China Detains Dissident During French Premier’s Visit : Human rights: Prime Minister Balladur, on fence-mending mission, declines to comment on incident.

Chinese police detained a veteran pro-democracy activist Friday as visiting French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur called for improved economic ties with China but refrained from commenting on Beijing’s human rights situation.

Police detained Xu Wenli at his Beijing home early Thursday, interrogated him overnight and took him into custody again Friday five minutes after he was released, his wife told reporters.

The detention of Xu, 50, comes one week after authorities rearrested the country’s most prominent political dissident, Wei Jingsheng. The two men edited underground journals promoting democratic reform during the Democracy Wall Movement of 1978-1979.

Wei served nearly 15 years in jail before his release last September. Xu, considered one of China’s more moderate dissidents, was released last May after 12 years in solitary confinement.

The United States has repeatedly criticized China for its human rights record. Under an executive order issued by President Clinton last year, China must show “overall, significant progress” in seven human rights areas for its preferential trading status to be renewed this June.

Wei was one of several dissidents picked up by authorities last month during a visit here by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Chinese officials were defiant in the face of Christopher’s calls for human rights improvements, and Beijing has yet to make good on the few promises it made toward that end.

At a news conference Friday, Balladur, who had come to mend fences with Beijing, was asked four times to comment on the detentions of the two dissidents. He declined each time.

“I do not wish to add anything on the subject, having said in private what I wished to say,” he told reporters. “You can accomplish more by being discreet.”

When Western journalists tried to find out from Xu’s wife, Kang Tong, why he had been detained, one of the police officers around Xu’s home dragged her away with his hand clasped over her mouth, according to David Schlesinger, a reporter for the British news service Reuters who was present. The journalists were accused of breaking the law and questioned for about 45 minutes before they were allowed to leave.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wu Jianmin told reporters after Balladur’s meetings with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng that there had been no discussion of either Xu or Wei.

Wu also attacked the United States as the only country in the world that continues to link China’s trade privileges to human rights. Such links do not exist between China and European countries or between China and Japan, he said. He added that he was not aware of Friday’s detention.

Balladur said France’s goal was to raise its profile in Asia, and increased trade with China is a central element of that plan. Relations between Paris and Beijing have been chilly since France sold Mirage jet fighters to Taiwan, China’s archenemy, nearly 18 months ago.

After the fighter plane sale, China closed the French Consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou in late 1992 and shut many French businesses out of the Chinese market. Estimates of the resulting lost sales are as high as $1 billion. The ban on French deals was lifted in January when France agreed to curb its arms sales to Taiwan.