MCLC: US decision on Wang Lijun's fate

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: US decision on Wang Lijun's fate
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (4/17/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/world/asia/details-emerge-on-us-decisions
-in-china-scandal.html

Frenzied Hours for U.S. on Fate of a China Insider
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON ‹ On the evening of Feb. 6, a vice mayor of a major Chinese
city who had a reputation as a crime fighter turned up at the American
Consulate in Chengdu in an agitated state, telling a tale of corruption
and murder that has ensnared the Obama administration in a scandal it
wants nothing to do with.

The official, Wang Lijun, sought asylum, fearing for his life even as
Chinese security forces quickly surrounded the building and asked the
American diplomats inside to turn him over.

Instead, after a frantic debate that reached the White House, Mr. Wang
stayed until he could arrange for an official from a Beijing ministry to
come 36 hours later and escort him past the local security cordon. The
authorities from Beijing took him into custody, and he is now under
investigation for divulging internal Chinese affairs to the Americans. If
charged with and convicted of treason, he could face a death sentence.

The information Mr. Wang possessed involved Bo Xilai, who was the
Communist Party chief in Chongqing until last month and Mr. Wang¹s onetime
patron before a falling-out led Mr. Wang to seek refuge in the consulate,
according to administration officials, Congressional aides, diplomats and
others briefed on what had happened.

According to the officials¹ version, the American diplomats who oversaw
his brief, bizarre stay pre-empted any formal application for asylum
because of the difficulties of spiriting him out of the country and
questions about his eligibility. Instead, they said, the State Department
shielded him from almost certain arrest by police officers loyal to Mr. Bo
and ensured he could make his accusations in Beijing.

Those charges brought down Mr. Bo and his wife, Gu Kailai, who is now
under investigation in the murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood,
and involved the United States and Britain in the biggest scandal facing
China¹s leadership in a generation.

³He was not tossed out,² a senior administration official said, referring
to Mr. Wang.

Some Republicans in Congress question, however, whether the Obama
administration mishandled Mr. Wang¹s case and left him to the mercy of the
Chinese authorities when he had sought to pass along explosive information
that affected a power struggle at the top of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Wang¹s arrival at the consulate could not have come at a more
sensitive moment for the administration: just a week before China¹s likely
future leader, Xi Jinping, was scheduled to visit Washington at the
invitation of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Granting asylum to Mr.
Wang could have soured or scuttled Mr. Xi¹s trip.

Even now, the episode ‹ which one Congressional official described as ³a
ŒBourne Supremacy¹ plot² ‹ risks straining relations as the White House
hopes to manage China¹s rise and enlist its support on issues like the
nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran and the government crackdown in
Syria.

As a result, the American role has been shrouded in silence. Officials at
the embassy in Beijing, the State Department and the White House have
declined to comment publicly on Mr. Wang¹s contacts with American
diplomats or the implications of his whistle-blowing on China¹s suddenly
turbulent internal politics.

³It would be incredibly foolish for the U.S. to play any public cards in
this very messy Chinese family feud,² said Orville Schell, the director of
the Center on U.S.-China Relations
<http://asiasociety.org/policy/center-us-china-relations> at the Asia
Society. ³The U.S. and China urgently need to get along, and if there is
one thing the Chinese are neuralgic about, it is when their private
affairs get aired before foreigners in an embarrassing way.²

The chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Representative
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, wrote to Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton in February demanding the release of all cables,
e-mails and memos related to the case. The circumstances, she wrote,
raised question about ³what steps were taken to secure U.S. national
interests and Mr. Wang¹s personal safety.² The State Department has not
yet complied.

According to the State Department, the United States cannot simply grant
asylum to anyone who walks into a diplomatic compound, given the legal and
logistical complications of spiriting someone out of a sovereign nation.
Asylum seekers ‹ who typically face persecution for political or religious
beliefs ‹ usually apply outside their own nation, whether in the United
States or a third country.

There are exceptions, but they are rare.

In June 1989, the Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi walked into the American
Embassy in Beijing a day after security forces attacked protesters in
Tiananmen Square. The embassy at first resisted, but the administration of
President George Bush offered him sanctuary, provoking a standoff that
lasted a year until the Chinese allowed him to leave, ostensibly for
medical treatment. (Mr. Fang died in Arizona on April 6; he was 76.)

This case, however, differs significantly. Mr. Wang, a vice mayor in
Chongqing who had overseen the police before a falling-out with Mr. Bo, is
no political dissident. During his years as one of Mr. Bo¹s top aides, he
had a reputation in Chongqing for ruthless and arbitrary enforcement of
the law.

That made a decision on asylum all but impossible, the diplomats felt,
according to one official briefed on the case, who like others would speak
only on condition of anonymity. He and others said the State Department,
after informing senior White House officials about Mr. Wang, had avoided
that sticky question from that start by facilitating Mr. Wang¹s transfer
to Beijing. The decision to proceed that way was made by the State
Department, those who were briefed said, not the White House officials,
whom they declined to identify.

³Granting asylum to a major human-rights icon in China, during the midst
of the Tiananmen Square uprising, is a special case,² said Jeffrey A.
Bader, a former China policy adviser to President Obama. ³It should not be
seen as a precedent, especially in the case of a former provincial police
commissioner, with hundreds of Chinese security forces assembled outside
the consulate.²

The consulate in Chengdu, with roughly 30 American officials, oversees
visas and commercial affairs for southwestern China. The consul general,
Peter Haymond, was not in Chengdu at the time, officials said, leaving Mr.
Wang¹s case to subordinates. They alerted the embassy in Beijing, which
flagged Washington.

Mr. Wang arrived with documents detailing accusations against Mr. Bo and
Ms. Gu, but he did not hand them over, the American officials said. The
contents are not known, though one official described them as technical
descriptions of police investigations in Chongqing. Mr. Wang was allowed
to make phone calls to officials in Beijing he hoped would help him. In
the meantime, he regaled startled diplomats with a rambling but ultimately
revealing discourse on the murky intersection of power, politics and
corruption in China.

³Not everything was coherent, as you would expect,² a Congressional
official said, ³but he did provide some good insights.² As Kenneth G.
Lieberthal, a former China adviser in the Clinton administration, put it:
³Two things were clear the moment he walked in: this was a very big deal,
and this was a very unsavory character. This is not the Dalai Lama who
walked in the door.²

Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting from Beijing.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 17, 2012

A previous version of this article stated that Gu Kailai was charged with
the murder of Neil Heywood. Ms. Gu is under investigation for the murder,
and has not yet been charged.