Yu Zhijian, a schoolteacher, Yu Dongyue, a journalist, and Lu Decheng, a bus company employee, are members of China`s pro-democracy movement who authorities say defaced a giant portrait of the late Mao Tse-tung that loomed over Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
According to Asia Watch . . . the three have been tortured, sentenced to prison terms ranging from 16 years to life, and kept for the last 30 months in cells the size of closets . . . .
This human agony is just a drop in the sea of human rights abuses of the current Chinese government. President George Bush, however . . . wishes to extend China`s favorable trade status. Mr. Bush, his spokesman said, believes that ”it is wrong to isolate China if we hope to influence China.”
In the years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, Mr. Bush`s
”constructive policy of engagement,” as the White House calls it, hasn`t impressed China`s communist rulers. In addition to internal oppression, they have adopted an openly defiant, even provocative, posture in other areas. . . .
Congress is not very likely to override the president on this issue;
such attempts failed in previous years. But President Bush`s victories in this area are hollow. His stand on China punches a big hole in the president`s claim that he is a foreign policy ace-one of the last claims on which his aspirations for a second term seem to rest these days.
