Clinton to ‘Chart Course’ for Better Ties With China

In his first major speech on U.S. relations with China, President Clinton served notice Friday that he wants to change American policy toward Beijing’s Communist regime so that it is “more positive” than in recent years.

Outlining his views before his meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin next week--his first summit meeting with a Chinese leader--Clinton dwelt at length on China’s strategic importance to the United States and strongly defended his administration’s policy of engagement with the Asian giant.

Clinton suggested that China and the United States might cooperate to ensure continuing supplies of oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. It was the first time that the president has proposed such broad cooperation with China on the Middle East.

Clinton said Jiang’s visit to Washington “gives us the opportunity and the responsibility to chart a course for the future that is more positive and more stable--and hopefully more productive--than our relations have been for the last few years.”

That was an implicit acknowledgment of the problems that have plagued U.S. ties with China during Clinton’s first years in office. The administration repeatedly has been at odds with the Beijing regime over human rights, trade, weapons proliferation and Taiwan.

In his half-hour address, the president stressed that in dealing with China, he will not abandon the cause of human rights that was an intrinsic element of his 1992 campaign for the White House.

“Americans share a fundamental conviction that people everywhere have the right to be treated with dignity, to give voice to their opinion, to choose their own leaders, to worship as they please,” Clinton said.

He asserted that the U.S. “must and will continue to stand up for human rights, to speak out against their abuse in China or anywhere else in the world. To do otherwise would run counter to everything we stand for as Americans.”

Still, the thrust of Clinton’s speech was that his administration will try to upgrade U.S. ties with China. He suggested that the United States will try to settle disputes by obtaining cooperation from China rather than by issuing threats.

When Clinton took office in 1993, he carried through on a campaign pledge by imposing restrictions on the renewal of China’s trading privileges in this country. Unless the Chinese regime took steps to improve its human rights policies, the trade benefits would be revoked, the president said at the time.

A year later, Clinton backed away from this threat and agreed to renew the trade benefits, although he acknowledged that China had not made the sort of progress on human rights that he had demanded.

Since then, Clinton’s policy has wavered between conflict and efforts at cooperation. At the same time, particularly over the last year, there has been a rising chorus of complaints in Congress that the administration is not assertive enough in dealing with the Chinese regime.

Congressional attitudes toward China were further soured by allegations that Beijing tried to influence the U.S. political process by illegally steering funds into the 1996 campaign. China has denied those charges, and they have not been substantiated.

In his speech Friday, the president sought to counter critics of his policy of engagement.

“I know there are those who disagree,” he said. “They insist that China’s interests and America’s are inexorably in conflict. . . . They, therefore, believe we should be working harder to contain or even to confront China before it becomes even stronger.

“I believe this view is wrong. Isolation of China is unworkable, counterproductive and potentially dangerous. Military, political and economic measures to do such a thing would find little support among our allies around the world and, more importantly, even among Chinese themselves working for greater liberty.”

In China, Clinton’s speech received a strongly positive response from Jiang. Meeting with U.S. reporters at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing this morning, Jiang said he was “impressed by the great importance President Clinton attaches to U.S.-China relations.”

Quoting from Clinton’s speech, Jiang said he also agreed with Clinton’s call for a “world of democracy.” However, he warned the U.S. against imposing its form of democracy on China, which he said still lags in economic development necessary for full democracy.

Clinton delivered his speech in an auditorium of the Voice of America office in Washington; the agency broadcast his remarks in both English and Mandarin.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), one of the leading congressional opponents of Clinton’s China policy, said later that the president’s speech “was masterful in its craftiness in whitewashing China’s record.”

“It is ironic that the president chose to give his China speech at Voice of America, since China continues to jam their broadcasts and the broadcasts of Radio Free Asia to China and Tibet,” Pelosi said.

Times staff writer Rone Tempest in Beijing contributed to this report.