East and West Still Divided Despite Summit

At this week’s summit between President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, it turns out that what did not happen was almost as important as what did.

On subjects ranging from arms exports to human rights to Taiwan, the United States and China tried, but failed, to win far-reaching concessions from each other, according to interviews with U.S. officials and experts.

The result was that, while the two governments deepened their overall foreign policy relationship, they failed to settle many of the specific policy issues dividing them. The friendly words uttered in public by Clinton, Jiang and their governments Wednesday in Washington camouflaged these unresolved disputes and unfinished negotiations.

Take, for example, the question of Clinton’s trip to China next year. The formal statement issued by the two governments said that the Chinese president had invited Clinton to visit Beijing in 1998 and that “President Clinton accepted this invitation with pleasure.”

Yet the Clinton administration had already said the president would visit China next year. The hidden, more important fact was that in private negotiations, China had wanted something more.

“The Chinese wanted a date,” one administration official said. Or, at least, China wanted Clinton to say he would come during “the first half of next year, or the first quarter, or the spring, or something like that.”

But U.S. officials refused. When Clinton visits Beijing, he will be the first American president to set foot in Tiananmen Square since the 1989 crackdown on democracy demonstrations there. Administration officials still hope for changes in the human rights climate in China before the president sets a date for his trip.

For its part, the administration had some notable failures too.

Administration officials had wanted to obtain solid assurances that China will stop selling missiles or missile technology to Iran. They did not succeed, despite news reports in the weeks before the summit suggesting that such an agreement might be in the works.

In the end, China was willing to give the United States a promise in writing that it will not enter into any “new nuclear cooperation” with Iran. A senior administration official said the pledge was made in “written, confidential communications”--reportedly a letter from Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

“This is a very significant step forward in our efforts to try to prevent the Iranians from acquiring a basic nuclear capability,” one senior administration official said this week.

To win the concession, Clinton opened the way for China to buy civilian nuclear technology from the United States.

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In the weeks before the summit, Clinton administration officials also suggested that they had won a promise from China to stop providing C-802 cruise missiles to Iran. Preventing Iran from obtaining these weapons was a high priority for the U.S. Navy, which is eager to minimize the risks to American warships patrolling the Persian Gulf.

But China’s assurance about the missiles was not as firm as the one involving nuclear technology.

Chinese officials said they do not have any “plans” to sell more C-802 missiles to Iran.

“We don’t know whether [this promise] covers existing contracts” between China and Iran, said Douglas Paal of the Asia Pacific Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank. Moreover, he said, “they could sell a new missile [called] the C-803.”

Furthermore, China refused to give the Clinton administration its assurance that it will stop selling ballistic-missile technology to Iran.

While cruise missiles could be used to strike warships in the Persian Gulf, ballistic missiles might enable Iran to strike targets throughout the Middle East.

Paal suggested that China has already decided it would be willing to rein in its help for Iran’s missile programs but intends to hold off for now to retain bargaining chips with the United States.

Chinese officials “are going to hold out for concessions on [U.S.] arms sales to Taiwan,” said Paal, who is a former Bush administration official.

In the area of trade, efforts at another deal stalled. During negotiations leading up to the summit, the Clinton administration had sought to obtain a package of specific economic and commercial concessions from China, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

In the negotiations, Washington and Beijing were trying to work out what would have been called a “down payment” toward China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, the body that sets the ground rules for international trade.

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The United States was trying to obtain reductions in China’s tariff and nontariff barriers and new agreements covering the service sector and agriculture. But the talks broke down about 10 days before the summit when China refused to ease its restrictions on American exports of citrus fruits.

U.S. officials had held out the possibility that if China made the trade concessions, the president would have been willing to say he would support, and fight for, a permanent extension of China’s trade privileges in the United States, commonly called most-favored-nation benefits. For the past 17 years, China has needed to get the MFN benefits renewed each year.

Chinese officials bargained hard to persuade the Clinton administration to set a date--for example, the end of 1998--by which the negotiations over China’s entry into the WTO would be completed. But when the secret trade discussions broke down, the administration refused to set any such date.

“Basically, we’re unwilling to do it,” National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said after the summit. “We don’t want to impose an artificial deadline on ourselves that says that China gets in [the WTO] in ’98 regardless of the offer on the table.”

Both sides were frustrated in the field of human rights. In the days before the summit, the Clinton administration was unable to persuade China to set free Wei Jingsheng, China’s most prominent dissident, or Wang Dan, a student leader of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

On the other hand, China not only failed to get Clinton to commit himself to a specific date for his visit to Beijing, it fell short in its objectives on human rights issues as well.

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The Clinton administration refused to lift all of the sanctions imposed on China after the Tiananmen crackdown, as China had wanted. Moreover, Chinese officials had urged the administration to drop its past support for a resolution condemning China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

“There is significant leverage, and it’s being used,” one administration official said of the efforts to win Wei’s freedom.

In other words, while Clinton and Jiang both failed to achieve most of their negotiating goals before this week’s summit, there is plenty of room for both governments to haggle with one another in the coming months.