Can this be spring? Beijing’s official media have dropped their anti-U.S. tone, “A few weeks back, it was ‘You have wronged us’,” said a Western diplomat in Beijing. “Now it’s ‘Let’s repair the relationship’.” If Sept. 25 talks between Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qiehen go well, China is expected to return the ambassador it recalled in June to protest the U.S. decision to let Taiwanese President Lee Tenghui visit his American alma mater. Beijing has dropped demands that Washington apologize for the visit and promise not to let Lee back in. Still, the root causes of the season of ill-will remain.
Harry Wu’s release didn’t change the human-rights situation he had set out to document. “If I [were] not an American–forget it, I would disappear.” the limping, exhausted activist told a press conference in California. Wu’s account of being hounded by interrogators, threatened with execution and denied care for a back injury he suffered during his earlier imprisonment hardly improves the image of the Chinese justice system. He also dismissed a filmed confession, sold by China last month to Western reporters, as a tactical ploy. “In my file there are so many ‘confessions’,” he said. “Under certain circumstances, I have to lie to liars.”
The weeks of exhausting exchanges were like a duel, but Wu knows the ropes. “In the beginning I say, ‘What do you want? I’m here, like meat on the chopping block’,” Wu said. “They say, ‘Yes, but you have bone, no?’ And I say, ‘Be careful, the bone can turn a knife’.” Determined to thwart his jailers, Wu kept a secret diary in the margin of an English-Chinese dictionary.
Interest in Wu may quickly cool, but the Taiwan issue can only burn hotter in the run-up to the island’s first open presidential election next March. While moderating its rhetoric toward Washington, Beijing last week renewed attacks on its little neighbor. China accuses the Taiwanese president, the front runner, of nurturing plans for independence even as he publicly espouses reunification. Working with Lee on unification, said the People’s Daily in one of a series of attacks, is like “climbing a tree to catch a fish.” Lee has already ignored even more pointed warnings–two separate Chinese missile tests just 80 miles north of Taiwan. “For the first time in decades China is using military might as a tool of diplomacy,” says one Beijing-based diplomat. “That’s very dangerous.”
China’s menacing new stance makes it clear that if Taiwan’s move to democracy turns into a popular drive for independence, Beijing won’t be satisfied with mere symbolic gestures from Washington. The Chinese will insist on nothing less than a categorical restatement of the 1972 “one China” policy. Yet newly empowered American conservatives suggest the opposite–U.N. recognition for Taiwan. It’s a quandary that will require tough policy choices–ones that Washington would prefer not to make.
