Jiang Zemin

It is unfortunate that Arianna Huffington (Column Right, Oct. 19) has grossly distorted both the behavior of China’s current leaders and the integrity of successive U.S. presidents. First, in labeling Chinese President Jiang Zemin as the “Butcher of Beijing,” Huffington reveals her ignorance of recent history: Jiang Zemin played no role whatever in the 1989 crackdown on Chinese students at Tiananmen Square. Second, in contemptuously dismissing the long-standing U.S. policy of “constructive engagement” toward China as “servile appeasement,” she maligns no fewer than six successive U.S. presidents, from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton--all of whom saw clearly the folly of trying to ostracize, isolate and gratuitously insult a reawakening Chinese giant.

To be sure, China is facing numerous transitional problems, including a brittle, insecure Communist Party leadership; a sharp polarization of wealth between haves and have-nots; and a massively inefficient, debt-ridden state-owned industrial sector. But there is also in China today a rising, self-confident, urban middle class; an increasingly visible and vigorous “civil society”; and--dare I say it?--a higher degree of cultural and intellectual pluralism than has existed at any time in modern Chinese history. Political dissent continues to be strongly discouraged, and opposition voices continue to be stifled--but less violently, and less arbitrarily, than before.

A more tolerant, benign political system won’t emerge in China overnight. But it is emerging, and we should be doing whatever we can to facilitate that emergence.

RICHARD BAUM

Prof. of Political Science

UCLA

The writer is author of “Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping” (Princeton University Press, 1996).

* I thank Huffington for writing this column. China is a very anti-democratic regime and one of the last Stalinist nations, along with North Korea and Cuba. Shamefully, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger continues to work for Beijing’s interests. I hope Huffington continues to criticize Kissinger.

IHN SONG

Granada Hills