Pragmatic and Proper Line in U.S. Relations With China

The United States continues to be concerned about Beijing’s intolerance of political dissent and its religious persecutions in Tibet, but it won’t put human rights issues at the top of its agenda with China. Instead, came the message from Manila, where President Clinton met with China’s President Jiang Zemin at a summit of Pacific Rim leaders, U.S. policy will give primacy to differences over trade and China’s export of nuclear and other military-related technology to potentially dangerous customers. And it will continue seeking China’s help to get North Korea to behave responsibly.

American human rights activists are disturbed by this shift in emphasis, but Congress seems inclined to support it, as it should. It’s time to put the dialogue with China on a more firmly pragmatic and, so Washington hopes, a considerably less confrontational footing. Criticism of China’s repressive policies should continue, by all means. Not, however, with the aim of interfering in Beijing’s internal affairs but rather to affirm transcendent moral values. At the same time greater focus has to be put on day-to-day matters affecting the course of a major relationship. The United States has the world’s largest economy, China the most rapidly growing. The best hope for a China that will evolve into a more open and pluralistic society lies in economic development. Continued foreign investment is essential to that development, and so is a stable political climate.

The coming year will test China’s ability to manage change effectively. On July 1 it is scheduled to reassert sovereignty over Hong Kong, and the world will be watching closely to see how it deals with pro-democracy forces there. Then next fall comes a fateful conference of the Chinese Communist Party that could decide for many years to come who will wield maximum power in the post-Deng Xiaoping era. Pending that decision it’s wholly unrealistic to expect any significant changes in current hard-line Chinese policies.

It’s against this background that Clinton and Jiang have agreed to exchange state visits sometime in the next two years. Jiang has long sought such an agreement as one means to raise his stature at home. If he comes out on top in the power contest to be played out at next year’s party conference he could be in a stronger position to be accommodating. But that may be assuming a lot, given the unsettled nature of China’s politics. The Manila meeting tried to put U.S.-China relations on a more predictable course, and that is a welcome development even though no major issues were resolved. When it comes to China and its relations with the United States, however, a lot of uncertainties surely lie ahead.