Who Cares Who Blinked? : China: Bush’s secrecy was a tactical error, but the President will ultimately be judged by how Beijing responds to the Scowcroft mission.

Three policy and political issues are at the real center of debate over National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft’s mission last weekend to China. They will ultimately decide whether President Bush loses or gains from his China gambit.

--Concern about human rights and democracy in other countries is now embedded in American policy. But these are not and cannot be the only issues on the American foreign-policy agenda.

The priority given to democracy and human rights varies enormously with the range of our interests and the immediacy of our problem. In Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, Sri Lanka, parts of India and Pakistan, Guatemala, Somalia, Zaire and even in some of our North Atlantic Treaty allies--Turkey and Britain, in its police role in Northern Ireland--there have been ample grounds for shock and deep concern in the recent past. These are high on the agenda of some interest groups and specific members of Congress. But generally, and rightly, they are submerged in the larger congressional and executive branch policy agendas for each of these countries.

The issue of human rights in China is important, but it is not our only interest. It is this point on which the President has tried to focus attention. He aggravated his problems unnecessarily by secrecy--at least in his failure to tell the congressional leadership. But this is an issue of tactics, not policy substance. High-level emissaries have become essential in dealing with major issues. Even many of the President’s congressional critics have had no hesitation in visiting countries such as North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba in the relatively recent past to open new channels of discussion on major policy issues of concern to the United States. This has been wise and useful, too.

The President’s mistake was in cutting high-level contact with China last June. When relations deteriorate is precisely when exchanges at such levels are important, especially in countries like China, where decisions are made by a relatively small group at the top. It was inevitable that these contacts would have to be renewed soon.

--It is playground politics to argue about who moves first in dealing with major issues of national policy or business--in purple prose, “who blinks first.” The bottom line is whether initatives produce results. Editorialists and members of Congress should be ashamed to argue about this.

Henry Kissinger went to China in 1971 in an effort to open a dialogue with Beijing. He had only a hint that it would be productive. Anwar Sadat didn’t have as much as a hint when he flew to Israel in 1977 in an effort to ease Middle East tensions. Mikhail Gorbachev has been leaping into the blue with daring initiatives for the last four years.

Who cares who blinked? Were the policy gains worth the gamble?

This will be the standard by which Bush will ultimately be judged. If the obvious political risks he has taken do not produce the appropriate Chinese response, he will pay politically. But so will the Chinese. The President’s flexibility in waiving sanctions against China will be far more constrained, and perhaps further inhibited by legislation. U.S. officials suggested that before the Scowcroft trip, the Chinese sent clear signals that they understood this.

It is not trivial to receive assurances that China will not sell missiles in the Middle East. But the presidential emissaries should have made clear that although our relations cover a broad range, some human-rights issues must also be dealt with. Americans may hope for a China that looks like Czechoslovakia, but that is simply not open for bargaining by Washington. Nevertheless, Chinese officials could end martial law in Beijing, drop the warrant for the arrest of Fang Lizhi and let that notable dissident and his family depart the country, or release the names of those who were arrested or executed after the June crackdown. Even more important in human-rights terms, they could agree to halt military aid to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

The danger for the President is that Beijing may stretch out its response over several months in order to avoid appearing to have responded directly to U.S. pressure. That could be too slow to avert a new downturn in relations.

--The Chinese leadership is old and divided, its popular support weakened, but it is far from collapse.

There are individuals within the leadership, and many in the provinces, who want to keep China’s links with the West intact and to return to economic reforms and even political moderation. A deepening of Sino-American tension will damage all in China who look toward such a future, weaken the Chinese economy, depress the prospect that the lives of the people will improve and strengthen those in the security and military forces who argue for an unwavering hard line. The Bush’s move is in part aimed at forestalling such a turn.

The prospects for change in China were enormously enhanced by Beijing’s engagement with the United States and the rest of the world over the last decade. Those most opposed to the United States and to reform in China know this full well and privately thrive on well-intentioned condemnations from the West. As Congress and the public consider the President’s initiative andthe Chinese response in the next few months, these points should not be forgotten.