U.S.-China Meeting Focuses on Getting Along

President Clinton took a high-profile step toward repairing U.S.-China relations Monday, receiving Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian at the White House as part of the administration’s new effort to reduce confrontations between the two countries.

David Johnson, Clinton’s spokesman for national security affairs, said the president only briefly mentioned long-contentious issues such as the Chinese record on human rights and the proliferation of weapons technology in the 20-minute session. The president did not go into detail on either topic.

Nor did Clinton allude to the key role that Chi played in the massacre of protesting students by Chinese soldiers at Tiananmen Square in June 1989, when Chi was the country’s top-ranking general. The incident knocked the bottom out of U.S.-China relations.

Instead, the White House handled Chi’s visit gingerly, scheduling low-key meetings between the defense minister and top foreign-policy officials and sending Chi on a tour of U.S. military installations that is to end up next week at the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii.

U.S. officials said the upbeat reception was intended to launch the administration’s new China policy, in which Washington will try to improve the overall diplomatic climate between the two countries so both sides can discuss disagreements without provoking a confrontation.

Officials said that Clinton did not even mention old differences between the two countries over matters such as Chinese arms sales to Pakistan and Iran and U.S. relations with Taiwan.

Despite Clinton’s apparent circumspection, officials said that outgoing Defense Secretary William J. Perry raised many key issues--such as the sale and proliferation of weapons--with Chi in their private talks later Monday. The two met for about 45 minutes.

U.S. officials said Perry told Chi that weapons sales to Iran could backfire on the Asian giant. A senior defense official said Perry told his visitor that arms sales to Iran could threaten Chinese interests because of Beijing’s increased dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf. Defense officials said Chi responded that he would “consider the point” but maintained that reports of the sales had been exaggerated.

Chi’s Monday session with Clinton--a surprise--resulted from deft juggling by the White House.

The appointment had been for today, but schedulers later realized that it would have fallen on International Human Rights Day. Clinton has scheduled an appearance today to talk about human rights, and hosting the man who led the Chinese armed forces during the Tiananmen Square massacre could prove to be an embarrassment politically.

Chi was the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Washington since the bloody 1989 incident. His visit had been scheduled twice since early 1994 but both times was postponed after the two countries got into squabbles.

After the United States let Taiwan’s president visit this country for a class reunion at Cornell University, relations between the two countries grew so tense that late in 1995 and early this year China launched provocative military actions in the Strait of Taiwan--including missile firings--and the U.S. dispatched aircraft carriers to the area.

Although Clinton had campaigned in 1992 calling for a tougher stance against Chinese human rights violations, top administration policy-makers concluded more recently that China is too big and important a player for the United States to try to isolate diplomatically.

Under an agreement worked out last month, Clinton is scheduled to travel to Beijing next year or in 1998 after a visit there next spring by Vice President Al Gore. After that, Chinese President Jiang Zemin is expected to come to the U.S.

Perry began discussions with Chi on a series of “confidence-building” measures, such as exchanges of visits by senior military officers and the scheduling of calls by U.S. naval vessels to Hong Kong after China takes over the British colony July 1.

Perry also proposed--but did not win immediate agreement on--a plan for setting up established procedures to avoid confrontations between U.S. and Chinese naval forces that encounter each other off the coast of China.

The United States had a similar accord with the Soviet Union, which was designed to prevent confrontations at sea from escalating into nuclear war. The plan called for each side to report any incidents to top authorities, who could work out a settlement.

For his part, Chi was cordial in his few, brief public appearances, telling a news conference at the Pentagon that, on some of the issues on which China has been criticized, “the media have blown [them] out of proportion.” At the same time, he conceded, China and the U.S. “have significant differences.”

Chi is to meet with key congressional leaders today and talk with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. He also is scheduled to give a speech at the National Defense University at Ft. McNair in Washington.