Arrests continue in China
It was front page news that China had sent the well-known dissident Wang Dan into American exile, just as it was last November when democracy advocate Wei Jingsheng was taken from prison and put on a jet to Detroit. But a steady flow of arrests did not make the front pages around America or even a mention in most newspapers.
There was the arrest in January of Li Qingxi, an unemployed former health worker who had urged colleagues to form independent unions. Shen Liangqing, a former prosecutor was sentenced to two years of "re-education through labor" this month, apparently because he criticized the selection of former Prime Minister Li Peng to head China's Parliament. Yang Qinheng and Father Lu Genyou are not household names in the West, either. The former was sentenced in March to three years hard labor, apparently for speaking on Radio Free Asia in favor of free unions; the latter, a Catholic priest, was reportedly arrested on April 5 while preparing to say Mass.
Wang Dan's release was part of a delicate unspoken deal between the Clinton and Jiang administrations. Bill Clinton dropped America's customary sponsorship of a resolution on China's human rights abuses at an annual UN conference. President Jiang sent Wang Dan into exile. Now the way is clear for Mr. Clinton's visit to China in June -- the first by a U.S. president since the Tienanmen massacre in 1989 ...
There can only be joy that (Wang) is free, albeit in forced exile. Yet there is a danger, as China bargains with its dissidents one by one, of losing sight of the thousands who remain in jail or labor camps, and of those added to the prison population week after week.
As Wang wrote in 1995, before his second arrest, China could minimize the danger of social and worker unrest by giving the public "a chance to express its dissatisfaction though democratic channels." But that would carry a different risk -- to the survival of China's Communist regime. That is why the regime is still doing what it can to make sure Wang's message will not be heard in the homeland.
-- The Washington Post