Bush Skirts Rights Issue

After a two-day visit to China billed as an opportunity to advance his second-term goal of spreading freedom, President Bush left the country today amid questions over how aggressively he had pressed the matter.

Before the trip, human rights advocates’ expectations were high. Bush had scheduled an appearance at a Beijing church, had challenged China to become a more open society during a speech last week in Japan and had welcomed the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual and political leader whom Beijing perceives as a threat, to the White House.

But days before Bush’s arrival, Chinese authorities apparently forced several high-profile dissidents to leave the capital in an effort to prevent negative publicity. Also, no political prisoners were released around the time of the visit, unlike previous U.S.-China summits. And U.S. officials apparently failed to persuade Beijing to air on state-controlled media all aspects of Bush’s trip, particularly the church stop.

“We all understand that a system that is open and competitive politically is one that is moving toward democracy,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after Bush’s meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders. “And there’s no question but that China would have a ways to go to meet that test.”

Bush’s China trip, his third as president, underscored the challenge this country posed to the “freedom agenda” that is the centerpiece of Bush’s second-term foreign policy.

The administration has focused intently on smaller countries such as Iraq, Syria and Myanmar in its quest to spread democracy. But China seems to operate in its own category as a fast-rising power with substantial economic influence on the U.S. One measure of that is the U.S. trade deficit with China, which approaches $200 billion.

Bush must also weigh the significance of China’s recent moves to beef up its military, and he must balance the demands of domestic politics in which evangelical Christians want him to pursue right-to-worship issues more aggressively while business lobbyists want access to China’s vast market. Both groups are key Republican Party constituents.

Bush invoked his freedom agenda today during a brief stop in Mongolia, a country of 2.8 million people nestled between China and Russia. The U.S. views Mongolia as an emerging democracy in a crucial region.

In China, Hu proclaimed Sunday that his country had achieved “historic progress” in democratic reform and human rights. Standing beside Bush in the Great Hall of the People abutting Tiananmen Square, the site of the 1989 student protests that sparked some of the reforms, Hu said the Chinese now exercise “their right of democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic supervision.”

But the Chinese president offered no details and did not mention the roundup of dissidents or his country’s continued efforts to crack down on public dissent and religious freedom.

He also took no questions, even though the audience for Sunday’s joint statements by Bush and Hu consisted almost entirely of journalists. U.S. negotiators failed to persuade Hu and his aides to permit a question-and-answer session with reporters as is traditional at Bush’s summit meetings.

The weekend’s discussions were dominated by business and trade issues, such as the value of China’s currency and Beijing’s failure to prevent the pirating of music and movies.

The president’s appearance at a Protestant church did underscore his support for religious freedom in an officially atheist country. Standing beside Hu later, Bush said it was important that “social, political and religious freedoms grow in China.” And he said that once the Chinese people see the “door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed.”

But some observers were disappointed that the freedom agenda seemed to take a back seat. Bush did not, for example, directly confront Hu with a list of imprisoned dissidents that the U.S. government maintains and frequently raises with the Chinese government.

Releases are common in the days preceding a visit by a U.S. president or other senior official. In March, just before a visit by Rice, China released business executive and women’s rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, who had been arrested six years earlier.

An administration official said Sunday in response to questions that Bush “alluded” to the list during his meeting with Hu. But the official did not provide the context or specifics of any interaction between the leaders on the question of dissidents.

Some critics said the topic should have been front and center. They fear that Bush put less emphasis on human rights amid pressure from the powerful U.S. business lobby to win trade and economic concessions from China.

A sign of that emphasis was seen Saturday, Bush’s first night in town, when one of his aides broke the news to reporters that Chicago-based Boeing Inc. had inked a deal to sell 70 of its 737 jetliners to China -- a “vindication,” the aide said, of the administration’s approach.

“The president chose to sit in church in China, which is a signal, but of course we hope he’ll be more vocal and insistent to Chinese leaders and hope that U.S. companies won’t sell out their conscience for business,” said Bob Fu, an activist with the China Aid Assn., a U.S.-based Christian rights group.

Chinese authorities forcibly removed several religious activists from Beijing in advance of Bush’s visit, China Aid said. Prominent pastor Hua Huiqi was forced by China’s public security bureau to fly to Sichuan province shortly before Bush landed in China. Another activist, Zhang Mingxuan, was taken to Henan province, while another lawyer active in religious issues was temporarily moved to Tianjin, the organization said.

Rice told reporters following Bush’s meetings that the administration was aware of China’s crackdown on religious activity and planned to address the issue “quite vociferously with the Chinese government to both get a clarification and to make clear that we believe open societies allow people to express themselves.”

In a briefing before the trip, Mike Green, a White House advisor on Asia policy, indicated that human rights would be a primary focus for the president.

“Our view is that we need to be frank with the Chinese in all categories of our relationship, whether it’s human rights, the military issues, North Korea, Taiwan. That if you try to pull punches in one area to make progress in the other area, you’ll regret having done it, because all of these are important. All of these have important constituencies in the United States, all of these are important to the world.”

Bush’s speech last week in Japan, in which he called on Beijing to meet “the legitimate demands of its citizens for freedom and openness,” raised hopes that he would speak forcefully about human rights while in China.

“We appreciate the attention your administration has given to human rights issues such as religious freedom and the release of political prisoners in China,” the organization Human Rights Watch said in a statement on the eve of the China stop. “However, we are concerned that the human rights situation has fallen on the list of priorities in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship in recent years.”

Bush, Rice and other officials sought Sunday to accentuate the positives, claiming progress on pressing China to address its rising trade surplus with the U.S. and to crack down on intellectual property theft. But the secretary of State was openly cautious about Hu’s intentions with his self-styled “peaceful development” agenda, a catchphrase he uses to describe slow and steady political reform accompanied by a military buildup.

Rice also commented on the state-run media’s narrow coverage of the Bush trip. Most airtime was given to Bush’s hourlong bike excursion with potential members of China’s Olympic mountain-biking team. The secretary of State said the administration would assess whether Bush was able to get his message out to the Chinese.

“I don’t, frankly, see why the Chinese government would invite the president of the United States and not want the Chinese people to know that he’s here.”

Bush, for his part, told reporters late Sunday that he was pleased with Hu’s reaction to his comments on human rights and freedom. A decade ago, Bush said, no Chinese leader would have bothered listening to such advice from a U.S. president.

“President Hu is a thoughtful fellow,” Bush said. “He listened to what I had to say.”