Published by: World Tibet Network News Issue Id: 97/10/28

By Lena H. Sun

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, October 28, 1997; Page A09

The Washington Post

When Chinese President Jiang Zemin is welcomed on the White House South Lawn with a 21-gun salute Wednesday, thousands of demonstrators plan to greet him outside the executive mansion with a towering replica of the Goddess of Democracy, the symbol of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.

Under any other circumstances, the demonstrators might be protesting against each other. But the Chinese leader's visit has pulled together an unusually broad coalition of groups and individuals. Religious conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council are mobilizing alongside organized labor, liberal Democrats, human rights organizations and such unlikely allies as talk-show host Oliver L. North and actor Richard Gere to focus attention on human rights abuses in China and Tibet.

The protests scheduled in Washington and other cities during Jiang's eight-day U.S. tour are among the largest and loudest to meet a foreign head of state in recent years, according to organizers. And while many of the groups disagree bitterly on issues such as abortion, opposition to China has proven a powerful incentive to overlook disputes in other areas.

"We're a big coalition, and everyone has agreed that the message . . . is to focus on China's restrictions on freedom of expression, association and religion," said Abigail Abrash, of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, one of five human rights groups organizing the Wednesday rally at Lafayette Square, which leaders expect to draw at least 2,000 participants.

"This is not any sort of fragmented platform for groups who have grudges from various perspectives to speak," she said. Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, one of nearly 30 supporting groups taking part in the rally, said, "Every once in a while, there is a great issue that causes coalitions to fall apart and re-form, and I think this is one of those issues.

"We will work together on this issue and agree to disagree on others, and everybody is pretty comfortable with that at this point," he said.

Bauer said the participation of the religious right is an outgrowth of a diverse and broad group that came together earlier this year in an unsuccessful effort to block renewal of China's normal trading status with the United States.

Other groups participating in the Lafayette Square rally here are the AFL-CIO, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the National Consumers League and the Sierra Club. Among the guest speakers is Bette Bao Lord, whose husband, Winston Lord, is a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing. Hours after addressing the rally, the Lords will attend a state dinner at the White House in Jiang's honor.

In Washington, the Wednesday rally may draw the largest crowds. But groups with chapters around the country, such as the International Campaign for Tibet and Amnesty International USA, have been working for weeks to organize events other than the standard protest "so that the effect is varied," said

Amnesty's Christine Haenn.

After the Chinese leader visits the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia on Thursday, Tibetan monks in cinnamon-colored robes plan the next day to chant Buddhist prayers to "cleanse" the site. In Boston, before Jiang is to speak at Harvard University on Saturday, protesters are planning to begin a 48-hour hunger strike to commemorate those killed in the Tiananmen Square crackdown eight years ago.

Protest organizers say they do not want to isolate China because of its human rights abuses. Like the Clinton administration, they say their goal is to encourage the United States to deepen its relationship with the world's most populous nation. But, organizers say, they want the administration to do so by pursuing a vigorous commitment to human rights and democracy.

"We support Jiang coming here, and we also support the president going over there -- so long as he stops being so wimpy," said John

Ackerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet.

If, for example, the administration fails to meet a Nov. 1 deadline for naming a coordinator for U.S. policy regarding Tibet, a move strongly opposed by China, which considers Tibet's status an internal matter, "they just look like they're waffling all over the place," Ackerly said.

Although organizers say the Chinese leader will be met by demonstrations at each of his stops, it is unclear how much the protests will go beyond the organized events to resonate with average Americans. In part the effect may depend on how Jiang responds to the protests, if at all.

"It's really going to take something to engage the American public on a traditional foreign policy issue like China," said Andy Kohut, director of the Washington-based Pew Research Center, a nonprofit public interest survey and research organization.

In a survey of 2,000 respondents last month, only 1 in 7 saw China as an adversary and most "aren't alarmed about China," he said. For Americans to see foreign policy as something relevant in their lives, he said, takes more than "dramatic movies and protests." Several movies critical of China, including one starring Gere, are being released in the weeks surrounding the visit.

Others disagreed. Labor union officials point to a May 1 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that showed Americans believing by a ore than 2-1 ratio that the Chinese Government should improve its human rights practices or lose its normal trading status with the United States.

"I think for the average union member, they care quite a bit," said Thea Lee, assistant director of public policy for the AFL-CIO. "They do see China as an egregious abuser of international norms for worker rights and environmental protection. Take a combination of that with the massive trade imbalance, and it does resonate as a problem to most people."