Just one day after two U.S.-based scholars were convicted on trumped-up espionage charges in trials that bore no resemblance to justice, the Chinese government has announced that Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang will be deported back to this country on medical paroles. This not unexpected turnaround comes just two days before Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives in China to smooth relations severely strained by last winter’s surveillance plane incident.

This turnaround is but one more manifestation of an increasingly tiresome gambit employed by Beijing – behave outrageously, make demands, try to intimidate the United States into accepting a political relationship on Beijing’s terms. Whether the outrage of the moment is the unrelenting campaign against religious believers or the escalating repression of intellectuals and dissidents, China’s position is that how it treats people within its own borders has no bearing upon it relations with the rest of the world.

It is a position Mr. Powell must make clear the United States rejects. He has said the purpose of his visit is to “get on to the real issues of trade and economics,” but that merely enables China’s oppression. The real issues are whether China will respect human rights and will enact the necessary reforms; trade and economics come after.

It is a brief and terse message Mr. Powell should deliver and the time will never be better. While China was still basking in the glow of its new and vague “friendship pact” with Russia, President Bush was reaching much more specific agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on negotiations to amend the 1972 ABM Treaty that stands in the way of the United States’ missile defense program. If the choice is between improving relations with the U.S. or with China, Russia has offered a strong hint of which way it leans.

Mr. Powell’s visit also comes at a time when the maneuvering to see who will succeed the aged Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin is intensifying. So far, the competition has been over which contenders can be the most hard-line and undemocratic. A blunt statement of America’s position by the secretary of state could help tilt the competition the other way; it certainly could not hurt.

The United States’ policy of “trade first, human rights will follow,” has a rational basis – the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago was caused, in broad terms, by that county’s increasing exposure to the free market and democratic ethics of the West; totalitarianism simply was unable to withstand the pressure. But the Soviet Union had long had extensive contact with the democracies of Western Europe. China is far more isolated and insular; it repeatedly has shown that the trade-human rights construct is a powerful ploy that even Congress’ annual debate on most-favored-nation status could not dent. It is time for the United States to expose it as a fraud, and standing on principle would be a good place to start.