Boy-Scout Wilsonianism Runs Amok in Congress : The urge in Congress to ‘contain’ China is a destructive relic of the black-and-white days of Cold War.

Is what’s good for California good for America? Can there be any doubt? But world events sometimes make obvious truths tough to defend. Take California’s up-and-coming Pacific trade partner, China, with which we Pacific-vision Sunshine Staters have been developing a special relationship. Last week, an edgy Beijing again cracked down on its best-known dissident, Wei Jingsheng, playing into the hands of those who, as if nostalgic for the black-and-white days of the Cold War, would cut off trade and resurrect the anachronistic policy of containment of China. That wouldn’t be good for California. Or for anyone else. But how to persuade a stubborn Beijing to lighten up?

China, with about one-fifth of the world’s people, and California, with about one-tenth of America’s, could make the economic match of history. Already California’s exports to China approach $2 billion annually and fuel an estimated 35,000 jobs here. Culturally, our state is a budding Asian diaspora. We welcome many legal Chinese, we take in many students. In China, the still-repressive but ever-opportunistic Deng Xiaoping regime has been multiplying the loaves and fishes with nearly miraculous success. In less than a generation, China, along with Japan and Latin America, could be for California what Europe has been for New York. By nurturing U.S. involvement in APEC, the vital Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have demonstrated that they understand what is at stake, the Administration’s current understandable preoccupation with central Europe notwithstanding.

The next century may well be China’s. So argues astute China-watcher George Yeo, Singapore’s minister for information and the arts. He lauds those Americans who, having glimpsed the future, are running to catch up to it. “Bill Gates is taking care to cultivate the leaders in Beijing,” Yeo points out admiringly in the journal New Perspectives Quarterly. “He is negotiating with the Chinese government about introducing a Chinese-language version of Windows 95 into China. The Disney Channel, which broadcasts from Singapore, will soon be using Mandarin and Cantonese.”

None of this is to downplay Beijing’s legendary humorlessness about dissent. While Deng’s relentless reforms of 1979-1994 triggered one of the biggest sustained living-standards upticks in history, it is the same regime that has intimidated, harangued or imprisoned anyone standing in its way; for the foreseeable future, that’s not likely to change. By formally charging Wei Jingsheng with sedition last week, China threatens the internationally admired dissident with a second round of prolonged imprisonment.

Yes, Beijing can be tough to take. Such policies are not only an outrage, they also satisfy emotionally needy members of Congress who require some new “evil empire” in order to make sense out of the new world disorder. Frets one well-placed Clinton Administration official: “This will be a difficult period for Sino-American relations. As China opens up, there will be a lot of internal instability. But if you drive them into a corner with an aggressive policy of containment, you only make the situation more difficult. So you want the Chinese to have a real stake in engagement. Engaging them is a way of moving them in the right direction. What some in Congress want--containment--is the wrong way.”

To all gung-ho, containment-mongering members of Congress, I say: Read “The China Challenge,” by University of Michigan Professor Kenneth Lieberthal in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. As he writes, powerfully: “It is in America’s interest for the Clinton Administration to reduce the emotionalism of the United States’ China policy, develop a strategic approach that focuses on the essentials of a mutually beneficial relationship and build both public and congressional support to implement such a strategy.” Or, in the memorable words of John F. Kennedy, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

In the current high-stakes environment, a useful U.S. containment policy would be containing members of Congress who mistakenly believe that the way to deal with the oldest civilization in the world and the most pervasive culture in Asia is with Boy Scout Wilsonianism and reheated Cold War rhetoric. President Clinton, having come to embrace a pragmatic policy that avoids selling out Taiwan, deserves the muscular help of every member of the state’s congressional delegation, Republican and Democrat. What’s good for California is not only good for the rest of America, of course. It’s good for the rest of the world as well.

Tom Plate’s column runs Tuesdays. His e-mail address is tplate@ucla edu