PERSPECTIVE ON CHINA : Speak Loudly and Hide the Stick : Keep channels open on human-rights support; reserve sanctions for extreme crimes, severe threats to U.S. interests.

The diplomatic train wreck resulting from Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s trip to China highlights the urgent requirement for a workable U.S. human-rights policy toward Asia. The issue goes well beyond China and resonates powerfully in South and Southeast Asia as well.

Democracy and human rights have been themes in U.S. foreign policy as old as the Republic. In fact, the idea that America could exert influence in the world on behalf of these values can be traced back to colonial days, when John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, evoked the classic image of America as “a city on a hill”--an example to the world.

No successful U.S. foreign policy can long ignore these values; the electorate will not permit it. But the Clinton Administration’s strong impulse to champion human rights has not been matched with a clear strategy to avoid provoking disputes that undercut other important policy interests. In Asia, these interests involve economic ties with a region that is the world’s fastest-growing. U.S. security commitments include the Korean peninsula where, not incidentally, Chinese cooperation is critical to dealing with an emergent North Korean nuclear weapons capability.

America and Asia come to the human-rights debate each bolstered by recent historic successes. The U.S. victory in the Cold War seemed to validate American political and economic values. Given the region’s spectacular economic performance over the past two decades, many Asians believe (and some Western observers agree) that they have developed a model for an advanced modern economy that differs in significant respects from--and is demonstrably superior to--the American orthodox faith in free markets and minimal government intrusion. Newly confident Asian leaderships are in no mood to take lessons from a United States that many see as deeply flawed, living well beyond its means with a society ill-disciplined and riven by crime.

Moreover, the cultural foundations of Asian society differ importantly from those in the West. Among these differences is the comparatively higher value Asians assign to group welfare and harmony as opposed to individual rights. Consequently, Asian views of democracy and civil liberties often differ substantially from those in America.

What, then is to be done? Is there a policy mix that supports vital U.S. interests in Asia while giving due regard to human-rights concerns? There is, and it can be summarized as “speak loudly and keep your stick in the closet.” Specifically:

* Articulate support for democratic and human-rights values through a variety of political and diplomatic means: official government statements, speeches by political leaders, congressional resolutions and diplomatic representations, including contact with and sympathy for victims of political oppression and human-rights abuse.

* Do nothing to discourage the activities of nongovernmental human-rights organizations like Asia Watch.

* Cooperate fully in preparing congressionally mandated reports regarding the human-rights performance of other countries.

But:

* Adopt a little humility in dealing with Asia by acknowledging that these are some of the world’s most ancient and sophisticated cultures, and maybe Americans do not have all the answers about how they can best organize their domestic affairs.

* Acknowledge that on some of the issues in which the United States adopted sanctions for human-rights purposes a full U.S. (or at least congressional) understanding of the circumstances and motivations was often lacking. For example, U.S. sanctioning of Malaysia for its rejection of Vietnamese boat people came despite Malaysia’s years of accepting these refugees or, in the worst case, diverting them to refugee centers in Indonesia.

* Understand that the most powerful agents for democratization are: modernization and rising living standards (including the emergence of a middle class); the explosion of international communications; person-to-person contact with America, especially through education in the United States of Asian college students and military officers, and the example of a successful, democratic and humane America.

* Sanctions, such as trade restrictions or denial of most-favored-nation status should be reserved for core national interests (to pressure China regarding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, for one) not human rights. The only exceptions should be when the human-rights abuses are sustained and brutal in the extreme, as in the Khmer Rouge slaughter in Cambodia, or when voted by the U.N. Security Council.

President Kennedy summarized his hemispheric human-rights policy more than three decades ago with the phrase: “A polite handshake for dictators; a warm abrazo for democrats.” It is a formula as applicable today in Asia as it was then in Latin America.