China: No Champagne

China’s release of two U.S.-based scholars on the eve of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s visit is welcome but nothing to crow about. The arrest and conviction of Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang on trumped-up charges of spying for Taiwan have already served Beijing’s purposes.

President Bush, in welcoming the release, said he thought that his raising the issue July 5 in a telephone conversation with Chinese President Jiang Zemin may have helped China realize it needs to make “better decisions on human rights.” Maybe. But before the administration breaks out the champagne, it should be asking itself what the cases say about the nature of the Chinese regime.

The spying charges that Beijing has brought against a variety of China scholars in the past year are not even half-truths. The scholars had no secret documents, just magazine articles, some of which are available in Chinese shops. The charges testify to the paranoia of a regime that commands no legitimacy among its people. In a so-called “hard-strikes campaign,” the Chinese police have been moving relentlessly to crack down on real or imagined dissidents. Going after scholars serves as a warning to the average Chinese about protest and a focus for nationalistic patriotism. Targeting U.S.-based academics guarantees wide publicity for the warning.

Powell at first treated the issue as isolated, saying, “I think the relationship [with China] is on the upswing now that these irritations are behind us.” This is not quite right. Convicting innocent scholars is not an “irritation” that can be soothed with diplomacy but rather is the essence of the Beijing oligarchy, as Powell seemed closer to recognizing Thursday. He said then that “our principal focus” should be not individual cases but a system that “occasionally” does not give people their rights. Occasionally, indeed.

Scholars are a potent threat to the regime because scholarship by definition is about free inquiry and independent thought. That principle must be defended. Isolating China is not practical or desirable. But in its eagerness to expand market opportunities, the Bush administration should not follow in the footsteps of the Clinton administration, which subordinated human rights to commerce.