U.S. Too Soft on China, Fang Says From Exile : Dissident: He is disappointed at American timidity. The populace still ‘harbors great dissatisfaction,’ he says.

During the past week here at the University of Cambridge, where he is now a visiting scholar of the Royal Society at the Institute of Astronomy, astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, China’s best-known dissident intellectual, has broken his yearlong silence.

Looking pale and tired but nonetheless in good spirits after his ordeal, he spoke candidly about his views on the Bush Administration’s China policy and his attitude toward his country’s exiled democracy movement.

He also recounted his bid for asylum in June, 1989, in the American Embassy in Beijing and the conditions under which he and his physicist wife, Li Shuxian, subsequently lived for almost 13 months.

While expressing his gratitude to the American government and Ambassador James R. Lilley for the hospitality extended to him and his wife, Fang also said that American policy toward China’s current hard-line government had sometimes been too “soft.”

“President Bush is not alone in wanting to prevent China from once again becoming isolated,” he said. “But if the first principle is to keep in contact, the second principle must be to keep applying pressure in the form of demands.”

He said the U.S. government has been found wanting in its support of human rights in China.

“Outside pressure is extremely important because, unlike during earlier periods where China could ignore pressure from the outside world, now, because the world has become more of a whole, Deng Xiaoping (China’s paramount leader) can no longer afford to do so.”

Incredulous that the United States would act so “timidly” when it was so strong, thus forfeiting the chance to use its influence to change China’s repressive policies during the past year, he warned: “Only when you show strength will the Chinese government respect you and give in.”

What might the United States have done? “They could have demanded the release of people who had been detained and arrested and lists of those executed, and we could have said that until such a list was made public, certain sanctions would not be lifted.”

Concerning National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft’s secret visits to Beijing last summer and fall after the Administration had declared a ban on high-level contact, Fang said simply that they were “just not right.” Such actions made Bush seem “close to the wishes of the Chinese leaders,” he said.

But he said further sanctions should not be used indiscriminately. Rather, “like a boxer who has different punches and knows when to throw them,” the United States should use sanctions to achieve specific goals rather than just to humiliate China.

Fang said he strongly doubts that government repression in the wake of last year’s democracy protest will suppress his country’s yearning for greater freedom of expression.

“The scale of the demonstrations was larger than ever before, and it gave people such a taste of independent thinking that, even though they may now still not be able to express their sentiments openly, they nonetheless privately harbor great dissatisfaction.”

Moreover, “the old tactic of brainwashing” is no longer effective because “people do not believe in the party anymore.”

When asked whether he thought Deng and other leaders should be brought to trial, he responded matter-of-factly, saying, “I think all of those who gave orders to fire on civilians around Tian An Men Square should be tried.”

He urged Chinese students to “read and study, because political change depends on cultural change. . . .

“I’m not saying we should just idly wait. Studying is in fact a form of active preparation.”

He said that he wishes to play a more “spiritual” than organizational role, saying that what is important for him is the “pursuit of truth, both scientific and otherwise.”

He cautioned Chinese people who eagerly look to him for leadership that he recognizes his responsibilities but that he is not “a superman” and is not prepared to abandon scientific research for politics.

Although he did express an unwavering commitment to keep working for human rights in China, he said:

“If the Chinese want a heroic person to tell them what to do and to lead them, I am not that man, because I think when people put such hopes and faith in a single leader, it is not only unhealthy but also dangerous.”

Describing his chaotic odyssey into the American Embassy last year, he recounted how, after the June 3-4 massacre, when he felt Chinese authorities had “lost all rationality” and he feared for his life, he met with two U.S. diplomats at the embassy. But then, filled with ambivalence about seeking protection from “foreigners,” he left again. It was not until the night of June 5 that the same U.S. envoys knocked on the door of the hotel room in which he was hiding and offered to escort him back to the embassy to take refuge “as President Bush’s personal guest.”

His original intention was to use the embassy for a few days anonymously as a sanctuary, and then to return home when things quieted down. But on June 7, the White House suddenly announced his presence in the embassy, creating an awkward dilemma. But Fang still claims that he was on the verge of leaving and was only dissuaded from doing so by concerned diplomats and his wife, who feared for his life.

Shortly thereafter, Fang and his wife were both accused by Chinese authorities of being “counterrevolutionary instigators,” and warrants were issued for their arrest. By this time, they had no choice but to remain in the embassy for an uncertain period of time.

From the beginning, the location of Fang’s quarters was kept secret from everyone except a handful of embassy employees. Ambassador Lilley was deeply fearful lest new unrest would tempt Chinese authorities to force their way into the compound and arrest Fang and Li.

During the summer and fall, this possibility seemed hardly far-fetched since every day the embassy grounds were surrounded by People’s Liberation Army soldiers toting automatic weapons, and relations between the United States and China continued to be tense. Ironically, one line of these soldiers stood no more than several yards from where Fang and Li were sequestered, separated only by a single brick wall ringing the embassy compound.

The couple’s secret quarters consisted of several rooms that normally served as a medical clinic, in a low building immediately behind the ambassador’s own residence. In the months to come, that proximity helped build a friendship between Lilley and the two dissidents.

Lilley, who had served as a CIA representative in Beijing during Bush’s 1974-75 tenure as charge d’affairs at the American liaison office in Beijing, immediately went about taking elaborate precautions to ensure the couple’s safety and the anonymity of their hiding place.

New doors were secretly hung so that not so much as a cough or a sneeze could be heard from outside the clinic area. Windows were draped. A security alarm system was installed with push-buttons in each room. And everything brought to the Fangs’ quarters was divided into small bundles and discreetly carried in by briefcase. All garbage and wastepaper were carefully brought back out again and secretly disposed of lest guards at the gate discern where the Fangs were sequestered.

During the whole of their confinement, only two or three outsiders were allowed to visit them and then only at night, when all the Chinese staff had gone home.

For more than a year, the Fangs lived in this cramped environment, blocked from daylight--they humorously came to refer to it as their “black hole”--reading, writing, watching television and doing theoretical astrophysical research.

As Fang noted ironically at the time, “I am an astrophysicist who is unable to see the stars.”

After months of fruitless negotiations, their release seemed to hinge more and more on the question of their second son’s being allowed to leave with them (their first son was already in the United States studying physics) and on the Chinese regime’s insistence that they had to make an admission of wrongdoing.

“Of course, we were unwilling to make such an admission,” Fang now says emphatically. But Lilley hoped to find some way of giving the Chinese government the face necessary to bring about a settlement.

This problem was suddenly solved in June, when Fang experienced some minor heart palpitations. He now cheerfully attributes them to too much coffee. But seizing on this presumed malady, Lilley suggested that the Chinese allow the couple to leave for humanitarian reasons, mainly for medical treatment abroad. Still, the Chinese side insisted on some kind of admission of wrongdoing from the Fangs, something that they refused to do.

But by now the Chinese government seemed eager to see them depart, thus removing a large barrier to improved U.S.-Sino relations. They finally accepted a rather bizarre statement in which Fang and Li merely “took note of” the fact that they opposed Deng’s four cardinal principles supporting socialism and the Chinese Communist Party and admitted that in doing so, they had violated the preamble of the Chinese constitution.

Eager to save any face they could from the approaching deal, the Chinese issued a counterstatement saying that the Fangs had shown “a sign of repentance.”

The next day, June 23, the Fangs were ushered by a Chinese police escort along with Lilley to Nanyuan military airport, put aboard a U.S. military plane sent specially from Japan and sent out of China toward England.

However, 10 hours before their departure, their youngest son, Fang Zhe, was picked up in Beijing by security police. After being held under detention for 12 days, to the family’s great relief, he was finally allowed to leave Beijing for London on Friday to join the family in Cambridge.

Asked what he thought prompted China’s sudden change of heart, Fang shrugged, gave one of his trademark laughs and said simply:

“I think it was all the pressure that the Chinese government was feeling from the outside world. One should never deny the role of economics as a factor in international relations.”