AFTER SEVERAL members of the Falun Gong movement set themselves on fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square last week, [Editor's note: the suicide has nothing to do with Falun Gong. See http://clearwisdom.net/eng/2001/Jan/23/VSF012301_3.html] the Bush administration reiterated past U.S. condemnations of China's crackdown on the spiritual movement, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded with another blunt warning about "harming Sino-U.S. relations." But there was more than boilerplate to that first exchange of public diplomatic messages: As both sides know, the Bush administration is walking up to a major opening decision about China policy. Secretary of State Colin Powell promised Congress that his "number one item" would be a recommendation to Mr. Bush on whether the United States should support a resolution at this year's meeting of the United Nations Human Rights commission citing China's continuing violations of religious and political freedoms. Either way, President Bush's decision will send a message of considerable symbolic importance. [...]

As the State Department reaction suggested, there remains considerable cause for condemnation of China's record. During the past year President Jiang Zemin's government, concerned about the potential for unrest at a time of painful economic restructuring, has moved aggressively to stamp out any hint of independent political activity, jailing dozens of activists and intellectuals. It has targeted Muslim and Christian believers, closing and in some cases demolishing scores of independent churches in the weeks before Christmas. And it has waged a campaign of escalating brutality against Falun Gong, arresting hundreds of leaders of the spiritual movement and sending thousands of their followers to labor camps. Human rights monitors say more than 100 Falun Gong members have died in police custody over the past 18 months.

For its part, China's official rhetoric last week also telegraphed an important reality: Beijing places great importance on the U.N. rights commission, which holds an annual assembly in Geneva, this year beginning on March 19. In past years Mr. Jiang's government has focused its diplomacy on trying to stop the United States and other Western countries from supporting or even introducing a resolution; as inducements for such inaction it has promised to sign human rights treaties, released well-known dissidents and offered bilateral "dialogues" on human rights with the United States and European Union. Of course, China never ratified, much less implemented, the two international treaties it agreed to sign before previous Geneva meetings, and the bilateral dialogues have proved fruitless, as even the European Union's ministers recently acknowledged.

This year, with China's bid to host the 2008 Olympic games coming up for a vote in July, its diplomatic press is harder than ever. Officials recently let it be known that the parliament might now ratify one of those treaties, though of course with amendments; and Mr. Jiang told former president Clinton at their last meeting in November that he was prepared to renew U.S.-China meetings on human rights -- provided, of course, that the United States muffles itself in Geneva.

It should not. On the contrary, the Bush administration should use Geneva to make clear that it will not put human rights issues on the back burner of the U.S.-China relationship. That is what the Clinton administration largely did, accepting Beijing's empty offers and either forgoing a Geneva resolution (as in 1998), or pursuing one belatedly and half-heartedly (1999), or making a show of supporting one only as a way of defusing congressional opposition to another major trade agreement (2000). Of course, the Bush administration needs to engage China seriously on trade and a range of other issues, and cooperate with Beijing as interests coincide. But it should establish from the beginning of its term that cooperation on economic or security issues will not preclude the United States from supporting those who seek greater religious or political freedom in China, or speaking up on their behalf.