Wong Defends His Diplomacy on Trip to China

Surprised by criticism over his recent meeting with China’s hard-line Premier Li Peng, Cerritos City Councilman Daniel K. Wong angrily defended his brand of foreign diplomacy when he arrived home from Beijing on Friday.

Wong, who was thrust into the international spotlight when top Chinese officials agreed to meet with him July 1, claimed in an interview at his home that he had fulfilled his mission during the trip by asking Li to have mercy on the students who took part in the protest movement.

Now, the 47-year-old gynecologist, who sometimes moonlights as a lounge singer, said his top priority is to brief President Bush on his visit, which was the first publicized meeting between Li and an American since Chinese soldiers killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of protesters in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square a month ago.

“I think the President should be interested to know (what was learned),” Wong said.

In defense of his trip, Wong said, “I criticized Li Peng right to his face. You have to go into the lion’s den.”

Chinese-Americans in Southern California expressed outrage this week after Wong was quoted in state-run Chinese newspapers and on television as saying that Li stated that the government had to use live ammunition on the students in Tian An Men Square because it had no rubber bullets or riot control training. Wong, his critics said, was used as a mouthpiece for the hard-line government leaders.

“The Chinese government did not use me,” Wong said. “I initiated to go. They did not ask me to go.”

Wong also suggested that his Chinese-American critics were shortsighted.

‘Very Selfish’

“This is the kind of thing that is unbearable, only knocking their own people. This is no unity, no understanding, very selfish,” Wong said. “Somebody has to do it.”

Wong, who is host of a Chinese-language variety television program on KSCI Channel 18, portrayed himself as a foreign journalist or globe-trotting diplomat.

“What if I’m Ted Koppel,” Wong said. “What if my name is not Wong and . . . I come back and make a report. . . . Are they going to accept that? I only reported what they said.”

The councilman, who once ran unsuccessfully for Congress, said he was not naive enough to believe everything that government leaders in China told him. He said he traveled to China without an invitation to see for himself what was going on and to seek amnesty for the students.

However, Chongli Guo, a spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, said Wong was invited to China by top Communist leaders because he had made “many Chinese friends” during earlier visits and because he is host of a TV program aimed at the Chinese-American community here.

“I think his trip is the kind of thing which can help people in the United States know the facts about the June 4 incident” and could clarify “one-sided” media reports, Guo said Friday.

“During his visit, he met with Premier Li and other leaders, including the vice mayor of Beijing,” Guo said.

Wong “then visited several places where anti-revolutionary rebellions happened,” he said.

‘See for Himself’

“He is right to see for himself what happened there,” Guo added. “He will know more than by watching television (news reports) and listening to one-sided stories on the radio.”

Nancy Beck, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department in Washington, disagreed.

“The best witnesses to what happened are the media. They were there,” she said.

Wong said he made extensive notes and videotapes of his trip and meetings with top Chinese officials. He refused, however, to discuss what he learned, saying that he wants to give the information to President Bush first, if the President wants to meet with him.

A picture of the President and Wong, who describes himself as a moderate-conservative Republican, is displayed in his living room.

White House spokesman Bob Hall, who declined to comment on Wong’s meeting with Li, suggested that the councilman’s chances of having an audience with the President in the near future are slim.

Wong said he posed hard questions to Chinese leaders, asking how many people were killed and why the crackdown was so bloody. He said he then sat for interviews with U.S. television reporters but reported that the Chinese government interfered with the broadcasts, cutting out portions that were critical of the Chinese leadership.

Wong said he was interviewed by both Cable News Network and CBS reporters.

Different Version

Rob Golden, assistant international editor for Cable News Network in Atlanta, recalled a different account of CNN’S interview with Wong taped July 1.

“We had an uninterrupted interview in his hotel room (in Beijing),” Golden said. “As far as I know, no Chinese officials interrupted the interview in his hotel room.”

Golden added that Wong himself, however, stopped the interview at one point when a Chinese newscast of his meeting with Li appeared on the television in his hotel room.

“He got up and got his own video camera to record scenes of himself with Li Peng on the Chinese evening newscast,” Golden said.

Although CNN technicians were unable to feed the interview out of China via satellite July 1, “we shipped it out the next day,” Golden said. The interview was aired on Sunday.

Wong said his critics in the Chinese-American community here have done little to help the Chinese people liberate themselves, and many of them do business with the mainland government.

“They don’t have the courage to go themselves,” he said.