CNS News: US Urged to Caution Chinese Leader on Taiwan, Human Rights

By Patrick Goodenough

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - As China's leader-in-waiting prepares to meet U.S. leaders, a leading China expert said the Bush Administration should make absolutely clear U.S. policy on Taiwan - including arms sales - while human rights campaigners urged officials to press for an improvement in Beijing's rights record.

Following a full program in New York City Monday - which included a brief visit to the site of the Sept. 11 terror attack - Vice-President Hu Jintao is due to meet with President Bush and Vice-President Cheney in Washington over the next two days.

China's heir apparent is expected to succeed President Jiang Zemin as Communist Party head late this year and president of China early in 2003. His first official visit to the U.S. comes at a time when Sino-U.S. relations have taken a beating over the administration's support for Taiwan, and analysts widely predict Hu will bring up Beijing's concerns regarding the island democracy it considers a renegade province. […]

'Don't Play Down Human Rights'

Also offering advice ahead of the Hu meetings was Human Rights Watch, which said Monday there had been no improvement in Beijing's rights record since Bush visited China last February.

"The administration must step up the pressure," said Mike Jendrzejczyk of the organization's Asia Division. "Hu needs to understand that China's international human rights obligations are a key issue in U.S.-China relations." Jendrzejczyk cited several areas of particular concern, including imprisonment of political and religious dissidents and repression in Tibet and Xinjiang - in the latter case justified by Beijing as part of the war against terrorism. "Some might be tempted to play down human rights with Hu, since it's his first visit here," he said. "But that would be a major mistake. Differences over human rights should be dealt with candidly and constructively, not swept under the rug."

Hu has been met by small demonstrations at the early stops of his visit. In Hawaii, supporters of Taiwan and practitioners of the Falun Gong meditation group protested outside his Waikiki hotel, while Chinese students studying there expressed backing for him.

In New York, a handful of Falun Gong members held a vigil outside Hu's hotel. Since Beijing banned Falun Gong in 1999, thousands of practitioners have been jailed or sent to labor camps. The movement claims that 403 have died in police custody. The group's New York-based Information Center in a statement called on Hu and other Chinese leaders to put an end to what it called "the reign of terror unleashed by Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin against compassionate, nonviolent people."

Falun Gong noted that a classmate of Hu's at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, Zhang Mengye, had in recent years spent two years in a labor camp "because he refused to give up his practice." Around 300 Tsinghua students and faculty had been detained or jailed since the movement was banned, it said. During his visit last February, Bush addressed students at Tsinghua, while Hu sat alongside him. "Freedom of religion is not something to be feared," the president told his audience then. "It's to be welcomed, because faith gives us a moral core and teaches us to hold ourselves to high standards, to love and to serve others, and to live responsible lives."

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