The New York Times

Monday, January 31, 2000

China Warns U.S. on Censure Attempt

By The Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) -- China-U.S. relations will suffer if Washington goes ahead with an attempt to censure Beijing at the U.N. Human Rights Commission, state media today quoted a senior Chinese diplomat as saying.

Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya said the U.S. plan to criticize China at the U.N. commission makes it impossible for the two countries to have private talks on human rights, the China Daily reported.

Even before Wang's comments, China-U.S. human rights talks were suspended. Beijing cut them off in anger in May over NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia during the war over Kosovo.

The United States has announced it will bring a resolution calling for censure of China for human rights abuses when the U.N. Human Rights Commission holds its annual meeting in March in Geneva.

``A dialogue on human rights between China and the U.S. will not be possible if no concrete steps are taken by the U.S. to eliminate the adverse effects of the anti-China resolution,'' said Wang, who was China's chief representative in rights talks with Washington before Beijing suspended them.

Wang argued that no country has a right to ``venture to be the teacher of others'' and said the Chinese government has made great efforts to protect human rights.

``The development of democracy and the legal system has seen active progress, and the Chinese people have enjoyed ever better social, economic and cultural rights,'' he asserted. ``China now has the best human rights situation in its history.''

Wang's comments were carried in a front-page story in the country's only English language daily newspaper, the China Daily, and by the English service of the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Eight previous U.S. efforts to censure China at the U.N. commission since 1989 have failed. Last year, American officials were unable to muster enough support to include the question on the commission's agenda. Many European nations opposed the U.S. initiative. Washington did not submit a China resolution in 1998 because it perceived that the rights situation had been improving.

The United States said it would support a resolution denouncing China because Beijing has cracked down on political dissent, vigorously suppressed the Falun Gong spiritual movement, tightened its grip on the media and the Internet, and strengthened controls on unregistered churches and on the political and religious expressions of ethnic minorities, especially Tibetans.