London, Dec. 8 (CNA) The British Broadcasting Corporation is introducing a series of programs on human rights on BBC 2, beginning Sunday night, in which Communist China receives strong criticism and mainland dissident Harry Wu is featured prominently.

John Simpson, BBC's foreign affairs editor, wrote a commentary in the Sunday Telegraph criticizing an article which appeared in last Sunday's edition of The Observer, saying it tried to give the impression that his forthcoming visit to mainland China was part of a plan to abandon the coverage of human rights in China because the BBC wanted to establish better commercial relations with the Beijing government.

The senior TV reporter said the BBC 2 series "Human Rights, Human Wrongs" deals with all sorts of uncomfortable issues, not only in Communist China, but in countries with which Britain feels more in tune.

For example, Harry Wu will expose the squalid conditions in Japanese prisons. He also will recall that Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed the truth about Israel's nuclear capability, has just completed 10 years in solitary confinement, added Simpson.

Wu will remind British viewers of the recent discovery that women prisoners in Britain were handcuffed when they were about to give birth. And he will name the Scotsman who, as head of public security in Bahrain, presides over a system that has tortured people to death.

As for China, Simpson continued, the government there presumably feels itself under serious pressure. The human rights activist Wang Dan, whom he came to regard as a personal friend during the Tiananmen Square period, was jailed five weeks ago for describing China as "a wind-filled tower awaiting the coming storm."

The fact that the Communist Chinese authorities felt compelled to lock him up for 11 years shows how nervous they are about the future. China is in a particularly interesting situation as it prepares to take back the last great British colony, and now is a good time to check its political temperature, according to Simpson.

But he stressed, "That does not mean compromising on any principles."

Mainland China is much more than just a source of stories about the abuse of human rights. It is, for instance, the country to which Britain is about to hand over control of Hong Kong. It is an ever-growing force in world trade as well. "A news organization has a duty to examine China in this light as well," wrote Simpson.

It is for these reasons that he is going to China for the first time since he reported from Tiananmen Square in 1989. He wants to look at the political set-up in the country that will take over Hong Kong in six months, get some idea of how things will change for the Hong Kong people, and establish a balance-sheet on the way Britain has dealt with the affair, explained the BBC editor. (By Nelson Chung)