Insider : U.S. Has New Point Man on China Policy : President Bush may call the shots but John Sununu is becoming an increasingly active figure on issues affecting Beijing.

Last month, when the Bush Administration was ready to make public its decision to extend China’s most-favored-nation trade benefits, the announcement was suddenly postponed for two days. According to Washington insiders, the reason for the last-minute delay was that White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu wanted to carefully scrutinize the decision, its implications and the wording of President Bush’s statement.

Sununu, it is said here, is becoming an increasingly active and influential figure on China issues. There have been reports that China’s ambassador to Washington, Zhu Qizhen, began meeting directly with Sununu in the weeks leading up to the Administration’s decision on the trade benefits. The White House refuses to comment on these reports. “I don’t know whether he did, and I don’t know that he didn’t,” a White House spokesman says.

Sununu’s performance shows how the Bush Administration is changing subtly in the way it makes policy toward China.

Who calls the shots? The short answer is simple: Ultimately, Bush himself does. No one can accuse the President of shirking responsibility. Ever since the Chinese regime dispatched the tanks to clear out pro-democracy demonstrators from Tian An Men Square a year ago, Bush has made plain his own personal desire to reconcile with the Chinese leadership. Among China hands, Bush is sometimes nicknamed “the desk officer in the White House.” (A desk officer is a low-ranking State Department official who handles the day-to-day details of U.S. policy toward a particular country.)

The problem is that as Bush assumes the role of China desk officer, the other top members of his foreign policy team begin to bow out.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III has made it plain that he does not want to stake his personal prestige on China or be too closely involved in the policy making. Baker spends his time on the Soviet Union, Germany and, at times, the Mideast and Japan; when it comes to China, Baker often notes loyally that the policy is the President’s.

Last year, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger were heavily involved in making decisions on China. The two men, both former aides to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger during the Nixon Administration’s opening to China, made secretly planned trips to Beijing on Bush’s behalf last July and December.

But Washington insiders say the firestorm raised in the United States by those trips, and the disappointing results from them, have made both men defensive about their performance and leery of too much involvement in new initiatives toward the Chinese leadership. “I’m certain Brent and Larry both feel singed by their experience (on the trips to Beijing),” says one Washington insider. “The Kissinger-Scowcroft-Eagleburger connection has become less useful to the Chinese.”

Early this month, Scowcroft met at the White House with Chai Ling, the now-exiled Chinese student who was among the leaders of the democracy protesters in Tian An Men Square last year. Outraged, the Chinese Embassy in Washington branded Chai a “criminal” and protested the Bush Administration’s extension of a red carpet for her.

As Bush’s foreign policy advisers distance themselves from China policy, Sununu becomes increasingly important.

In one respect, this should not be too surprising. Sununu is Bush’s top political adviser, and Roger W. Sullivan, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, observes that “China has become very much a domestic political issue.”

In the debate over whether to extend most-favored-nation status for Beijing, some past critics of the Administration’s China policy refrained from calling for a revocation of these trade benefits, which help American businesses.

California Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) avoided taking any position for weeks. Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.), head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Asia subcommittee, and former U.S. Ambassador to China Winston Lord called for extending the benefits, but attaching some new conditions to them that would require improvements in China’s human rights situation. On the GOP right, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) stayed away from the controversy over trade benefits, concentrating instead on an effort to keep goods produced in Chinese prisons out of the United States.

Instead, the opposition to extending the trade benefits was spearheaded by Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), the Senate majority leader, and others in the Democratic Party leadership. The Democrats have discovered that Bush may be vulnerable on China and thus have stepped up their partisan attacks.

Sununu has become important in part because he needs to help out in the political defense of his boss. Insiders say that when Sununu first looked at the issue of extending U.S. trade benefits to China, he branded it a “loser” for the Administration and questioned the wisdom of doing it. Eventually, he came around and worked to minimize the political fallout.

Sununu’s new involvement in China policy could also mean something else. For nearly two decades, Chinese leaders have skillfully courted each Administration by establishing close personal ties with an individual whose views and positions would be favorable to them. The Chinese regime then tends to use this person as the conduit for high-level messages from Beijing.

During the Nixon Administration, the Chinese chose Kissinger, then the national security adviser, over Secretary of State William P. Rogers. Under President Jimmy Carter, the Chinese elected to work closely with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski instead of Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance. And in the early days of the Reagan Administration, the Chinese sought to establish Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. as the main link for U.S.-China relations, rather than National Security Adviser Richard Allen.

As U.S. policy toward China becomes increasingly politicized, Sununu may now be emerging as the Chinese regime’s new pipeline into Washington.