U.N. Rejects U.S. Resolution Condemning Abuses in China

In a decision that is becoming something of an annual tradition, the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Tuesday rejected a Clinton administration resolution that sought to condemn China for political and religious repression.

The commission, meeting in Geneva, voted 22 to 18, with 12 abstentions, to take no action on the issue this year. In 1999, the vote was strikingly similar: 22 to 17, with 14 abstentions.

Although U.S. officials acknowledge that they had no realistic hope that the U.N. agency would act against a country with China’s political clout, the administration advanced the measure to demonstrate that it is not ignoring any human rights violations by Beijing despite President Clinton’s effort to bring China into the international trading system.

In his final year in office, Clinton has made it a top priority to extend full, permanent trading privileges to China, a step that he says will open Chinese markets to U.S. goods and clear the way for Beijing’s membership in the World Trade Organization.

Opponents of the China trade bill have focused on the country’s alleged human rights violations. The administration hopes to take that issue off the table by showing that all sides in the U.S. debate deplore religious and political persecution.

In Geneva, the United States was supported by Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and several smaller countries. China was backed by Cuba, Russia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, among others.

The commission has rejected resolutions criticizing China each year since the bloody repression of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. The United States has led the effort most years, as the Clinton and Bush administrations sought to separate human rights from trade relations with the world’s most populous country.

On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the administration’s allies on the China trade bill were lining up support for legislation to establish a watchdog commission to monitor China’s human rights record. The panel would be authorized to recommend sanctions for abuses as long as the sanctions were consistent with WTO rules.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), legislative sponsor of the administration’s China trade bill, said the planned watchdog commission would strengthen U.S. monitoring of China’s human rights situation.

In the past, Congress has voted annually on normal trade relations for China after debate that often focused on human rights. The administration’s bill would eliminate that annual chance for China’s critics to vent their anger.

But businesspeople and their supporters on Capitol Hill who endorse trade with China for economic reasons have been reluctant to join in criticism of Beijing’s human rights record for fear of upsetting annual renewal of trade privileges. Under the administration’s new approach, officials said, supporters of trade with China would be free to assess the human rights situation on its own merits.