China Lets U.S. Official Meet With Jailed Activist : Asia: Harry Wu of California tells consul general he is in good condition. But Chinese security officers monitor their conversation.

In a conversation carefully monitored by Chinese officials, Chinese American human rights crusader Harry Wu told a U.S. Embassy official Monday that he is in good condition and has not been beaten or tortured in the three weeks since his arrest at a remote western China border post.

Consul General Arturo Macias met Wu in the east-central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the 58-year-old resident of Milpitas, Calif., is being held on charges of entering China under false pretenses, obtaining state secrets and “conducting criminal activities in areas and institutions that are not open to foreign nationals.”

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, relaying information provided by Macias, said that four or five Chinese security officers listened in on the conversation. The Chinese government prohibited Wu and Macias from discussing specifics of the charges, and when the talk seemed to turn in that direction, one of the monitors intervened.

“Mr. Wu stated that he was fine, that he was being fed and that he had not been beaten or tortured,” Burns said.

Burns called on China to release Wu immediately, asserting that it is important for China to take the step if it hopes to improve its badly strained relations with the United States. “Certainly, action by the Chinese government in the particular case of Mr. Wu would provide that kind of progress that might help us unlock some of the difficulties that are currently a big factor in our relationship with China,” he said. “The Harry Wu case is quite important to us and we’re signaling that to the Chinese government.”

But Burns said the Clinton Administration will not make Wu’s release a condition for continuing relations with Beijing. “We have a variety of interests at stake in our relations with China--not just the Harry Wu case, but others,” he said.

On Capitol Hill, anger at China’s treatment of Wu, a friend of many members of Congress, was turning into calls for a tougher U.S. response.

In separate statements, Reps. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) and Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) called on the Administration to cancel U.S. participation in the United Nations Conference on Women, scheduled for September in Beijing, unless Wu is released.

Smith also said: “The Chinese dictatorship must be told in no uncertain terms that most-favored-nation trading status is dead so long as Harry Wu remains a captive.” President Clinton last month agreed to allow Chinese goods into the United States for another year under most-favored status, which ensures the Chinese the same low tariffs that apply to most countries. But Congress could overturn that action by passing a joint resolution by Sept. 1.

In a letter to Clinton, Wolf also called on the Administration to warn Americans that it is dangerous to travel in China. Moreover, he said that even if Clinton decides to permit Americans to participate in the Beijing conference on women, he should cancel “at the very minimum the attendance of the First Lady and high-level State Department officials.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who has been outspoken in his support for Wu throughout the ordeal, issued a new statement Monday: “The Chinese leaders should know, in no uncertain terms, that if they refuse to release Harry Wu, or harm him in any way, the consequences for China will be very grave.”

The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch / Asia said the Administration “has done a good job” on the Wu case. But Mike Jendrzejczyk, the group’s Washington director, said the U.S. government should take three more steps: “suspension of certain high-level visits to China; a hold on upcoming World Bank loans to Beijing, and an effort by the White House to get U.S. companies to work for the release of Mr. Wu and other key Chinese dissidents.”

Since news of Wu’s detention surfaced, U.S. officials in Beijing have repeatedly asked for an audience with the naturalized U.S. citizen, who immigrated to the United States in 1985 after serving 19 years in labor reform camps here.

The Chinese government announced Saturday that Wu had been arrested by public security officers in Wuhan. No explanation was given of how Wu was taken to Wuhan from Horgas on the border with Kazakhstan, where he was detained June 19.

The Chinese delay of nearly three weeks in announcing Wu’s arrest apparently stemmed from an internal debate about what to do with the man who on three previous occasions made clandestine entries into China to document his campaign against prison labor and conditions in the labor reform camps.

“Since June, 1991,” the China Daily newspaper reported Monday, “Wu, using the aliases ‘Peter Hwu’ and ‘Harry Wu,’ has entered areas and units closed to foreigners on several occasions, engaged in espionage, bought secret information and stolen secret documents. He then carried these secrets abroad and provided them to foreign organizations and institutions.”

Wu’s Chinese name was Wu Hungda. When he immigrated to the United States, he legally changed his name to Peter H. Wu, although he is generally known as Harry.

Tempest reported from Beijing and Kempster from Washington.