U.S. News & World Report

BEIJING -- The telephone call from an agitated Chinese woman came at 9:30 Saturday morning, November 16. At that moment, 3 miles away in the Great Hall at Tiananmen Square, Secretary of State James Baker was sitting down to talk about human rights with China's prime minister, Li Peng, and 7,500 miles away in Washington, D.C., the Senate was passing a unanimous resolution deploring China's mistreatment of journalists in general and one in particular: an outspoken ex-political prisoner, 50-year-old Dai Qing.

''This is Dai Qing," said the caller. ''I am ready to meet Mr. Bake [sic], but my newspaper is trying to stop me." With three heavies in her house, she was on the run. She was calling U.S. News because its Beijing correspondent, Susan Lawrence, is a friend of hers. In a city where phone tapping is a major industry, I hand carried Dai's SOS to U.S. officials who had contacted her about a possible meeting with Baker, giving them two phone numbers to reach her by noon. But at 11:20, three carloads of police came and dragged her out of the Min Zu Hotel.

I confirmed her disappearance with U.S. officials on Sunday morning but held the news, hoping that high-level U.S. intervention might free her. Later, I let the word out, and Baker was asked about Dai's abduction. His reply: ''If true, this would be distressing news."

Had Americans led Dai Qing down a garden path to danger? The night before her call, a U.S. official told the press that a session with dissidents had been ruled out. Dai was not informed. Nor was Hou Xiaotian, the wife of an imprisoned economist, who had also been approached and had also vanished over the weekend.

Hou re-emerged just after Baker left Beijing. Dai remained sequestered at a beach resort popular with the Politburo, six hours away. She was given an English-language book to read -- ''Birds of the World" -- and, after three days, fresh underwear. Last Wednesday, she returned home to find a gaggle of foreign correspondents.

Ironically, China could have scored points by letting someone with Dai's independent voice speak out. She criticizes the paranoia of leaders who see outspoken intellectuals as threats, but she consistently gives credit where it is due. When she was last released from incarceration in May 1990, she angered fellow protesters by praising jailers who had treated her humanely. This time, she urged patience with China's leaders: ''I think they will change on their own, over time."

China's grasp of public relations lags a long way behind its negotiation skills. On missile sales, it repackaged old promises about adhering to international guidelines but made the pledges conditional on the United States' lifting some of its sanctions. On prison-labor exports, China agreed to a memo of understanding but refused a key U.S. demand for access to suspect Chinese factories.

Now, Dai will be the test of the only human-rights pledge Baker extracted: to grant exit visas to anyone with a legitimate reason to travel and no pending criminal charges. Dai has been barred from taking a Harvard University Nieman Fellowship for journalists. The Chinese may well let her go and even release some political prisoners. But that will not convince Congress that Baker got more than he gave away in Beijing.