One of those foreigners was the State Department’s chief troubleshooter on human rights, John Shattuck. And after their April 1994 meeting, Wei was detained again. Last week the Chinese formally charged him with attempting to overthrow the government–a crime that could lead to execution. No one was surprised that the government still considers Wei Public Enemy No. 1; he has branded Deng Xiaoping a dictator and writ-ten that China’s leaders “have no interest in honoring the promises they made to the masses.” But the timing was bizarre. Since the nose dive in their bilateral relations last summer, both the United States and China have been at pains to improve ties. In August the Chinese expelled Chinese-American human-rights activist Harry Wu instead of keeping him in jail, and Bill Clinton had a fairly cordial meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin in New York in October. By charging Wei (the verdict against him can be assumed in advance), the Chinese seem bent on stirring up a fracas over their human-rights record. Dissident Fang Lizhi, in exile in Arizona, says the charges show “the Chinese leadership does not care about international concerns.”
But Beijing has not yet paid a price for the affront to the West. The State Department responded to the news with a tepid expression of"regret" over Wei’s fate, saying that it had raised the matter with Chinese officials. The summits between Clinton and Jiang, and among all the Pacific leaders in Japan in mid-November, passed without major mishap. There are no big international powwows in the immediate future where foreign partners might raise embarrassing questions about Chinese dissidents. And, having held Wei for more than a year and a half, the Chinese government had to do something with him. Wei’s family had taken to writing needling letters, pointing out that the government was violating China’s own laws by holding Wei so long without charging him.
Heavy international pressure helped get Wei out of prison the first time. China was then campaigning to host the 2000 Olympics, and the outside world had some unique and momentary leverage over the isolated Chinese leadership. Whether outsiders still have that leverage today, with the mood in China growing increasingly nationalistic, remains an open question. And how insistently they will choose to use that leverage is another question still.
