U.S. Gave China Prisoner List; Pressure Failed

The Bush Administration acknowledged Monday that it secretly gave China a list last spring of more than 800 political or religious prisoners that it said should be released from Chinese jails but so far has received little response from officials in Beijing.

The list, which senior State Department officials gave to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, conflicts with the Chinese government’s continuing claims that there are no political prisoners in the country.

And the disclosure raises new questions about the strength of the Administration’s effort to press for improvements in human rights in China. Despite the apparent lack of tangible results from the earlier effort, Secretary of State James A. Baker III announced Sunday that he will soon make his first visit to Beijing since the bloody 1989 crackdown there, ending a two-year official U.S. ban on high-level contacts with China.

Baker’s agreement to visit Beijing amounts to “an acceptance of their repressive policy and a victory for the Chinese regime,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). “It shows that the Chinese were right after the Tian An Men Square massacre when they said we are a paper tiger. China’s repressive policy has continued in spite of everything that has been said about it. . . . The Administration has waffled every step of the way.”

Congressional leaders began taking steps Monday to press for passage of legislation, long opposed by the Administration, to impose conditions on renewal of China’s most-favored-nation trade benefits next year. Different versions of the legislation passed the House and the Senate last summer and must now be reconciled by conference committee.

“It will play badly for MFN (most-favored-nation status) if China stiffs Baker,” acknowledged one senior Administration official.

The human rights group Asia Watch, which first disclosed the State Department’s list of Chinese political prisoners, said in a statement that the Administration’s quiet diplomacy with Beijing has “failed utterly.” Mike Jendrzejczyk, head of Asia Watch’s Washington office, said he does not believe that Baker should go to China “unless there’s a commitment that significant numbers of prisoners will be released.”

Asia Watch said State Department officials gave the prisoner list to the Chinese Embassy in Washington shortly after then-Undersecretary of State Robert M. Kimmitt visited Beijing last May.

For almost a year, the State Department has maintained that its China policy was succeeding because China had agreed to engage for the first time in a “dialogue” with the United States on human rights.

But Asia Watch officials said that, in the months since it received the prisoner list, the Chinese have provided no information about any detainees. “The Chinese have used the threat of cutting off a nonexistent ‘dialogue’ on human rights to blackmail the Bush Administration into silence on political prisoners,” Asia Watch executive director Sidney Jones said.

A senior Administration official called Jones’ claim “typical Asia Watch overstatement. . . . I categorically deny that we’ve been blackmailed into silence.” But a senior State Department official confirmed that Chinese officials have been willing to discuss the U.S. list only “in abstract terms” and will not talk about specific cases.