Leading Article: China has a lot to do

IN THE days preceding Warren Christopher's visit to Peking on Friday, the Chinese authorities might be expected to be releasing dissidents rather than rounding them up. The US Secretary of State's conclusions on human rights in China are likely to influence President Clinton's decision in June on the renewal, or otherwise, of China's Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trading status.

The Chinese government itself appears to be divided over the issue. Its less illiberal elements believe that concessions should be made to US pressure. The hardliners are evidently winning, their hand doubtless strengthened by the start of the annual National People's Congress on Thursday: around 14 of the country's best- known dissidents have been detained during the past week.

In an unusually strong statement yesterday, Mr Christopher expressed his 'strong distaste' for the harassment, warning that it would have a negative effect on his visit. The Chinese responded by saying American criticisms were 'irresponsible' and an interference in purely internal affairs.

For China especially, the stakes are high. The US takes one-third of all China's exports, which last year were in surplus vis-a-vis imports from the US to the tune of dollars 30bn. Removal of MFN status and the much higher tariffs that would result could devastate this trade, with the loss of many thousands of jobs in both countries. Last May, President Clinton made renewal conditional on progress on five human rights fronts. Among these were freer emigration, compliance with a 1992 agreement to end prison labour, the release of political prisoners (thought to number more than 10,000), permission for international broadcasting to China, and protection for Tibet's cultural heritage.

It is a measure of the nervousness of China's Communist regime that it has felt able to do so little in this direction. As the country's economy expands, resentment between the haves and the have-nots is growing, fuelled by ever-spreading corruption and urban inflation. Tension is growing, too, between prosperous coastal and impoverished central regions - and between local and central government. Nothing frightens the old men in Peking more than the threat of social unrest, of the sort implicit in a current petition for more workers' rights likely to have enjoyed wide dissident support.

The leadership has, it is true, made some grudging concessions in allowing limited visits to, and inspections of, prisons and (notionally at least) by dishing out shorter sentences. The Americans are right to insist on much more. Human rights pressure proved very effective in undermining the moral legitimacy of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. If the Chinese want the benefits of international free trade, they must do more to fulfil the ideals of equality, reciprocity and democratic liberalism on which it is based. They cannot expect to have full access to Western markets if they conduct their internal affairs in a manner abhorrent to civilised international opinion.