Backsliding on China

In the conduct of foreign policy, as in life itself, the acceptance of unavoidable contradictions is a mark of maturity. The cultivation of such conditions where they need not exist is something else entirely. That is what is so disturbing about the Bush Administration’s quiet backsliding from the principled and balanced policy it adopted toward the People’s Republic of China in the wake of the massacre in Tian An Men Square last June.

At the time, the President sensibly refused to break diplomatic relations with Beijing. But, he said, “It is very important the Chinese leaders know it’s not going to be business as usual. The United States cannot condone the violent attacks” by the People’s Liberation Army on unarmed students peacefully petitioning for democratic reforms. As a consequence, the President ordered a diminution of diplomatic contacts and froze various bilateral economic initiatives, including $600 million in U.S. sales to China. The bulk of those sales involve a $500-million program to upgrade Beijing’s F-8 fighter planes.

These temperate steps won wide support among America’s allies and, today, China remains more isolated than anyone could have predicted last June. The very success of the President’s policy makes Washington’s effort to nudge Sino-American relations back to a pre-June footingall the more perplexing. Whether the Administration lacks conviction or resolve is unclear, but the drift toward normalcy is unmistakable.

Friday, for example, Times staff writer Jim Mann reported that Chinese military officers have quietly been allowed to return to the Grumman Corp. facility on Long Island and to a U.S. air base in Ohio, where work on the F-8 program has resumed. Meanwhile, according to Mann’s story, some of $100-million worth of other military equipment covered by the supposed freeze, in fact, has been shipped. Other materiel still is being manufactured for future delivery.

Thus, in the very week that President Bush flew to Costa Rica to bolster the cause of Latin American democracy--and to reinforce his position pointedly avoided the Marxist president of Nicaragua--the United States has encouraged Chinese hard-liners by rewarding the institution of their society--the Army--that carried out the worst act of anti-democratic repression in recent memory. That is what the late Chairman Mao would have called an “antagonistic contradiction.”

If it ultimately is resolved through the imposition of congressionally ordered sanctions against China--soon to be discussed by House and Senate conferees--the Administration will have no one to blame but itself.