China Treated Differently, U.S. Aide Says

One of the senior Bush Administration officials who took part in two secret missions to Beijing last year said Wednesday that the Administration has decided to treat China differently from any other country in the world.

Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, seeking to fend off comparisons between the Bush Administration’s conciliatory policy towards China and its tougher stance towards other countries, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China’s population, size and history merit special treatment.

“What we are trying to do with regard to China is China-specific,” Eagleburger declared. “ . . . It is different than the way you deal with the GDR (East Germany) or Romania or Czechoslovakia, because it’s a different country, not least of which is it’s substantially over a billion people and is a good bit larger geographically. . . . “

Furthermore, Eagleburger warned that the Administration might not react the same way it did after China’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators if the Soviet Union were to crush pro-democracy demonstrators in Red Square.

“I do not think that anyone should draw any conclusions from U.S. policy with regard to China after Tian An Men Square that applies in any other case,” he said, responding to questions by senators about possible comparisons with the Soviet Union.

Eagleburger was the first senior U.S. official to testify about the Administration’s China policy since last July, when President Bush sent him and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft for secret talks with Chinese leaders. The same two officials made a second trip to Beijing in December.

Eagleburger’s blunt testimony did nothing to assuage congressional criticism of the two secret trips.

At Wednesday’s hearing, both Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) and Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.) said they felt that Bush, who headed the U.S. liaison office in China in 1974-75, had failed to remain impartial. They accused Bush of developing “clientitis.” Sarbanes defined this as becoming “so close to the country . . . that (he) in effect start(s) speaking for the country instead of speaking for the United States.”

During his testimony, Eagleburger provided the first sketchy details of his July trip to Beijing. On that occasion, just one month after the massacre in Beijing and only two weeks after Bush had publicly announced a suspension of high-level exchanges between U.S. and Chinese officials, U.S. officials did all the talking and Chinese officials just listened, Eagleburger said.

“I can only say that the (Chinese) response was inscrutable,” Eagleburger said. He told Congress that the Chinese leaders would say only that it was up to the United States to “untie the knot”--that is, to make the first move in easing the friction in Sino-American relations.

“I can tell you that our July visit was neither easy nor pleasant,” said the deputy secretary.

That trip lasted only 24 hours, Eagleburger testified. He said he and Scowcroft were accompanied only by Douglas H. Paal, director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council, and by a secretary. Eagleburger did not say with which Chinese leaders the American delegation met.

There has been considerable speculation that the purpose of that first visit was to tell Chinese leaders that the President wanted to maintain strong ties with China, despite the series of sanctions which he had just imposed. According to this theory, the U.S. officials were sent to tell the Chinese regime not to overreact, but to wait until Congress and the American public had time to forget about the massacre in Beijing.

But Eagleburger described the mission in different terms. The trip, he said, “was intended to convey an undiluted message from the President to the Chinese leadership about America’s horror over the massacre.” Eagleburger said he also told Chinese leaders about Bush’s own personal outrage as well, and did not try to draw a distinction between the President’s views and those of the American public.

Sarbanes, the senator who took the most active role in the questioning, pressed Eagleburger about the results of the trip.

” . . . You made this visit. You came back. You then looked to see what was happening. What was happening? My understanding is they detained or arrested more than 10,000 people. . . ,” Sarbanes said. “Didn’t the repression continue?”

“Yes, sir, it did,” admitted Eagleburger.

But he said that when he returned to China in December, “there was much better give-and-take” between the Bush Administration officials and the Chinese leadership.

“I can’t say it was a mea culpa by the Chinese leadership,” he said. Nevertheless, by December, he said, “there was clearly, on the other side, an expression that they heard us.”