Mr. Clinton in China

President Clinton’s visit to China beginning today is an opportunity to reframe the political lament of the 1950s — “Who lost China?” to a question of who helped save it. To play even a small part of such a huge event, however, the president must raise his vision beyond the economic relationship and look directly into China’s glaring human-rights abuses.

This is not an easy or a simple challenge for the president. One-fourth of the world’s population in the third-largest economy currently is surrounded by free-falling Asian economies that could take years to recover. China’s fixed currency may have dropped if not for Mr. Clinton’s decision to spend $6 billion supporting the yen. The Asian economic miracle now seems about as well-constructed as the Massachusetts Miracle, only its impact could be far more profound for the United States.

Nevertheless, potential economic gains for U.S. corporations are meaningless without improvements in China’s human-rights record. The president’s mistaken agreement in March to withhold U.S. sponsorship of a United Nations resolution critical of China makes the issue for this trip more important. The motion in Geneva, which the United States had sponsored annually since 1990 at least pushed Beijing to remain aware that other world powers formally disapproved of the way China’s people have been treated by their government.

Michael Jendrzejczyk, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Asia Division, recently listed six practical — rather than symbolic — steps the president could take to advance human rights in China. First, he said, Mr. Clinton could seek agreement to release or review the sentences of some 2,000 persons imprisoned on vague charges of “counter-revolutionary activities.” He could persuade Beijing to grant unrestricted access to Tibet and Xinjiang by foreign journalists and human-rights monitors and persuade Chinese officials to review current regulations requiring all religious bodies to register with the authorities.

He could press Beijing to protect the rights of Chinese workers, including those seeking to exercise their rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (which China signed last October); promote the lifting of restrictions on Chinese citizens living abroad who have been forbidden to return to China because of their pro-democracy activities; and seek a commitment to end the system of re-education through labor.

Raising all of these issues during his visit this week would certainly shock and offend his hosts. Finding opportunities to raise some of them and expressing a commitment to discuss the remainder in the future would present China with a strong U.S. leader who understands that true engagement means something more than simply increasing trade.