Mr. President, Send Your Wife to China : Policy: The U.S. can best champion the goals of the U.N. Conference on Women by having her lead the delegation.

Hillary Rodham Clinton waits while her husband and his foreign policy experts debate whether she should attend the fourth U.N. Conference on Women in September in China. What a sobering image for the women of the world to contemplate.

While he waffles, President Clinton should consider why America’s First Lady should attend this important gathering:

* Hillary Rodham Clinton is the honorary chairwoman of the U.S. delegation, to be led by U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. But it would take the First Lady’s presence to draw the world’s attention to the growing impoverishment of the world’s women and the effort to redefine women’s rights as human rights.

* The current strains between the United States and China are irrelevant. This is a multilateral, international conference that will bring together 40,000 women from all regions of the world. The United States can best champion the conference’s goals by sending its First Lady to the meetings. The imprisonment of human rights activist Harry Wu requires urgent attention by the State Department, but not an embargo of an international conference that will publicize the importance of human rights.

* Hillary Clinton should not be required to boycott China when the President has decided to allow U.S. trade with the world’s most populous nation.

* Bill Clinton needs a majority of U.S. women’s votes in order to win reelection in 1996. So far, his Administration has trivialized the U.N. conference, treating it as a cute gathering of “the girls.” Yet, women across the nation, particularly many poor and minority women, have spent the past decade preparing for it. How will a campaigning Clinton explain that he wouldn’t allow his wife, a long-time activist on behalf of women’s and children’s rights, to attend a conference concerned with improving the economic and physical well-being of the world’s women?

* The best reason for Hillary Clinton to attend is that the Chinese government has made every effort to sabotage this conference. Just by her presence, she will ensure the visibility of the non-government organizations and the issues they will raise.

While the President dithers, the Chinese government is working overtime to subvert the conference’s success. Having lost its bid for the Olympic Games after the Tian An Men Square massacre, China hoped to recapture some international stature by hosting what it imagined to be a harmless ladies’ tea party.

Now that tens of thousands of feminists and human-rights activists are about to pour into China, Beijing is busily engaged in damage control.

To silence the most radical activists at the conference, China has moved the NGO forum to a resort town 35 miles outside of Beijing that can accommodate only one-quarter of the anticipated participants and is ill-equipped for electronic communication with the rest of the world.

In response to complaints, the Chinese government sent an “advisory” suggesting that some women might prefer sightseeing to attending the conference. To discredit Western participants, officials are spreading rumors that most are prostitutes or lesbians. To stifle human-rights activists, China has denied visas to entire delegations, including groups that support Tibetan independence and gay rights. To limit publicity, China has restricted foreign journalists’ visas. Of the Chinese press, only the official New China News Agency will be allowed to cover the conference.

In the face of such resistance, how can the Administration not send our First Lady to China? The President’s aides are reportedly fearful that she will become embroiled in some embarrassing diplomatic nightmare. Excuse me, but there are few individuals in the Administration more adept or articulate than Hillary Rodham Clinton. And what could be more embarrassing than an American delegation whose chairwoman has been kept at home by her husband, the President?

Save the moral indignation. The United States can best promote democratic change there and elsewhere by improving our own nation’s commitment to human rights. Send Hillary to China, Mr. President. The women of the world are watching.