China ‘More Receptive’ on Rights Issue, Gore Says

Wrapping up discussions with top Chinese leaders, Vice President Al Gore said here Wednesday that he had a “more receptive response” this week than in the past on the subject of human rights--an issue that has long bedeviled Sino-U.S. relations.

“I think we are finding ways to communicate more effectively with China’s leaders on this topic,” Gore said in a news conference following a meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

He added that the discussions “provided an opportunity to develop the broad strategic dialogue between our two countries.”

Jiang also offered an upbeat assessment of the meetings, telling Gore earlier in the day: “The past two days have also been very productive, and this I believe [means] we can actually have a chat in a light atmosphere today.”

The vice president’s trip to the Chinese capital set the groundwork for a state visit to Washington next autumn by Jiang and a reciprocal visit to China by President Clinton next year.

This week’s trip is viewed as particularly important to Washington and Beijing because the vice president is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since relations soured in 1989. In June of that year, the Chinese military cracked down on peaceful demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square, killing at least several hundred people.

Disagreements between the U.S. and China over human rights since then have been destructive to overall ties, and on Wednesday Gore steered clear of provocative rhetoric.

He told reporters that he “made clear the seriousness of our commitment to the advancement of human rights, including in the areas of freedom of expression, association and religion.” But he chose not to outline publicly Beijing’s human rights abuses or even to be generally critical of them.

When asked to highlight specific human rights cases that he raised during the talks, he declined. Nor did he pinpoint any new agreements or other concrete progress in human rights--or in the two sides’ other areas of discussion, including trade, nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the environment.

“Specific cases were raised during the course of my visit,” Gore said. “I’m not going to specify individual names to you, because I believe that the accumulated experience that we’ve had in the United States dealing with this issue shows very clearly that our prospects for success are enhanced by taking the approach I’m taking here.”

During talks Tuesday, Premier Li Peng told Gore that clashing views on human rights can be explained by the fact that since the Renaissance the two cultures have gone in different directions, with the United States emphasizing the individual and the Chinese emphasizing the collective, according to U.S. Ambassador to China James R. Sasser, who attended the meeting.

The State Department’s annual human rights report, released earlier this year, gave a grim assessment of “widespread and well documented” abuses in China last year.

“All public dissent against the [Communist] Party and government was effectively silenced by intimidation, exile, the imposition of prison terms, administrative detention or house arrest. No dissidents were known to be active at year’s end,” the report said.

Just before Gore left for China, he received a letter from several senior senators, including Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), urging him to press China for specific practical measures to improve its record, including allowing international humanitarian agencies into China’s prisons, releasing a significant number of political prisoners and ratifying two international human rights conventions.

Although Gore’s talks with Chinese leaders ended Wednesday, he remains in the country for two more days, visiting the cities of Xian and Shanghai. Human rights watchers said they hope he will use the opportunity to press China harder on abuses.

They urged him to publicly state specific U.S. concerns and put the Chinese government on notice that failure to progress could hinder preparations for the higher-level visits and perhaps U.S. support for China’s bid to join the World Trade Organization. And they said if Gore fails to do so, he will be signaling to China that it no longer has to worry about human rights to improve its relationship with the United States.

“It appears as if the [Clinton] administration and the Chinese have tacitly agreed to move human rights into the margins so that it doesn’t interfere with closer economic relations, and I believe Gore is following that line,” said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of Human Rights Watch/Asia, a group that monitors human rights practices.

But Gore defended his strategy, saying that as Chinese trade and other types of ties with the United States broaden, they will spark greater economic freedoms, which in turn will lead to greater political freedoms in the world’s most populous country.

Gore said he and the Chinese leaders also talked about the growing trade deficit with China, and he pointed to two major deals that U.S. firms and state-owned Chinese companies signed earlier in his visit as indications of Beijing’s willingness to open its market wider.

“The completion of two contracts with Boeing and General Motors represents a good sign, and both President Jiang and Premier Li Peng made it clear in their comments that they intend to take further steps to open the Chinese market more to U.S. goods and services,” Gore said.