By James T. Areddy
522 words
26 May 2008
The Wall Street Journal Asia
2
English
(c) 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. To see the edition in which this article appeared, click here http://awsj.com.hk/factiva-ns
The U.S. and China will hold a dialogue on human rights this week for the first time since 2002, against the backdrop of this year's unrest in Tibet and ahead of the Olympic Games in August.
The dialogue, to take place in Beijing, is a formal engagement that in past years featured requests for release of particular prisoners and statements by each country about the other's human-rights record.
Planning for the meeting began well before protests by Tibetans in March and a resulting crackdown by Chinese security forces. It is unclear how China's recent earthquake in Sichuan province, which has claimed more than 50,000 lives, might figure into the talks.
During a February visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, signaled his government's readiness to resume the dialogue after a six-year hiatus.
The U.S. will be represented in Beijing by David J. Kramer, a newly appointed State Department assistant secretary who heads the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He is expected to hold two days of meetings with Chinese officials representing various ministries, according to a release issued by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Friday.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has acknowledged that both sides "are in contact" for the specific issues related to the human-rights dialogue. "We hope the dialogue will help enhance understanding, enlarge consensus and narrow down the differences between the two countries," the foreign ministry said in response to questions.
China's willingness to re-engage over human rights is seen partly as a gesture ahead of the Olympic Games in Beijing. It has been welcomed by the State Department, which on March 11 removed China from its list of the world's worst human-rights offenders.
Ms. Rice highlighted U.S. priorities in February when she named three prisoners in China. Among them was Jude Shao, a naturalized U.S. citizen serving a 16-year sentence in Shanghai for allegedly defrauding the government of $393,000 in taxes in his medical-equipment export business. Supporters of Mr. Shao, who marked his 10th year in prison in May, say Shanghai prison authorities have in recent months reversed pledges to request his parole. Local authorities declined to comment on Mr. Shao.
Another priority U.S. case mentioned by Ms. Rice is Hu Jia, an AIDS activist and blogger who used the coming Olympics to criticize China's human-rights record and was sentenced in April to 31/2 years in prison after a Beijing court found him guilty of subversion and libel.
The other person is Shi Tao, a former newspaper reporter jailed in 2004 for 10 years on state-secrets charges after sending an email about Chinese government policy. His case gained international attention because prosecutors used as evidence the account information turned over by a Yahoo Inc. subsidiary that hosted his email account.
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