Wei's exile is lose-lose situation for China, U.S.

In the wake of the recent Sino-American summit, the question was already being asked -- how could President Bill Clinton possibly pay a return visit to China while leading dissidents remained imprisoned for their beliefs? Part of the answer has been given with the release of Wei Jingsheng. But our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin points out that while Wei's journey into exile can be said to be a tactical gain for China and the U.S., it is more likely to be a strategic setback for both nations.

HONG KONG (JP): Wei Jingsheng, China's most dedicated advocate of democracy, who has been imprisoned for his convictions for all but seven months of the last eighteen years, was sent into exile in the United States Sunday.

While the release will be seen, particularly in the United States, as a victory for human rights, Wei's departure into what is likely to be an extended exile is more realistically yet another major setback for the cause of a greater degree of free expression within a more open China.

Wei, who is 47, was evidently brought from a prison near Beijing on Saturday and held overnight at a government detention center, before being allowed to see his family briefly for breakfast. He was then released to the custody of an American diplomat on the steps of a jet leaving the Chinese capital for Detroit on Nov. 16. It was expected that he would fly on to New York. Instead Wei was taken from the plane straight to a Detroit hospital.

While Wei's release is bound to be seen by some as a diplomatic gesture by China to the United States, it is likely that another motive weighed heavily with the Chinese leadership: it did not want Wei, who has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace prize, and who last year was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, to die while in custody. This was probably the consideration which outweighed the argument produced once again by President Jiang Zemin recently in the United States -- that Wei was a criminal properly punished under China's criminal code.

This motive, of making sure that Wei does not die in prison in China, has been heavily underlined by the fact that Wei did not fly on to New York but was instead immediately hospitalized in Detroit. Wei's family has insisted for a long time that his health has been deteriorating during this second imprisonment and that he has a serious heart ailment. Even more disturbing, there have been several reports that prisoners in the same jail have been encouraged to treat Wei badly, and this has also seriously affected his health. Evidently this officially permitted prison bullying continued until a few day's before Wei's release.

The only official Chinese public statement about Wei, a very brief English language report by the Xinhua News Agency, said that he had been released "for medical treatment because of his illness" and that he has "gone abroad for medical treatment."

The reality behind this brief report -- Chinese authorities always give dissidents the absolute minimum of publicity, and the English-language report was probably not reduplicated on Xinhua's Chinese service -- is likely to be that Wei is being sent into extended exile, with the Chinese government having belatedly realized that an imprisoned, sick Wei does more harm to China's interests and prestige than if Wei is in indefinite exile abroad.

However Wei, on the rare occasions that he has been free to speak his mind, has always firmly resisted any suggestion of exile, saying that he wants to continue to work for democratic change and better human rights within China. Thus the fact that he has agreed to depart this time also strongly suggests that his medical condition has critically worsened.

Wei's release comes as he was serving his second term of imprisonment for sedition and counter-revolutionary activity. He was first sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for his activities at China's Democracy Wall in Beijing 1978-1979. This was the period when Deng Xiaoping first encouraged the democracy movement, as he sought to establish himself as China's paramount leader, and then cracked down upon it when that purpose had been served.

Prior to this conviction, Wei wrote his famous essay -- Democracy the Fifth Modernization -- in which he argued that the four modernizations policy could not succeed without greater freedom. His arguments are particularly interesting today as it becomes more obvious that economic failures by various authoritarian governments can clearly be attributed, in part, to a lack of free expression and argument.

"Without democracy," Wei wrote, "society will become stagnant and economic growth will face insurmountable obstacles. A democratic social system is the precondition for all development... Without this precondition... even preserving the level of development already attained would be very difficult".

Wei was released in 1993, six months before his first prison term ended. The Chinese authorities then hoped that the gesture would help their (eventually unsuccessful) campaign for China to become the host for the Olympic Games in the year 2000.

Wei (who had of course been in prison during the great upsurge of protest in China in 1989 which culminated in the Beijing Massacre) quickly resumed his previous activities, even writing dissident articles for newspapers overseas.

Shortly after he met U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck in Beijing in 1994, Wei disappeared from view as the Chinese government arbitrarily detained him for nearly a year. Then in 1995 he was brought to trial and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for sedition. Whether or not Wei's release relates to foreign, particularly U.S., pressure on China over human rights will no doubt be debated in the days ahead.

For some critics, the Clinton Administration was at fault for not quietly insisting upon the prior release of Wei and another leading dissident Wang Dan, also now reported to be seriously ill in prison, well before the exchange of Sino-American summit meetings was arranged. This argument gained in force because the detention of Wei so soon after he saw Shattuck was clearly an expression of Chinese official contempt for the United States with its arguments in favor of human rights.

Whether U.S. official and Congressional pressure, plus the constant demonstrations during President Jiang Zemin's recent visit to the United States, alone helped secure his release appears doubtful, as already indicated. But the Clinton Administration has lost no time using the release to justify its "new" policy of "constructive engagement" with China. The justification is the more necessary since many critics view the "new" policy as but the old policy of appeasement dressed up in fancy clothes.

The far more important fact remains -- although the Chinese fail to see things in such a light -- that Jiang's visit, and Sino-American relations generally, would have clearly benefited had Wei Jinsheng and Wang Dan been released well before the summit, and in advance of any foreign pressure being applied.

But with the current Chinese communist leadership avoiding all discussion of any meaningful degree of political reform, as at the recent 15th Party Congress, it is highly unlikely that the release of Wei signals a relaxation of the hardline posture against China's relatively small number of dissidents.

Once his health recovers, Wei will be able to resume writing abroad in favor of more democracy at home. But, if the past is any guide, those thoughts from exile will find a relatively faint echo within China itself, and China is unlikely to allow Wei to return home anytime soon, even if he chooses to try and do so.

So rather than seeing Wei's release as a victory for any policy it seems more pertinent to view it as a classic lose-lose situation.

The U.S. aim of greater human rights within China loses because, with Wei's exile, the dissident voice within China will be weaker still. The only worthwhile "victory", for the U.S., would be to somehow persuade China's leadership that greater tolerance of dissent is in their interest.

China loses, not least in its present and future economic development, because it simply cannot co-opt the remarkable tenacity and idealism of China's dwindling body of dissidents for the greater longterm benefit of the motherland.