native land. And Mr. Wu is an American citizen.

Wang Bingzhang was merely a green card holder. The U.S. Embassy was inquiring about him, but he had used a false name to enter China. He could have been tried and convicted.

But he had served his purpose for the Chinese authorities. Shadowed by the Public Security Bureau, he made it easy for his contacts - accomplices, in Beijing's eyes-to be pinpointed. Some are detained; more may be arrested.

Beijing cannot lose by the policy of getting rid of famous dissidents - not by the firing squad and the gulag but by jetliner. They no longer form a focus for diplomatic acrimony.

Like the mythical strongmen who lost their strength when their feet left the ground, dissidents from whatever country tend to vanish from sight when they are exiled.

Exile is also a frightening warning to other Chinese political activists. When a few refuse it when offered, after a few years behind bars, and probably some torture. Most finally go abroad.

In the meantime, Beijing can continue to persecute obscure activists like the four poets arrested in Guizhou last month, and the friends of Mr. Wang.

China's vast human rights problems at home remain, involving large populations Muslim Xinjiang and in Tibet. Yet even here, without actually providing any more liberty the Chinese could win much approval by agreeing to negotiate with the Dalai Lama.

That would look open minded, it would take years, and China's occupation of Tibet could proceed a pace undisturbed by a much muted libertarian cacophony

from abroad.

The writer, a former East Asia editor of The Times of London, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.