Ten Years After Tiananmen: U.S., China and Human Rights

Transcript

B. Gill: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you very much for coming at this early hour after a delightful holiday weekend. My name is Bates Gill. I'm director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. And on behalf of the Brookings Institution, I want to extend a warm welcome to one and all for joining us today for this important briefing on an important event in U.S.-China relations.

The Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies based at the Brookings Institution was established just last year, and was brought together in order to raise the salience and profile of important political, security and economic issues related to Northeast Asia — as a means we hope to inform public opinion as well as public policy on issues of interest in Northeast Asia for Americans as well as, in our own modest way, to try to assist to overcoming the divisions which often characterize Northeast Asia on economic, political and security issues.

We welcome you to this briefing, and we look forward to continuing our association with all of you as we move forward in trying to understand this very important part of the world.

Today, of course we are addressing a very important public policy issue in Northeast Asia and for U.S. interests there. It has to do with our relationship with China, and particularly the often troubling aspect of that relationship related to human rights.

Ten years ago, the tragic events in and around Tiananmen and around China profoundly affected our understanding of China and U.S. relations with that country. Indeed, even today, 10 years later, the very subject of human rights is so fraught with political sensitivity and difficulty that it's sometimes even a taboo subject to discuss in Washington, even within the councils of government.

We think 10 years on, it is high time that we more frankly addressed how the issues of human rights affect U.S.-China relations and our relationship with this very important country. How well have our policies aimed at affecting human rights in China worked? Is there a way that we can more effectively come up with public policy to bring changes that are of interest to the United States, without unduly undermining our relationship with China?

How much has China changed, in terms of its human rights over the past 10 years? How important is the economic and political transformation that's taking place in China today, to affecting, over the long term, the kinds of changes many people in this country would like to see? I'm hopeful that our experts around the table today will be able to answer many of these and other questions.

Let me take a moment to introduce our speakers. We will proceed in the two panels. The first, we will have Professor Li Cheng and Mr. Wei Jingsheng.

Wei Jingsheng is well known to everyone as one of the most prominent dissidents from China, now living in the United States. Mr. Wei was born in 1950, served as a Red Guard and as a soldier in China. It was not until 1978, however, during the now-famous Democracy Wall movement, that Mr. Wei presented the now-famous essay on the Fifth Modernization in China.

For his efforts, he was imprisoned twice, first for a lengthy period from 1979 to 1993, and he was again imprisoned for what was supposed to be another 14-year sentence in 1994. However, he was released on medical parole to the United States in 1997, and now is based at Columbia University as a senior fellow at the University's Center for the Study of Human Rights.

Professor Li Cheng is now at Hamilton College in New York. Born in Shanghai and growing up during the Cultural Revolution, he came to the United States in 1985, where he obtained advanced degrees from the prestigious University of California at Berkeley as well as his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Mr. Li is a well-known commentator on issues concerning leadership politics and politics in general in China, and has been frequently interviewed and cited by the more prominent media sources. And we are very pleased that he was also able to join us today.

I've asked the speakers to limit their remarks to about five minutes — five to seven minutes — so we'll have more time for there to be give-and-take with the audience. Before proceeding, I will remind everyone that Mr. Wei will have an interpreter, Ms. Susan Jakes, his assistant at Columbia University.

So without further ado, let me turn over the floor to Mr. Wei Jingsheng.

W. Jingsheng: [Through interpreter] Okay, so I'll just sit while I speak. As everyone knows, in three days we will commemorate the anniversary of the great massacre in Tiananmen Square. And so I feel that 10 years later, it's now appropriate to discuss the current situation of human rights in China.

There are people who believe that U.S. government concern with Chinese human rights is somehow useless. But I disagree with that. Whether the usefulness of our concern with human rights is superficial or on the inside, it's nevertheless very important.

Everyone well knows that the Chinese Communist Party, who was responsible for the deaths of so many thousands of Chinese citizens in 1989, has enormous responsibility for this event. But people less frequently realize that the United States and the West in general also have to take a smaller amount of responsibility for what happened.

Two months before the actual massacre, the Chinese Communist government was already making plans for the massacre. But at that time, they were still waiting to see what the reaction would be from the rest of the world. They wanted to see whether or not the West would take action.

As I remember, several months before the Tiananmen uprising, the U.S. president issued a statement saying that the U.S. wouldn't become involved in — wouldn't interfere in Chinese internal affairs. And that was what gave Deng Xiaoping the resolve to carry out the massacre.

Of course, we have no absolute way of proving that what happened in China was entirely the responsibility of the U.S. government. But nevertheless, this provides us with a lens for examining the relationship of the U.S. attitude on human rights and the activities of the Chinese government.

We are now facing another crucial point in human rights in China, not so much because it's the 10-year anniversary of the Tiananmen uprising, but more so because the Chinese Communist government has recently begun to foment a kind of nationalist fanaticism amongst the people in China.

The intention of the CCP hardliners who are responsible for instigating this recent nationalist movement was to make Chinese government policies, both domestic and foreign, take a turn towards being more hard line. And during the past few weeks of this nationalist fervor, the people who have been subject to attack in China not only include Chinese democracy advocates, but also foreign business people living in China.

And if we're not able to control the spread of this nationalist fanaticism, then it's going to start to influence more than just a small group of people, and its damages will begin to spread to a much larger number of people. And at a moment like this, the presence of international pressure on China, whether it exists or not, how much pressure is put on China, will be essential in determining the development of the political situation in China.

So I think that right now is a crucial moment for involvement on the part of the outside world in this human rights situation in China. We don't want to wait until the situation in China deteriorates to something like the present-day Kosovo before we begin to get involved. It's important that at such a crucial moment, the international community get involved in trying to make a difference in China's human rights situation before it gets out of control, when it's still amenable to change.

Thank you.

B. Gill: Thank you very much, Mr. Wei, for those remarks. We all look forward to engaging with you after we hear remarks from Professor Li. Professor Li has also provided remarks in writing. It's available at the table for those of you who wish to take them.

Professor Li.

L. Cheng: Thank you.

Well, I'm delighted to speak to such a distinguished audience. I'm particularly honored to be on the same panel with Mr. Wei Jingsheng, a legendary figure in contemporary China. I have never been an activist for a democratic movement in China. But as a college professor in Chinese studies and a victim of totalitarianism myself, I have long been inspired by Mr. Wei's courage, beliefs, foresight, and everlasting fight for democracy in China.

Although we may have different assessments of China's current situation and may have somewhat divergent views on what should be China's priority for political development, I firmly share Wei's view that without the Fifth Modernization — namely, democracy — the other modernizations would ultimately bring trouble to the Chinese people. Mr. Wei, you have my sincere admiration and deep respect.

Today I have been asked to address human rights issues in China, especially to assess the progress and the problems in China's political liberalization 10 years after Tiananmen. This is not an easy task. The meaning and significance of the Tiananmen movement as well as China's reform over the past two decades, are still very much open to question.

I am reminded of Chou Enlai's famous words. When he was asked what he thought of the French Revolution, Chou said "It is still too early to tell." There is a British saying that echoes Chou Enlai's remarks: "History isn't history until 200 years have passed. The rest is mere journalism." This audience certainly knows the difference.

Well, I would like to make three points in my presentation. Number one, the linkage of economic development and human rights. Number two, changes in value in Chinese society over the past decade. And number three, the prospect of law and the legal system in China.

My presentation may differ significantly from what we usually hear from the Western media. We have heard too often that the Chinese people kill baby girls, eat dog meat, and torture the handicapped and orphans. Of course there are many serious human rights violations in today's China. China needs to improve its human rights record in areas such as women's rights, child protection, care for the elderly, minorities' rights and religious freedom.

But a common problem in the Western world's view of human rights in China is that it focuses too much on highly visible political dissidents, and less on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. This leads me to my first point: how economic development is linked to human rights issues.

From 1993 to 1995, as a follower of the U.S.-based institute of grass-roots affairs, I have an extraordinary opportunity to live in Shanghai and travel across China. My assignment was to live as a local resident and to observe grass roots changes and the political trends in the country. In addition, I spent my sabbatical leave in coastal China from 1997 to 1998. During my three-year stay there, I was amazed by the degree of personal freedom and the social diversity that the Chinese people now enjoy.

What surprised me the most and what I think is the most important change in China, is the economic freedom and improvement in the standard of living among the Chinese people. Western China watchers who are interested in human rights issues tend to overlook that the right to own property and the right to be well-fed are two basic human rights.

During the past two decades, especially during the post-Mao era, China gave property rights back to the people, and lifted 170 million of people out of poverty. It may not be an exaggeration to say that China has made one of the most remarkable improvements in human rights in world history. I wish I were paid by People's Daily for making this statement. [Laughter]

The private savings of Shanghai residents, for example, increased from three billion yuan in 1980 to 237 billion in 1998, a 79-fold gross in 18 years — just within a generation.

Meanwhile, state efforts have declined significantly. This tells us a great deal about the most fundamental change in the relationship between the state and its citizens. The government has lots of material resources to control the lives of the Chinese people. The improvements in the standard of living has led to emerging of an entrepreneurial class, or what we call middle class.

The middle class in China is presently a marginal part of the entire population. But if two percent of Chinese people were to become members of the middle class, that would be 24 million people. If the rise of a middle class is essential to political democracy, China is certainly going to the right direction.

I'm not uncritically singing the praises of the Chinese government. Rapid economic changes during the past decade have led to some serious new problems. And the new forms of human rights violations: official corruption, environmental degradation, income inequality, regional disparity, and urban unemployment are among the serious problems that China faces.

The market economy has loosened the control of the state. But it has also put the laborers at the mercy of another equally merciless factor: capitalist exploitation. Migrant workers are now one of the most vulnerable groups to abuse: no medical care, no health insurance, no work contract, no trade union, no welfare benefits, no permanent residence permits, no workplace safety. They have virtually nothing but a little bit of money.

Understandably, people begin to talk about social justice as the income gap widens. The Chinese government has been slow and ineffective in dealing with these serious problems.

A second important development in the past decade is the changing values in Chinese society. The Chinese term for human rights, "wen chen [ph]," is no longer seen as a quote, unquote, "hypocritical Western idea," but now it is a value of the Chinese people. Social and cultural diversity can be seen in all aspects of Chinese life today: in fashion, in music, dance, the arts, movies, advertisements, social interaction and social tolerance.

For example, gays and lesbians, who were severely persecuted for three decades of the PRC, congregated openly in large and medium-size societies. In addition to new life-styles, a new generation of public intellectuals and thinkers with new ideas and the new values have come to the fore in the later 1990s.

The Chinese authorities still strictly control the mass media. One important phenomenon in the post-Tiananmen era is that the Chinese journalists receive high pay from the government, and they get kickbacks from the private sector. Some journalists traded their intellectual integrity for material gains.

But I also want to point out that not all public intellectuals and journalists are corrupted or silenced by money or power or both. For example, Hun Chingleng [ph], the author of the Chinese book "China's Pitfalls," openly criticized policy mistakes made by the current leadership. In another recently published Chinese book on the new generation of thinker, Yang Dungshing [ph], a member of a Chinese environment NGO called "Friends of Nature" advocates for the Green movement of environment protection.

The third development n the post-Tiananmen era is the effort to consolidate the rule of law. China has probably issued more laws and regulations during the 1990s than any other country. In the early 1980s, there were only 3,000 lawyers in a country of over one billion people. It is expected that by next year, China will have 150,000 lawyers. The growth rate is even more rapid than in the United States — for better or for worse.

Well, as Mr. Wei Jingsheng commented in a Washington Post article early this year, they are brave lawyers in China who support the political prisoners with their own funds. This development could hardly be imagined just a few years ago.

I don't mean that China is a country ruled by law at this point. Yet we China-watchers should not be too cynical about the prospect for the rule of law in China. The making of laws and regulations may be seen as a small step on paper, but it is one that can have profound long-term implications. Related political changes have already occurred.

Let me give a few examples: genuine local elections, term limits for government officials, restraints on nepotism in both the central and local governments, and the growing power of the People's Congress. We may visibly say that China today is not a free country but it is undoubtedly much freer than during any period in the PRC's history.

In conclusion, I believe that our assessment of China's political situation should be based on China's historical context and China's complicated reality. Philosopher Nietzsche once said "The greatest events are not our loudest but the quietest. Not around the invaders of new noises but around the invaders of new values does the world revolve."

Economic and political reform during the 1990s which my friend Tai Ching [ph], who is also with us here, a dissident writer, called, "the quiet revolution" is profoundly changing China. I hope that it will lead to a genuine improvement in human rights and political democracy — the goal that the 1989 Tiananmen movement attempted but failed to achieve.

Thank you very much. [Applause]

B. Gill: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Professor Li. Let me just make a couple of remarks for our conversation. We do have a microphone. We would like persons to hold their question until we have a chance to get the microphone to them. And when you do, please identify yourself with your name and your affiliation. And I'll be the moderator to take questions.

Would anyone like to begin, please? Sir.

Participant: I'm Lin Shao [ph], a visiting scholar at George Washington University. [Asks question in Chinese]

L. Cheng: He said that two months before the June 4th incident, the Communist Party decided the massacre. So he meant early April 1989. I think you don't have enough evidence to support this argument. And when you don't have much evidence and you say so, you are irresponsible and inappropriate.

Participant: [Through translator] I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying. What I said was that two months before the massacre, there were already plans for it. But I didn't say that there was an absolute decision to carry out the massacre. This was the distinction.

Already two months before the massacre, troops had been moved into Beijing who were involved in various kinds of repressive activities within the city. And if you've been in the army, you know that you don't move troops into a city if you don't have plans.

And also, during the months leading up to Tiananmen, there were several military leaders that were dismissed from the army. And it was clear that there was a process of power consolidation taking place.

B. Gill: Another question, please. Or please, ma'am.

Participant: Nadja Oseilo [ph] for Radio Free Asia. My question is to Professor Cheng. You talked about the developments in China, in terms of human rights and the lackings. Are you for the Western countries' intervention — maybe it's a strong word — but for instance, the United States criticizes China and they hold talks on human rights. Are you for this kind of activity?

L. Cheng: Yes, I'm for that. But we should put it in perspective. I talk about progress in China. The credit should not entirely go to the Chinese government, no. It should go to the various factors, including Western pressure, including Western media, including dissidents.

But the most important factor is within Chinese society itself: the social forces emerge to demand more. So that's the most fundamental thing. We should not have illusion that we from our side can fundamentally change China. No. I think we have a role to play, but that role is limited, with its limitations. I continue to think that the U.S. should criticize China for human rights violations, publicly or privately. But at the same time, we also should have a better understanding of Chinese society, both progress and the problems. And also understand our limitations in this area. Sometimes we may harm rather than help China's situation.

Thank you.

B. Gill: Sir. Just right here. Thank you.

Participant: I'm Peter Todfus of the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung. With 200,000 Chinese students here and with an emergent elite of very articulate Americans of Chinese descent — people like yourself, Mr. Cheng — what do you think is the reason that America's ignorance about China is so widespread?

B. Gill: Just to clarify, in the Chinese fashion, we have listed Professor Li's name with family name first, and given name second. So when you write your articles and cite him, he should be "Professor Li."

L. Cheng: Well, there are various reasons for misperception. And one of the reasons is because China is changing so rapidly. And sometimes the issue — the older issues and the longer issues, solutions become new problems.

But there are many other problems. One is what I call American arrogance, as I quoted this. And the one is — someone probably understands perfectly. There's no problem for misunderstanding. But this is in the interest of the United States. We want to find enemy. But I don't think this is the U.S. interest. I think that the mutual beneficial relationship should continue, particularly at this critical time in China-U.S. relations.

So the hardline approach to China will only help hardliners in China. So I think that there are various sources were misunderstanding or deliberately misperceiving China, or misrepresenting China.

But there's also other factors. It is our sincere hope — but hope China could get better. And I think this is a very positive. But also the directly changing nature of Chinese society is also a factor.

Participant: Thank you.

B. Gill: Mr. Wei would like to comment.

W. Jingsheng: [Through translator] I think a major reason why people outside of China frequently misunderstand China is because it's such a big country. Frequently, when American scholars and journalists and politicians visit China, their travels are restricted to the economically developed coastal cities. And they very rarely travel to parts of the countryside outside of those cities. And so naturally their impression is that China's economic development is proceeding very rapidly, that there's increased freedom and that there has been tremendous change.

If, however, they did visit these areas in the countryside, they would get a very different picture — one of a world that has experienced very little change over the last few years.

Evidence of the situation in the countryside can be found in a new program that the Chinese government has to send peasant children to school. Ten dollars — 10 American dollars or 20 American dollars — is sufficient to put a child in the countryside through school for an entire year. So this should give you some idea of the level of poverty in these areas.

And this isn't just a small group of people. This is the absolute vast majority of the Chinese population. And furthermore, according to the statistics we have now, we know that the numbers of unemployed urban workers have risen to 40 or 50 million over the last years. And this should also be an indicator of the extent of poverty in today's China.

I also want to slightly take issue with a comment that Professor Li just made when he said that for the United States to have a hardline attitude towards China will only increase the toughness or vigilance, hardline stand of the Chinese government. From what I've observed personally, this situation is actually completely the opposite of that.

For example, when I was in prison, the period of time when the conditions in my prison were the most comfortable was between 1990 and 1993 — at the time when international pressure on China was at its highest. And on the other hand, the period of time when I was in prison that was the most difficult period of time — during which I was beaten frequently — was just after President Clinton had announced that Jiang Zemin was his strategic partner.

And this is also indicative of the Chinese government's policies or attitudes towards the vast majority of the Chinese people. It follows the same rule.

It's true that practically speaking, Chinese people have much more freedom than they did in the past. But this shouldn't be attributed to any amount of willingness on the Chinese government to grant people their freedom. It's really just an indicator of the extent to which the Chinese government is now unable to control people's activities.

There was a similar period of lack of government control during the two and a half months leading up to the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, and this is something that people have observed and reported on in the past — that during that period, there was a fair amount of real freedom of the press. But at that time, people hadn't really completely earned freedom. They hadn't completely achieved it. It was just an atmosphere. And the Chinese government hadn't formalized that feeling of freedom through the legal system.

So our job now should be to take advantage of this relative opening and to try to get it formalized in the Chinese law.

B. Gill: Tai Ching [ph].

Participant: Li Cheng, could you translate for me?

L. Cheng: Yeah.

Participant: I'd rather speak Chinese. [Through translator] This is Tai Ching [ph]. My name is Tai Ching [ph]. Right now I'm a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow. And I'm going — home! — I'm going to Beijing in one week.

L. Cheng: Okay. Do I need to translate that for you into Chinese?

Participant: [Mr. Cheng translates] Okay, I have a question and actually a comment, that I have a certain past which is similar to Mr. Wei's but also in different other aspects. First of all, when I was released in 1990 from the prison, and largely as a result of the negotiations between World Bank and China, because the World Bank was going to offer a loan to China, so I was the beneficiary for that deal.

Having said that, I want to say that what's happened in the past 20 years, particularly what's happened in the past 10 years — the improvement, the progress, are largely the result of a time when the international pressure was very low or at least not radical or not superficial, which means that at the point that the international community did not confront China directly — I want to give three examples.

First, in 1978, during a famous meeting that the Chinese Communist Party decided no longer to talk about the class analysis and the class struggle.

The second development is in the rural area is what we call the "household responsibility system." That is a fundamental change from our era to Deng era, because this gives people — the Chinese farmers — rights.

The third example is what happened in April. The same day when Liu Baodang died, I had a conversation with Mr. Wong Fon [ph], who is the director of China's affairs with Taiwan. "We" — the Central Committee, which is the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party — and Wong Fon said "we" — the Chinese Communist Party — are considering to abolish the Four Principles from China's party constitution. The Four Principles refer to the Party leadership, socialism, and et cetera. Yeah, the Four Principles — as I said, two are the Chinese Communist Party's leadership, socialist road, Marxist-Leninism as China's ideology, and then finally the proletarian dictatorship.

These Four Principles are the biggest violations of China's human rights. But that occurred during the time that there was no obvious international pressure for China — although the international environment is relevant and important, this is the decision made by the Chinese Communist Party itself.

What I want to say — my conclusion here is that international pressure probably would be helpful for us — meaning dissidents — but not necessarily for the Chinese society at the moment.

B. Gill: Okay, thank you very much. Maybe we could take a question at this — did you want to respond to that, Mr. Wei?

Okay, that's fine. Thank you.

W. Jingsheng: [Through translator] I fundamentally agree with what Ms. Tai Ching [ph] just said. The two examples she gave both took place when there wasn't a high tide of overt international pressure on China. What was important at that time was not the attention of the international community, which at that time was quite low — it's still quite low. But what was more important was the pressure being exerted on the Chinese government by the Chinese people themselves, which was at such a high point that it was almost comparable to when a government is facing an economic collapse and they are absolutely forced into undertaking political changes.

But I think when you're dealing with a government as obstinate as the current Chinese Communist regime, at least one kind of high-level pressure is needed if that government is to be convinced to undertake political change — whether the pressure comes from the outside world or from the Chinese people themselves, it's very important that there be sufficient pressure to move the government to undertake changes.

Even in a democracy, if you want to see any sort of political transformation, it's necessary to maintain a constant level of pressure on the government. That's the only way that political change actually happens, even in democracies. But in an authoritarian state like China, it's very difficult for ordinary people to be able to exert pressure on their government.

And so in a situation when ordinary people don't have an established legal way of putting pressure on their government, pressure from the international community becomes all the more important.

B. Gill: Yes ma'am, please.

Participant: Stephanie Maneil [ph], Voice of America. We've been talking about how international pressure affects the human rights situation inside China. I'd like to flip-flop that for a minute. In the past 10 years, we've seen how the human rights situation in China and in particular post-Tiananmen has affected the U.S.-Chinese relationship, and you've both talked about the extent to which the U.S. or other countries should put pressure on China.

I'd like to hear from you about the extent to which diplomats and the international relations people should allow human rights to be part of — to affect the relationship. To what extent should human rights be a number-one priority for Westerners in dealing with China? To what extent should human rights be a less important priority? And looking in the context of this post-Tiananmen period.

B. Gill: That was a question for —

Participant: Either one.

B. Gill: — both gentlemen? Why don't we start with Professor Li.

L. Cheng: Well, first of all, I think I already partially answered your question. I think that economic rights — the right to own property and to be well-fed — are basic human rights. I think if that's the case, certainly we need to talk about human rights. But even talking about political rights, we still need to make pressure to the Chinese government. But I don't think this should be the only issue. Poverty should not be the number-one issue. I think there are many other important issues: nuclear non-proliferation, the environmental degradation and trade and et cetera. And again, I think this should be one of the issues, but not the only issue.

B. Gill: Wei Jingsheng.

W. Jingsheng: [Through translator] I think that in the realm of foreign policy, human rights is a more important question than people often give it credit for being. This is a lesson that we learned well after the Second World War.

For instance, Professor Li just said that there are several other issues that are very important to foreign policy, like the question of weapons proliferation. If we don't have a democratic system that can begin to regulate into whose hands weapons fall, then we have a very dangerous political situation. And if there aren't basic protections of human rights, then it's impossible to — or very difficult — to establish democracy. So I've been saying for the last 20 years: if we don't have democracy, all of these other problems are going to be very difficult to resolve.

And so concern for human rights, interest in human rights, is actually a very important condition for concern with all sorts of other foreign relations issues. If we want to have a peaceful future for this world, then we must begin to emphasize the importance of human rights. This is the knowledge that we gained from the war 50 years ago.

B. Gill: Thank you very much. Is there another question? Please. We'll probably wrap up in just a few minutes, so if anyone has any last questions, we'll want to take them after this questioner.

Thank you.

Participant: I'm Patricia Callan [ph]. I work with I Ching, and I am a doctoral student at Brown University. I would like to ask both panelists that in terms of other kinds of international pressure on the part of the government and on the part of the people in China: has the breakdown of communism in the former Soviet Union or the events in Eastern Europe made the government feel that it is in their interest to allow a little more breathing space for democracy? Number one.

And number two, has it made the people of China feel that perhaps they have a way to push democracy from the inside?

B. Gill: Is that for both gentlemen? Professor Li, why don't you go ahead?

L. Cheng: Yeah, I think the exchanges could be cultural exchanges, educational exchange. But most importantly I think the change of old values and ideas. I think that's very important. And again, the human rights — the concept was very weak in Chinese tradition. Of course it existed. But largely what happened was an improved in human values largely because of Western influence, but also the social-economic change within Chinese society as well.

So I think we should in many ways express our concern. Why we want to do this in Kosovo, in Yugoslavia. But notice most Chinese, including intellectuals, thought this was just a power game. This is just a result of America hegemony interests. But it's not that simple. There are some very sincere humanitarian concerns.

So we should express that concern to Chinese people through various channels, but not just for condemning China or whatever. So this is what I want to say.

But I also want to use this opportunity, just a half-minute, to respond to what Wei Jingsheng said. I absolutely agree with you, democracy is important. But at the same time, we should talk about timing, talk about procedure, talk about the priorities. These are the issues we should examine, rather than just the absolute goals.

But also I want to refer to the poverty. Yes, China still has a problem of poverty. But there's no starvation like what happened in the 1950s — the Great Leap Forward. Twenty to 30 million people died because of starvation — but is not happening in China. Yes, there is a very high percentage of unemployment in China. But there's no starvation. But also the Chinese government and the private sector working on that.

So there's a back-up for security for these people, but it's not an issue of poverty at the moment.

W. Jingsheng: [Through translator] Admittedly, the Chinese government does want to resolve these problems that Professor Li just mentioned, and may be trying to resolve these problems. But I'm afraid that the inherent nature of the Chinese Communist system is incapable of resolving problems of the nature that Mr. Li just spoke of.

The process of democratic transformation is a long one. Obviously there's first a period of striving for democracy. And then following that, there is a period of the actual process of building a democratic polity. The United States has already been working on this for over 200 years, and it still hasn't achieved an entirely perfect democracy.

But people often misunderstand the distinction between these two periods in the process of democratic transformation that I just spoke of — the period of calling for democracy, making the decision to begin to build a democracy — and then the period of the building itself. It's like when you decide to build — it's like when you're building a house. The building period itself can go slowly as you put plank upon plank. But the actual decision that you want to build the house happens very quickly. And that's an important distinction to keep in mind.

The day when we decide that we want to build a democracy, the whole atmosphere that we're in will change. The decision itself, which will happen very suddenly, will then influence the whole development of what comes afterwards.

And so what we are working for now is just to get up to that point where we can make a concrete decision to begin to build a democracy, and then after that has happened, we'll be able to enter into the process of planning the construction itself.

B. Gill: Okay. We have time for just a couple of more questions. I think this gentleman here had his hand up for sometime. Please.

Participant: The first question is to Mr. Wei. You just mentioned about the reaction of the Chinese students in the past weeks. My question is that what do you think of the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade? Do you think it's a violation of human rights? This is one question.

The other is — maybe these two questions are related. The second question is after the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, many, many students went to the street to stage demonstrations, at the U.S. embassy. And many Western press and the Japanese press pointed out that the feelings, the sentiment, the mentality of the students now have been profoundly changed from those of 10 years ago.

What do you think of this point?

My third question is also related. You just mentioned that the human rights is very important. I agree with you, human rights is very important. But my question is: which is more important, human rights or sovereignty? Some people now are saying human rights is more important than sovereignty. If there is some violation with China, do you think that the Westerners will drop bombs, or something like that in Kosovo? These three questions are related with each other.

B. Gill: I will add here that following this panel in just a few minutes, we'll be bringing up several American specialists including former government officials and journalists who will also be able to address the question of human rights and U.S.-China relations. But let me turn the floor back to Mr. Wei.

W. Jingsheng: [Through translator] I think that the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade could certainly be considered a violation of human rights, or at the very least an event that did not demonstrate respect for human rights.

But up until the present, we still have no evidence that the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was intentional on the part of the U.S. army, and so in order to make a judgment about violations of human rights, we have to wait until we have that evidence of nationalist fanaticism. Its propaganda campaign towards this end demonstrates a severe disrespect for human rights. This is a government that still hasn't admitted that it was mistaken in killing thousands of people in 1989. How can you say that this is a government that has respect for human rights?

And furthermore, the goal of the Chinese government in instigating this nationalist movement had nothing to do with human rights. It was intended for a different goal. And these goals most likely also had very little to do with China's policy vis-a-vis the rest of the world, but were more likely intended to have effects on the domestic scene.

According to my observations, according to various people's observations, the instigation of this nationalist fanaticism had very little to do with the bombing of the embassy in Belgrade itself and was much more a result of the dissatisfaction of the hard-line TCP members with their more moderate counterparts and a desire to bolster their own authority within the party.

There was a similar case in Germany half a century ago. Hitler's own intention in instigating nationalist fanaticism in Germany had less to do with his personal feelings about Jews and had much more to do with a desire to topple his political opposition.

And so, sooner or later, the Chinese government was going to find an excuse for carrying on these sorts of activities. If it hadn't been the bombing of the embassy in Belgrade, which gave them a very convenient excuse, they would have found another excuse. And so I really think that these nationalist demonstrations in China over the last couple of weeks have no direct connection to the bombing of the embassy in Belgrade.

And so, just to summarize, the Chinese government's deliberate organization and tolerance of the students and Beijing citizens who attacked the American embassy and the French and German consulates is what we should construe as the real violation of human rights, because it was a deliberate action. And what I had left off of the end of that was because, in today's China, it's impossible to attend a demonstration or to organize a demonstration without the permission of the government. And so the fact that all these people were allowed to come and throw rocks at the embassy proves that there was government organization behind what was going on.

B. Gill: Thank you, Mr. Wei. We've come to the end of the first session. As I noted earlier, we're going to ask our other participants to come up here right away and continue and look at some of these questions from a U.S. perspective. Before we do so, though, I want to extend our grateful appreciation to our speakers today: Mr. Wei Jingsheng from the Columbia Center for the Study of Human Rights and Professor Li Cheng from Hamilton College in New York.

I think we have here, for many of us, an excellent example of the kinds of debate and discussion that can take place and needs to take place more frequently in this city and elsewhere in order to get a more fundamental understanding of the complexities of the human rights question in China today. I want to thank you very much once again. Thank you. [Applause]

Let me add that I think it may be possible, following our session, to have some further words with any of our speakers if members of the press would be interested.

[Short break]

B. Gill: I'm Bates Gill, the director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. And on behalf of Brookings, I want to welcome you all to our second part of our briefing today on the question of U.S.-China and human rights. We've just heard from two excellent presentations and a very good question-answer period, I thought, between Professor Li Cheng of Hamilton College and Mr. Wei Jingsheng, now senior fellow at the Columbia Center for the Study of Human Rights.

Let's turn now to considering this very important question from an American perspective. We have with us today three excellent specialists on this question, persons who have had very close professional and personal experience in looking at the question of U.S.-China relations and human rights issues. I'll introduce our speakers in the order in which they'll make their five-minute presentations, and then we'll open up the floor to questions.

Let me begin all the way to my right. It's a pleasure to introduce Mr. Mike Jendrzejczyk. Mr. Jendrzejczyk is at present the director of Human Rights Asia, formerly known as Asia Watch, the director here in Washington, of the Washington office here. Previously he served on the staff of the international secretariat of Amnesty International in London, and from 1984 to 1987 was campaign director for Amnesty International USA in New York.

Mr. Jendrzejczyk, of course, is familiar to many of us here as a frequent commentator and participant regarding important issues of human rights and has been widely published in such important journals and newspapers as the International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor and many of the other journals and papers represented in this room today.

Let me also introduce to you Mr. Steve Mufson. Steve, as many of you know, was for many years the Washington Post's chief in the Beijing bureau. He served there for four years before returning to Washington D.C. in August 1998 and put in some time at the paper's financial news staff. He has been recently shifted over to become the Washington Post's diplomatic correspondent, part of the national staff here in Washington D.C.

Mr. Mufson has worked for the Council on Foreign Relations as a visiting fellow. He also has extensive experience in other parts of the world, including a two-year stint as a correspondent in Johannesburg, South Africa from which he was able to produce his volume by the Beacon Press known as "Fighting Years: Black Resistance and the Struggle for a New South Africa."

All the way to my left, I'm pleased to introduce my colleague from Brookings Institution, Ms. Catharin Dalpino, presently a guest scholar at Brookings, where she is conducting work on U.S. policy responses to political change and liberalization in Asia. She's also a professor at the School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University and at the Elliott School of International Studies at George Washington University.

For four years, from 1993 to 1997, Ms. Dalpino served as the deputy assistant secretary of State for democracy in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor; and before that, served for 10 years as an officer with the Asia Foundation, serving in Washington and in Bangkok, among other posts. She's the author of two books, one known as "Anchoring Third Wave Democracies," the other, forthcoming from Brookings next year, known as "Opening Windows." And she is currently conducting even further work on the political consequences of the Asian economic crisis.

We're very pleased to have these three specialists with us today. Let me turn the floor over to Mr. Jendrzejczyk.

M. Jendrzejczyk: Thank you very much. Ten years after Tiananmen Square, I think China has been enormously successful in removing the stigma of the June 4th massacre in order to maintain its economic and political relations. And as you know, under Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, the economic reform program is more important than ever to try to restore some of the legitimacy that the Communist Party lost 10 years ago when it cracked down in Tiananmen Square. So openness to the West, including openness to foreign investors, technology and western markets, I think, are more important than ever.

The U.S., as you know, does maintain a few rather token sanctions left from 1989, the only government to do so. But I think Jiang Zemin's visit here in Washington in October 1997 and the president's tour of China last year finally removed the stigma of 1989 from U.S.-China relations. Both sides signaled that human rights would not be allowed to get in the way or to in any way interfere with closer economic and political relations. Indeed, human rights could be a topic for formal dialogue and discussion, even at the highest levels of the two governments.

Also in the last year, I think, China has been quite successful in convincing nearly all industrial countries and all of its chief trading partners to substitute, as China puts it, confrontation over human rights to dialogue and formal discussion. I think, however, it's quite clear now that these dialogues have largely been window-dressing for business as usual. China has found that it can engage in such discussions without necessarily committing itself to any real changes in its human rights policies or practices. And as you know, many governments, including the U.S., have instituted rule-of-law training programs, which I think are very useful for the future but are a very long-term proposition at best.

And, of course, China, I think, rightly assumes that one of its greatest diplomatic victories in the last two years has been convincing the historic sponsors of resolutions critical of China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, both the U.S. and the European Union, to back off from the Geneva debate. As you know, this past year the U.S. tried, I think, in a very late and rather half-hearted way, to launch a resolution which got virtually no support and which China was easily able to defeat. Last year, neither the U.S. nor the E.U. even tried to put forward such a resolution.

I also think, frankly, the administration has been rightly criticized for, as a component of its engagement policy, overselling the results of summitry, specifically overselling the results of the two summit meetings last year and the year before. And now, with the approach later this week of the tenth anniversary of Tiananmen, we've seen an increasing crackdown on political dissent of all kinds accompanied by a tightening of controls on the media and other steps backwards in the last six months of last year and for the first part of this year, following a period of relative openness early in 1998.

It's obvious — and the previous panelists, I think, made this point very clearly — that the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade has given the Chinese leadership a powerful tool which they are using to attack the hypocrisy of the United States, on the one hand, for preaching about human rights and international law while, at the same time, bombing and killing innocent Chinese civilians.

In the wake of this and the release of the Cox report, I'm quite worried about the anti-American rhetoric coming out of the Chinese media on a daily basis. I'm also very concerned about the anti-Chinese rhetoric that is apparent here on Capitol Hill and I think will continue to overheat over the summer as the annual MFN debate begins later this week.

But I also think it's important to underline that neither government at this stage has an interest in starting up a new cold war. And I think that is the crucial thing to remember when it comes to not only restoring more stable U.S.-China relations, but also how the United States responds and how the United States acts when it comes to its human rights policies.

I think, in fact, the administration would be wrong to overreact to the crisis atmosphere that China has created, including by suspending the formal bilateral dialogue on human rights that was just officially resumed this past January. In fact, I think the administration should be more determined than ever to get human rights back on the agenda, both in terms of its multilateral relations with China and at a multilateral level — sorry, its bilateral relations with China and on a multilateral level.

And I'd like to offer four or five concrete possibilities and ideas for how the administration could and should do this, both in the short term and in the long term. First of all, I think the U.S. should defend the rights of Chinese citizens to freely express their views about the June 4th massacre and its significance.

This includes especially those like Bao Tong [ph], a former high Communist Party leader who, as you may know, this past March wrote an open letter calling for a reversal on the official verdict of Tiananmen Square; also, Professor Ding Zelin [ph], professor at Beijing University, who, along with other courageous family members, are filing official petitions to the Chinese government asking for prosecution of those responsible for the massacre. I think the U.S. should not hesitate and, in fact, should be very outspoken in defending the rights of these Chinese citizens to exercise their right to free expression under both the Chinese constitution and under international law.

Secondly, I think the administration should try to follow through on a visit by Alexis Herman, the U.S. labor secretary, who's been invited to China late this fall. As you may know, when the Chinese labor minister visited here in March, he extended the invitation for such a visit. Now, clearly China has an interest in talking about things like insurance programs and the re-employment of dislocated workers.

But Labor Secretary Herman, also in her discussions, has brought up issues such as core labor rights, including the right of association and the right of workers to join free trade unions. So I think these issues, which are so critical now in China's economic and political development, and so crucial for human rights, should be key on the agenda for a visit. And I really hope the administration will do everything possible to make sure that visit comes off.

Thirdly, in the arena of the United Nations, China has demonstrated over and over again that it wants to be respected as a responsible member of the U.N. That's why this debate in Geneva has been so important to China's leadership. China has invited Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner on human rights, who visited China and Tibet last September, to pay a return visit. They've also invited a U.N. special rapporteur on torture to visit China later this year.

I think these visits obviously should go forward, but only with the understanding and the expectation that they will be followed by concrete steps by China to bring its laws and practices into conformity with international norms and standards. For this to happen, there will need to be a much better, more closely coordinated strategy among all of China's trading partners, the kinds of coordination we've seen, for example, in the negotiations around World Trade Organization membership for China.

I think the administration should take the lead in organizing a working party composed of the European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan, governments, all of whom have bilateral dialogues with China, to ensure that such a strategy is developed, especially prior to Mary Robinson's visit to China, either this year or next year.

I would also support, in the area of legislation, a couple of initiatives, including any legislation that would put in place a code of conduct for American companies operating in China. Now, this legislation has been, in fact, debated and even passed in the House, introduced by Tom Lantos, most recently in 1995, and prior to that in the Senate, introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy, but has never been adopted. And I think now it's time for the administration to join with Congress and the business community to support such legislation, and legislation that not only, I should add, has a code of conduct for companies, but also a means of transparency for reporting on their monitoring and compliance of such a code.

Finally, on the issue of World Trade Organization entry for China, I do think it would be useful and positive if China were to become a member of the WTO under the right terms and circumstances. But I also hope that in any congressional debate over China's entry into the WTO, members would point out that without the rule of law, without a free press, and without an independent judiciary, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to effectively monitor China's compliance with any WTO agreement.

And I would add that if permanent MFN or normal trade status for China is part of a WTO package, I think China should be expected and required to make some minimal but important human rights gestures in exchange for any decision by Congress and the administration to do away with the annual MFN process. As you know, this has been high on China's agenda, especially in the post-Tiananmen era, to do away with the annual renewal of MFN, but I don't think this should be allowed to take place unless there are some positive and very significant steps taken by China in exchange.

Thank you.

B. Gill: Thank you very much, Mr. Jendrzejczyk. Let me turn the floor over to Mr. Mufson, please.

S. Mufson: Well, I'm not going to make a lot of prescriptions about policy, but I want to talk a little bit about my impressions from China from the four years I was there. And in particular, I want to talk about them in the context of having not been a China expert before but having my previous experience in foreign reporting being primarily in South Africa.

And this is particularly relevant in the context of this anniversary, because I got to South Africa almost exactly 10 years after the Soweto uprising. And in South Africa, I felt that a lot of people had missed the significance of the years in between the Soweto uprising and the uprising that I was there for in the mid '80s, because a lot of organization took place in those years that was important in bringing about the renewal of protests in the mid '80s and ultimately a change in the government.

And so when I went to China, I was looking for some of those developments, to see if they were taking place in China. And I think largely I found that they weren't. In South Africa, an important part of what happened after the unsuccessful student uprising there in 1976 is that students realized they needed to be organized in a way that they weren't in '76. The '76 uprising seemed to me to have a lot in common with the 1989 Tiananmen uprising. It was somewhat spontaneous. It succeeded beyond the imagination of the initial protesters. The government overreacted and killed a lot of people.

But in South Africa, what happened a couple of years later is that people started forming organizations mostly based on bread-and-butter issues and engaged the government, negotiated with the government, won concessions, and ultimately a lot of these grassroots organizations combined to form an effective political movement that brought change to the country.

But during my time in China, I must say I didn't really find anything quite like that. There isn't a strong network of community organizations outside the realm of the government of the sort you found in South Africa, or probably in Eastern Europe during the time that change was developing there. And these organizations were important, because people learned to govern themselves. They learned to negotiate directly with the government, to make compromises with the government, and were able to win concessions and become some sort of independent force.

In China, it seems to me that a lot of people who were veterans of the 1989 uprising either fled or they're still in jail or they've been otherwise blocked from forming some sort of effective organization. The Chinese government, it seems to me, is very aware of the threat of rival organizations and has been effective at suppressing those, which the government may congratulate itself on right now, but I think ultimately is a dangerous development for the country. If you believe that some sort of transition is inevitable, it's useful to have a transition take place that people are used to in one way or another, negotiating and conducting themselves in a somewhat democratic fashion with other people.

In South Africa, of course, another important venue for that was black trade unions or big black trade union reform. That gave black South Africans an opportunity to practice democracy and negotiate. And in China, of course, the trade union movement is still completely under control of the party and therefore doesn't really serve that function at all.

So while there are dissidents in both countries and figures like Wei Jingsheng, I think that, on their own, they will not bring about political change in China. And so the question is, where is the force for political change coming from? And I do think there are still some forces for political change, but it won't necessarily be like we've seen it in some other places.

And my feeling is that there are still important changes taking place in China, but a lot of them are within the party and a lot of them are within other realms. And a lot of them are not taking place with the people who were active in '89. I guess during my time there, the people who I felt were most — who seemed to carry the most promise of effectively changing the Chinese system were people who were veterans of the cultural revolution, people who were a little bit older and have drawn different conclusion, more similar to those you see in other countries where there has been successful political change. And these people tend to be in their 40s.

I did a series of stories about some of them before I left, but I think of them as kind of the next — China being a place where relatively old people run the country, these are the next generation in the Chinese context, people who in America you would call out-of-the-box thinkers, because their whole world was turned upside-down in the '60s and '70s and they're kind of suspicious of political dogma and theory. As a result, a lot of them didn't take part in the 1989 movement. Some did, but a lot of them didn't. Or if they did, they took part with a certain amount of skepticism about movements in general, which had such a negative connotation for them.

I think one must be careful when thinking about these people. Although they may be agents for political change in China, a lot of them aren't democrats in our sense of the word. They may be reformers of one sort or another, but a lot of them are not democrats in the American mold. I think one reason why Bao Tong has been the only party member sent to jail, breaking sort of Deng's cardinal rule that you can be a senior party member and disagree with the party and you wouldn't necessarily go to jail — you might be shoved out of power but not put into jail — he's the one person who really has violated that Deng era rule. And I think it's because he presents a potential organizational threat to the party in a way that other people did not.

And so I think the party has been, in sum, savvy about organizational threats and that may have helped it keep control in the short run. But in the long run, I think some sort of transition of the system is inevitable, and this has probably been counterproductive in the sense of training new people.

I think, just to bring this back to U.S. policy before stopping, I think this is part of the reason for confusion about U.S. policy. If change is coming from outside the party, then it has different implications for phrases like "constructive engagement," which, incidentally, the phrase "constructive engagement" is a holdover from Reagan era South African policy, having been coined by Chester Crocker.

If change is coming from within the party as opposed to outside the party, you would deal with it in different ways. But I think we hear a lot of echoes, even though people don't usually think of China in terms of South Africa because the countries are so radically different, but the debate is the same. Mike has just called for the Sullivan principles to be applied to China.

I feel like I've been transported back about a dozen years. These are the same debates, and we had the same debate in the United States before. And I think it wasn't clear — it's still not clear to what extent each factor was responsible for bring about change in South Africa, and that is one reason why we're not quite sure what to do now. Was it more important that we had sanctions in the Sullivan code as opposed to a lot of engagement with South Africa, or was it more important what South Africans are doing for themselves? And I think there's still a lot of confusion about this all around.

B. Gill: Thank you very much, Steve. Let me turn the floor over to our final speaker, Ms. Catharin Dalpino.

C. Dalpino: Thank you. One of the difficulties in being the last speaker on the agenda is you sit in agony and listen to other speakers make the very points you had meant to make. But, that said, let me say that I'd like to strongly associate myself with Professor Li's views of the situation in China as it presently exists and with Steve's bottom-line conclusions about where the present momentum and possible agents of change in China to lie.

That said, I'd like to carry it a bit further and speak specifically about U.S. policy in China and in general in the post-Cold War world and talk about four perhaps problems in our policy paradigm as we've seen them in the past 10 years after the Tiananmen Square crackdown and for potential adjustments we could make to our policy now that might make our policy more useful to supporting change as it presently is offered in China. And my views are taken both from having been in the government for four years, as Bates said, and since then.

In a general view, I think it's fair to say that one of the elements of our post-Cold War policy in the United States government after the Cold War has been to introduce democracy promotion as an official objective, an operational objective, as opposed to the more rhetorical position it held in government policy before then, particularly with the advent of large-scale assistance programs, with new bureaus and bureaucrats to promote democracy.

I was the State Department's first deputy assistant secretary for democracy, so I certainly have some first-hand experience with that, and with several consequences. And one of the consequences of this is our tendency to expect all countries to be moving towards a democratic transition if they aren't already, and moreover, to expect that that transition will be announced formally.

And I think also we have tended in the past 10 years to lump governments more generally and more unfairly into either democratic or non-democratic. And oddly, and ironically, in the past 10 years we've lost some of the nuance and some of the calibration that we've brought to looking at authoritarian regimes, and we tend now to take a monolithic approach or a more monolithic approach to them and not even to make oftentimes a distinction between a totalitarian regime and an authoritarian one.

I think if you see some of the descriptions of China in the U.S. policy community, on one day it's a totalitarian regime; on another day it's an authoritarian regime. On one day it is tantamount and equal to North Korea and Burma; on others it's perhaps given a different interpretation. And that is because conceptually in our policy we're not equipped to take a calibrated view of these sorts of regimes anymore.

Second is I think that we are applying a narrow definition of political change in general, and specifically to China. I think it's fair to say, if you look at some of the statements, including the human rights reports the State Department released on China as part of its general exercise, as well as several congressional statements and several administration statements, that the real concern of the past year or the most immediate concern has been China's treatment of a small group of activists who have attempted to start a formal opposition party in China. This opens every statement of concern, and oftentimes carries the day.

Again, that is taking political change in China at the point of a democratic transition, or assuming it to be, when I would argue that probably what we're seeing is an era of liberalization which may or may not lead to democratization. I would disagree with Wei Jingsheng that they're in a period of calling for democracy. I don't think China is there, but certainly experimenting with political openness with a very uncertain outcome.

What you don't hear in statements, or what you hear only as sidelines, is attention, for example, to the phenomenon of citizens' voluntary organizations. And I agree with Steve that one of the reasons that it's difficult to capture this trend is it's not organized into the sorts of networks that you saw in South Africa, where the black civil society organizations were more avowedly anti-apartheid, or even in Eastern Europe, where civil society arose in the 1980s as deliberately to challenge Leninist rule.

We've also seen, in addition to voluntary organizations, explosions of legal aid societies in China, some more official than others, and the requirement that Chinese lawyers all devote some time pro bono to legal aid for an indigent. That's a rarity. That's something that we see oftentimes in the United States through our state bar associations, but again, this is not a universal requirement. I think it's interesting.

The promulgation of administrative law, which allows citizens to sue the government and to sue their employers, which oftentimes are the government but sometimes not, and also something that I think has been completely unheralded in the United States, which is the gradual transformation of the urban neighborhood committees into social service agencies, which had been the thought police of the Maoist era. So these are very quiet changes that certainly have been undeclared but I think are where the momentum for liberalization in China might be today.

A third problem in our policy paradigm is the failure to consider ultimate models of political change for China and the failure perhaps to consider that China will provide its own model for political change that we can't quite label at this point. Time and again, when I was in the government, I came across an implicit comparison to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and to the events of Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. And I think that's only natural, given that the Tiananmen Square movement happened at the same time. But the outgrowth of that is that we tend to view the Tiananmen Square movement as a failed democratic transition or a failed attempt to do what the eastern bloc was doing in Europe. I think that's probably inaccurate.

There's very little discussion in the policy community, for example, of Taiwan's past political change, which did see for several decades local elections before national elections were allowed, which did see individual opposition politicians to operate long before an official opposition party was sanctioned, and did also see, particularly in the 1980s, the rise of social issue groups, advocacy and social service providers, in areas such as the environment and women's rights and consumer's rights, who were able to put pressure on the government for policy change long before an official opposition party was allowed to do so.

I would argue that China is probably not going to follow in lock step with Taiwan's path. But again, there are several models that might be applied. And the fact that we are implicitly stuck to the Soviet one, I think, is revealing.

Lastly, there has been a tendency in the American policy community to be frozen to the Tiananmen Square movement at times, to be frozen in 1989, and to calibrate political change from that and to assume that everything has radiated out of the Tiananmen Square movement in terms of political change. Again, I think that's too narrow an interpretation.

I would point out, for example, that the village elections in China, which have sort of become the darlings of the American media and of American democracy promotion organizations, were actually authorized by the 1987 villagers' committees organic law and did continue pretty much apace through this decade, with, of course, a pause after the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Professor Li talked about a continuum and the need for a longer-term one. I would say that many Chinese tend to look at the continuum of change as going back to 1978 and '79 and forward and not stopping or beginning in 1989.

What then can U.S. policy do? And I don't recommend the sort of about-face, 180-degree turn that is typical of the policy debate. I think that we are locked into a zero-sum debate. I think it's highly unrealistic that the United States policy community is going to abandon its interest in political rights in China, but I think it can do a number of things to flesh out its policy and to respond particularly to indigenous social and legal trends in China.

First is this business of a continuum; we can deliberately and consciously take a longer-term view of China both in our human rights reports and also in the mission program plans that all embassies are required to submit to Washington which articulate policy goals in terms of what emphases Beijing may think about doing over the next five to 10 years instead of just a one-year period.

Second is, although I think that it's inevitable that we're going to focus on the possibility of a long-term democratic transition for China whenever that might occur, if that occurs, I think we are foregoing immediate opportunities to promote openness as it's presently found in China. And here I would disagree with Mike Jendrzejczyk's characterization. The U.S. government itself does not fund rule-of-law programs in China. There was a rule-of-law initiative that came out of the summit, but Congress has thus far not funded this.

I think it was interesting that when President Clinton was literally on Air Force One, going to China for his visit, Congress killed the funding that year for a rule-of-law program and put into the legislation specific language which would prohibit the use of economic support funds for rule-of-law programs. Some American non-governmental organizations do fund that, but the official program at this point is certainly dormant, if not dead. Also, training for non-governmental leaders, exchanges, the sorts of things that Professor Li mentioned, I think would be useful.

Thirdly, I think we do have to give weight to informers inside, as well as the high-profile dissidents. And Steve, I think, has laid that out.

And lastly, I think that in promoting human rights dialogue — and I would certainly agree with Mike Jendrzejczyk that it has been window-dressing for most of the decade — if we're going to engage China and make it a genuine dialogue, we're going to have to work from a larger and broader perspective of human rights and include some aspects of social and economic rights.

That doesn't simply mean giving rhetorical obeisance to that — the Chinese certainly are very good with working that in — but also looking at those areas of instrumental change — environmental protection, other areas — where citizens' activism, citizens' advocacy, are gathering at the present time. That will invest China more in this dialogue.

And lastly, I'd also suggest that we try and get as much non-governmental participation into this dialogue as possible. Harold Coe, the assistant secretary of State for human rights, has suggested that whenever the dialogue resumes, he bring non-governmental participants with him to China. I think that's a very good suggestion, and I hope that it can be followed through.

Lastly, I think we need to state the obvious, that no human rights policy is going to be effective if both sides can't come to some sort of an implicit agreement that fire walls need to be built into the policy in general so that every issue area isn't held hostage to the current bilateral dispute of the day. If we don't do that, we'll never make progress on any of these issue areas. If anything, I'm arguing for a Balkanization of our policy — [laughs] — so as to be able to get anything done at all in these various issue areas.

Thank you.

B. Gill: Well, thank you very much to our speakers. I'm very pleased that we've gotten many of these, as I said in my opening remarks, often taboo subjects out onto the table. And I'm looking forward to having a dialogue with persons in the room. Please don't forget to wait for the microphone and identify yourself and your affiliation. And it might be helpful, since we have three persons on the panel, to direct your question, if need be, to a particular individual.

Please, may I open the floor to any interested speakers? Please. Thank you.

Participant: Mark Johnson with Brookings. My question, I guess, is to Steve and Catharin. Is Deng Xiaoping the same as Gorbachev, or do we need some of the new middle-aged new generation that Steve talked about? Or is he capable of being the agent of change, regardless of the paradigm that's adopted?

C. Dalpino: You know he's dead. [Laughter]

Participant: I'm sorry. I meant Jiang Zemin. Yes.

C. Dalpino: [Laughs]

B. Gill: All right, so it's a question about Jiang Zemin.

C. Dalpino: Jiang Zemin. Jiang Zemin.

S. Mufson: Well, is Jiang Zemin Gorbachev? Well, of course, in China, being Gorbachev is not considered a compliment, because Gorbachev is considered a failure, and probably — although he liberated Eastern Europe, for Russia it's been kind of a disaster. Democracy is troubled and the economy is a wreck. And, if anything, the lesson of Russia is a negative lesson for China, that you should, you know, fix the economy and not liberalize in politics as opposed to liberalizing in politics and not fixing the economy. So I don't see Jiang Zemin as a Gorbachev-type figure at all.

C. Dalpino: I think no. Specifically, I think that Deng Xiaoping and his successor's view was that economic change would precede political change. For Gorbachev, it was exactly the opposite, in part because Gorbachev couldn't get the consensus he needed for economic reform. And he needed to roust out some of those who were standing in his way.

That said — and I think that I would agree with Mike Jendrzejczyk that China has been very successful in pushing its economic agenda forward — some of the administrative reforms that are now coming to light actually were embedded in regulations in the late '70s and early '80s. And, of course, they were dormant. They weren't enforced. And what's significant now is that they are starting to be enforced.

So on the drawing board, there was a certain amount of political change that was envisioned, but the party in the late '70s and early '80s was in no particular hurry to implement it.

M. Jendrzejczyk: Could I just add that I think Jiang Zemin is probably a transition figure, one that is relatively weak, so that, for example, using the Belgrade bombing to try to shore up his position in the government, needing Li Peng to still be head of the National People's Congress in order to ensure that those who are advocating a more hard-line position are somehow mollified, I think all of this points to the fact that, one, he's rather weak, and two, the fact that the government is so defensive and so paranoid about this tenth anniversary coming up this week, worried about a linking up between activists, disaffected workers, and intellectuals, I think, again, points to the fact that he may be trying to follow Deng's example of economic reform now, political reform maybe later someday. But he's also planting the seeds for much more instability and possible unrest by failing to address the fundamental contradiction that Deng left unaddressed when he died.

S. Mufson: And in that, he might be similar to Gorbachev, because he doesn't really have a strong vision, I don't think. And Gorbachev didn't have a strong economic vision and Jiang doesn't have a strong political vision.

B. Gill: Of course, Chinese time lines are much longer than ours, but people have been calling Jiang Zemin a transition figure for about 10 years now.

S. Mufson: They didn't say how long the transition would take.

B. Gill: He's survived remarkably well, given the difficult political situation in China, much better than any American politician could probably do over those last 10 years. But in my view, if there's going to be someone who takes a fall for all this, it won't be Jiang Zemin. It will be someone else; maybe Zhu Rongji or someone like that.

Next.

Participant: Charlie Snyder of the Hong Kong Standard. Ever since the Tiananmen, Chinese leaders from, I believe, Deng Xiaoping on down have said, "We needed to crack down. It was essential for the stability that we've had since, so that we could have the economic changes, the advancements and reforms that we've had." And this seems to be one of the main reasons, perhaps the main reason, that the Chinese leadership refuses to re-evaluate the lesson of Tiananmen. How would you assess this argument that the Chinese leader is making? The whole panel.

B. Gill: All right, a couple of minutes apiece.

C. Dalpino: I think one annotation of that question would be crack down on whom, because I think probably the Tiananmen movement and crackdown were a little more complicated than sometimes we remember. And one of the questions at the time was why did the crackdown occur when so many of the demonstrators had left the square? And I think one answer to that might be that Deng Xiaoping needed to send a message to his military, among other things. So there's that.

I think it's also important to remember what the demonstrators were and weren't asking for. And sometimes Americans tend to blur that, too, and they blur it in part because of this replica of the Statue of Liberty that was brandished at the time which led many Americans to automatically assume that what the demonstrators were asking for was an American-style democracy, when, in fact, most of them said at that time, "We're not even asking for a change in regime; we're asking for a reform of the regime."

So I think it's difficult to assess — to prove a negative, to prove what would have happened if there hadn't been a crackdown. But I just would bring those two points about that time to light, to remember.

B. Gill: Steve, do you want to add something? Mike, do you care to make a comment?

M. Jendrzejczyk: Yeah, I would just add two things. One, the last point — well, actually, two points. The last point, that there is not going to be a reassessment of the official verdict on 1989 as counterrevolutionary rebellion or riot, namely because of this theory that the Chinese government has put forward to justify the crackdown. That may be true, but I think it has more to do with the fact that Li Peng and some other key figures — Li Peng, as you remember, then declared martial law — remain in power. And I think that until they're out of power, I think it may be impossible politically for there to be an official re-evaluation. But many within China believe that it is, in fact, inevitable. It's a question of when and how it takes place.

I would also echo what Catharin said and point out that ironically, despite the crackdown, though the Communist Party nominally remains in power, in some ways it's weaker, more vulnerable, and certainly the problems such as rampant corruption, which helped spark the 1989 movement, if anything, are worse 10 years later than they were at the time; so that, yes, it did reinforce the party's control. It did terrorize the people of China into submitting. It did enable Deng Xiaoping to continue with his economic reforms. But, in the long term, China, I think, paid a very great price for that.

B. Gill: Yes, sir, please.

Participant: — Paris. I know it's not exactly the subject of discussion here, but what do you make of the assessment that the combination of historical facts of economic and military development and the confrontations more and more frequent with the West could bring — and also economic difficulties inside and political difficulties — could bring China to develop a kind of fascism with Chinese characteristics. That is to say that it could, in fact, move into a much more aggressive, anti-foreign, xenophobic China than it is at the present.

S. Mufson: Well, I think that's entirely possible. And I think that we should be careful here about people who suggest that just because the economy is changing and people wear blue jeans that they can't be fascists or that they'll necessarily be democrats. I think people who say that just because you eat McDonald's and wear blue jeans, that means you're a democrat, are wrong. So I think that's very possible.

And, of course, just because you become richer, it also doesn't mean you're going to become democratic, obviously; Singapore being my favorite example. I mean, China is pretty different from Singapore, so I think it'd be quite difficult to have the same system as you have there. But I still think you could have something that is not democratic and yet modern.

B. Gill: Yes, sir, please.

Participant: — with the German newspaper. I wonder whether you have — I'd like to address my question to Ms. Dalpino. Do you have an explanation why Americans seem to have such different American foreign policy, different standards of human rights vis-a-vis various powers? The most obvious example that strikes me right now is American policy towards Russia and China. We seem to invest so much more into China's human rights record than we do in Russia's human rights record. Is there a reason for that?

C. Dalpino: I think there's a very simple reason, which is that there's been an ideological shift in our view of Russia overall because of the events of the early 1990s, and that we have some ideological views of China that I think are rooted in the Cold War.

B. Gill: Only half-jokingly, many people say that the best thing that the Chinese government could do to improve relations with the United States is change the name of the ruling party. And I think that may in part give an answer to your question.

Is there another — I thought I saw a hand over here. I might just take the opportunity, as the chair, to ask a question of both Mike and Catharin. Catharin made the point that there are certain opportunities. Specifically she mentioned official funding in support of rule-of-law initiatives in China which are going unfunded. That was a point of some perhaps disagreement between the two of you. But I wonder if we — I think it would be very interesting for all of us to hear more on that question to perhaps help explain why these sorts of initiatives, which we would probably agree might be useful, have so far gone unfunded and what their prospects might be for the future.

M. Jendrzejczyk: Well, first, Catharin is right. Technically, yes, the U.S. government launched these programs when Jiang Zemin and Clinton met in October '97 but haven't funded them. They've been funded by the business community, by private foundations and others. And Congress has, I think unfortunately and wrongly, blocked any funding, worried that any program administered in any way by government agencies in China or that would involve government officials would somehow directly or indirectly prop them up or give them legitimacy. And I just think that's a mistaken assumption.

At the same time, while I think these programs are useful — and I should add, the Europeans, the Australians and other countries, the Canadians, have been doing this for some time, having judges and magistrates visit to and from each country holding seminars and so on — I think we have to recognize that until there's a very fundamental political change in China, one that frees up the judiciary from its current control under the party, it will be very difficult to expect anything but the most marginal improvements in the short run.

On the other hand, it is interesting that — sorry — the president of the supreme court and the former justice minister, Shao Yong [ph], did announce earlier this year that certain trials will now be open to the Chinese public for the first time. And he exempted trials involving charges of state security or overt political charges. But nonetheless, I think the fact that the government at the highest levels has decided to take this step recognizes that they know their own people are not confident in this very corrupt and decrepit judicial system.

So here I think there is an opening where China's direct, immediate self-interest in developing a modern legal system, both to attract foreign investors as well as to deal with the problems of corruption, coincide with what I think is a larger U.S. policy objective, which is to promote the rule of law rather than ruled by state or by personality, which currently has been the system in place in China since 1949.

C. Dalpino: I'm going to agree with Mike on a couple of things for perhaps perverse reasons. First of all, I agree that probably the sort of gains that would result from external assistance would be marginal. But from my experience of 10 years as a grant-maker in Asia, working in democratizing and non-democratic countries, that's basically what you can get out of most official assistance. And the trick is to know when it's important to be there on the margin at a particular place and time.

Secondly, to answer the specific question about why it is that this sort of funding has been blocked, I think it's because some of the human rights advocates on the Hill rather broadly view any assistance to China, not just to the government but that goes inside China, as capitulation to Beijing because they do think it does legitimate Beijing.

I would actually at this point not recommend there be an official assistance program to China, but rather that the U.S. government provide funds to American non-governmental organizations who have been working in China for 20 years, not just since the summit. In fact, in part because I fear that an official program, particularly in the post-Cold War era of democracy — promotion would be too high-profile — would take what I would call a brass-band approach and would claim credit for every single political development in China that did arise during that period, whether it was related or not — that goes with an official program, the sorts of pressures that we put on our aid to demonstrate that it's really doing something.

B. Gill: Well, I think we've come to the close of our event today. I think, once again, I'm very pleased to note that 10 years on, we're able to have this kind of more open and often critical and constructively critical, I hope, discussion about how to improve our effectiveness in trying to reach certain goals within China related to human rights.

Before we close, I want to extend a special appreciation to our speakers today: Professor Li Cheng of Hamilton College; Mr. Wei Jingsheng, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University; Mr. Mike Jendrzejczyk, director of Human Rights Watch here in Washington D.C.; Mr. Steve Mufson, diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post; and Ms. Catharin Dalpino, guest fellow at the Brookings Institution.

I'm Bates Gill, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. And on behalf of the Brookings Institution, I want to thank you all very much for coming. We look forward to continuing our dialogue with you in the weeks and months ahead. Thanks again. [Applause]

[END OF EVENT]