Pataki’s China Trip Attracts Criticism On Rights Issues

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The New York Sun

As part of his effort to line up support for a possible presidential bid in 2008, Governor Pataki later this week will head to a place rarely seen as an ideal venue to stump for votes: the People’s Republic of China.


Political analysts portrayed Mr. Pataki’s decision to lead a trade mission to Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing as a savvy part of the governor’s efforts to burnish his international credentials. However, human rights activists and Taiwanese-Americans yesterday faulted Mr. Pataki for his apparent intention to keep human rights issues off his overseas agenda.


“The road to Pennsylvania Avenue leads through both Des Moines, Iowa, and Peking, China,” a political science professor at Baruch College, Douglas Muzzio, said.


He said Mr. Pataki “really needs … the foreign policy/international relations element to his resume, because it’s really lacking. I think that you’re going to see the governor on a number of these trips. The fact that it’s China is quite smart.”


While the promise of increased sales to the rapidly expanding Chinese market is enticing to the dozen or so New York business executives who will accompany Mr. Pataki to Asia, issues such as human rights and the outsourcing of American jobs may also loom over the governor’s trip.


“People are constantly having more ties with China. I think that’s normal,” a Taiwanese-American computer engineer from Queens, Bor-Cheng Hsu, said yesterday.


However, Mr. Hsu, 28, said he expected the governor to raise specific concerns about workers’ rights and religious freedom with the Chinese. “As any other politician with a conscience, Governor Pataki should definitely bring up human rights issues, such as slave labor, Falun Gong, and the Tibetans,” Mr. Hsu, who is active in the Taiwanese Association of New York, said.


A spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, which is organizing the trip, said Mr. Pataki views those issues as beyond the scope of the trade oriented trip.


“This is a trade mission. The focus will be on economic issues and jobs. We do not now anticipate the governor raising human rights issues on this trip,” the spokesman, Marc Weinberg, said.


A former businessman who is considered the most successful advocate for the release of Chinese political prisoners, John Kamm, said he was disappointed in Mr. Pataki’s stance. “I think that’s regrettable. It’s very narrow-minded,” Mr. Kamm, who heads the San Francisco based Dui Hua Foundation, said.


Mr. Kamm noted that one of the leading complaints of American companies operating in China is the lack of an impartial legal system. “You can’t really separate the two. Without rule of law, you can’t do business successfully in China,” the prisoner advocate said. “I do not see how you can do a trade mission in China without raising these issues. It’s the elephant in the room.”


Mr. Kamm, who won a so-called genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation for his efforts in China, said he routinely gives American business and political leaders lists of unjustly confined prisoners. The lists are then presented to Chinese officials during official meetings. “Certainly I hope Governor Pataki will bring a list. If he needs one, I’m happy to provide him with one,” Mr. Kamm said.


Another human rights activist, Sharon Hom, urged Mr. Pataki to raise the case of a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, who was sentenced to a 10-year term for disclosing state secrets after an Internet firm, Yahoo, identified him to authorities as the owner of an e-mail account used to forward a propaganda directive to Western reporters. “When Pataki goes, he should say something. It’s outrageous, if he says nothing. It’s not acceptable,” Ms. Hom, the executive director of a nongovernmental organization, Human Rights in China, said.


The governor’s office referred all questions about the trip to Mr. Weinberg. He said the mission will last from September 17 to 23, but details of Mr. Pataki’s meetings with Chinese officials are still being finalized.


The delegation will include representatives from a dozen New York companies, most of which are in the environmental or biotechnology fields.


“New York businesses and their employees are well positioned to significantly benefit from the rapidly increasing demand in China for products and services produced right here in New York,” Mr. Weinberg said.


The chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, Charles Gargano, and three of his staffers are expected to join the governor in China, the spokesman said. He added that Mr. Pataki’s contingent was in flux yesterday because some personnel have been drafted into efforts to assist the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.


The businesses involved are bearing the costs of their executives’ travel, while the government employees’ share will be paid for out of state funds, Mr. Weinberg said.


One of the business participants, Vincent Arbucci, said he is making the trip even though he’s not sure whether China has much appetite yet for the hazardous materials abatement services offered by his firm, Microtech Contracting Corporation of West Babylon. “China’s having fantastic growth. If you miss the boat, you might be locked out,” Mr. Arbucci said. “As they have cars and TV and food on the table, they’re going to start to look at why they get asthma, why they get heart disease. … They’re going to want to clean things up,” he said.


Mr. Pataki will have little time to pack his bags before leaving for China on Saturday. He was in Iowa yesterday for the second time in as many months, wrapping up a two-day swing through the state with lunchtime speech to business leaders in Cedar Rapids.


A New York group upset with Mr. Pataki’s policies on education funding flew in a small group of parents and schoolchildren to protest outside the hotel where he spoke. “Governor Pataki is now in the equivalent of a college entrance exam for a potential presidential candidate, and people in Iowa deserve the right to know his full record,” the director of the Alliance for Quality Education, William Easton, said.


The governor yesterday dismissed a reporter’s question about the demonstration. “New York spends more per student than any state in the nation,” Mr. Pataki said, according to the Associated Press.


Mr. Easton said the group might hold similar protests in Iowa or New Hampshire, but does not plan to follow Mr. Pataki overseas. “China is probably out of our budget,” the education activist said.


One of Mr. Pataki’s possible rivals for the Republican nomination in 2008, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, recently canceled a trip to Israel in the wake of criticism that he was neglecting his duties at home.


A Democratic political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, said he doubted Mr. Pataki’s travels would put him under the same kind of pressure. The consultant noted that Mr. Romney faces re-election next year, while Mr. Pataki does not. “Pataki’s perceived to be on the way out,” Mr. Sheinkopf said. “The electorate he needs won’t be tremendously upset with him taking a trip to China as long as he doesn’t involve himself in matters about exporting jobs.”


The New York Sun

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