New York Times - February 24, 1997

By PATRICK E. TYLER

BEIJING After seven months of secret diplomacy, American and Chinese officials seem to be within striking distance of a breakthrough in their longstanding dispute over human rights. At issue is the fate of thousands of Chinese political and religious dissidents held in prisons, labor camps or just at home under heavy guard or surveillance.

Under the terms of a deal that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will seek to nudge toward agreement when she arrives in Beijing on Monday for her first official visit, China would agree to sign two key U.N. covenants on human rights, release a representative group of up to eight political prisoners and restart talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross aimed at establishing a program of prison visits to determine the status of the thousands of prisoners of conscience in China.

In return, China could expect to bring an end to the annual confrontation over its human rights record at the U.N. Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

For President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin, this prospective breakthrough comes at a time of extraordinary opportunity and risk.

With the death last week of Deng Xiaoping, it accords the new generation of Chinese leaders an early chance to end the period of harsh repression that has marked the years since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989.

To emerge from their long "defensive crouch," as a former American ambassador, J. Stapleton Roy, once called it, China's new leaders would have to stand up to the hard-line forces in the Communist Party. Those forces see any act of political tolerance or human rights concessions to Washington as appeasing those who would like to topple Communist rule here.

It is anyone's guess as to whether the Chinese feel confident enough to go forward. But American officials point to two important factors.

First, the government's leading hard-liner, Prime Minister Li Peng, has confidently predicted in internal leadership discussions that he can pull off an acceptable deal with the Americans that would assist China's case before the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

The commission meets from March 10 to April 18 this year and will again take up a resolution calling for an investigation into human rights conditions in China.

Beijing has defeated the resolution each time, often by narrow margins.

Chinese officials say such an achievement by Li would boost his campaign to gain a prestigious party post and retain supervision of China's foreign affairs after he steps down as prime minister next year.

The second factor is that both Chinese and American officials have known since November that Wang Dan, a student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement who was sentenced to 14 years in prison last fall, is willing to go into exile in exchange for his freedom.

Wang is one of the best known of the eight dissidents on the list presented in July by Anthony Lake, who was then Clinton's national security adviser, in talks with Communist Party leaders. Wang's release and arrival in the United States, which has already privately conveyed a willingness to provide him asylum, would be a dramatic 11th hour concession by China.

Since November, China has released three other political prisoners on the list, apparently in response to the American requirements: Chen Ziming, sentenced as one of the "black hands" behind the 1989 demonstrations; a dissident from Inner Mongolia named Ulan Shovo, and Xi Yang, a journalist.

For Clinton, who took significant political risks in breaking the link between China's human rights performance and its trade privileges imposed by his predecessor, a demonstration of tangible gains would vindicate his instinct to persevere with a policy of high-level dialogue and engagement with Beijing.

But Clinton, whose presidency now faces an extended investigation into Asian fund-raising efforts during his re-election campaign, will need concessions that are able to withstand congressional scrutiny.

One difficult issue for Clinton is deciding how many prisoners among the eight cases raised is enough to declare progress. One is Wei Jingsheng, China's best-known dissident, who has served 17 years of a total of 29 years in successive prison sentences and for whom Clinton once showed great public concern.

With both China and the United States constrained by domestic political considerations, Albright appeared to be lowering expectations for her first meeting with Chinese leaders since she became secretary of state. Her senior aides indicated that she was maneuvering to give the Chinese an opportunity to get through the period of Deng's funeral before the final hard bargaining on the Geneva resolution.

"The emphasis in China over the coming weeks and months is likely to be on continuity, on stability within the leadership, on building consensus within the leadership," said a senior official who briefed reporters traveling with Albright. "In other words, nothing risky."

"Our expectations are not too high," he said, adding "Based on the current situation, we expect to proceed with the resolution."

Last week, the State Department sent out cablegrams to the 53 nations represented on the Human Rights Commission saying that without a breakthrough in the negotiations, Washington intended to go forward with plans to sponsor the resolution in Geneva calling China to account for human rights abuses.

But Clinton administration officials have been careful to say the final decision to go forward will be made closer to the Geneva meeting. American officials also hope that the brinksmanship in the negotiations, or recriminations over failure, will not disrupt the visit of Vice President Al Gore, who is coming to Asia in late March, but the Chinese have withheld any final setting of dates for his stay in Beijing.

"While one can always hope for human rights progress, we shouldn't expect any dramatic movement forward in the next few days," the official traveling with Ms. Albright said. He added that between now and the opening of the Geneva proceedings, "we obviously would welcome a gesture now or at any point in next few months."

"Mrs. Albright is hoping that the Chinese will make significant enough concessions that the administration could credibly back off on going forward in Geneva," said Mike Jendrzejczyk, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. "For the Chinese, they want to avoid the kind of loss of face that would arise from another debate and from a vote in Geneva."

John Kamm, a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong who regularly travels to Beijing on behalf of political prisoner cases, said that for the Chinese, "with the passing of Deng, a new beginning is possible," said.

"There is now a window of opportunity for China to demonstrate that it intends to live by international standards of human rights," he said. "If Jiang Zemin were to make this decision, it would demonstrate to the outside world and especially to Hong Kong that he is stepping in and being very decisive. But there is going to be considerable opposition in the party to doing this."

A key issue this year has been whether China would sign and then ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and a similar document on economic, social and cultural rights. Together, they would obligate China not only to uphold freedom of speech, assembly and religious worship while also adhering to due process of law, but also to report on its human rights situation to the international community.

"We think signing the covenants would be an extremely important step forward for China," said a French diplomat here.

But so far, China has said only that it will sign the documents without committing itself to a specific date and has used this vague commitment in hopes of splitting the American and European alliance that has formed each year in Geneva. Last year at this time, China tried a similar tactic, but after "consideration," did not sign the covenants.

Similarly, while China has invited a senior Red Cross official to visit Beijing, it has refused to make a specific commitment to go ahead with the agency's prison visit program, which has been the subject of many fruitless negotiations.

"We look for progress on various issues," said the official with Albright. "We don't expect the visits themselves to be merely symbolic. We want them to provide evidence of an improvement in relations."

Stanley Roth, who is expected to become Albright's assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs, told an interviewer in Washington this weekend that "the relationship cannot be a one-way street."

"If there is no improvement in all the issues the United States cares about," Roth said, it will be "very hard to create support for a broad relationship."