U.S. rights envoy Lorne Craner on Monday began two days of high-level talks with Chinese officials in which he was expected to press Beijing to free political prisoners and increase religious freedoms.
In a resumption of a bilateral human rights dialogue, last active in October 2001, Craner said he would discuss human rights and democracy issues, but did not elaborate on specific cases he would raise.
"We're hoping for a very productive session today and results in the coming weeks and new year," Craner, U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor affairs, told reporters.
China's criminal justice system and workers' rights would also feature in talks with senior Foreign Ministry official Li Baodong and Chief Justice Nan Ying. China imprisoned labor leaders during mass protests this year.
Predominantly Buddhist Tibet and the Muslim-populated region of Xinjiang would also be discussed during the talks, which were also to be attended by John Hanford, U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, the U.S. embassy said.
U.S. concerns about human rights in China have continued to stand out as a stumbling block in a relationship that has improved, with closer cooperation, since the U.S.-led war on terror began in September last year.
China was quick to back the campaign, but called for international support for its own fight against separatists from Xinjiang's Uighur ethnic minority, who foreign rights groups say suffer wrongful persecution under Chinese rule.
Beijing has accused Uighur separatists of joining forces with Osama bin Laden, chief suspect for the September 11 attacks, and of terror-linked bombings and killings on Chinese soil.
Human rights has always been a thorny issue between the two nations, partly due to differing views on individual versus collective rights. The Sino-U.S rights dialogue stalled after the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Washington said the bombing was a mistake.
SLEW OF CASES
Craner was to visit Xinjiang on Wednesday and Thursday in a move that could placate rights groups that are worried that human rights issues may play second fiddle to broader bilateral political objectives.
Fears that Washington might overlook human rights issues in exchange for strengthened political support arose in September, when the United States put a group named the East Turkestan Islamic Movement on its list of terrorist organizations.
Some western diplomats described the move as a quid pro quo to win China's support for U.S. plans in Iraq.
A spokesman for the Germany-based East Turkestan Information Center said by telephone that political pressures had touched all levels of Xinjiang society since the September 11 attacks and that thousands of Uighurs had been rounded up by Chinese police.
"The Chinese government thinks that all kinds of people are linked to separatism," the spokesman said. "Islam has been seen as a more dangerous religion after September 11."
Uighurs abroad hoped Washington would go beyond talks and exert concrete political pressure on China to loosen religious controls and improve the human rights situation, he said.
"(The United States) should help us establish a local non-governmental human rights observation organization," he said.
"That way we can give feedback on the local situation to international human rights organizations in time, instead of listening to what the Chinese authorities say."
The U.S. embassy declined to comment on specific cases Craner was likely to bring up during the bilateral talks.
But U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Clark Randt told business people last month that he had consistently raised a slew of unresolved rights cases involving prisoners of conscience and people held in defiance of China's own laws.
Randt mentioned Xu Wenli, jailed for 13 years in 1998 for organizing an opposition political party, and Rebiya Kadeer, a leading Uighur businesswoman imprisoned for eight years for mailing newspaper clippings to her U.S.-based husband.
U.S. officials have also expressed concern about Yang Jianli, a dissident detained in April after entering China on a friend's passport and trying to leave on fake identification papers.
Randt said he hoped further dialogue with China on specific cases would lead to concrete results, as in the case of Tibetan nun Ngawang Sangdrol, who was freed ahead of an October summit between Chinese President Jiang Zemin and U.S. counterpart George W. Bush.