"Weekend Australian" Saturday, August 9

Australia is primed for Chinese complaints about racism and discrimination against Aborigines when the two countries meet on Monday in Beijing for pioneering two-way talks on human rights.

The closed-door talks were agreed to by China earlier this year after Australia refused to join a number of Western countries in a UN resolution condemning Beijing's human rights abuses.

Australian officials are playing down expectations of results from the four-day dialogue, saying they will concentrate on general issues in an effort to build "confidence" on the Chinese side.

But Australia has also made it clear that its delegation is happy to discuss any issues the Chinese raise, including Aborigines and anti-Asian racism.

Australia's openness on these sore spots is likely to ensure the Chinese do not push them too hard, because they would then be opening themselves up to questioning on their own internal issues.

A human rights expert at the Australian National University in Canberra, Ann Kent, said Chinese criticism of Australia would be a tacit acceptance of the legitimacy of interference in issues they insist are "internal".

"It would remove their ability to decide these (internal) things for themselves and enmesh them in the whole system of reciprocity," she said yesterday.

"(These talks) are rewarding Australia for being so co-operative on the United Nations Commission vote. So they are unlikely to be too nasty, because this is a pat on the back."

The two Australian parliamentary delegations, which went to China in 1990 and 1991 to investigate human rights, invited the Chinese to conduct similar tours of Australia, but neither invitation was taken up.

Australian officials will come armed, nonetheless, with details of the country's anti-discrimination laws, legal system and other mechanisms for pursuing human rights issues. The 10-person Australian delegation will be headed by Department of Foreign Affairs deputy-secretary Bill Farmer, and the Chinese side by Vice Foreign Minister Li Zhao Xing.

The Australians will visit the Justice Ministry and China's top legal body, the Supreme People's Court.

It is not known whether the case of jailed Chinese-Australian businessman James Peng will be discussed, even though Alexander Downer has specifically said it was the sort of issue which could be considered.

Peng, who was kidnapped from Macau in 1993 and sentenced to years later to spend another 16 years in jail, is in prison in Shanghai, despite indications from the top Chinese leadership earlier this year that he would be freed.

Other issues Australia may raise are China's rule of the remote Himalayan kingdom of Tibet, the maintenance of freedoms in Hong Kong and Beijing's adherence to an international convention on torture.

It is not known whether Australia will raise any specific cases of jailed dissidents.

The Chinese, for their part, are expected to stick to their traditional line that economic growth and increasing wealth are just as important as civil and political rights.

The Chinese also consistently maintain that each country has its own standard on human rights, rejecting the Western notion of universal values.

A spokeswoman for Amnesty International said yesterday that China had to be held to minimum standards of human rights if the talks were to have any substance.

"The Australian Government needs to remember that they are representing Australian community values, and that there are minimum standards," she said.