China President Counted on Meeting Clinton

Among the most disappointed by President Clinton’s cancellation of his Japan trip is Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. Sources here said he was counting on an Osaka meeting with Clinton to set U.S.-Chinese relations back on track before the distractions of the upcoming American presidential campaign season.

After a tense summer following the Clinton Administration’s decision to allow Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to visit the United States, relations appeared to warm slightly during a summit in New York last month between Clinton and Jiang, China’s president and Communist Party chief.

Sources who accompanied Jiang to New York said the Chinese leader was buoyed by the meeting and saw the Osaka summit as a chance to restore relations fully.

Under the original schedule, Clinton and Jiang were to have met Saturday morning in an Osaka garden, the fourth meeting between the two leaders in two years.

“We have enough experience with American electoral politics to know that not much is possible after the presidential campaign begins,” a Foreign Ministry official said in an interview. “We are hoping that these two summits, held close together, would repair the problems we’ve had.”

Underlying the Chinese government’s concerns was a dilemma of choice. Although China was upset with the Clinton Administration over Lee’s visit, it has also been greatly alarmed by the pro-Taiwanese stances struck by many first-term members of the majority Republican Congress.

The Chinese leadership apparently had decided that the known quantity of the Clinton Administration was better than the unknown prospect of a new administration in which pro-Taiwan forces might play an even larger role.

Also coloring the Chinese position was Jiang’s wish to be recognized as a statesman. Jiang, 69, recently consolidated his favored position to replace 91-year-old Deng Xiaoping as China’s paramount leader by securing key appointments to the powerful Central Military Commission.

The former Shanghai mayor, who jumped into prominence after the 1989 Tian An Men Square incident, was counting on the high-profile, back-to-back summits with Clinton to win recognition abroad as Deng’s political dauphin.

Officially, China dismissed the importance of Clinton’s Osaka cancellation. In a joint Osaka news conference with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Foreign Minister Qian Qichen said the cancellation will have no direct effect on U.S.-Chinese relations.