NEWS ANALYSIS : China Knew U.S. Political Bottom Line: Money Talks

In the end, China’s success in overcoming human rights opposition to win renewal of trade privileges from the United States boiled down to one simple truth: The Chinese regime demonstrated a much better understanding of the American political system than the Clinton Administration did of the Chinese system.

The key to Beijing’s strategy was to divert attention from human rights issues by using the blinding lights of China’s booming economy and huge potential market. By doing this, Chinese officials said, they successfully broadened the terms of the debate inside the United States. As a result, the Clinton Administration found itself fighting back on many fronts, often against some of its own most powerful citizens.

Time and again during the last year, the Chinese effectively called on U.S. big business to do most of the heavy lifting in carrying their case to the American public and President Clinton himself. Major league companies such as Boeing, AT&T;, General Electric and United Technologies were more than happy to go to bat for the Chinese with their powerful public relations machines.

“My feeling is that a few huge companies had more at stake than in the past,” said Anne Stevenson-Yang, Beijing director of the U.S. China Business Council. American executives, for example, lobbied hard for a last-minute meeting between Clinton and Chinese Vice Premier Zou Jiahua in early May that was one of the turning points in the dialogue.

When confronted with allegations of human rights abuses, the Chinese leadership coolly responded by changing the subject, citing the thousands of U.S. jobs that depend on Chinese orders for commercial aircraft and telecommunications equipment.

This approach was used in November when Chinese President Jiang Zemin held his first summit with Clinton during a Seattle visit. Jiang ostentatiously made a point of visiting the family of a Boeing worker. His Chinese staff noted for all who would listen that China buys one out of every seven Boeing aircraft made.

This effort continued right up until Clinton’s news conference Thursday announcing renewal of China’s most-favored-nation trading status--the same rights that the United States grants all but a few pariah states. The same day, the Wall Street Journal reported that China is “within weeks” of finalizing an agreement to buy 50 new aircraft from Boeing, an order worth $5 billion.

On another front often very embarrassing to the Clinton Administration, the Beijing regime romanced U.S. allies with attractive business opportunities to accentuate the U.S. isolation on the human rights question.

For example, at the same time Clinton was in Seattle presenting Jiang with a list of human rights concerns, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl traveled to Beijing with German business leaders to sign $3.5 billion worth of contracts. This spring, French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur arrived in Beijing with a similar entourage.

The Chinese government made the point abundantly clear: Only the United States put human rights conditions on trade. If the Clinton Administration kept insisting, China could take its business elsewhere.

Finally, during the year leading up to the Clinton decision, China hosted and feted hundreds of American political and business leaders.

During all of 1992, for example, only 11 members of Congress--eight representatives and three senators--came to China. But between June, 1993, and May, 1994, Beijing was swarmed by 47 U.S. representatives and 14 senators.

The influx of American politicians was partly the result of the efforts of U.S. Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, who encouraged Congress members to visit China and witness its development firsthand.

But the Chinese were quick to welcome the visitors, spending thousands of dollars to feed them and show them the sights. As a result, they may have won a few extra votes for their cause. Many Congress members indicated that the bleak land of torture and abuse described in news reports appeared instead to be a land in the throes of rapid, healthy development.

By consistently outmaneuvering Clinton’s Asia policy-makers, China was finally able to win the “de-linking” of human rights questions and trade relations, while making only a handful of mostly token concessions to the American side.

This was the prize they wanted most but had been unable to win from a hostile Democratic Congress during the George Bush Administration, despite President Bush’s personal support for separating trade and human rights issues.

Several officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, architects of the Chinese strategy in the trade versus human rights debate, rose early Friday, China time, to watch Clinton’s news conference live on the satellite CNN network.

When Clinton pronounced the magic word de-link , the Chinese knew that their efforts had paid off. They listened contentedly as the American President used some of China’s own arguments to justify his decision.

In explaining why the Chinese had not fully responded to American demands on human rights, for example, Clinton said that China was under great strain from tensions between its far-flung provinces and the central government. This is a common argument espoused by senior Communist Party leaders when they explain the need for measures to ensure “stability.”

Borrowing another common Chinese argument, Clinton noted that Asian societies such as China have a more authoritarian tradition. He cited as an example the recent case of American teen-ager Michael Fay, sentenced to several strokes of a rattan cane for a vandalism charge in Singapore.

Even when the Chinese did make concessions to the Americans, such as the release earlier this month of prominent dissidents Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, they skillfully timed them to win maximum possible credit from the Clinton Administration, which in the later stages of the game was desperate for any such sign from the Chinese.

During the months leading up to Clinton’s MFN decision, business delegations from the United States were welcomed in Beijing like heads of state by Chinese leaders.

In contrast, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who came to China in March ostensibly to tie up the package on human rights, was given one of the frostiest receptions an American diplomat ever received in the Chinese capital.

The State Department’s special human rights envoy, Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck, who came to China to prepare for the Christopher visit, was accused by authorities of breaking Chinese law because he met with prominent dissident Wei Jingsheng during the visit.

Adding insult to injury in the Shattuck episode, the Chinese authorities subsequently jailed Wei for allegedly telling Shattuck that China’s most-favored-nation status should not be renewed unless improvements in the rights arena were made. Wei was still in jail when Clinton renewed the trading status Thursday.

By ignoring the diplomats and concentrating on the business lobby, the Chinese gambled successfully, if somewhat cynically, that money talks louder than morality in the American political system.

When cornered on some tough points--such as the thousands of political prisoners in Chinese jails and labor reform camps--Beijing turned the tables on the Americans.

In response to U.S. objections to the export of goods made in Chinese prisons, for example, China commissioned a series of reports in respectable international publications documenting examples of American prison exports to other countries.

Under a barrage of human rights allegations from the West, China responded that its first obligation to human rights is feeding and housing its people, something the United States so far has been unable to do with its enormous homeless population.

Finally, the Chinese adopted a strategy of aiming their diplomatic efforts directly at Clinton, while shunting aside his most prominent emissaries, even Christopher.

Although American policy on the human rights-trade question was denounced in the Chinese press, Clinton himself was never personally attacked.

Moreover, when the Chinese authorities released dissident Wang in May, they made it clear that it was because Clinton had requested the release on medical grounds. Wang suffers from hepatitis.

Confident that it had already won the diplomatic matchup over human rights through its other efforts, particularly by marshaling U.S. business interests in its cause, China viewed the releases of dissidents Wang and Chen as a way of “giving face” to the young American President, still a neophyte in international affairs.

During his campaign for the presidency, Clinton repeatedly attacked Bush for “coddling dictators” in China.

On Thursday, however, Clinton succeeded where Bush had failed--removing human rights conditions from trade matters between the two countries.

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