Dole Struggling to Shape His Stand on China

Beset by differences within the Republican Party, presidential candidate Bob Dole and his advisors are now quietly struggling over what he should say about China, one of the main foreign policy issues of the 1996 campaign.

Dole has been invited to give a keynote address about Asia policy later this month at ceremonies at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, in honor of Henry A. Kissinger. Campaign advisors have been working up a speech that would, for the first time, lay out the views about China that Dole will espouse during his fall campaign against President Clinton.

However, over the past few weeks, the process seems to have become ensnarled in a series of disputes among Republicans over what--or how much--Dole should say about the subject.

Dole’s foreign policy advisors, dominated by former executive branch officials of the George Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations, are generally urging him to downplay human rights issues and emphasize China’s strategic importance to the United States.

But more conservative Republicans, particularly in Congress, are said to be balking. They want Dole to take a less accommodating, more confrontational stand against the Beijing government--perhaps using China as a campaign issue against the Clinton administration in the same way that Clinton himself four years ago invoked the “butchers of Beijing” against Bush.

“I think he’s getting slightly different advice [on China] from different people,” acknowledges former U.S. Ambassador to Beijing James Lilley, a veteran of past Republican administrations.

One episode last month hinted at the skirmishing within the Dole camp. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” Dole said that as president, “I would support Taiwan having a seat in the United Nations. Whether I could get that accomplished or not, I don’t know.”

Only a few days later, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is the Dole campaign’s national security advisor, told The Times: “I don’t think he would stand by that [position].” China is intensely opposed to any U.N. seat for Taiwan, which it considers part of its own territory.

Dole does not have as much freedom of action concerning China as Clinton did in 1992, because as a senator, he has a 25-year record of votes and statements.

An examination of Dole’s record shows that he has for years been one of Taiwan’s strongest supporters in Congress--but that he also has regularly favored improving ties with China in order to open up commercial opportunities for U.S. companies.

When President Carter decided in late 1978 to recognize the People’s Republic of China, for example, one of his most vocal critics in Congress was Dole, who thought the action was unfair to the government in Taipei with which the United States was breaking diplomatic relations.

After Carter recognized Beijing, Dole immediately called upon the White House to invite then-President Chiang Ching-kuo of Taiwan for a visit to the United States. Chiang declined the offer--and no Taiwan president came here until Clinton last year permitted Chiang’s successor, Lee Teng-hui, to attend his college reunion at Cornell University.

When Carter proposed extending most-favored-nation trade benefits to China, Dole personally led the opposition. He introduced legislation denying MFN benefits for any country that refused to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. (At the time, China hadn’t signed.)

Nevertheless, in 1980, a year after criticizing the decision to recognize Beijing, Dole, while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in Iowa, said Carter ought to be trying to sell more grain to China.

It was one of many times over the years when Dole has viewed China primarily as a purchaser of wheat, particularly for his home state of Kansas.

In 1992 Dole, his aides confirmed, as the Senate majority leader quietly told the Chinese ambassador he would withhold his support for MFN trade benefits if he did not get assurances that China would continue to buy American grain.

“I don’t think it is well known, but China last year imported 8 million tons of grain from the United States, and nearly all of it came from the state of Sen. Dole,” asserted one Chinese official in Beijing recently. “I’m sure Sen. Dole would be happy to take credit for this.”

Other Chinese officials have made clear their hope that Dole says as little as possible about China this year, that China won’t become the sort of partisan political issue it became in 1992, and that Dole won’t be pressured to take tough positions during the campaign that might limit his freedom of action if he is elected.

McCain, who is Dole’s coordinator for foreign policy issues, has been seeking advice on China from a number of Bush and Reagan administration officials.

Among them are former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Undersecretary of State Robert Zoellick, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard L. Armitage, Lilley and Douglas Paal, director of Asia policy for Bush’s National Security Council.

Recent congressional testimony by Paal reflected the views of quite a few former Republican executive branch officials. He criticized the Clinton administration for being too aggressive and public in trying to push American human rights concerns in China. Yet he also attacked the administration for being too weak in failing to confront China on security issues.

“We seek both to integrate and deter China, with a strong preference for integration and yet a recognition that there may be a need for deterrence,” Paal told the House International Relations Committee. He said the Clinton administration had unwittingly taught China that “to stand up to American demands pays.”

In his current campaign for the White House, Dole has generally flaunted his old ties to Nixon, who led the way for the historic American rapprochement with China. Dole has been asked to give the main speech April 22 when the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda awards what it calls the “Architect of Peace” award to Kissinger, described in the dinner invitation as “America’s statesman nonpareil.”

Yet Dole has not yet formally accepted the invitation. Identifying himself so closely with Nixon and Kissinger might reopen the divisions within the Republican Party over the foreign policies of geostrategic realism that both men espoused. In the 1970s, opposition to their policy of detente with the Soviet Union contributed to Reagan’s rise to power within the Republican Party.

In somewhat comparable fashion, the Nixon-Kissinger policy of working out an accommodation with China today is unpopular among more populist Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Some of the Republican leaders in Congress today have been China’s severest critics in the United States.

They include Reps. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee and a staunch supporter of Taiwan and Tibet; and Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Rules Committee, who has for years sought to revoke China’s MFN trade benefits because of human rights violations.

Dole and his advisors now appear to be trying to reconcile the conflicting pressures concerning China within the party.

“There is no doubt in Dole’s mind that China is displaying very aggressive behavior in the region” of Asia, McCain told The Times in a recent interview. “Not just vis-a-vis Taiwan, but claiming all of the South China Sea, flaunting all of their military power, their activities in selling weapons to Pakistan. . . . So it’s a pattern of behavior that is of great concern.”

According to McCain, Dole would make several points clear as president. “One is that Taiwan is part of China; two, that the country will be peacefully reunited; three, that there are consequences to acts of aggression [by China], and [U.S. restrictions on] MFN [China’s trade status] is one of them.”

Times staff writers Rone Tempest in Beijing and Ronald Brownstein in Washington contributed to this story.

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Dole’s Record on China

December 1978: President Carter announces establishment of diplomatic relations with China. Dole emerges as one of his most vocal critics.

January 1980: Dole leads the Republican opposition to extend most-favored-nation (MFN) trade benefits to China.

January 1980: Campaigning in Iowa, Dole says the United States should try to sell more wheat and corn to China.

August 1985: Visiting Taiwan as head of a 30-member congressional delegation, Dole says U.S. policy is “to help the people of Taiwan meet their legitimate defense needs.”

August 1985: Visiting Beijing, Dole tells Chinese leaders he wants the Taiwan issue to be “resolved peacefully.” He also urges China to buy more American grain. “As you know, we have plenty of good product to sell, and such purchases would benefit us both,” he says.

April 1991: Dole plays a prominent role in bringing the Dalai Lama to speak in the Capitol rotunda. “As His Holiness and the people of Tibet move forward on their own great journey, we stand with them,” Dole says.

May 1993: Dole is among the leading critics of President Clinton’s decision to make renewal of China’s MFN benefits contingent on improvements in human rights in China. “Every year American farmers and manufacturers have to hold their breath to see if their ability to do business with China will be cut off,” Dole says.

October 1993: Dole is leader of a group of 44 U.S. senators who say, in a letter to Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, that Taiwan should be given representation in all international agencies, including the United Nations.

July 1995: Dole says China’s imprisonment of Harry Wu, a Chinese-American human rights activist, is “an affront to all freedom-loving people.” He says the United States should not take part in a United Nations conference on Women in Beijing unless Wu is set free. Wu is released on the eve of the conference.