U.S. Effort Led China to Release Dissident

China’s weekend release of its top dissident, Wei Jingsheng, into exile in the United States was the culmination of an intensive although largely secret four-month campaign by the Clinton administration, according to senior administration officials.

As part of this effort, President Clinton personally urged Chinese President Jiang Zemin to release Wei from prison. The request came during a nighttime conversation in the residence quarters of the White House on Oct. 28 as part of their recent summit meeting.

“Many of us came out of the [Clinton-Jiang] summit with the idea that something good would happen,” one U.S. official said Sunday.

Even so, the White House was not sure until last week, when Chinese Foreign Ministry officials informed U.S. Ambassador James R. Sasser in Beijing that they were prepared to let Wei leave the country for medical treatment.

For nearly 20 years, most of them in prison, Wei has been the foremost proponent of democracy in China. His release settles one of the most contentious issues between Washington and Beijing, perhaps easing the way for a further upgrading of relations. On Sunday, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger called Wei’s release “a very happy development.”

The behind-the-scenes U.S. effort, however, carried a price. China’s Communist Party leadership again succeeded in shipping a dissenter abroad and preventing any serious political opposition from taking root on Chinese soil.

Over the past eight years, several other leading critics of Communist Party rule in China, including Fang Lizhi and Wang Juntao, have similarly been forced to leave the country. By contrast, while the former Soviet Union forced many dissidents into exile, others, such as Andrei D. Sakharov, were able to stay and work for change inside the country.

In the past, Wei always insisted that he did not want to be released from prison unless he could remain in China.

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Wei’s former aide Tong Yi, now a student at Columbia University in New York, explained in an interview two months ago that he feared “if [Wei] went out [of China], he would lose the direct contact with Chinese people and lose his influence gradually, like other dissidents have done.”

Recently, however, with his health failing and living under constant watch in his isolation cell at the Nanpu New Life Salt Farm, Wei finally agreed to leave his homeland.

In their talks with the Chinese regime, the Clinton administration and Wei also had to make one more crucial concession: Wei has no guarantees that he will be able to go back to China.

Officially, the administration said Sunday that the question of Wei’s return will be decided “in accordance with Chinese law.” But one administration official explained this arrangement in blunter terms.

“Neither he nor we are assuming that [Wei] can get on a plane in the near future and go back and walk the Beijing streets,” the official said.

Administration officials emphasized Sunday that they had made no deals or concessions in exchange for Wei’s release. There could, however, be some loose and unacknowledged trade-offs.

Chinese officials have been urging the United States to set a date for Clinton’s visit to China next year. They also have asked the administration to drop its annual efforts in Geneva to obtain a formal condemnation of China by the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

And they have called on Clinton to lift the remaining sanctions imposed on China after the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

While Wei was still in prison, the Clinton administration was unwilling to make any of these concessions. Now, the situation could change.

“This case has been a top priority of the administration,” John H. Shattuck, an assistant secretary of State, said in an interview Sunday. “Wei is one of many people who are held for expressing political or religious views. Hopefully, this will be an indication of a new direction toward greater freedom of speech and freedom of religion inside China.”

In 1994, Shattuck’s meeting with Wei, who had been freed from prison the year before, led to the latter’s rearrest. Chinese officials accused Wei of trying to overthrow the regime by meeting with the top American human rights official on the eve of a visit to China by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. As a result, Wei was sentenced in 1995 to 14 more years.

The campaign for Wei’s release began in earnest in August, when Berger visited China to make plans for Jiang’s visit to the United States. Berger made it clear that the Clinton administration wanted more than a merely ceremonial summit and hoped for broader progress in several areas, including human rights, according to both U.S. and Chinese sources.

U.S. Embassy officials in Beijing had hoped to win Wei’s freedom in the days before last month’s summit. Wei Shanshan, the dissident’s sister, flew from her home in Germany to Washington to plead for his release. But it didn’t happen.

At the summit, standing beside Clinton at a White House news conference, Jiang said only: “As for the issues such as the one concerning Wei Jingsheng, this involves China’s criminal law and will be resolved gradually according to the legal procedure by the court of China.”

As a fallback position, administration officials suggested at the time that China might set Wei free soon after Jiang returned home. U.S. officials explained that the Chinese regime might then avoid giving the impression that the release was linked directly to the summit.

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Over the past 10 days, an extraordinary number of senior State Department officials visited China, among them Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Last week, Sasser was told that China was ready to let Wei leave the country for the United States if the Clinton administration was willing to receive him. That was the break the administration had been seeking.

There remained one last hurdle. At the Beijing airport Saturday morning, ringed by a phalanx of Chinese security aides, U.S. officials met with Wei to make sure that he was leaving China voluntarily and that he understood there were no promises about when he could return. Wei said he understood.

Administration officials also assured Wei that while in the United States, “he is free to say whatever he wants, whenever he wants,” one U.S. official said.

Within a couple of hours, escorted by a U.S. Embassy diplomat and an embassy nurse, Wei was in the air aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 88, bound for a country he had never seen and the freedom he has never had.