China Plays Its Fang Lizhi Card : Bush’s Policy of Keeping Channels Open Looks Better

By finally agreeing to let the country’s two best-known dissidents--astrophysicist Fang Lizhi and his wife Li Shuxian--quit their refuge in the American embassy for exile in Britain, Beijing removed a major irritant in U.S.-China relations. Predictably, the White House welcomed this decision as a “humanitarian action.” It’s that, to be sure, but first and foremost it should be seen as a calculated step intended to aid China’s long-term economic interests.

Fang and Li took refuge in the embassy in Beijing more than a year ago, immediately after the brutal crackdown on the student-led reform movement and just before they were charged in arrest warrants with the treasonable crimes of “counter-revolutionary propaganda and instigation.” From the beginning their case has worked to sour China’s relations with the United States, Japan and Western Europe. Now a face-saving way has been found to resolve the problem. Everyone gains, and President Bush’s pragmatic, if controversial, policy of keeping channels open to China looks better. But a word of caution: letting Fang and Li move to Cambridge University, in exchange for their reported agreement not to engage in “activities directed against China,” in itself does nothing to advance the greater cause of wider freedoms for China’s people.

Fang’s reported promise of silence on political matters unhappily means that China stands to lose its most eloquent and fearless advocate of human rights and democratic reform. Like the late Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union, Fang used the platform given him by his scientific prominence to publicize his beliefs, foremost among which was that “without democratization in China there can be no modernization.” Like other dissidents he paid heavily for his courage. But his spirit was never broken and his integrity was never diminished. Someday China’s history texts will acknowledge the debt that is owed him.

In the meantime, Beijing can anticipate some rewards of its own. Japan has already signaled its willingness to reopen suspended talks on a $5.2-billion loan program to China. At next month’s Houston meeting of the seven major Western industrial nations, policy toward China will be a major agenda item, and a more favorable climate is now likely to exist. The same will probably be true in Congress, where Bush’s decision to extend China most-favored-nation trading status for another year is being debated. Some in Congress had cited the Fang case as the basis for their opposition to MFN.

Fang and Li have long been symbols of immense significance to the reform movement in China. Even though they took no active part in last year’s protests, the regime nonetheless accused them of inciting the unrest, an implicit acknowledgement of their deep moral influence. Fang and Li now have their freedom. But thousands of other Chinese whose names are largely unknown to the world continue to suffer in prisons and work camps because of their political beliefs. The human rights in China that Fang and Li spent decades struggling for remain a dispiritingly elusive goal.