China fails to address Western concerns in human rights report

BEIJING, 2/17/2000 (AP) China cannot copy Western methods for promoting

human rights, the government said Thursday in a report on its rights

record that ignored concerns raised by foreign governments and critics.

Publication of the 20-page report came weeks before China will face a

U.S. effort to censure Beijing at the U.N. Human Rights Commission,

which begins its six-week annual session next month.

Beijing's rights record is also being scrutinized in a U.S.

Congressional debate over a deal that would enable China to join the

World Trade Organization.

The report, published by the Information Office of the State Council, or

Cabinet, listed major improvements in health care, education, social

welfare, poverty alleviation and other fields in the 50 years since the

Communist Party took power.

The government often has contended that such quality of life issues

outweigh concerns about protection of civil liberties.

The Chinese now ''enjoy unprecedented democracy and freedom,'' the

report said while also conceding that China's democratic and legal

systems show ''room for improvement.''

But it did not touch on many issues frequently raised by foreign

governments and rights groups: China's world-leading use of the death

penalty, a prohibition on organized political dissent and the sentencing

of people without trial to labor camps.

The report said the average life expectancy of Tibetans has jumped from

36 to 65 years under communist rule, but it did not address repeated

appeals by foreign governments to open talks with the Dalai Lama,

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader. Nor did it mention the seven-month

crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which has seen thousands

detained or imprisoned.

It also did not mention two international human rights treaties that

Beijing has signed but not ratified.

The report said that as a developing country with 1.25 billion people

and a relative shortage of resources and wealth, ''China cannot copy the

mode of human rights development of the developed Western countries, nor

can it copy the methods of other developing countries.''

''China can only start from its own reality and explore a road with its

own characteristics,'' the report said.

It reiterated the government's long-standing argument that the right to

food, clothing, housing and economic progress what the report termed

''subsistence and development'' takes precedence over political, social,

economic, cultural, individual and collective rights.