THE NEW YORK TIMES

January 28, 1997

U.S. REPORT REBUKES CHINA OVER RIGHTS

by Steven Erlanger

Washington, Jan. 27 - By the end of 1996, there were no active dissidents left in China who had not been jailed or exiled, Clinton Administration officials said today, describing the conclusion their reached for the United States Government's annual report on human rights conditions. One official described the Chinese success at wiping out active dissent as "an accomplishment even post-Stalinist Russia could not achieve." A China expert outside the Government who has seen the draft report, now circulating at the White House and other agencies for comment, said that it is "hard-hitting" and makes no effort tp "disguise China's retreat, on human rights in 1996." The report on China, one of 193 reports on human rights around the world to be made public on Thursday, is also one of the most sensitive. The Clinton Administration is trying to establish a policy of "constructive engagement" with China that the new Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright, calls multifaceted. Under the approach, no one issue - wheth

er human rights or the spread of nuclear weapons - would dominate and distort the relationship, and high-level meetings could go ahead. There is something of an annual ritual now in sharp criticism of China in the human rights report, followed by policy decisions that play down the importance of human rights in the overall relationship, compared with other issues like trade, Taiwan, arms sales, missile and nuclear proliferation, and Beijing's help in controlling regional actors like North Korea. Another report, on Germany, criticizes discrimination against members of the Church of Scientology, which Washington regards as a religion and Bonn considers a cult. But State'Department officials said this year's criticism was only marginally more extensive than last year's. The place of human rights in relations with China is a preoccupation of the White House and State Department. The Administration wants to be seen to "keep the faith," as one senior official said, with dissidents in China and to keep human rights

an important factor in the overall United States-China relationship. A group of officials is on the way to China to discuss human rights and other issues. Ms. Albright is considering visiting Beijing next month when she makes her first extended foreign trip as Secretary of State to both Europe and Asia. The main purpose of the current visit, officials said today, is to try to persuade the Chinese to make significant gestures on human rights that could justify the dropping by Washington of its co-sponsorship of an annual resolution condemning China at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. The Chinese are already lobbying to defeat a resolution at the commission, which meets in early March and runs through April 18. The United States must decide soon whether to co-sponsor a resolution, as it has for the last seven years, to allow the measures any chance of success. The United States, in a message to European Union officials last week called a "Coordinated Human Rights Approach to China," m

ade available to the New York Times, said the United States is "continuing to talk to the Chinese about what meaningful, concrete steps they might take to avoid confrontation in Geneva." According to the document, these are the steps that China might take:

It might release some noted political prisoners on the grounds of medical need.

It might sign and submit for ratification two international human rights convenants - one on political and civil rights and the other on economic, social and cultural rights.

It might resume talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross on allowing regular prison visits.

The Chinese have begun to lobby against a resolution, the document says. Last week China suddenly offered to resume, on Feb.14 in Singapore a long-stagnant European Union-Chinese dialogue on human rights. That has effectively put the European Union on hold until Feb.24 - too close to the Geneva meeting to allow joint lobbying with the United States.