VII. WAFFLING IN 1997

It was clear by November 1996 that sponsorship of a resolution on China at the 1997 U.N. Human Rights Commission was in for a rough ride. On November 24, at a debriefing following President Clinton's meeting with Jiang Zemin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Manila, a senior administration official said that "the president said that we want to maintain dialogue and cooperate on [human rights], but on the present record we could not forgo presenting [...] a resolution." The implication was clear: any nominal gesture or open-ended promise on China's part that could be interpreted as progress on human rights might be enough to derail a resolution.

The European Union played a similar game of delaying a decision on the resolution by bouncing consideration of the question from one E.U. body to another. When the E.U. Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) could not reach a decision on what to do about a resolution at its meeting on December 13, 1996, further consideration was delayed almost a month until January 10 when the Political Affairs Working Group, with representatives from all fifteen E.U. capitals, met in Brussels. The meeting decided to refer the issue back to the HRWG despite the fact that a straw poll of political directors had found an overwhelming majority in favor of a resolution and the HRWG had recommended that the E.U. move quickly. Rather than taking a firm decision to exert pressure through a resolution, the political affairs meeting discussed a variety of ways of avoiding confrontation at the commission, including pushing for consensus rather than majority vote on resolutions and substitution of investigations by the U.N. thematic mechanisms for commission resolutions.13 Just as the HRWG was about to meet on January 23, China suddenly proposed a human rights discussion on February 14 around the edges of the Asia-Europe (ASEM) foreign ministers' meeting in Singapore, providing some E.U. countries with a pretext for delaying a decision once more. (For months, the E.U. had been unsuccessful in trying to schedule a formal E.U.-China human rights dialogue, originally scheduled for October 1996.) But China offered no human rights concessions or gestures during the meeting, according to diplomatic sources.

The U.S. also refused to commit itself to the one multilateral initiative that might have exerted real pressure on China, with officials reiterating that Sino-U.S. relations could not be "held hostage" to human rights concerns and that a decision about sponsorship would be made "when the time came." During the U.S. Senate hearing on January 8, 1997 to confirm Madeleine Albright as secretary of state, Albright went so far as to imply that China's previous record was of no import; what counted was "in the remaining weeks" how China "approach[ed] that situation" and whether any changes took place. Different administration officials gave the same message: the U.S. position would be determined based on China's actions between "now" -- and "now" became later and later -- and the time of the commission vote. A week after Albright's confirmation hearing, the Chinese government warned of complications in the bilateral relationship if the U.S. pressed on rights issues.14 No concrete promises or assurances resulted from a visit to Beijing on January 30-31 by a low-level delegation from the National Security Council and the State Department, aimed at exploring the possibilities for a human rights breakthrough.

On January 21, the Clinton administration moved to ensure consistency in the U.S.-E.U. position. A diplomatic demarché circulated to E.U. members in Brussels stated that "we are continuing to talk with the Chinese about what meaningful concrete steps they might take to avoid confrontation in Geneva," and it suggested that tomake compliance easier, the E.U. ask China for the same minimal concessions: releases of prisoners with medical problems, resumption of discussions on prison visits, and signing and submitting to the National People's Congress for ratification the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The U.S. did state its willingness to cosponsor a resolution if China's performance did not improve but did not set a time frame or deadline for making a formal decision. President Clinton himself went further, stating at his January 24 press conference that there was no need to press China on human rights because the current government would, like the Berlin Wall, eventually fall.15

Six days later, the Clinton administration was back to justifying no decision in terms of seeking improvements. On January 30, Secretary Albright relayed that message when she met in Washington with Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van Mierlo and Sir Leon Brittan, vice-president of the European Commission and a strong supporter of commercial diplomacy.16 Given the deterioration of human rights in China across the board over the past year, however, trying to seek "improvements" in the few months before the commission meetings began was disingenuous at best.

Secretary Albright's visit to Beijing on February 24 -- just prior to Deng Xiaoping's funeral -- provided another opportunity to avoid a resolution, pending the outcome of her high-level discussions with Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and other senior officials. A report in the New York Times, published the day she arrived in Beijing, outlined the possible elements of a deal; although the administration vehemently denied the story's suggestion that a bargain was imminent, it did not dispute the other details.17 Albright left Beijing, empty-handed but noting that breakthroughs before had not come during high-level visits but often several weeks or months afterwards, so as not to give the impression that foreign pressure had been involved.

Three days after her visit, however, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman announced that China was giving "positive consideration" to signing the two major international human rights agreements, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, he went on to say, "as to when we would join, that is entirely our own affair." It is worth noting that in November 1993, China had announced that it was giving "positive consideration" to access to its prisons by the International Committee of the Red Cross; not long afterwards, negotiations with the ICRC came to a standstill.

But two days after the February 27 statement on the covenants, China announced that it had agreed to "resume our contact [with the ICRC] after a two-year hiatus."18 An ICRC spokesman noted that these were "talks about talks to begin talks." The only element of a deal that had not been announced by China by the end of February, then, was the release of key dissidents.

It was left to Vice President Gore to try to close any deal during his late March visit. Meanwhile the E.U. had met in Brussels on February 24 and decided to put off any decision on a resolution, waiting instead for the outcome of Albright's trip. Immediately following Gore's visit, Australian Prime Minister John Howard is due in Beijing, as are Canada's foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy (in April), and French President Jacque Chirac (in May).

While the E.U. and the U.S. were procrastinating, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights José Ayala Lasso announced on February 10, before the sudden announcement of his resignation, that he had received and accepted in principle an invitation from China to visit. The timing of the invitation was clearly an effort to try to undermine the already dim prospects for a successful resolution by demonstrating China's openness to cooperation on human rights with the U.N.