Ease Repression or Lose Favored Trading Status, U.S. Warns China : Rights: Beijing is challenged to grant more freedom for its people before June deadline.

Reinforcing recent diplomatic warnings, the Clinton Administration declared in its annual human rights report Tuesday that China has taken only limited steps to ease repression of its people and must make more “significant, overall” progress to retain most-favored-nation trading status.

In effect, Washington challenged the Beijing regime to take dramatic measures to increase political and personal freedom before June, when President Clinton must decide whether the United States will extend most-favored benefits again to China.

Should the thriving exporter lose the coveted status enjoyed by most U.S. trading partners, it would be forced to pay higher tariffs on most goods sent to this country.

Many business groups want to continue the present trading relationship, despite widespread concern over Beijing’s human rights failings. But the President and majorities in the House and Senate have insisted on linking trade privileges with China to an improvement in the nation’s human rights record.

Despite the Administration’s apparent hard line, however, Human Rights Watch, an advocacy organization, criticized the report, contending that it “gives China more credit than it is due, particularly in the areas of prison labor and religious persecution.”

The annual report, first issued in 1977, is compiled from reports from U.S. Foreign Service officers, private organizations, journalists and other observers and now assesses the status of human rights in 193 countries. For the first time, it includes an extensive assessment of how the rights of women are observed around the world.

In its review of China, the report said that fundamental human rights safeguards in the Chinese constitution frequently are ignored in practice, while challenges to the Communist Party’s political authority are often dealt with harshly and arbitrarily.

The State Department said that Chinese security forces are responsible for widespread torture, forced confessions and arbitrary detentions and that the government has failed to account for thousands of people who were detained during the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tien An Men Square.

While Beijing took a few positive steps by releasing some political dissidents and allowing others to leave the country, the report said, it did not go far enough.

“The (Chinese) government’s overall human rights record in 1993 fell far short of internationally accepted norms as it continued to repress domestic critics and failed to control abuses by its own security forces,” the report said. “In 1993, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of political prisoners remained under detention or in prison . . . (while) physical abuse, including torture by police and prison officials persisted, especially in the politically restive regions with minority populations.”

John H. Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, underscored the official line in a news conference, saying: “The report certainly shows a continuing climate of repression of political and human rights in China. China in no way meets the standards set out by the President.”

In presenting the document to Congress on Tuesday, State Department Counselor Timothy E. Wirth praised China for releasing several prominent political prisoners but issued a warning meant to be heard half a world away by the aging Communist leadership: “The Chinese government must demonstrate, over time, steady and substantial benefit in human rights” to retain the most-favored status that nearly all other U.S. trading partners enjoy.

“We have a long way to go,” Wirth added, suggesting that the United States would require annual reviews of human rights gains in China before extending it trade benefits.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said that he is concerned that the report might be “whitewashing egregious Chinese crimes.” But California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on international security, international organizations and human rights, said he is persuaded that most-favored status will be revoked unless China makes major changes in the next few months.

Meanwhile, the report predictably indicated that Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Haiti, North Korea, Sudan, Zaire and Cuba are among the most repressive regimes in the world. But in a somewhat surprising development, the State Department declared, “There are no known political prisoners in Russia.”

The report contained some criticism of longtime U.S. allies, including Turkey, Mexico, Thailand and even Israel, along with detailed accounts of repression in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Some of the most damning indictments of summary executions and other misconduct by police and military forces were directed at Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs, who were accused of waging a “brutal campaign of terror--in which acts of genocide took place” to establish an expanded Serbian state. But it also reported Bosnian government atrocities, chiefly against Bosnian Croats.

The report noted that “positive human rights developments” occurred in Israel last year, with court decisions that expanded prisoners rights and placed more restrictions on the Israeli practice of demolishing the homes of Arab prisoners convicted of terrorism.

But, citing what it described as “credible sources,” the report also said that undercover security units disguised as Palestinians were responsible for the deaths of 27 Arabs in the occupied territories in the first 11 months of 1993.

There also were “credible reports” that Israel “in some cases tortured Palestinians during arrest and interrogation, utilized undercover units implicated in extrajudicial killings” and otherwise followed a “harsh” policy in dealing with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

While coercion used to force confessions from Palestinian suspects was far less severe than the torture common in the prison systems of many other Middle Eastern countries, the report said, Israel’s interrogation practices violate internationally accepted norms and include “forced standing or tying up in contorted positions, prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures, blows and beatings, confinement in a small space (and) sleep and food deprivation.”