By John F. Harris and Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 26, 1998; Page A01

XIAN, China, June 26 (Friday)—President Clinton opened his visit to China Thursday by challenging critics of his bid for warmer relations with the world's most populous nation, declaring that the United States and China "have a special responsibility to the future of the world."

"There may be those here and back in America who wonder whether closer ties and deeper friendship between America and China are good," Clinton said. "Clearly, the answer is yes."

An hour after Air Force One touched down Thursday night on the first stop of Clinton's nine-day visit to China, the president was greeted here with a drum-banging, banner-waving arrival ceremony designed to evoke the glory of the ancient Chinese empire. Apparently unknown to Clinton at the time, his Chinese hosts had also whisked several prominent political dissidents out of public view.

The president told several hundred people who made it past tight security for the invitation-only ceremony that those who question his policy of dialogue with China's Communist leadership do not appreciate the benefits to be gained. Making the first visit by a U.S. president to China since the 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Clinton also used the occasion to touch on China's human rights record.

"Respect for the worth, the dignity, the potential and the freedom of every citizen is a vital source of America's strength and success," he said. "In this global information age . . . a commitment to providing all human beings the opportunity to develop their full potential is vital to the strength and success of the new China as well."

In the hours before the president's arrival, however, Chinese authorities gave new ammunition to critics of the Beijing government and Washington's policy of "constructive engagement" by detaining several suspected political dissidents at stops along Clinton's itinerary.

Here in the Xian area of central China, three dissidents were seized over the past two days, with their conditions and whereabouts unknown, according to the Hong-Kong based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. In the southern city of Guilin, where Clinton will travel next week, a onetime member of the disbanded dissident group Human Rights Voice was similarly detained, according to the Hong Kong center, which also noted tightened security checks on government critics in Beijing and Shanghai.

Later today, while touring a village near Xian, Clinton addressed the detentions in brief remarks to reporters. Calling the reports "disturbing," he said U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Jim Sasser would take up the matter with Chinese authorities this afternoon. "If true, they [the detentions] represent not China at its best and not China looking forward but looking backward," Clinton said.

Even so, he said, the detentions were not sufficient reason to cease cooperation with the Chinese. "It makes it all the more important that we continue to work with the Chinese and to engage them," he said. A White House aide traveling with the president said Clinton would address the issue of repression of political dissent more broadly at his meeting in Beijing Saturday with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Detentions and heightened surveillance of dissidents by the Chinese government are fairly routine before major official ceremonies or foreign visits here, human rights experts say. Usually the detainees are released within a few days.

But U.S. officials were cringing in private. They acknowledged that the detentions, and their impolitic timing, undercut the message that Clinton is trying to promote here and at home: that quiet talks and expanded commercial and political ties can coax China into gradually improving its human rights record more effectively than a policy of confrontation and isolation.

It was the second prominent sign in recent days that China is not willing to change its customary practices out of deference to Clinton. On Tuesday, the day before Clinton left Washington, Beijing denied visas to three journalists with Radio Free Asia, which is funded by the U.S. government.

And on Thursday, Yang Hai, a student leader of the 1989 democracy demonstrations, was detained while returning from work to his Xian home. He had been scheduled to give an interview that day to ABC News, according to his wife, Wang Jing. Yang spent a year in jail for his 1989 activities; in recent weeks, he had signed a number of open letters calling for democratic reforms and an improvement in human rights conditions here.

"They are afraid [Yang] would call for democratization," Wang said in an interview, adding that she knows of two other dissidents who were evicted from the city before Clinton's visit and at least one elderly intellectual who was kept confined to his house with his phone cut off. "Clinton told the world that China's human rights situation is improving, but this shows it hasn't been improving," she said. "They won't even let people speak."

A U.S. official speculated that the arrests represent the Chinese government's traditional zeal for order rather than any desire to embarrass Clinton. As it happened, that very insistence on control chilled an outwardly ebullient reception for Clinton. On the route into Xian from the airport, where Clinton landed after 19 hours of travel that left his voice weak and hoarse, tens of thousands of people jammed the roadsides to wave at the motorcade. But only a select group of invitees actually made it past the tight security cordon set up for the ceremony.

Tian Lei, an economic-law student at the Northwestern Politics and Law Institute, was standing outside. "It's his first trip to China, and his first stop is in Xian, so I feel proud," said Tian, who lamented, "They would not let us through."

Those who got in witnessed a flamboyant pageant, filled with color and raucous sound. Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were escorted by the Xian mayor down a red carpet several hundred yards long. They stopped at a stage just before the entrance to the South City Gate of the famous city wall -- 55-feet thick and eight miles in perimeter -- that encloses the heart of Xian in a giant rectangle.

Clinton started the trip in Xian so he could rest before the Beijing summit, an aide said. The stop also allowed him to avoid having a Tiananmen Square arrival ceremony as the first event of the tour. That will come Saturday, just before his talks with Jiang.

Before flying to Beijing, Clinton toured Xia He village, where he extolled the democratic elections taking root in many Chinese villages. But the American interpreter failed to translate into Chinese Clinton's clincher: "Whenever there's an election and the people decide, everyone wins."