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Nothing is more critical in the long and difficult road ahead in U.S.-China relations than the issue of Beijing’s refusal to honor American passports.
Professor Li Shaomin, 45, a naturalized American consultant to U.S. firms, after months of detention, has been arrested on what appear to be trumped up espionage charges. Like so many other agreements, China refuses to provide access to detained U.S. citizens.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We are very concerned about this development. We will continue to express our concerns about Mr. Li's case to the Chinese Government. Obviously we are going to press very strongly for him to be accorded due process and for this case to be brought to a fair and a speedy conclusion."
But that really isn’t good enough. There are now at least a half-dozen instances, most of them still unresolved.
Why is this paramount in the welter of complex issues that Bush II already has on its plate with China?
There are three important reasons:
1] The sanctity of the American passport. In recent years, due largely to increased travel, a certain slovenly disregard has developed for what was the U.S. traveler’s most treasured document. Furthermore, first with Israel, and now with other countries, the barrier of dual citizenship has been broached; there was a time when Americans were not permitted to pledge allegiance to a foreign power and retain their passport. U.S. policy must move back toward that zero tolerance. If the Chinese are permitted to insist that anyone born in China or of Chinese parents remains subject to their jurisdiction, we would have gone further down a slippery slope. [One need not draw a diagram alluding to our increasingly complex relationship with Mexico.]
2] The position of Chinese Americans. It seems more than likely that the U.S. and China relationship will continue to be rocky. The issues between the U.S. and this particular China regime must be kept distinct. Already, there has been, on the one hand, a faint smell of racism in the air; conversely, some Chinese American spokesmen, and even some politicians, have confused criticism of China’s regime with racism and xenophobia. The fact that most Americans abhor China’s tyrannical regime must be separated from attitudes toward the Chinese people themselves, and, obviously, our own loyal Chinese American citizenry.
3] The threat of blackmail. It is clear that Beijing will continue to try to use Chinese Americans in their efforts at espionage and to influence the American government. [We are still digging around in the China connections in the Clinton and Gore campaign contributions, and it appears others on the other side of the aisle have been remiss.] False arrest or detention or the threat against Chinese American citizens is just the sort of blackmail that the Soviet regime used throughout the Cold War.
In April, the State Department warned overseas scholars with Chinese origins about traveling to China, especially if they had criticized the Chinese government or had Taiwan links. That is just the sort of namby-pamby attitude that has often typified our diplomatic establishment.
In fact, the menace that Beijing holds over Chinese Americans can be exercised against them even when they are resident in this country by threats to relatives still remaining in China. This, too, is an old Communist tool known all too well in intelligence circles.
Then what to do?
Washington should immediately make it clear that if the “disappeared” U.S. persons are not accounted for and given due access to U.S. officials or released promptly where there are no specific and valid charges, the U.S. government will oppose the Olympic Games going to Beijing, an issue to be decided later this summer. That should also be the position of our NGOs concerned with such questions. A campaign on this matter should begin among those who want peaceful and amicable relations with Beijing — but, given the character of the regime, know that that cannot be had unless we use all possible leverage against arbitrary actions by that government.
The morality and efficacy of such action is clear. The Olympics are to be held in an environment that honors freedom to compete. What would be the guarantee that political pressures would not be applied to countries and individuals if those guarantees were not available to scholars and businessmen of the strongest power in the world? The U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics had a salutary effect even though many in the U.S. and Europe opposed it.
U.S.-China policy will be effective in assuring peace and progress only if it is clear about the issues — and the devil is in the details. Those details include the treatment of U.S. citizens by China authorities whatever their ethnicity.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.