From: "(Xiaowen Li)" <lix@CRSA.BU.EDU>
Subject:      Forward an article
Reply-To: "(Xiaowen Li)" <lix@CRSA.BU.EDU>
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 00:35:32 GMT
Comments: To: CHINA-NT@uga.cc.uga.edu

I believe I have made my points clear already: Shen Tong should be released,
and no one related to his trip should be punished or investigated. So I
have no more to say. A friend asked me to forward his article to China-net.
For some reasons, he wishes to be anonymous. He takes full responsibility
to his article, this is merely a forwarding.

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The Shen Tong Case:  Some Disturbing Reports

During the past few weeks one hesitated to discuss the Shen
Tong case for obvious reasons.  Now that the battle in the
U.S. congress is finally over and total victory proclaimed
we should pay more attention to Mr. Shen's case.   Let's
look at reports of his activities in the Mainland immediately
prior to his arrest.  Some are very disturbing indeed.

He visited some critics of the CCP in both the rural and urban areas
in the Chinese Mainland.  He then committed their opinions to a highly
contentious essay intended for the New York Times.  He reportedly
arranged for its publication in the event of his arrest.  He is also
said to have recorded the interviews with a video camera.  Moreover,
it has been reported that Mr. Shen did some recruiting for his own
organization.  Names and other background details were transcribed to
computer disks.  Both his videotapes and disks are now in the hands
of the CCP, according to news reports.  It would appear that people
who had trusted him may now have reasons for regrets.

It is a matter of record that, unlike Wang Dan, Wu'er Kaixi, and
some others,  Mr. Shen was never on the CCP's wanted list.  That is
why he was able to leave Beijing for Boston with such amazing ease.
That may well be the reason why he was able to return to the Mainland
without the slightest let or hindrance.  That may also be the reason
why some local critics of the CCP were freely talking to him.  Most
of us who are neither famous nor targeted by the CCP regime would
find plenty of such critics in the Mainland who are willing to have
a frank exchange of opinions.  If you assure them you are an Overseas
Chinese, they may well be nonchalant and accommodating enough to allow
you to put the conversations on tape.  For they have good reasons to
believe that whatever they may tell you is common knowledge and
therefore inconsequential.  They may even give you their names, in
the none-too-unreasonable belief that the CCP or at least those who
are supposed to enforce its policies really care little about casual
encounters between a local citizen and an Overseas Chinese visitor.

Imagine their chagrin and consternation if you, the Overseas
Chinese visitor, should later call a press conference to
announce the opening of a Beijing chapter of a multinational
pressure group whose aim it is to monitor the CCP's conformance,
or the lack thereof, with Western norms of human rights.  Imagine
their sense of entrapment and betrayal if they were to learn
that tapes of their conversations with you have been seized by
the security police in an all-too-predictable response to your
scheduled press conference, widely publicized and to be guided
by an American advisor and witnessed by a couple of French T.V.
reporters who would transmit its proceedings to an admiring
audience in Europe and America.

Casual or confidential conversations they have with you, a supposedly
innocuous and obscure Overseas Chinese visitor, would now become
valuable evidence in a worldwide campaign to undermine the CCP regime
and perhaps, more ambitiously, to "break up China."  Worse still, you
the unheralded Overseas Chinese would turn out to be none other
than the Mr. Shen whose "I CALL UPON ...." proclamation as printed by
the New York Times surpasses even General Charles de Gaulle's June 18,
1940 BBC broadcast in sheer grandiloquence.  In fact, Mr. Shen used
"I CALL UPON ...." four times, whereas the French leader used the
more modest words "J'INVITE" and he did so only twice.  One might
be forgiven for regarding Mr. Shen as a future Chinese Head of State.

Very stirring and very impressive.  But what about the folks Mr. Shen
visited in the Mainland?  To say the very least, it would have been
more cricket if Mr. Shen had told them, up front, who he is and explained
to them the kind of respect and access he commands in the U.S. congress.
It would then have been up to the interviewees to decide if they should
freely express their candid but private opinions to the visitor.

Once the press conference had been called, the folks Mr. Shen
interviewed became pawns in the jostling between the CCP, whose
regime is undeniably repressive and unpopular, and a group of
American congressmen, whose sleaziness is well-documented.  Despite
his pretensions, Mr. Shen, whose safety and eventual return to his
career in the U.S. should never be in doubt, will be transmuted
from a celebrity to a cause celebre.   He will, alas, serve a higher
cause which has very little to do with human rights in China and
whose possible success may make Chinese democracy fighters such as
Mr. Shen stateless patriots in search of a country.
Newsgroups: talk.politics.china