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The current crackdown, however, displays more than the usual steely vigilance. Authorities swept up at least 16 well-known dissidents over the past two weeks. Hundreds of others are under close surveillance. Beijing is reacting to the first stirrings of a revived democracy movement. Not only are dissidents seeking public attention during a period in which the U.S. is demanding that China improve its human-rights record and Deng Xiaoping, China's senior leader, is fading, but the hard-line government fears a newfound boldness among the activists. The men in power detect signs that their real nightmare -- an alliance of workers and intellectuals along the lines of Poland's Solidarity that could bring together a popular force mighty enough to topple them -- may be taking shape. After all, the increasing number of workers who supported the students in Tiananmen played an important role in Beijing's decision to send in the tanks.
Last week petitions circulated in many parts of the country urging the creation of worker and peasant unions and demanding the right to strike. Dissidents also distributed a draft charter for a League for the Protection of the Rights of the Working People of China. Liu Nianchun, a labor activist, defiantly applied for formal registration of the unofficial league, claiming 120 founding members. At least one of them, Yuan Hongbing, was arrested. These organizing efforts are still small, but they worry the Chinese leadership because they could ignite major unrest, especially among urban workers. Inflation is running at 23% in the big cities, and the economic reforms that will privatize huge state-owned industries will add to the unemployment rolls. The last thing China's leaders want to face is a newly militant labor movement, even if it is interested primarily in job security.
No doubt the Chinese would have preferred not to move against rights campaigners on the eve of Christopher's visit, but they went ahead anyway. The Secretary of State arrived in Beijing Friday night with an unequivocal message: China must improve its human-rights record or lose the low-tariff benefits of most-favored-nation trading status. President Bill Clinton had vowed that he would not renew MFN -- a boon that allowed China to roll up a $23 billion trade surplus with the U.S. last year -- if Beijing did not demonstrate tangible improvement by June, when the decision on extending MFN comes due. Nor did roundups like those of last week help China's fading prospects for support in Congress. Beijing's bosses obviously place a higher priority on maintaining the country's stability -- by which they mean doing whatever it takes to hold on to political power.
When Premier Li Peng opened the parliamentary session last week, he told the 2,800 delegates that balanced economic development was the government's top priority and said that "social stability is an indispensable prerequisite for economic development." He conceded that a "dialogue" with other countries on human rights was possible "on the basis of mutual equality" but warned that China "will never allow anyone to interfere in its internal affairs under any pretext."