Our "Friend" Red China

Yah. Remember that nations having MFN/PNTR status must respect human rights. Evidently the State and Commerce Departments don't read the newspapers.

THE plight of seven detained bishops of the underground Roman Catholic Church in China, at least one of whom is gravely ill, has prompted secret negotiations between the Vatican and the Chinese.

The men, most of them frail and elderly, are political hostages in a dispute half a century old over the Pope’s right to appoint bishops in China and the Vatican’s recognition of Taiwan. The talks were disclosed by Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, who has watched with alarm as recent moves to reconcile the Vatican with China have turned into a strident confrontation.

The two bishops, Su Zhimin and An Shuxin, were on a list of seven detained bishops presented in testimony to the US Congress by the Cardinal Kung Foundation, an exile group that campaigns for religious freedom in China.

Su’s crime, in the view of the Chinese authorities, seems to be that he met Christopher Smith, a visiting US congressman, in 1994. “All of the approximately 40 underground bishops in China are either arrested and now in jail, or under house arrest, or in hiding, or on the run, or simply have disappeared,” said Joseph Kung, a foundation spokesman.

Liu warned Chinese leaders that allowing the Pope to appoint bishops would lead to the church becoming the vanguard of anti-communist dissent as it did in Poland.

For the staunch believers of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, the diplomatic debacle has exposed the fallacy of believing that the Communist party could ever compromise on an issue touching on its absolute power.

There are some positive signs: it appears that the resistance to Rome is largely within the middle-level of the bureaucracy, rather than at the top.

Another testament to the idiocy of Harry Truman and the perfidy of Owen Lattimore...