Contribution Dispute That Is Front Page News in U.S. Doesn’t Faze Asians Overseas

“One thing we know,” President Clinton said, explaining why he had not been more critical of two Taiwanese American friends at the center of the ongoing illegal campaign contributions scandal, “is that the culture out of which they come doesn’t draw the same bright lines between politics, government and business that we do.”

Clinton’s comments in an Oval Office interview on Friday reflected a view common here and in other Asian capitals. Much as President Nixon’s ordeal with Watergate caused more puzzlement here than outrage, the reaction to the Asian campaign money issue in Asia itself has been mostly a big “So what?”

Paying large sums to pose for photographs with senior leaders? Buddhist cult masters urging the faithful to direct their worldly goods to a needy candidate? Using money to lobby for a good seat at a political banquet? In most of Asia, this is just business--and politics--as usual.

Even here in the People’s Republic, where power still flows from the Communist Party Central Committee, the viability of a business venture is often judged by the status of the most senior official whose photograph or whose personal calligraphy adorns the lobby. So the spectacle of ambitious businessmen paying money to pose with the leader of the world’s most powerful country comes as little shock.

In the Communist mainland, commented Columbia University China scholar Andrew Nathan, this ostentatious display of top connections--or guanxi--is more important because “rule of law is less available.”

“Westerners will also display photos of themselves with the president,” Nathan noted. “But to the customer or client, this conveys more of a message of status than power because the person with the photo is more likely to go to court than through the back door if he gets involved in a conflict. Of course, it is not a black or white distinction. Even in the West there are plenty of fixed deals. But in China, the person is likely to get more out of the personal connections route than through the courts, in the present state of the courts.”

So why did Johnny Chung, a Taiwanese American entrepreneur with a struggling business in Torrance, donate $366,000 to the Democratic National Committee and use his political largess as entree to escort Beijing beer executives and other businessmen from China on personalized White House tours?

Commented a Hong Kong-based American business consultant and former diplomat who was present at one of the 49 visits Chung made to the White House: “He [Chung] was in an entrepreneurial spirit, using the aura or afterglow of his official connections to create confidence in himself or his ability to promote the visitors’ business.”

Sun Jianfeng--chief executive for Taihe Enterprise Group, a conglomerate involved in real estate, hotels, trading and entertainment businesses in China’s far Western Xinjiang region--was the member of one of Chung’s White House delegations in late 1994. Like most Chinese businessmen who participated in the White House visits, Sun was tight-lipped when contacted by telephone. He said that, like others in the delegation including Chen Shizeng, a former beer company president who took a six-pack of his product with him to the White House, he was in the United States to “investigate” the American market.

Sun declined to say if he paid Chung money for the honor of meeting Clinton at the White House. But he did say he “was very moved that [Chung] did not forget that he was of Chinese descent” and was making an effort to attract foreign technology and investment to China.

Clinton employed cultural relativism in defense of his friends--John Huang, the fund-raiser who was most successful at steering Asian American money to the Democratic Party, and Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, the Little Rock, Ark., restaurant owner who diverted thousands of dollars from a Taiwan-based Buddhist cult to Clinton’s legal defense fund.

Much of the money raised by the two men was part of the $2.1 million that the Democratic National Committee ($1.5 million) and the president’s legal defense fund ($600,000) have been forced to return to donors because of illegalities or irregularities. “The reason that I have not been more critical of Charlie Trie or John Huang,” Clinton said in an interview with The Times on Friday, “is that it is not clear to me . . . to what extent they knew exactly what they were doing and whether it was wrong.”

For the president, the cultural relativism defense lets him avoid lashing out at devoted friends such as Trie, whose Chinese food buffet table was a favorite luncheon stop during Clinton’s Arkansas days.

But the argument can also be used to explain why the front-page scandal in the United States seldom makes even the inside pages of publications in Asia.

Asians involved in the funding scandal, commented USC political science professor Stanley Rosen, a frequent visitor to China, “are for the most part behaving according to standard procedure in Asia.”

“A Taiwanese teapot has the clear potential to become an American tempest,” said Richard Baum, a UCLA China specialist now living in Hong Kong. “It is hardly a secret, even in the Puritanical U.S.A., that money talks. The key difference is that, in Asia, the language of monetized political exchanges--the buying and selling of influence--is understood and accepted as normal.”

In Asia, press coverage of the campaign contribution scandal has been limited. In mainland China, official newspapers have published extensive coverage of the Whitewater case but not a word about the campaign finance scandal, even when the allegations touched Chinese businessmen or officials.

In Asian countries where the political contribution scandal has been covered, such as in Indonesia, it has not necessarily been to the detriment of those involved. Such was the case with another Clinton friend from the Little Rock days: James T. Riady, banker son of Indonesian billionaire Mochtar Riady, patriarch of the Lippo Group of businesses.

Several newspapers in Indonesia--which is not known for its probing domestic press--published accounts of Riady’s key role in raising money for the Democrats. But the result was the opposite of similar revelations in America.

“Riady has increased popularity in Indonesia as a result of all the negative publicity from [New York Times columnist] William Safire and others,” commented Rosen.

Noting scandals in Asian capitals involving tens of millions of dollars, he added: “Clinton has been very adept at combining the American politician’s need for funds--which still pales compared to the need for funds by Japanese, Taiwanese or, until recently, Korean politicians--with the Asian entrepreneur’s willingness to ‘purchase’ access.”