China may free dissident ahead of Hu's U.S. visit

Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING (Reuters) - China may release a dissident from prison to coincide with Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the United States next month, analysts said on Friday, a ploy commonly used in the run-up to top-level Sino-U.S. exchanges.

Yang Jianli, a Boston-based democracy campaigner who was arrested in China in 2002 and sentenced to five years for illegal entry and spying for rival Taiwan, tops the list.

Forty U.S. senators, including John Kerry, Edward Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged Hu in a letter in June to free Yang, who has two doctorates from Harvard and Berkeley. He has lived in the United States for more than a decade but opted against assuming U.S. citizenship.

"Every single high visit has been preceded by the release of a prisoner and Yang Jianli has served, I think, over 50 percent of his time," Nicolas Becquelin, Hong Kong-based research director of Human Rights in China, said by telephone.

"He has been very high on the list of the Americans and a lot of congressmen have come to the defense of Yang Jianli or raised his case. So Yang Jianli is a very likely candidate."

Hu visits the United States, Canada and Mexico from September 5-17, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said.

Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman from the restive and predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang in China's northwest, was paroled and exiled to the United States in March days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Beijing.

Jared Genser of Freedom Now, a Washington-based non-government organization which represents political prisoners, has said he hoped Yang would be freed before Hu's U.S. visit.

But Yang's family was not optimistic. "They wouldn't even let us make prison visits," said a relative who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions for speaking to a foreign journalist.

HK REPORTER

Some Hong Kong newspapers have speculated that Ching Cheong, Hong Kong-based reporter for Singapore's Straits Times who has been in Chinese custody since April for spying for Taiwan, would be released or found guilty and expelled before Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visits China.

Lee is likely to visit later this year.

The White House said this week President George W. Bush would host Hu on September 7, a visit that caps months of rising trade friction as well as growing cooperation on stopping North Korea's nuclear arms ambitions.

Hu will also attend the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, which runs from September 13-16, Minister Li said. He did not give specific dates for Hu's stops in the three countries.

Li called for "mutual respect, seeking common ground while reserving differences, strengthening exchanges and cooperation and properly handling differences" with the United States.

The first U.S. visit by Hu, 62, since he became president in 2003 follows a stormy summer in bilateral trade ties as China and America wrangle over energy, textiles, Chinese counterfeiting and China's exchange rate policies.

China revalued its currency by 2.1 percent last month, but lawmakers have said they want more of a revaluation to address a U.S. trade deficit with China that is on track to surpass last year's record $162 billion.

Congress also reacted with outrage when China's state-run CNOOC tried to buy the U.S. oil firm Unocal.

But the two countries have cooperated on geopolitical issues, notably on six-party talks hosted by Beijing to try to defuse a crisis over North Korea's nuclear arms program. Some analysts credit Beijing and Washington for keeping the potential flashpoint of Taiwan quiet for much of this year.

Hu's trip falls short of a full state visit, but a U.S. official said it was wrong to discount the hospitality. Many Chinese expect Hu to make a coveted trip to Bush's Texas ranch.

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Source: "Reuters".