China Frees AIDS Activist, Sen. Clinton Gets Credit
It’s official: the strange saga of Dr. Gao Yaojie’s visit to the United States apparently will have a happy ending. The NYT reports that China “gave in to international pressure” and will release the prominent Chinese AIDS activist from house arrest so that she can travel to Washington to be honored next month.
This comes after a hoax perpetrated by Chinese authorities had some convinced that Dr. Gao had long ago been freed. What a harebrained scheme. Peking Duck offers some appropriate thoughts on this fiasco. Indeed, it was Senator Clinton who delivered the good news on Friday, saying that she was “delighted” after fielding a call from the Chinese ambassador in Washington. The nebulous involvement of Sen. Clinton in this affair adds a juicy twist. Might some powerful people in China think Clinton might be the next US president, and not want to get on her bad side? At the very least, Chinese leaders would very much like to avoid having its human rights, trade, labor, currency (etc etc) records become a major campaign issue in the 2008 US election cycle. But i
Dr. Gao, 80, has been kept under house arrest in the central city of Zhengzhou in Henan Province since Feb. 1 in a failed effort to keep her from travelling to the United States, where she was scheduled to be honored by Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nonprofit women’s advocacy group, and meet Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, an honorary co-chairwoman of the group.t could shake up that way in spite of China’s better efforts.
