THE ASIA BOOM : U.S. View : Foreign Policy Up for Grabs With New Congress : Republican victories will affect relations with Asia. Most in Washington see China and Vietnam as losers, Japan as winner.

By now, President Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher are probably tired of being asked what the political upheavals of America’s midterm elections mean for Asia.

On all stops of their trips across the Pacific earlier this month, prime ministers and foreign ministers bombarded the President and the secretary of state with questions about the impact of the Republican victories.

Christopher, for instance, was forced to deal with the issue within a few hours of the polls closing on Nov. 8 in California and other western states.

It was already Wednesday afternoon in Seoul. Cable News Network and the Korean Broadcasting System were reporting that the Democrats had lost both houses of Congress.

Not surprisingly, South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung Joo popped the question of what was going to happen to Clinton’s foreign policy.

The secretary of state talked about consensus, bipartisanship and continuity. In Seoul and a couple of days later, before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, forum in Jakarta, Indonesia, he tried to soothe the Asian leaders’ anxieties.

Clinton himself, less than a day after arriving in Asia, blandly announced that there would be no problem.

“I don’t expect (the elections) to have any impact on our foreign policy,” the President told a press conference in the Philippines.

That was the diplomatically correct, politically proper position to take. What should a President say, that his foreign policy is up for grabs?

Yet his subordinates and others in Washington were already speculating on how the election returns will affect their policies and plans for the next two years.

The conclusion: Among Asian governments, China seems to be the main loser in the American elections, and Japan appears to be the biggest winner.

That, at least, is the judgment of Clinton Administration officials and Capitol Hill staffers as they try to calculate what the new, Republican-controlled Congress that convenes in January will mean for American policy toward Asia.

The new Congress could bring forth new friction between Washington and Beijing. The tension will probably not center on China’s most-favored-nation trade benefits, as it has for the past four years.

Rather, it will be on non-economic issues of the sort that may seem symbolic to Congress but will produce howls of outrage in Beijing.

“I’m not worried about trade,” confided one U.S. official handling China policy. “The Republicans are the free-trade party.

“But we could have a lot of trouble with congressional resolutions on Taiwan and Tibet,” he added, mentioning two cases that Beijing prefers to keep out of the public arena.

In shoring up support for its China policy over the past two years, the Clinton Administration has necessarily devoted most of its attention to overcoming opposition from within the Democratic Party.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine, House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco were among those who wanted to link any renewal of China’s MFN benefits to improvements in its human rights record.

Last May, after China had stonewalled the Administration’s pleas to improve its human rights policies, Clinton yielded and decided to extend the MFN benefits unconditionally.

He later won a lopsided 280-152 vote in Congress over those who still wanted to restrict China’s trade privileges.

With that vote, the steam went out of the MFN issue. Chinese leaders finally seemed to have found a working accommodation with the Democratic President who, in his acceptance speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, had denounced the “butchers” of Beijing.

In the new Congress next January, the forces that sought to restrict China’s MFN benefits will be weaker. Mitchell is retiring, Gephardt and Pelosi are in the minority party, and there will be fewer traditional, labor-oriented Democrats to join their cause against Chinese human rights practices. The Republicans, who have historically favored free trade, will be running the show.

Yet the Republicans include a number of lawmakers who have raised different sorts of complaints about U.S. policy toward China. And they will suddenly find themselves in new positions of power in the new Congress.

The list starts with the man slated to be chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who has for years denounced China’s Communist regime, supported Taiwan and the cause of independence for Tibet. And on these issues, Helms has some prominent supporters among his fellow Republicans.

Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), another determined defender of Taiwan, will have new power both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Republican majority on the Foreign Relations Committee also includes Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota, who has criticized Chinese arms sales, and Sen. Hank Brown of Colorado, an opponent of U.S.-China military cooperation.

On the House side. Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), who will become chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is a longtime supporter of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has worked for years to call attention to China’s prison labor system, will likely chair a House Appropriations subcommittee.

And the House Rules Committee, which decides how and when legislation is called to the floor of Congress, will be chaired by Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.). His opinion of China is so low that he has, for several years, gone even further than Mitchell and Pelosi, sponsoring legislation to abolish China’s MFN benefits whether there are improvements in human rights or not. As a result, the White House will now have to shift course and spend its time fending off Republican-led opposition to its China policy.

During the last Congress, there were efforts to invalidate the 1982 communique limiting U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and to require the Clinton Administration to reverse policy and let Taiwan’s top leaders visit the United States. In the end, the Administration succeeded in watering these resolutions down to the point where they had no practical effect.

Now, those congressional efforts may well gather momentum.

“They (members of Congress) may try to pass a resolution requiring the President to play golf with (Taiwan President) Lee Teng-hui,” said one senior Administration official--knowing well how intensely Beijing reacts to any sign of official U.S. recognition of Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.

The situation is not all one-sided. Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the man slated to be Speaker of the House, supported the Clinton Administration in its congressional battles over MFN. And Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the incoming Senate majority leader, has gone along with U.S. policy on China--sometimes--after China made large purchases of wheat from his home state.

What is not clear is whether Dole, Gingrich and other Republican congressional leaders will spend any of their political capital helping a Democratic President fend off trouble in relations between Washington and Beijing.

“Those guys on the Hill don’t have many restraints on them, particularly when they’re the opposite party from the President,” a worried U.S. official said.

In contrast with Beijing, Tokyo has many reasons to be delighted with the outcome of the American elections.

In general, the results weakened the position of organized labor in Congress. The Republicans who will be taking the place of pro-labor Democrats have shown far less interest in efforts to take a tough stand on Japan and trade issues.

Some specific personnel changes tell the story.

Retiring Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.), who championed the interests of American auto workers in U.S. policy toward Japan, will be replaced by Spencer Abraham, a Republican who worked as an aide to Tokyo’s strongest ally in American politics, former Vice President Dan Quayle.

And among the losing incumbents was Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), a staunch critic of American policy toward Japan, who suggested that the Gulf War against Iraq was being fought to “protect the oil supply for our friends in Japan and Western Europe.”

Administration officials say Japan is now worried less about the new Congress than about the Clinton White House and the Democratic Party. The fear is that either a politically weakened President or some Democratic Party challenger could try to score political points before the 1996 presidential primaries with tougher policies toward Japan.

One other Asian nation that could be affected by the changes in Congress is Vietnam.

Gilman, the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has worked closely with groups supporting the families of Americans missing in action in Vietnam. And Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who could become the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, attacked Clinton last February for lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.

“There may be efforts to slow down the improvement of relations with Vietnam, or to place some conditions on this improvement,” predicted one congressional staff member.

However, Clinton Administration officials seem less worried about this possibility, explaining that most of what will happen on Vietnam policy can be done by the executive branch on its own.

“There’s not a lot that we need from Congress on Vietnam,” one senior U.S. official said. “After all, we’re not trying to give Vietnam foreign aid.”