Jiang's visit will spark controversy, protests

Americans know relatively little about Chinese president Jiang Zemin, who replaced the late, better-known Deng Xiaoping last year. Little, that is, except for the fact that he leads a country with a none-too-immaculate human rights record -- and he hasn't gone out of his way to reverse the trend. For this reason, students at Penn and Harvard, two of the three universities Jiang will visit this week during his U.S. summit tour, have planned demonstrations against the controversial Chinese leader. Drexel University, the third school Jiang will visit, will see no organized protests. At Penn, about 100 University Trustees, faculty members, staffers and a group of mostly Chinese students, chosen by the University, will meet with Jiang inside the University Museum Thursday. Meanwhile, Amnesty International members -- with the help of a "showing of solidarity" from the Free Burma Coalition and the Penn Environmental Group -- will protest outside, according to Amnesty International President Mark Kahn. The protesters may later follow Jiang and his entourage to other sites, Kahn said. "We know that [after he leaves Penn] he plans to ring the Liberty Bell, which is tremendously offensive to people who love concepts like liberty? Jiang Zemin is the leader of a nation that has shown no regard for human rights," he said "Everything we're doing is a reaction as we hear more news," he added, emphasizing that because the University made no formal announcement of the visit until Friday, the groups -- who will meet Wednesday night in Houston Hall to organize the protest -- were caught off-guard. In contrast to Drexel -- whose World Wide Web page jubilantly proclaims a bilingual welcome to the president -- Penn has remained decidedly low-key about the visit. While selected students were e-mailed a message regarding the possible visit October 8, word did not seep out to Penn's student body until October 22. And as of last night, the press releases on Penn's Web site -- which hails former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's May Commencement address -- did not include news of Jiang's visit Thursday. "There's been a tremendous disinformation campaign [on the part of the University]," Kahn said. "They're not really going out of their way to publicize this, and it seems they're doing whatever they can to avoid a demonstration." But University spokesperson Ken Wildes said welcoming Jiang enthusiastically would not be Penn's "style," adding that such an approach would be "Drexel's style." "Here's the difference -- this is not the first leader to come here; it will not be the last to come here," he said. "As much as we'd like to say this is a big deal, is it a much bigger deal than [President Clinton] coming [last year]? Not really." Reaction to Penn's late announcement of the visit stands in sharp contrast to the response at the other two schools he will visit this week. At Drexel, where his visit has been heralded positively and prominently, the only formal protest so far has been a History professor's letter to the Drexel Triangle, the school newspaper. "People [I've talked to] have either no comment or think it's just business as usual," Drexel student council president Ed Gillison said, adding that while some students have been "gathering steam," no formal protests have been established. Conversely, the Harvard campus, which Jiang will visit Friday, is abuzz with controversy surrounding his scheduled speech. Adhe Tapontsang, a former Tibetan prisoner, spoke on the school's Cambridge, Mass., campus last Wednesday, inciting support for the numerous protests to come. Harvard's student government has allotted funds to publish a schedule of the planned demonstrations, which include a hunger strike for the duration of Jiang's stay in Boston. Amid the preparations for Jiang's visit, further information emerged yesterday about the Wharton School's recent agreement to teach free-market business practices to the leaders of China's state-run businesses. Because Chinese officials insist they can't afford to fund the classes, Wharton will pick up the $250,000 cost of teaching national leaders in Beijing. Provincial leaders from Jiangsu will pay $300,000 for a six- to eight week course taught in Philadelphia, and Shanghai will pay Wharton between $12,000 and $15,000 for each student enrolled in its two- to three-week class in China.

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