WASHINGTON — Some countries view an attempt by the United States to censure Beijing at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva as a ploy to persuade Congress to approve permanent normal trade status for China, a special envoy of Tibet's exiled Dalai Lama, said Thursday.
"There is vocal and widespread cynicism among delegates at the commission that the U.S.-sponsored resolution is merely a ploy to win Congressional approval for permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) for China," the envoy, Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, testified at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee.
"It is also understood that the European Union nations who will vote as a block in Geneva, are divided among themselves. Nonetheless, President (Bill) Clinton ... chose to be silent on the resolution when he visited Geneva two weeks past," Gyari said. "Not only did he not use a critical opportunity to lobby for the resolution, but he did so in the context of a campaign that has him on an almost daily basis speaking out publicly for passage of PNTR."
Gyari acknowledged that the State Department is trying hard to persuade EU countries to back the resolution, but his critical comments highlighted an irony of U.S. China policy that many in Congress have been quick to seize upon.
While the 53-member U.N. Human Rights Commission is now midway through its annual session and Washington is lobbying for passage of the China human rights resolution this month, the debate over Beijing's trade status looms large over Congress in the run-up to a vote set for late May.
The vexed issue has already produced a strange alliance of pro-big business Republicans who support Clinton on trade but are concerned about China's bellicose threats against Taiwan and its repression of pro-democracy groups.
On the Democratic side, many of Clinton's traditional allies oppose permanent normal trade with China because of a deterioration in its human rights record, crackdowns on labor and religious groups like Falun Gong and its refusal to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama over its occupation of Tibet.
Chinese troops invaded Tibet in 1950 and the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India nine years later after a bloody uprising against Chinese rule.
Julia Taft, an Assistant Secretary at the State Department and special coordinator of Tibetan issues, said Chinese repression in Tibet worsened last year with widespread abuses of human rights and religious freedoms, arbitrary arrests, detention without trial, torture and "intensification of controls over Tibetan monasteries and on monks and nuns."
Against this background by considering PNTR for China, "Congress is preparing to ensure that no matter what Beijing does in the human rights arena, they will not lose a single penny," said Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat.
The Clinton administration has strongly defended its policies, arguing that more open engagement with China is the best way to work toward improvements on human rights.
"PNTR now is a priority for the administration and frankly for our human rights agenda, for our ability to engage with Beijing on human rights issues," Bennett Freeman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, told a forum in Washington on Thursday.
"The passage of PNTR and therefore then we hope...China's accession to the WTO (World Trade Organization) will allow the international community, particularly the United States, to engage with China on a broader and more durable basis across the entire range of our interests, including human rights."
Taft also told the House panel she did not believe the human rights resolution conflicted with the issue of China's trade status. "I don't see it as competing," she said. "I see it as complimentary."
Washington has moved a similar human rights resolution at every meeting of the U.N. body since 1990, except in 1998 when it believed China's attitude toward political dissidents had improved. But China has managed to block the move each year by mustering enough votes to pass a motion for "no action".
This year Washington is striving to get European nations to co-sponsor the resolution and believes it has a better chance of success because of the deterioration in China's human rights record in five key areas: Tibet, the treatment of women, religious freedom, political dissent and prison labor.