On or about June 11, according to Liu Qing of the organization Human Rights in China, Beijing was engineering a savage prison beating of Wei Jingsheng, the country's most notable political detainee. On our side of the Pacific, House speaker Newt Gingrich was striking out at Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, who has made himself America's foremost critic of China appeasement.
In a private meeting, Bauer had urged the speaker to delay the MFN vote. He tried to appeal to Gingrich's partisan interests, telling him he'd heard that Republican fund-raising letters criticizing Clinton administration China policy had generated a lot of money. In a meeting with House Republicans early last week, Bauer's plea on behalf of Chinese liberty was recounted by Gingrich in a slightly different way. Gary Bauer, the speaker disparagingly told his men, had admitted to him that he was only doing "this China stuff" for fund-raising purposes. Several members of Congress -- including some who sided with Newt on MFN -- were taken aback, since they knew Bauer had put his organization at some risk by agitating against MFN, given the pro-MFN views of some of his biggest donors. This didn't shore up Gingrich's already shaky credibility with his colleagues, and Bauer plans to confront him on the matter next week.