Bush Confronts Crucial Test of China Policy : Politics: The President is lobbying hard to avoid an embarrassing override of his veto of student legislation.

President Bush, heading for a showdown on his China policy in Congress this week, is pulling out all the stops to avoid an embarrassing defeat.

Congress will be voting on whether to override Bush’s veto of legislation guaranteeing Chinese students in the United States the right to stay on in this country for several years. Under current law, most Chinese students have been required to return home for two years after completing their studies in this country.

The vote will be the first test of U.S. policy toward China since a furor arose last month over Bush’s policy of reconciliation with the Chinese leadership. The vote is being viewed as an indicator of whether Congress also may be willing to support other legislation denying U.S. benefits to China because of its repression of the pro-democracy movement.

“This is the litmus test for this sort of initiative,” one congressional source said. “There could be a snowball effect if Bush loses this one. If the votes go against him, economic sanctions (against China) could come next.”

Administration officials say the future of U.S. educational exchanges with China also is at stake.

“A vote to override may provide just the pretext needed for those in China long eager to stamp out these educational opportunities,” Douglas H. Paal, director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council, asserted in a speech last Friday.

The voting breakdown in Congress will also show whether, for the first time in decades, China will become a partisan issue in American domestic politics.

Democratic leaders are lined up against the Administration. “I strongly oppose the President’s policy on China,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) told reporters last week. He said Bush’s dispatching of National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing for talks with Chinese leaders “was an embarrassing kowtowing to a repressive Communist government.”

Republicans Split

By contrast, Republican leaders are divided. House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Michigan Rep. William S. Broomfield, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have spoken out against Bush’s China policy. But Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who last summer endorsed legislation to protect Chinese students, has switched sides and is backing the President.

Buoyed by Dole’s support, the Administration has been concentrating its efforts on Senate Republicans, hoping to come up with the votes necessary to sustain Bush’s veto. Overriding a presidential veto requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. Thus, Bush needs the support of 34 senators to forestall defeat.

Over the last few days, Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle reportedly have been calling some of the 45 Republican senators, urging them to support the White House on the student legislation. Secretary of State James A. Baker III is scheduled to meet today with the Senate Republican Caucus in a further effort to shore up the party’s wavering support.

Other senior Administration officials also have been giving speeches and lobbying Congress on the eve of the vote. On Friday, for example, Scowcroft defended Bush’s China policy in a speech to leaders of the Republican National Committee.

“It is not that he (Bush) is not interested in human rights but that he has a long-range view in mind,” Scowcroft declared.

A senior Administration official said Monday that Bush has been told he will probably lose the vote but that “he needs to speak out. . . . It’s a foreign-policy point on which he knows he’ll be vindicated over time.”

The legislation on Chinese students was sponsored by California Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). Last summer, after China’s violent crackdown on demonstrations, many Chinese students in this country said they feared that if they are required to return home, they might be subject to retaliation for their support of the pro-democracy movement.

Despite efforts by Bush to kill the Pelosi bill, the House passed it last November by a vote of 403-0 and the Senate approved it by voice vote.

Bush then vetoed the legislation, but at the same time, he announced that he was taking administrative action to grant protection to the Chinese students similar to that enacted by Congress.

Dole contended recently that Bush’s action removed the need for new legislation. “I think Republicans have to decide if they just want to gratuitously bash the President,” he told reporters. “There really isn’t any need to override because he has done by administrative action . . . as much or more than the legislation does.”

Chinese students argue that Bush’s administrative protections could be withdrawn at any time, perhaps as part of a new agreement with China. By contrast, they say,the legislation could be changed only by a new act of Congress.

“This vote is essential to protect Chinese students here,” said Zhao Haiching, a Harvard University student and chairman of the Committee on Chinese Student Affairs.

Staff writers Paul Houston, William J. Eaton and James Gerstenzang contributed to this article.