China & U.S. Clash Over Rights

China suspended dialogue on human rights with the United States on Tuesday, one day after Washington said it would seek to criticize the mainland's rights record at a U.N. conference.

The dispute over human rights "has already seriously damaged the foundation of the dialogue and exchange on human rights between the two countries," Assistant Foreign Minister Shen Guofang was quoted as saying on the Foreign Ministry's Web site. "China has to immediately suspend the dialogue and exchanges."

According to the official Xinhua News Agency, Shen summoned Ambassador Clark T. Randt "to make a solemn representation on United States' anti-China motion."

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing could not immediately confirm the report.

Washington has announced it would seek a resolution criticizing China's human rights record at the U.N. Human Rights Conference under way in Geneva

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday that the United States has been disappointed by Beijing's failure to keep promises made during a U.S.-China human rights dialogue in 2002.

He said China has also failed to follow through on its stated intention to expand cooperation on human rights in 2003.

"We are concerned about backsliding on key human rights issues that has occurred in a variety of areas since that time," Boucher said.

The United States decided not to seek a resolution criticizing China at last year's U.N. conference because it said Beijing had made limited but significant progress on the issue.

The House of Representatives, in a near unanimous vote earlier this month, pressed the government to take up the resolution.

Such a resolution has been introduced almost every year since the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square. Because of effective Chinese diplomacy, no such resolution has ever been approved there.

According to the most recent State Department human rights report, covering 2003 and released in February, China's record remained poor, and the government continued to commit numerous and serious abuses."

"Citizens did not have the right peacefully to change their government, and many who openly expressed dissenting political views were harassed, detained, or imprisoned," the report read. "Authorities were quick to suppress religious, political, and social groups that they perceived as threatening to government authority or national stability."

"Abuses included instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process," it continued.

"However, significant legal reforms continued during the year," the report said, citing the elimination of a type of imprisonment for migrants and restrictions on unlawful detention.

This year's conference began March 15 and runs until April 23.

China also said Tuesday that it has urged the United States to underscore its support for the one-China policy and "do more" to help maintain peace between the mainland and Taiwan.

Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing made the appeal in a telephone call with Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday, the day of Taiwan's tumultuous presidential election.

The United States toes a delicate line on Taiwan, opposing independence while supplying the island with weapons that would be used to repel a Chinese invasion.

Relations between the United States and China have generally warmed over the course of the Bush administration.

A collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese jet raised tensions in 2001, but Beijing and Washington have found common ground in efforts to thwart terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Washington added a Muslim separatist group based in western China to its list of foreign terrorist organizations, and China has worked to get North Korea to the negotiating table over its nuclear program.

Rifts in the relationship now mainly concern trade. The U.S. has filed a World Trade Organization complaint over against China's taxes on imported computer chips, and the Bush administration has been pressing for China to let its currency float against the dollar to improve U.S. exports.