China Policy: Revulsion Real, Reprisal Wrong

China’s brutal repression of its pro-democracy movement has shocked the Western World. The Tian An Men Square crackdown was shockingly cruel and incredibly stupid. Last week’s executions of activists and workers deepened our revulsion, leading even China’s friends to question the rationality of a regime that would go forward with such brutality in spite of the protests of Western governments, whose future good will China needs to continue its economic reforms.

For now, China seems to have reverted to its old fanatical communist hard line. In the light of this development, it is difficult to contemplate how continued normal relations with China would be in our interests, at least in the short term. But before adopting policies of reprisal that would again virtually isolate the Chinese regime from the West, the Bush Administration must consider long-term stakes, for the United States and the people of China.

Lashing back with punitive policies would be politically popular and emotionally satisfying for the great majority of the American people. Such policies would make us feel better. But they would have no effect whatsoever on China’s hard-line leadership. Instead, they could dash the Chinese people’s chances for further economic progress and eventual political reform. They would not be in the interests of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese in China and all over the world who have demonstrated for political reform. And they would not be in the interests of the United States. If, in anger, we drive China back into the shadows of the Soviet Union and the oppressive economic system Deng Xiaoping has tried to reform, those who have died for freedom in China will truly have died in vain.

To see where we should go in our policy toward China, we should first look back to see where we have been.

When I went to China in 1972, I was criticized by the far right and praised by the far left, both for the wrong reasons. The far right believed I had betrayed my anti-communist principles; the far left rejoiced because it thought I had outgrown them. In fact, my decision had nothing to do with my attitude toward communism.

The first reason I went to China was the Soviet threat. Both the Soviet Union and China had communist governments. Both were supporting our enemies in North Vietnam. But there was a crucial difference. The Soviet Union, as a nuclear superpower, was a potential threat to the United States. China was not. China had broken away from the Soviets and was in the position to play a more constructive international role. It made both moral and strategic sense for the United States to have relations with any nation that did not threaten our fundamental interests.

The second reason I went to China had nothing to do with the Soviet Union. Even if there had been no Soviet threat, it was essential that we have relations with a government that was a member of the nuclear club. And today, how can we launch a worldwide attack on the environmental crisis without the cooperation of a government ruling more than one-fourth of all people on Earth?

Today, a strong, stable China is as vital as ever to the security interests of the United States and to peace in the Pacific. A weak, fractured China would leave the Soviet Union as the dominant military power in Asia and Japan as the dominant economic power.

Whatever happens in the future, it is imperative that Chinese-American relations remain strong so the United States can help maintain the balance among China, Japan and the Soviet Union.

President Bush will be pressured to take harsher action by a strange coalition of China-bashers. Those on the far right who oppose any relations with China will demand economic and diplomatic sanctions. So will the human-rights lobby, which calls for punishing every regime that does not live up to our standards, regardless of our interests or those of the millions living under those regimes whom sanctions would hurt the most. The Bush Administration should continue to ignore these extremist voices and stay the prudent course it has already set.

Many who criticized the President’s measured response to the Beijing crackdown were strangely quiet about the deafening silence from Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He may have refrained from condemning the Chinese leaders because he fears that he, too, will continue to face pro-democracy and anti-Moscow regional movements, such as the one in Georgia this spring where troops used shovels and poison gas against the people. In stark contrast to the massive coverage of tragedy in Tian An Men Square, American television cameras and reporters were not present when 20 or more Georgians died, which is one reason Gorbachev’s popularity rating in the West remains high while Deng’s is plunging. But the Soviet leader cannot push his luck by condemning Deng for taking steps he has already taken and may have to take again.

Gorbachev also knows a freeze between Washington and Beijing will hasten the thaw between Moscow and Beijing. Nearly forgotten in the aftermath of Tian An Men Square is an equally important event that occurred there just days before: the normalization of relations between Moscow and Beijing. Hard-line communist leaders in Beijing, some of whom have been suspicious of Americans to begin with, are probably saying today that if the United States adopts further sanctions--in effect closing the door to China that we opened in 1972--the Kremlin gates now stand open.

China’s leaders want to continue economic progress, and they know the best way to achieve that is through continued access to Western technology and investment. They neither like nor trust the Russians, and the Russians have little to offer them compared with the West.

But political factors can override economic realities. The Chinese got along without the West for a quarter-century, and they could do so again. If we force them back into their angry isolation from the West, we risk prompting a potentially disastrous entente between the two great communist powers that would be in nobody’s interests but Gorbachev’s.

Despite the fundamental national self-interest behind our rapprochement with China, many Americans have gone overboard and turned it into a romance. China has a limitless capacity to fascinate. But it is not Disneyland. It is, as it has been since 1949, a communist dictatorship held together by brute force.

No one who knows China should be surprised when its leaders turn to violence in pursuing their political goals.

They have done far worse before Tian An Men Square. One overly excited journalist wrote last week that the crackdown transformed “the Woodstock-like encampment of young students . . . into the bloodiest killing ground in communist China’s history.” He apparently was not aware that many times more people died--hundreds of thousands, some Chinese claim millions--in Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution. Twenty million died in the wake of the brutal forced collectivization known as the Great Leap Forward. Attacks on unarmed civilians are never justified. But in condemning them, we should not pretend that we did not know that China’s leaders were capable of using violence for political purposes.

Since Tian An Men Square, some pundits have noted with irony that the Deng who beguiled millions during his state visit to the United States in 1979 is the same man who ordered the crackdown. What is more ironic is that many of the same pundits were willing to believe that the dedicated communist who had fought his way through the Long March and the bloody Chinese civil war was just a cuddly teddy bear with a cute smile. Those who insist on romanticizing relations between nations will always be disappointed when the realities of national interest and survival inevitably intrude.

But while we should be realistic about China, its leaders and the strategic reasons our relationship must continue, we should not lose sight of the benefits the Chinese people have derived from that relationship, particularly the economic progress that has come along with it. If we can restore a close relationship with China, the greatest beneficiaries will be the people of China themselves.

Some Beijing demonstrators carried banners reading, “In the Soviet Union they have Gorbachev--who do we have?” They have leaders who have made life better for hundreds of millions of Chinese.

In the 10 years since Deng instituted his economic reforms and an intensive campaign to attract Western investment, the income of the average Chinese has doubled. In the five years since Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, despite the rave reviews for his political reforms, the income of the average Russian has stagnated or even gone down.

In 1972 there were no Chinese students from the People’s Republic studying in the United States. Since that time, 62,500 have gone to school here. In that same period only a few hundred Soviet students have studied here. Gorbachev’s glasnost notwithstanding, television and press coverage of the events in Tian An Men Square has been far greater than that of comparable events in the Soviet Union.

On June 2, two days before the crackdown, a Chinese student studying in New York City mailed a letter to my office. “Please tell President Nixon,” he wrote, “that we young people from China really appreciate what he has done to open up China to the outside world. Just look at the Statue of Liberty that the Chinese students carried when demonstrating on the streets for democracy. It would be impossible without his courageous visit to China.”

As events later unfolded, I took little comfort from his message. China’s new fascination with the West and the dramatic economic reforms Deng adopted were both welcome developments. But they also entailed great dangers. By giving their people a better life economically and permitting their brightest young people to study in the West, China’s leaders ran a risk--that the people’s rising expectations would eventually lead to demands for political reforms challenging the authority of the Communist Party.

The further tragedy is that the suppression of the pro-democracy challenge has dealt a massive setback to Deng’s economic policies. A fundamental goal of U.S. policy toward China should be to in fluence its leaders to get the economic reforms back on track and also to go forward with peaceful political reforms. Our influence will be squandered if we make pious pronouncements in public about what the Chinese leaders should or should not do. It would be far better to urge them, through private channels, to show restraint in dealing with pro-democracy activists and eventually to find a way to accommodate dissent within the system.

In 1972 I met with a group of congressmen and senators who opposed our new relationship with the Soviet Union because of its policies against Jewish immigration. I said, “The walls of the Kremlin are very thick. It is difficult to be heard even when you are inside the walls. It is impossible to be heard when you are outside.” When we opened lines of communication to the Kremlin and made our views known privately, the number of Jews allowed to leave the Soviet Union increased, from 600 the year before I came to office in 1969, to 37,000 in 1973.

We face a similar dilemma today. The Great Wall of China is very thick. We may not always be heard when we are inside. If we withdraw outside the wall again, we will not be heard at all, and the Chinese people’s dreams of more democracy and a better life will almost certainly die.