Divided over whether or not to censure China at the UN Convention on Human Rights, the EU has dispatched a team of officials to Beijing to make a last-minute report on progress on human rights in China.
A team of experts from the UN Commission on Human Rights is also in China to review questions of technical assistance in protecting rights. The EU diplomats, from Austria, Germany and Finland, met senior Chinese officials yesterday, the fifth time the two sides have engaged in dialogue.
EU foreign ministers will not decide until the end of March on how to act at the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission, which begins in Geneva on March 22nd, but diplomats in Beijing said the main concern was to avoid a debacle such as the one that occurred in 1997, when EU members split over China.
Last year no censure motion was tabled by any country on the grounds that the situation was changing: China had entered a human rights dialogue with the West; it had invited the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mrs Mary Robinson, to Beijing; and it had promised to sign the UN convention on civil and political rights.
It had also won many critics over to its argument that the majority of citizens were enjoying greater economic and social freedoms than ever before, and that stability was paramount at a time of change.
In some EU countries the view of China is more "nuanced" than before, a diplomat said. However, the merit of dialogue is being challenged following the imprisonment last autumn of several pro-democracy activists in what Amnesty International called "one of the most disturbing crackdowns seen in China in the past decade". Prompted by a scathing US State Department report on China's record, the US Senate voted 99-0 last month to condemn Beijing in Geneva. The motion is non-binding, but the anti-China mood in Washington may force the US administration's hand. This could put the EU in a quandary when the six-week session of the UN Human Rights Commission begins. European capitals are moving towards a consensus that the dialogue deserves more time, but a US or third country motion could split the EU again.
A diplomat close to the EU delegation said: "The dilemma can be put this way: after a year of dialogue, it seems little has been achieved. But if we censure China we achieve nothing and seriously jeopardise trade and diplomatic ties with the world's largest potential market, not to mention the whole international climate."
Uppermost in diplomats' minds is the experience of Denmark in 1977. Then, the seven-year consensus on condemning China at Geneva was wrecked when France suddenly pulled out, followed by Germany, Italy, Greece, and Spain. Denmark went it alone, backed by other EU countries, including Ireland and the UK, and was "punished" by the loss of some big contacts in China.
A Beijing Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Sun Yuxi, called on Europe yesterday to value the good momentum in dialogue and not to "slip back into the old rut of confrontation".
The Prime Minister, Mr Zhu Rongji, defended China's record on Monday, saying parliament had passed many laws to strengthen the protection of basic human rights. He also admitted that China's record was not perfect and he himself was impatient for change.
At their meeting yesterday, the EU officials are believed to have raised the trials of dissidents since October 1998, restrictions on trade unions, NGOs and other social groups, the widespread use of the death penalty, arbitrary administrative detentions and co-operation with UN mechanisms.
Four human rights experts from Geneva are visiting Xinjiang, Shanghai and Beijing from March 8th to 22nd, according to Mr Jose Luis Diaz, spokesman for Mrs Robinson. Amnesty International said it had become progressively disenchanted with the process of dialogue.
"A willingness on the part of Chinese officials to speak on a limited range of human rights issues, behind closed doors, to a carefully vetted foreign audience cannot be deemed progress when outside Chinese citizens who discuss similar issues, who attempt to provide UN mechanisms and foreign observers with information on human rights violations, or who attempt to organise around their concerns are increasingly being harassed and imprisoned," it said.