U.S. to Cite China Rights Abuses

In yet another rip in the fabric of U.S.-Chinese relations, the Clinton administration announced Friday that it will introduce a resolution at a United Nations conference to formally accuse China of violating the human rights of its people.

The move signals that, even though President Clinton favors a policy of engagement with China, he intends to keep a spotlight focused on China’s mistreatment of its own people, administration officials said.

Until last year, the U.S. for seven consecutive years had sponsored a resolution condemning China at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. The U.S. cited a marked improvement in China’s human rights record in suspending the practice last year.

The latest resolution will reflect the administration’s “sense of deep concern” over the human rights situation in China, which has “deteriorated sharply,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said.

Specifically, the resolution will outline recent repression in Tibet and a crackdown on political dissent throughout China. It will also call on Beijing to improve those conditions, officials said.

The decision further frays U.S.-China relations, which have been unraveling recently over disputes on issues ranging from trade to espionage.

“We firmly oppose the U.S. government’s practice of interfering in our internal affairs,” said Yu Shuning, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington. “Of course it will have a negative impact on China-U.S. relations.”

Reverberations from the decision will likely be felt during Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji’s first official visit to the United States next month. Zhu plans to meet with Clinton at the White House on April 8, midway through a weeklong visit to several American cities that will begin in Los Angeles.

“The atmosphere will not be as good,” Yu said.

Chinese officials are determined to fight for the resolution’s defeat.

“They tried to introduce and adopt an anti-China resolution in the past seven years, and seven times they failed,” Yu said. “They will fail again.”

The human rights commission’s six-week session opened Monday, and the vote on the resolution is expected on April 23, giving the U.S. relatively little time to make its case with other members.

The announcement of the resolution was held up because of an internal dispute in the administration over whether to sponsor it. Some officials argued that it would be a meaningless gesture.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lobbied hard for the resurrection of the practice after her trip to Beijing earlier this month, where she was frustrated in her efforts to prod Chinese officials in a positive direction on human rights.

That visit followed by just a few days the release of a scathing State Department report detailing widespread abuses in China, including a rash of arrests of peaceful political activists in several cities that began last fall.

Administration officials argued that, having reported the facts, they had no choice but to back them up in the conference specifically designed for discussion of human rights conditions.

“At some level you have to sustain your credibility,” a senior White House official said. “We’re going to lose almost certainly in Geneva. But the president has said he’s going to speak up about these issues, and if you don’t do it in the one forum set up to deal with these issues, you lose your credibility.”

The administration has yet to line up other nations as sponsors for its proposed resolution, and other countries appear wary.

Earlier this week, the European Union foreign ministers agreed in Brussels not to support a resolution in Geneva that specifically condemns China. The EU was a co-sponsor of earlier resolutions.

Human rights activists applauded the administration’s decision but warned that Washington faces an uphill battle.

“The administration deserves credit for doing the right thing, but it should have started this process weeks and weeks ago,” said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of the Asian division of Human Rights Watch. “No doubt China hopes that economic interests will again triumph over principle and few governments will join the United States in Geneva.”

Relations between Washington and Beijing have deteriorated since last summer, when Clinton met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Beijing.

Since that meeting, congressional investigations have focused on alleged Chinese espionage of nuclear weapons design secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory, as well as alleged misuse of American satellites and other sensitive technology.

China, in turn, has bitterly complained about U.S. plans to develop and deploy regional missile defense systems that could be used to shield Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province.

The yawning trade deficit between the two nations has also contributed to heightening tensions.

Yet U.S. officials attempted to downplay predictions that the action on human rights will harm U.S.-China relations.

“Our hope and expectation is that the relationship is strong enough to bear this kind of honesty on human rights,” a senior State Department official said.