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Human rights concerns dropped even lower on the agenda of the U.S. and China's other major trading partners this year, even as the Chinese government's restrictions on freedom of expression and association grew tighter. Following the Belgrade bombing, the Administration was preoccupied with getting bilateral relations back on track, largely putting human rights concerns on the back burner. For its part, the Chinese government suspended its bilateral human rights dialogue with the U.S., put off a planned visit by the German chancellor until November, and delayed talks on China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). International protests against the banning of Falun Gong and the crackdown on activists prior to the June 4 and October 1 anniversaries were mild or nonexistent.

U.S. Human Rights Policy: Recommendations

The Clinton Administration had no clear strategy to follow up the president's visit to China.

It is crucial that the Administration begin now to lay the groundwork for a sustained multilateral effort on China at next spring's U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Only with U.S. leadership -- from both the White House and the State Department -- can a serious campaign be launched to hold China accountable in the highest U.N. forum designed to protect and promote human rights.

We also hope the new U.S. ambassador to the People's Republic of China will place a much higher priority on human rights, not only by pressing China to take the steps outlined below, but also by increasing regular monitoring of human rights abuses by embassy and consulate staff; by energetically seeking access by diplomatic personnel and the media to trials, such as the trials of Falun Gong members that have recently begun and the trials of pro-democracy activists; and by working with other embassies to develop coordinated strategies on key human rights issues.

We urge the Administration to press China to take practical, concrete steps to improve human rights in China and Tibet including the following:

-- Getting agreement to release, amnesty or review the convictions of approximately 2000 persons still imprisoned on charged of "counterrevolution." These offenses were formally abolished as a crime in 1997, but the Chinese government has stated that this will have no effect on those already convicted. They include numerous nuns and monks from Tibet, labor rights activists and individuals imprisoned in connection with the June 1989 crackdown.

--Initiation of a process to end the system of re-education through labor, which leads to the arbitrary detention of thousands of Chinese citizens each year, without charge or trial.

--Obtaining verifiable information on the current status and whereabouts of the Panchen Lama, Gendun Choeki Nyima, the child chosen by the Dalai Lama in 1995 as the reincarnation of an important Tibetan religious figure.

-- Getting agreement on unrestricted access to Tibet and Xinjiang by the international press, human rights and humanitarian organizations.

--Securing a commitment to implement safeguards on freedom of association and labor rights. The International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Civil and Political Rights both contain important guarantees on freedom of religion, association, assembly and expression.

WTO and Codes of Conduct

In late November, the World Trade Organization will hold its ministerial conference in Seattle, and talks with the U.S. and other governments on China's potential entry into the WTO have recently resumed. We believe that bringing China into the WTO on commercially acceptable terms could help human rights and strengthen the rule of law over the long term. As a member of the WTO, China would face increasing demands -- internally and externally -- for greater transparency, an independent judiciary, and protection of worker rights.

However, the Administration should not once again make the mistake of overstating the benefits of its trade policy. The President has stated that he would push for permanent NTR (Normal Trade Relations) status for China as part of a WTO package, thus doing away with the annual NTR renewal process. In return for permanent NTR -- something China has lobbied for over several years -- we believe the Congress should insist on reciprocal gestures on human rights by China. For example, within one year of getting permanent NTR, China should ratify either or both of the two UN covenants, and take some of the other concrete steps outlined above. We hope the Administration will join the Congress in supporting limited, realistic but meaningful human rights conditions on permanent NTR.

We would also strongly support legislation on codes of conduct for U.S. companies operating in China, along the lines of bills previously introduced in both the House and Senate. Such legislation would express the sense of Congress that U.S. companies doing business in China should adopt certain principles to prohibit the use of forced labor, prohibit a police or military presence in the workplace, protect workers' rights of free association, assembly and religion, discourage compulsory political indoctrination, and promote freedom of expression by workers including their freedom to seek and receive information of all kinds through any media -- in writing, orally, or through the Internet.

Legislation outlining principles for U.S. companies should contain a registration and reporting procedure, and an annual report to Congress on the level of adherence to the principles by U.S. companies.

Human Rights Developments in China, Tibet, Hong Kong

Controls on basic freedoms were tightened during the past year, in part because of Chinese authorities' desire to ensure stability on several sensitive dates. These included the fortieth anniversary of the March 10, 1959, Tibetan uprising, the tenth anniversary of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the PRC on October 1, 1949.

Trials of dissidents—and there were many—were neither fair nor open. Gao Yu, a prominent journalist accused of leaking state secrets, was released from prison early, but like many other released prisoners, continued to face a variety of restrictions.

A prolonged economic slump coupled with illegal and excessive fees and taxes fueled unrest and heightened the government's concerns with stability. On the political front, President Jiang Zemin's determination to bolster the Chinese Communist Party, to placate hardliners, and to secure his own place in history contributed to heightened intolerance of any organization openly critical of the Party's platform or attempting to function outside Party control. Individuals and groups suspected of ties to "hostile" foreign organizations and those disseminating sensitive political information overseas were particularly targeted.

State control of religious affairs in Tibet intensified. Dozens of judicial executions were reported from Xinjiang, where some ethnic Uighur groups were advocating a separate state; other alleged "splittists" were sentenced to long prison terms. Judicial independence and the rule of law in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong were seriously undermined when the SAR government asked Beijing to interpret a ruling by the SAR's highest court.

On the positive side, legal reform efforts continued, although the legal system remained highly politicized. Supreme Court President Xiao Yang announced in March that in the interests of transparency, trials would be open and verdicts quickly made public, except for cases involving state secrets. In April, he announced plans to curb government interference with the legal process. Chinese judicial and legal experts continued to meet with their counterparts in many countries in an effort to further the reform process.

On November 23, 1998, former Premier Li Peng announced that China would not tolerate any political system that would "negate the leadership of the Communist Party." A month later, three organizers of the opposition China Democracy Party (CDP) received heavy sentences. Veteran dissident Xu Wenli in Beijing, Qin Yongmin in Hubei province, and Wang Youcai in Zhejiang were sentenced to thirteen, twelve, and eleven years in prison respectively on charges of subversion. Other CDP members were also tried. During the first week of August alone, Zha Jianguo and Gao Hongming received nine- and eight-year terms in Beijing, and She Wanbao and Liu Xianbin received twelve and thirteen years respectively from courts in Sichuan. The following week, two Shanghai CDP members, Cai Guihua and Han Lifa, instead of being released on schedule, had their terms extended. Some thirty CDP members were still in custody as of mid-October, and the crackdown on the CDP had extended to some twenty provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities.

Legal authorities also squashed the China Development Union (CDU), a nongovernmental organization committed to environmental and political reform. In February, its leader, Peng Ming, was detained for fifteen days on a charge of soliciting prostitution. Instead of being released, he was then administratively sentenced to an additional term of eighteen months.

Labor and peasant activists also received long sentences. Unrest in Hunan province resulted in sentences of up to six years for nine peasants who protested the imposition of exorbitant taxes; the arrest of Liao Shihua for organizing workers to demand an end to pervasive corruption in the province; and two-year terms for six farmers who alleged that local elections had been rigged.

Throughout the year, China repeatedly demonstrated its determination to prevent contacts between mainland and overseas dissidents and to obstruct information flows. On January 20 the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate Court announced a two-year sentence for computer entrepreneur Lin Hai for passing some 30,000 e-mail addresses to VIP Reference, an overseas dissident publication. Fang Jue, a former economic planning official in Fujian province, whose essay on democratic reform was published abroad in 1998, was sentenced to a four-year prison term in June 1999 on what appeared to be spurious fraud charges. In March, a district court sentenced Gao Shaokun, a retired police officer, to a two-year term after he told the foreign press about a peasant protest; on May 11 a Beijing court sentenced Liu Xianli to a four-year term for his attempts to publish a work about well-known Chinese dissidents. Song Yongyi, a Dickinson College (Pennsylvania) researcher, was detained in August when he returned to China on a Chinese passport to continue his research on the Cultural Revolution.

Chinese authorities were clearly concerned about increasing use of the Internet. New regulations in January required bars and cafes with Internet access to register and inform the police about their business operations and customers. In May the Ministry of State Security installed monitoring devices on Internet service providers capable of tracking individual e-mail accounts. Special computer task forces began round-the-clock checks on bulletin boards. In January one of those bulletin boards, "Everything Under the Sun," was ordered closed for posting messages critical of the government. In February Chinese authorities shut down the "New Wave Network," a popular bulletin board that featured political discussion. In September police detained Qi Yanchen, a former China Development Union member and a member of the China Democracy Party, whose electronic magazine Consultations pushed the CDU agenda. In early September, after overseas dissidents hacked into the website of the official newspaper, People's Daily, a police circular called for a crackdown on all anti-Party and government articles on the Internet.

The government also tightened controls on publishing and the print media. On January 1 new regulations required shippers of printed material to obtain government permits. President Jiang Zemin personally ordered senior officials to prevent the media from undermining the fiftieth anniversary celebration. His complaints about the number of publications in circulation resulted in a decision to stop issuing any publication permits at least through June. In September the government decreed that local newspapers and magazines had to be placed under Party management by October 30 or face closure, and it was estimated that some 20,000 publications would be closed.

In September Chinese authorities banned newsstand sales of special editions of Time, Asiaweek, and Newsweek covering fifty years of Communist Party rule. Censorship even affected computer games and survey research, with authorities confiscating some 10,000 games that featured Taiwan repelling a mainland invasion.

Restraints on religion and belief increased significantly during the year. On April 25, ten thousand members of Falung Gong (also known as Falun Dafa)surrounded Zhongnanhai, the Beijing compound housing China's top leaders. The peaceful, silent demonstration was to protest a newspaper article disparaging Falun Gong. The size of the demonstration clearly shocked the government, and while authorities took no immediate action, they began a systematic crackdown three months later. On July 22the Ministry of Civil Affairs labeled Falun Gong an illegal organization and accused it of spreading "superstition" and "endangering social stability." It banned public and private practice and distribution of the organization's literature. Police detained thousands of practitioners for reeducation and began to confiscate and destroy over one million books. A week later, the government issued an arrest warrant for Li Hongzhi, the group's leader, who had been living in the U.S. The government put the number of practitioners at two million; other estimates run as high as seventy million. Alarmed at the number of party members involved, the party leadership mounted a full-scale internal "rectification," using the opportunity to emphasize the value of Marxism and reinvigorate President Jiang's "three stresses" campaign to strengthen theoretical study, political awareness, and good conduct among Party members. As of October at least three top Falun Gong leaders, Wang Zhiwen, Li Chang and Ji Liuwu, were still in custody; and ten managers of printing presses in Sichuan and Guangxi were being held for printing Falun Gong materials. The Ministry of Justice announced that any lawyer wishing to represent a Falun Gong follower must obtain government permission.

Police detained members of at least three other sects, the Men Tu Hui or Disciples, Dongfang Shandian or Eastern Lightning, and a group known as God's Religion. The government continued its longstanding campaign to force Catholic congregations to register with the Bureau of Religious Affairs. The campaign, centered in parts of Zhejiang and Hebei provinces with large Catholic populations, was marked by detentions, disappearances, ill-treatment, fines, and harassment. A series of arrests in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, that continued into September, forced some clergy into hiding. In one still unexplained incident, Father Yan Weiping, from Hebei, was found dead on a Beijing street on May 13. He had been detained that same day while saying Mass. In a crackdown in southern Henan province, several prominent house church leaders were briefly detained. The raid followed an earlier one in central Henan on January 24 when pastor Chu Chang'en and forty-five others were detained. In May, three students in China's most prestigious Protestant seminary were expelled after protesting the government's control of religious affairs.

Free assembly fared poorly during the year. Police in several cities prevented those wishing to publicly commemorate the tenth anniversary of the June 4 crackdown from laying wreaths or visiting cemeteries. Jiang Qisheng, a student leaders in 1989, was formally arrested for calling on people to remember the crackdown with a candlelight vigil.

In a move to ensure order before the October 1 celebration, the Beijing city government banned all public gatherings after July 1. Police detained or expelled those without papers, legal residence permits or permanent incomes. They targeted migrants, beggars, hawkers, food vendors, the homeless, the unemployed, the mentally ill, prostitutes, and other "undesirables." On September 6 the Public Security Bureau notified hostels, hotels, boarding houses, and private citizens that they would be penalized for housing illegal migrants. Dissidents were under heavy surveillance, their movements restricted, and their phone lines cut. Any non-resident wishing to enter Beijing needed a detailed letter of introduction.

The death penalty continued in use, and mass executions were common. On September 27 the Guangdong Supreme People's Court declared it would hold fifty-seven public rallies to announce 818 sentences. Two hundred and thirty-eight prisoners were scheduled to be executed before October 1. Executions also took place in Changsha, Hunan province and Chongqing, a city formerly part of Sichuan province.

Tibet

At the beginning of the year, authorities announced a three-year campaign to free rural Tibetans from the "negative influence of religion," and to work against the Dalai Lama's "splittist" struggle. They continued to deny access to Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the ten-year-old boy recognized by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism. No one has seen the child or members of his family since 1995 when the Chinese government recognized another boy, Gyaltsen Norbu, as the reincarnation. On June 17, that boy arrived in Tibet for the first time.

In response to a World Bank proposal to resettle some 58,000 Han Chinese and Hui Muslims in a predominately Tibetan and Mongolian area in Qinghai province, an Australian, Gabriel Lafitte, an American, Daja Meston, and their Tibetan translator, Tsering Dorje, traveled to the area to assess for themselves the feelings of residents in the resettlement region. State security forces detained all three on August 15 but released them within two weeks. Lafitte and Meston, who was severely injured in an escape attempt, were permitted to leave after confessing to wrongdoing.

During the year, security forces detained Tibetans who openly advocated independence. On March 10, the fortieth anniversary of an abortive uprising against China, two Tibetan monks, Phuntsok Legmon and Namdol, demonstrated in Barkor Square in Lhasa. On July 9 they reportedly received three- and four-year sentences respectively, a report that Tibetan officials have denied. In a preemptive move, some eighty people were detained beforeMarch 10. Monks from major monasteries could not enter the city, and the Jokhang, the most religious site in Tibet, was closed for "cleaning."

Prison conditions in Tibet remained substandard. In February the official Chinese news agency acknowledged that "quasi-military" training for staff and prisoners had been carried out in Drapchi prison "to improve police officers' managerial abilities and enhance prisoners' discipline and awareness of the law." The use of torture continued, sometimes resulting in death. Legshe Tsoglam, a Nalanda monk who resisted reeducation, died in April, several days after his release from Gutsa Detention Center. A Ganden monk, Ngawang Jinpa, died two months after serving his full four-year term, and Norbu, also from Nalanda, died almost three years after severe prison beatings damaged his kidneys. All three were in their early twenties. Several monks, arrested in 1998 for putting photos of the Dalai Lama on the main altar in Kirti monastery in Sichuan Province, were sentenced in July and August 1999. Ngawang Sangdrol, a twenty-three-year-old nun, severely beaten after a protest in Drapchi prison in May 1998, had her original three-year sentence extended for the third time for a total of twenty-one years.

Xinjiang

Local authorities, claiming that "splittist" elements in the region were using terrorist tactics, ordered intensified efforts to maintain stability in the run-up to the October 1 anniversary celebrations. Executions of so-called "splittists" were commonplace, as were long prison sentences and public sentencing rallies. In January, a court official in Ili prefecture, the scene of massive demonstrations and rioting in 1997, confirmed that twenty-nine people, all but two of them ethnic Uighurs, had been given the death penalty. In July a court in Nonshishi sentenced another eighteen men to terms ranging from ten to fifteen years for, among other things, allegedly destroying the Party's religious policy. In an apparent attempt to decrease the flow of information overseas, public security officers in Urumqi, the capital, seized Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent Uighur businesswoman, on August 11 as she was on her way to meet a visiting American. She was later charged with trying to transmit information across borders. Rebiya Kadeer's husband, a U.S. resident, publicly advocates independence and appears regularly on Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America. Rebiya, her son, Ablikim Abdyirim, and her secretary, Kahriman Abdukirim, remained in prison as of October.

Hong Kong

This year China took several steps to curtail Hong Kong's autonomy and the rule of law. The independence of the courts in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) was placed in jeopardy after Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa invited Beijing to intervene in a decision of the highest court in Hong Kong, the Court of Final Appeal. Tung campaigned against the court's decision on right of abode in Hong Kong that would have allowed many more mainland Chinese to reside in the S.A.R. (How many more was a matter of intense debate.) Fearing a flood of Chinese immigrants, on May 18 Tung invited the Standing Committee of China's People's National Congress, as the ultimate authority under Hong Kong's constitution, the Basic Law, to overturn the ruling. Leading judges and lawyers questioned the political decision of the Chief Executive to invite Beijing to intervene. The Standing Committee effectively reversed the Court of Final Appeal's decision.

Municipal councils, the middle tier of elected office in Hong Kong, were abolished by Tung this year, in a transparent effort to weaken the influence of pro-democracy political parties in Hong Kong.

Chinese officials barred entry to pro-democracy Hong Kong lawmakers. On September 12, Margaret Ng (who was a witness before this Committee last July) was prevented from attending a seminar on China's constitution. China also interfered with requests for travel to Hong Kong, refusing to consider a papal visit because the Vatican and Taiwan maintain diplomatic relations. A senior official from Taiwan was prevented from attending an academic conference at the University of Hong Kong.

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