Why Clinton Should Go to Beijing

Just a few days before China said it would conduct live-ammo exercises off Taiwan and Washington sent gunboats to the area, I’m at a table at the Bel-Air Hotel enjoying lunch and maybe the best weather anywhere. The sun is splashing and the breeze is blowing and at the next table is Robin Williams and at the next one is Bob Newhart and so on. And there, amid all this splendor and tinsel, what do I start thinking about? I’m thinking about war in the Taiwan Strait, of course.

It’s got to be a lot easier being Robin Williams.

I’m fixating on China. My lunch guest, a former distinguished Democratic foreign policy advisor, is worried, too. But President Clinton is on his mind. He and his foreign policy friends around the country (some of them former government officials too) worry that if Asia starts to unravel over China, the biggest thing shadowing Clinton’s reelection prospects won’t be Bob Dole but Pacific war clouds.

My distinguished friend watches Robin Williams polish off a joke--too bad we can’t hear him--and then gravely sips his chardonnay: “Clinton is in trouble with Asia. His foreign policy people have got to get his attention. He could lose this election not in some border state but in the Taiwan Strait. If China swallows up [the offshore island of] Quemoy, Bob Dole & Co. will have the field day of all political field days.”

That’s right: The septuagenarian senator can neutralize the issue of his advanced age only if Clinton’s relative youth can be portrayed as a flaw. A mess in Asia would raise that immaturity issue.

Will China go to war over Taiwan? By all economic and political logic, no. But China is starting to assert itself. China is the big black cat that someone chucked into the pool but is resurfacing--surly, shaking off the past, back on all fours, ready for all comers. The Clinton administration, like its predecessor, has been walking both sides of the policy street, trying to be nice to both Beijing and Taipei: the policy of strategic ambivalence. But now, from both the political left and the right in America, it’s under attack. And each new Chinese military maneuver seems to date the policy more.

Last week, 40 House Republicans called for a new, pro-Taiwan policy, Beijing be damned. China’s recent military exercises, charged Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), “are changed circumstances and they require a response.” Strategic concerns aside, Cox also knows that instability in the strait would hurt California’s economy much more than even another base closing or plant downsizing. Taiwan is California’s fourth-largest export market. Then there are human rights liberals like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who told me: “The strategic ambiguity policy has failed. In truth, we don’t have any China policy at all. If only we had been firmer in the strait from the start.”

Peace on earth: As Newhart blows a kiss to Williams, my friend the former foreign policy advisor asks: “You know the column you wrote last month saying that Clinton should stop off in Seoul after he spends two days in Tokyo in April, especially as the South Koreans are practically begging him to make a symbolic visit? Was there any reaction to that?”

I say: “The president is too busy getting reelected to blow half a day on the South Koreans, is the reaction.”

“Dumb and dumber,” mutters the former foreign policy advisor. Suddenly Robin Williams tells a joke and everyone at his table is gasping for air. I wish I could tell a story like that. Maybe it’s my material.

“What do you think?” my friend asks. I say: “Not only should the president spend half a day in Korea after his two days in Japan. He should also go to Beijing.”

“Why should he do that?”

“There’s an ominous struggle for power going on in China. America needs President Jiang Zemin and his fellow moderates, including Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, to come out on top. If the president of the United States shows up in Beijing during an American election campaign, that’s a huge feather in Jiang’s cap.”

“Might not Beijing take the visit as a sign of weakness or worse yet, that we’re suddenly on their side against Taiwan? Those House Republicans would howl for Clinton’s blood.”

“No, [if Clinton sends] gunboats there, that should be enough to contain the hawks in Congress. Besides, Beijing would take Clinton’s sudden visit as a great sign of respect, not weakness. Beijing knows that Clinton, with almost the entire Congress in his face, couldn’t abandon Taiwan even if he wanted to.”

A silence. Then from behind those ominous dark glasses, the foreign policy advisor says, with professorial finality: “Yes, that’s the scenario. Clinton goes to China as well as Korea after he’s in Tokyo next month. And all through it, he looks magisterially presidential. Yes, that could get our Arkansas wonder over this hump.”

“And maybe,” I add, “lower the risk of armed conflict in Asia.”

I think I hear Robin Williams laugh.

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