AS CHINA celebrated the start of the Year of the Ox, families of imprisoned dissidents were hoping, though without much confidence, that a marked increase in the level of US-Chinese contacts in 1997 would bring about an easing of China's hard-line policy against internal political dissent.
The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeline Albright, and the US Vice-President, Mr Al Gore, will visit Beijing separately in the next eight weeks, and a summit between President Clinton and the Chinese President, Mr Jiang Zemin, is expected before the end of the year.
However, any releases of imprisoned political activists are expected to be on medical grounds, diplomatic sources say, and the authorities are unlikely to set free outspoken dissidents such as Mr Wang Dan, Mr Wei Jingsheng or Mr Liu Xiaobo.
The US State Department, in its report on human rights in China last week, said that the small group of active dissidents had been effectively silenced in the past year by being imprisoned or exiled.
"With the nation about to celebrate reunification with Hong Kong, and the leadership fixated on stability in the run-up to the 15th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in the autumn, there is no possibility that dissidents will be allowed to speak out this year," one western diplomat said.
Ms. Albright, who has said she will raise human rights with the Chinese government, will visit Beijing on February 24th. Mr Gore, under pressure from US human rights groups to raise individual cases, arrives in the Chinese capital four weeks later. These visits are forerunners of two fully-fledged summits between President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin in 1997-98.
The American country music singer, Bonnie Raitt, the rock star Sheryl Crow and 10 other musicians have sent a letter to the US Vice-President asking him not to visit China unless authorities release a Tibetan music scholar Ngawang Choephel, who has been sentenced to 18 years' jail on spying charges. They call the imprisonment of the 30-year-old performer, who taught in the US "a glaring example of the Chinese government's persecution of Tibetan culture
Some faint hopes of an easing of the tough line on dissidents have also been raised by the plans of the National People's Congress (China's national assembly) to substitute the words "threatening state security" for "counter-revolutionary crime" in Chinese law when it meets in Beijing along with the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) later this month. This has been approved by the leadership of the Communist Party.
The change is likely to be cited by China in its argument that the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva should not proceed with a resolution critical of its human rights situation.
As China celebrated the Lunar New Year yesterday, a labour activist, Mr Liu Nianchun, received the first holiday visit from his wife in two years, according to agency reports. Mr Liu's wife, Ms Chu Hailan, was given verbal permission by police to visit her husband in the Shuanghe "re-education through labour" camp in Heilongjiang after she had threatened to hold a protest in Beijing.
Mr Wang Dan's family is trying to get permission to visit him in Liaoning, the reports said, quoting his father, Mr Wang Xianzeng, who said: "We have asked special permission for all of us, my wife, my daughter, my grandson and myself, to go and see him on Monday." A regular monthly visit on January 20th was cancelled without explanation.
One activist was quoted as saying that if there were any releases they would probably be prisoners like Mr Bao Ge in Shanghai who have almost served their sentences.