Chinese dissident Xu Wenli in a 1996 file photo. (Associated Press)

By Michael Laris
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 3, 1998; Page A36

China's Foreign Ministry said today that detained democracy campaigner Xu Wenli is suspected of having "harmed national security," a serious charge indicating that the ruling Communist Party may be planning to prosecute Xu as a warning to other would-be leaders of the embattled opposition China Democratic Party.

Reacting to sharp criticism from the State Department, which Tuesday called Xu's arrest "a serious step in the wrong direction," the Foreign Ministry also warned that "other nations" should not interfere in China's internal affairs.

The willingness of Chinese authorities to risk a new round of acrimony with Washington over China's human rights record -- following a year of successful efforts to warm relations -- shows how sensitive Communist Party leaders are about challenges to their authority at home and how nettlesome the nascent party had become.

In an expression of defiance, 191 democracy campaigners in cities throughout China blasted the government earlier today for arresting Xu and other key organizers of the China Democratic Party and vowed to continue their activism. Others began a sympathy hunger strike.

Police today released two of the five activists arrested on Monday, but Xu and Qin Yongmin, two of China's most prominent dissidents, remained jailed. Party campaigners from three other Chinese provinces also remained in detention, including Wang Youcai, the Zhejiang-based dissident who started the campaign to formally register the new party on June 25, the day President Clinton arrived in China for a state visit. The Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said nine dissidents remain in detention in connection with the party.

While China has seen a period of relative intellectual tolerance over the last nine months, including open debate on political reform, the Communist Party has never tolerated direct challenges to its authority. When Li Peng, the Communist Party's second-ranking leader, made stern comments ruling out opposition parties in an interview with a German newspaper that were released in China Tuesday, he was sounding a warning on the limits of dissent.

But even as Li's statements -- which equated liberal democracy with the turmoil of China's Cultural Revolution and defended his role in the 1989 army crackdown on students in Tiananmen Square -- were placed on the front pages of China's official newspapers today, China announced an ambitious plan to restructure its judicial system next year.

Xiao Yang, president of China's Supreme People's Court, said today that many more trials will be open to the public in 1999, and that courts will revive a little-used "people's jury system."

"Judicial reform is part of an ongoing political restructuring in China," Xiao said, according to the official New China News Agency. The announcement shows that more-liberal factions in the Communist Party also remain busy, and that reform continues within the system.

But those reforms likely will not help people like Qin Yongmin, whose family was told today to bring clothes and blankets to the jail -- an indication that he will not be released quickly, as was the case in many earlier recent detentions. Qin was arrested on charges of "plotting to overthrow state power," one of China's most serious crimes.

Wang Zechen, an activist in Liaoning province in China's industrial northeast, said the arrests of party organizers Monday have not chilled his pro-democracy activities. "I've been jailed twice. I don't have that kind of dread in my heart anymore," he said. Wang organized the petition calling for the release of Xu, Qin, Wang and other activists, which was signed by 191 dissidents in 22 provinces and cities.

"By these acts, China's government and relevant authorities have brazenly violated international treaties and universal human rights principles," read the open letter. "On the one hand, they are deceiving and cheating international public opinion while on the other hand they are suppressing and persecuting domestic political dissidents."

To invoke some of the stark symbolism of the hunger strikes during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, Zhai Weimin and 17 other dissidents have also started 24-hour fasts, one after the other, to protest the recent arrests.

Zhai, who was ranked sixth on China's list of "most wanted" student organizers after the army crackdown in 1989, said he is neither surprised nor discouraged by the government's treatment of party campaigners. He tried to register the China Democratic Party in Henan province earlier this year, part of a nationwide effort.