U.S.--China Relations Reach an Unhappy Upcoming Anniversary : Diplomacy: Secret meetings and soothing comments failed. The Administration comes to realize the futility of trying business as usual with Beijing.

China seems headed for a springtime of sensitive anniversaries and bad memories. At the same time, relations between the United States and the Chinese regime of Deng Xiaoping head for the deep freeze, as Bush Administration officials belatedly realize they must wait for far-reaching changes in China’s leadership before they can even hope to restore once-close ties.

In retrospect, President Bush’s overtures to the Chinese leadership last year--particularly his decision to dispatch National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger twice on secret missions to Beijing--were a failure. They did not bring about an end to Chinese repression. They did not assure safe release for Chinese leading dissident, Fang Lizhi, now in refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

And they did not set in motion a process enabling Congress and the American public, on one side, or the old guard in China’s leadership, on the other, to become more accommodating. On the contrary: It can be argued that the secret missions served merely to accentuate fundamental disagreements between the two governments. In its very eagerness to prevent change, the Bush Administration managed to accelerate it.

Two months ago, Bush was boasting that, in the wake of Scowcroft’s December meeting with Deng, China had toned down hard-line rhetoric against the United States. But in recent weeks China’s rhetoric has taken on a hard edge, just as it did last fall. Chinese leaders continue to suggest that the United States has been plotting to overthrow Chinese communism through a strategy of “peaceful evolution.” The official Chinese press has heaped abuse on U.S. intervention in the world, citing Bush’s invasion of Panama as most recent example. “What right does a hegemonist that wantonly infringes on other countries’ rights and bullies the weak by force have in prating about human rights?” asked one publication.

There has been a continuation of cultural and educational exchanges, but at reduced levels. After months of wrangling, the two countries agreed to continue the Fulbright scholars’ exchange program next year, but the number of people has been cut back by one-third. China has refused to send students abroad for some exchange programs, including one run by Johns Hopkins University. The United States is considering a possible phase-out of the once-touted program run by the State University of New York to teach business management to Chinese students in the city of Dalian. The Bush Administration was particularly embarrassed when the Chinese imposed new rules making it harder for students to study abroad.

Now, seeking to limit the political damage, Administration officials gradually modify their public statements on China. Back in January, Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle repeatedly assured the nation that the Scowcroft mission had brought about important concrete results. But two weeks ago, in an interview with NBC’s Tom Brokaw, the President admitted that “there hasn’t been much give” from the Chinese leadership yet, and “I wish there would be more.”

In a separate TV interview, Quayle responded to a question about the Administration overture to China, “I will not say it’s been a failure. It’s been a disappointment . . . . China refuses to recognize reality, and that’s freedom and democracy eventually.” Those last words were probably more irritating and threatening to the Chinese leadership than anything said on Capitol Hill.

In private, some of the principal American architects of the once-close U.S. ties with China put out the word that the Chinese leadership should not hope for further unilateral U.S. concessions. Last month, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Zhu Qizhen travelled to the New Jersey home of Richard M. Nixon for a small dinner with the former President and some prominent American leaders in politics and business. According to one participant, the ambassador argued that now was the time for the Bush Administration to take a major new step in improving relations; Zhu wanted the United States to open the way for more and speedier World Bank loans to China. But former Democratic Party Chairman Robert Strauss told the ambassador that Bush had already gone as far as he could go without major changes in Beijing; when it comes to China, Strauss said, Bush has no political running room left. Nixon said he agreed.

Over the next few weeks, the young and disaffected in China will have a number of opportunities to demonstrate displeasure. Qing Ming festival occurs in early April, the annual Chinese commemoration of the dead--including the hundreds, if not thousands, killed in the vicinity of Tian An Men Square last June. Throughout the spring, China will mark the anniversary of key moments in last year’s tumultuous pro-democracy demonstrations. The leading organization of Chinese dissidents in France and the United States, the Federation for Democracy in China, has purchased a 1,140-ton ship and outfitted it with a radio transmitter, hoping to broadcast to the mainland from international waters off the Chinese coastline.

The Chinese regime will probably be able to prevent or shut down any new trouble in the streets. Yet new, publicized confrontations will deter any Chinese efforts to restore ties with the United States and other Western nations. The next possible battle in Congress over Administration overtures toward Beijing may come later this spring, when China comes up for annual renewal of its most-favored nation status, the trade classification assuring the lowest possible tariffs on exports to the United States. A change in China’s trade status would be the most severe economic blow the United States could impose, short of something no one wants--a return to the old days of a trade embargo.

As it sought to defend and bolster its China policy, the Bush Administration has often found itself ensnarled in a series of seeming contradictions. Sometimes U.S. officials have insisted that Deng, now 85 and in frail health, is in command and still committed to reforming China. On other occasions, they have mourned that the Chinese leadership is so beset by divisions that no bold action is possible. Sometimes Administration officials have argued that China is as strategically important to the United States as it ever was. On other occasions, they acknowledge that, given the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, China’s strategic significance has changed.

Coming up with a new foreign-policy rationale for the old, close ties with China--a relationship forged in the Nixon era and based on shared opposition to the Soviet Union--is not easy. Recently, on Capitol Hill, Eagleburger maintained that China is important to the United States because of the proliferation of missiles, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons around the world. That strange argument suggested that the more missiles and weapons China sells, the more important to the United States it will become. Meanwhile, Nixon himself has been pressing the argument that the United States needs China’s help to prevent Japan from becoming a political and military superpower. Such talk does nothing to help U.S. ties with Japan, currently America’s closest ally in Asia.

Last fall, Bush and the Chinese were essentially trying to see whether they could could repair relationships after Tian An Men. Now, it seems less possible. In the United States, public attitudes toward China have changed. Within the Chinese leadership, opinions about the United States seem to have changed. Both countries find it difficult to return to business as usual in a changing world.