Two Takes on the Selling of a President

There’s never a loss for words at the filing center for the hundreds of American reporters accompanying the president: A spokesman holds regular briefings. Transcripts of every word uttered by the leader of the free world appear on reporters’ desks, still warm from the copying machine. White House flacks hover over correspondents’ computers in last-minute lobbying attempts as deadlines draw near.

But across the street in the Chinese government press office, the only sound is a broadcast of the Cable News Network. Few reporters bother to come here to talk to the officials slumped on the scattered couches. Their main mission is to control information, not to give it away. In China, newspapers publish little independent reporting; television shows mostly what it is told to. After offering yet another “no comment,” one official gestures toward the U.S. pressroom and says wistfully, “We have a lot to learn.”

Little does he know that the White House press officers, seeing the Beijing regime’s line printed verbatim in Chinese papers, are probably thinking the same thing.

President Clinton’s time in China has offered a study of contrasts in political information style: Call it the Propaganda Ministry vs. the Spin Doctors. Both Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin had clear agendas for this summit and ideas to sell at home. Both are searching for the most effective way to control their message.

In China, though, their varying methods to accomplish this have raised the question about which is more persuasive: the voice of ultimate authority or messy but open debate?

While here, Clinton has sought to demonstrate the power of a soft touch in a land that has long known an iron grip. With the permission of the Chinese government, he has taken his message directly to the people, appearing live on television and radio to answer questions on everything from U.S. foreign policy to his health and exercise habits and retirement plans.

He won more than a few new fans. Chinese listeners noted that he is quick-witted and thoughtful, and--surprisingly--seemed to respond to questions rather than just repeat a canned answer.

“Clinton looks great on TV,” said Shanghai accountant Xu Keqing, 32, after watching the groundbreaking live news conference with Jiang and Clinton on Saturday. “He is eloquent and direct in answering the questions. He is a fast-thinking man.”

But after years of reading between the lines, those in the Chinese audience were as sharp and as skeptical as most media-savvy Americans. At Clinton’s live televised speech at Beijing University, one student asked him if he was concealing a hidden agenda to contain China “behind a smile.”

Clinton’s way is smoothed by advance teams that check out everything from a potential “line of death”--where a would-be assassin could draw a bead on the president--to the possible story line of the day. The White House employs pollsters to gauge what people need to hear and Hollywood producers to help him tell it in a dramatic way.

“We’re supposed to be invisible,” one advance team member said. “We’re supposed to pretend all these things just happen.”

Mort Engelberg, one team member, has made 17 movies, including “Smokey and the Bandit” (parts 1, 2, and 3) and “The Big Easy.” For more than five years, he has worked--unpaid--for the president, staging symbolic events and whistle-stop tours. Now he’s adding Clinton’s Hong Kong visit to his production credits--the final stop of the China tour and the place where Clinton will make his parting argument for what he achieved.

Jiang, by contrast, has the entire state apparatus working to control his official news--though this machine sometimes also acts to keep him in check. More conservative party members resisted the idea of a live Clinton-Jiang news conference, Chinese analysts say, preferring to keep debate in a tightly closed circle. Jiang himself is said to have pushed at the last minute to allow live coverage of Clinton’s visit. But he is now seen as unlikely to continue this practice after the American president leaves.

Unlike his U.S. counterpart, when it comes to medium and message, Jiang is advised by a small group of scholars who have studied abroad and cadres from the government’s Central Committee who favor pedantry to pageantry.

But before his trip to the U.S. in October, one professor’s advice went beyond policy. “I told him the most important thing is that he needs to be confident,” said Ding Xinghao, president of Shanghai’s Assn. of American Studies, who has spent years in the United States. “His style must be relaxed and comfortable and he should have dialogues spontaneously.”

Surveys showed that Jiang was perceived in the U.S. as rigid and humorless, partly because of the formalities demanded by his post. “It’s hard to be casual in the Great Hall of the People,” Ding observed. So Jiang made concerted attempts to appear to be a regular guy while in America, for example, dancing the hula in Hawaii and donning a tricorn hat in Williamsburg, Va.

At home too he is beginning to let his human side come through. He charms foreign guests by reciting the Gettysburg Address and singing “Old Man River.” (That tune is a kind of personal theme song, since his last name means river in Chinese.) He visits outlying provinces and is shown on television wearing a hard hat to join workers at construction sites or hip boots to wade near a flooded village.

“President Jiang is the top leader of a large nation,” said another scholar who has advised him. “But I think he also just wants to be liked.”

But whether his populist instincts garner him a place of respect in history in China--or the world--is another matter.

Consider the survey conducted last year by Horizon Research, one of China’s first pollsters. The firm ranked world leaders whom the Chinese found most impressive.

No. 1 on the list of 10? President Nixon, who established Sino-U.S. relations but left office in disgrace.

President Kennedy, popular at home and revered after his assassination, made nary a dent with the Chinese and ranked at the bottom. “It is clear that Americans and Chinese look for different things in a leader,” said Horizon Research’s Victor Yuan.