CAUGHT IN THE CROSS FIRE

By Kevin Fedarko

AS HE WAS LEAVING ON ANOTHER risky mission to China last month, human-rights activist Harry Wu offered Sue Howell, the assistant who was accompanying him, some advice on how to survive a Chinese interrogation. "Play it like a game," he said. "They insist you give them something. You resist, then give a little. But you get in trouble if you give everything at once or if you refuse to cooperate." Wu must now follow his own counsel, since the Chinese arrested him on that trip. But his words might also be useful to the U.S., whose relations with China seem to worsen week by week. A disciplined strategy of resisting, but giving a little, may be just what the U.S. needs.

The arrest of Wu, 58, is itself the latest source of conflict between the two countries. The son of a Shanghai banker, he was imprisoned in 1960 for criticizing the Soviet Union. After being released, immigrating to the U.S. in 1985 and becoming a citizen, he embarked on a crusade to publicize the nightmare of China's prison system. Using a hidden camera, he once sneaked into a Chinese tanning factory and filmed naked prisoners standing in vats of toxic chemicals. Last year, while he posed as a wealthy American searching for a kidney for a relative, the BBC filmed transplant recipients who told Wu that their organs had come from executed prisoners.

The Chinese government will do almost anything to keep such information secret. Last month Wu was detained after trying to cross into China with his U.S. passport at a remote customs post on the Kazakhstan border. Chinese authorities waited until July 8 to announce his arrest on charges that will include disclosing "state secrets" to "foreign organizations," a crime that could carry the death penalty. Howell, who was returned to Kazakhstan after being detained with Wu for a few days, says he didn't resent the guards. "Harry kept saying, 'They're just doing their job. They're not bad people. They're caught up in the system too.'" Last week Wu was finally allowed a visit by an American consular official, to whom Wu reported that he had not been tortured.

Wu is caught in the middle as the world's sole superpower and the world's most populous country snipe at each other. The list of recent incidents is considerable. Congress has introduced resolutions condemning China's "acts of aggression" in territorial disputes over the Spratly Islands. A CIA report last May said China might deserve sanctions because it sold ballistic-missile components to Iran and Pakistan. The U.S. is holding up China's application for membership in the World Trade Organization. And the U.S. recognition last week of Vietnam, China's neighbor and frequent enemy, fuels Beijing's fears that Washington has malign strategic intentions.

By far the biggest controversy arose in May when President Clinton responded to Taiwan's congressional supporters and allowed Taiwan's President, Lee Teng-hui, to visit the U.S. Clinton's foreign-policy advisers were unanimously opposed to the visit, and the Chinese treated it as an abrogation of the fundamental tenet of U.S.-China relations--that there is "one China." Enraged, Beijing retaliated by pulling out its ambassador to the U.S. "We expected a reaction," says a State Department official, "but we were surprised by its ferocity."

In retrospect, perhaps, the State Department should not have been, for China has become increasingly obstreperous in its external relations. A few months ago, it detonated a nuclear device immediately after signing the renewal of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And in the Spratlys, located in the South China Sea, China has aggressively tried to muscle aside the long-standing territorial claims of other Asian nations.

As for the U.S., China sees a pattern that may not in fact exist. The Clinton foreign policy in general is somewhat ad hoc and driven by politics. The approach to China is no different, but Beijing sees something more systematic and more sinister. "In China, more and more people are wondering, What are the Americans up to?" says Cui Liru, a scholar at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing. "Quite a number believe the Americans regard a powerful China as a hindrance to the U.S. in its bid to maintain world dominance, and so are trying hard to keep China weak and divided."

In the past, both countries put aside their differences for the sake of upholding their informal alliance against the Soviet Union. Now, with the Soviet threat gone, the disagreements can fester. Making matters even worse is the struggle under way over who will succeed Deng Xiaoping. "To appear weak before the U.S. puts potential successors in a vulnerable position," says Robert Ross, a visiting professor at the College of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. Testifying before Congress last week, Henry Kissinger, the advance man for President Nixon's opening to China, said, "Sino-American relations are in free fall." For a good indication of how far they will fall, watch what happens to Harry Wu.

--Reported by Hannah Bloch and Dean Fischer/Washington, John Colmey/Hong Kong and Mia Turner/Beijing