TWO WEEKS AGO, following a long round of high-profile diplomacy, the Bush administration finally achieved what it thought an acceptable entente with the People’s Republic of China regarding the disposition of our downed EP-3 surveillance plane. The entire embarrassing incident thus safely consigned to history, America’s China-policy professionals have returned to their day jobs—an expert enterprise so exquisitely subtle that untutored civilians are very often unable to distinguish it from simple appeasement of Beijing’s Communist rulers. As, for example, on June 1, when, with the famous EP-3 still squatting on a Hainan runway, President Bush announced his intention to renew China’s favorable treatment under U.S. tariff schedules for another year. Just the way, he pointed out, “every president has done since 1980.” Bush went on to argue—again, as has every president since 1980—that vigorous trade with China is good for American “business” and “farmers” and “workers” and “consumers.” And good for their Chinese counterparts, too, he urged us to believe: Bilateral commercial entanglements are indispensable “if we are to promote American values of transparency and accountability and ensure that the Chinese government adheres to the rule of law in its dealings with its own people as well as with the international community.” The president did not explain how it is, the United States having so guaranteed vigorous trade with China for more than twenty years now, that said country nevertheless remains a virtual wasteland where such “American values” are concerned. Nor did the president explain why he should feel liberated to make public his “normal trade relations” decision merely by China’s promised return of a ruined airplane. We would have expected George W. Bush, in accordance with his own stated principles, to care rather less about this piece of machinery and rather more about certain other, truly priceless American resources held captive by Beijing. We are referring here, of course, to the fact that, for several months now, China’s fearsome Ministry of State Security has been “detaining”—and refusing to provide more than superficial information about—a half dozen U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Surely the plight of these detainees speaks as nothing better could to the abject failure of American import-export policy as a means to “ensure” Beijing’s respect for the rule of law. Surely President Bush cannot seriously hope to maintain “normal” relations with China so long as its government is openly and unapologetically conducting a terror campaign against selected visiting Americans. And surely the protection and retrieval of these Americans must be the Bush administration’s very highest China-policy priority at the moment. Surely, indeed, every other question must be deferred, every other planned démarche or initiative must be frozen in abeyance, until we get our people home. A man named Li Shaomin is one of these people. He and the others have led roughly parallel lives. Li was born in Beijing in 1956. When he was 10, during the Cultural Revolution, his father, Li Honglin, a leading Chinese intellectual and Communist party official, was purged and exiled with his family to northeastern Hebei province. There they survived by raising ducks. And there Li Shaomin, despite being denied formal schooling, somehow managed to learn enough that his was the nation’s highest score on the 1978 Beijing University entrance exam. At the university, Li met his wife, Liu Yingli. Upon graduation, the couple moved to the United States where both did graduate work, Li earning a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton and a post-doctoral fellowship from Harvard. After Boston, Li spent several years working as a senior analyst for AT&T in New Jersey. (The man who hired him, Salvatore Cordo, has organized an Internet petition drive on Li Shaomin’s behalf at the following address: www.atdinc.com/Li_Shaomin_petition_FR.htm. We urge our readers to participate.) By then, Li’s father had been rehabilitated and returned to prominence as a top deputy of the reformist Communist party chief Hu Yaobang. But Li Honglin would again be purged, and briefly imprisoned, for his support of the “counterrevolutionary” pro-democracy movement that culminated in the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. That event, and the stateside birth of their now 9-year-old daughter, Diana, resolved Shaomin and Yingli to become U.S. citizens, a process they completed in 1995. Both husband and wife have since become widely respected career academics. Li Shaomin, for his part, has published six books and innumerable papers on demography, business marketing, and political economy. Most recently, he and Yingli have been serving on the faculty of the City University of Hong Kong. It was from his office there, on the evening of Sunday, February 25, 2001, that Li Shaomin set off for the nearby mainland city of Shenzhen, intending to visit a friend—and to return home the following afternoon. But instead he disappeared. Four agonizing days went by before Yingli learned from U.S. diplomats that her husband had been detained at the border. It has been more than 100 days since she last saw or spoke to him. In late April, Yang Jiechi, China’s ambassador in Washington, informed Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey that his constituent, Li Shaomin, had “confessed” to “espionage activities” for the Taiwanese intelligence service. No evidence for the charge has ever been produced—and none exists, for it is false. But on May 15, having already declared him guilty, the Chinese Ministry of Security informed Liu Yingli by telephone that it had finally placed her husband under formal arrest. Her request that he be provided legal representation was denied. Let us be plain about this. Li Shaomin’s personal friends here at home have worked tirelessly to secure his release. Various U.S.-based human rights organizations, like the Princeton University chapter of Amnesty International, have joined the cause—as have an honorable number of academic organizations, like the American Association for the Advancement of Science. New Jersey’s delegation to the House of Representatives has unanimously rallied to Li’s support (though the state’s two senators have both gone AWOL). American newspapers and television networks have given occasional notice to the case. And executive-branch agencies have fulfilled every responsibility imposed on them by law and custom. U.S. consular officials in Beijing have been unfailingly attentive and sympathetic, for example, and in Washington, both the State Department and White House have duly expressed public “concern” and urged the Chinese to proceed “fairly.” And yet. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that something crucial has all along been missing in America’s response: appropriate and palpable persistence, intensity, and determination at the highest levels of our government. Individuals traveling under the ostensible protection of U.S. passports have been subjected to lengthy, arbitrary confinement—and several of them accused, without basis, of crimes for which the punishment more often than not is death—by a lawless and secretive Communist dictatorship. In short, this is a foreign policy emergency, one that directly implicates the American presidency as an institution. But we do not get the sense that White House lights are burning late into the night over the thing. And we are surprised by that. Liu Yingli, who was in Washington last week desperately attempting to generate interest in her husband’s predicament, still has heard nothing from the West Wing—though her daughter Diana’s affecting letter, reprinted on this page, was hand-delivered to the president by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey more than a month ago. This particular oversight appears personally out of character for George W. Bush; perhaps some procedural mistake by his aides is the explanation. Another, more serious West Wing oversight, however, can only be explained one way. F
or one reason or another, the president has so far chosen not to employ an obvious, most effective, and—we think—necessary mechanism of American influence on behalf of our detainees in Beijing. He has made clear to the Chinese that he wants Li Shaomin and the others set free. But he has not yet made clear that anything the Chinese want from us will depend on it. For instance: The president is currently scheduled to attend a regional economic summit in Shanghai this October. The event, and Bush’s presence there, are important to the Chinese. But if, come that time, Beijing continues to hold even a single American political prisoner, the president’s trip will be politically and morally impossible, and he will not go. He needs to say as much—now, and in public, so that China might actually believe the United States can sometimes be pushed too far.
