GOP Shift Curbs Clinton’s Goals for China Trip

President Clinton is facing a milestone trip to China that will be considerably trickier than the one he had planned.

The recent crescendo of attacks by congressional Republicans on Clinton’s China policy has transformed the political context for his visit later this month, the first by a U.S. president since the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989. Suddenly, the White House finds itself on the defensive about China.

“The atmosphere has changed,” one Clinton administration official said mournfully. “The center of gravity of the Republican Party has clearly moved--and in the past, the Republican Party has been more supportive on issues like China’s trade benefits than the Democrats have.”

As a result of the renewed political furor, many analysts and scholars say, Clinton will be able to reach fewer agreements during his visit to China than had been envisioned. They predict that the trip, scheduled to begin June 24, will be long on meetings, ceremony, tourism and talk--but little action--about strategic issues.

“Frankly, I’d hoped two or three weeks ago that this would be a more productive and substantive trip,” said Johns Hopkins University professor David M. Lampton.

As Clinton’s visit approaches, U.S. policy toward China has become much more partisan.

For the past few years, party affiliation was no indicator of how a member of Congress would vote on China. The coalition supporting Clinton’s policy of engagement included members of both parties, and opponents included conservative Republicans and liberal and labor-oriented Democrats.

Now, even Republicans who had been in Clinton’s corner are joining the chorus of attacks. More than 160 Republicans signed a letter urging Clinton to postpone the trip.

Meanwhile, among Democrats, some long-standing opponents of Clinton’s China policy are accusing the Republican leadership of bad faith.

“All of a sudden, the Republican leaders are speaking out in hyperbolic ways,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

“How dare they? How do people like [House Speaker] Newt Gingrich think they have any credibility on this issue, when they have been a major part of the policy they’re now attacking?” she asked. “Every chance the Republican leaders had to change the policy, they rejected.”

The Time Was Right

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. When Clinton decided early this year to visit China in mid-June, administration officials calculated that the time and climate were right.

The uproar over China’s reported role in the 1996 Democratic campaign fund-raising scandal seemed to have subsided, and America seemed ready to accept more harmonious relations with the leaders of the world’s most populous country.

But the Republicans were galvanized into action by the disclosure in April that Clinton had approved the export of an American satellite to China in February despite a warning from Justice Department officials that by doing so, he could undercut a pending grand jury probe into the possible transfer of American technology to China after an earlier satellite launch failure.

Republican leaders have charged that Clinton’s satellite exports may have jeopardized national security by helping China develop its missile capabilities. “I’m also worried if we continue to play patty-cake with China while they continue to be involved in weapons proliferation,” said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

Administration officials have countered that they were merely continuing the policy of satellite exports initiated by presidents Reagan and Bush and that the satellites were exported under procedures that protected American technology. The satellite controversy is now the subject of congressional investigations.

Amid the renewed furor, some members of Congress have argued that Clinton should not even set foot on Chinese soil. “Until we know the truth about what was going on [concerning the satellite deals], it is very inappropriate for the president to go to China,” said Gingrich, a Republican from Georgia.

And many more are calling upon Clinton to avoid the formal welcoming ceremonies that the Chinese regime will stage for him (as it traditionally does for other visiting heads of state) in Tiananmen Square, where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of protesters were killed in the 1989 crackdown. On Thursday, the House overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution urging Clinton not to visit Tiananmen.

A Bold Gesture Sought

Some legislators and spokespeople for human rights groups say that if Clinton takes part in the official ceremonies, he should make some bold gesture to signal America’s support for the 1989 demonstrators.

“Do you think it might be a good idea for the president to also visit with the family members of at least one of the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre?” Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) asked one administration official at a recent congressional hearing. Others have suggested that Clinton make a public statement in support of democracy during the ceremonies.

Administration officials say there is no chance Clinton will make such a dramatic gesture. “That’s unthinkable,” said one senior U.S. official. He pointed out that there will be no microphones at the Tiananmen Square event and no opportunity for Clinton to speak there.

Asked recently whether Clinton’s participation in the Tiananmen Square arrival ceremonies was already a done deal, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger replied, “I think that’s the way the Chinese do things.”

Berger and other administration officials have suggested that the president will emphasize the United States’ democratic values and its belief in human rights in a speech at a different Chinese location--for example, in remarks he is scheduled to make to students at Beijing University.

“There’s no question the president will address these issues, both before he goes and when he is there,” Berger said.

It’s not clear, however, whether such an approach will quiet the controversy in Washington.

In March, after the China trip was announced, administration officials hoped that they might be able to conclude some kind of groundbreaking agreement during the visit. Doing so, they believed, would demonstrate the improved relationship between Washington and Beijing and underscore the benefits of Clinton’s China policy.

At the time, the potential deal most frequently mentioned would have involved making China a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, the international group that sets the rules for limiting the global spread of missiles.

Ironically, what the administration was originally offering in return was a further easing of restrictions on the export of U.S. satellites to China.

The proposed deal foundered when Chinese officials balked at the idea of joining the missile group. Now that Clinton’s policy on satellites is the focus of the Republican attacks, administration officials acknowledge that the arrangement is out of the question.

“The notion of waiving the Tiananmen sanctions for satellite launches is not realistic now,” one American official said, referring to the U.S. restrictions instituted after the 1989 crackdown.

Concessions Difficult

Other far-reaching agreements also are considered unlikely--in part because both governments know that anything requiring congressional review could be swept up in the political charges and countercharges.

“It makes it difficult for the Chinese to make hard decisions” about concessions to the United States, said Lampton, the Johns Hopkins professor. “The incentive for them to do so has gone down.”

In recent days, administration officials have settled on what amounts to a strategic rationale for Clinton’s trip, arguing that last month’s nuclear tests in India and Pakistan show why the United States needs good relations with China, Asia’s most powerful country.

Clinton appealed for Beijing’s help in trying to dissuade Pakistan from matching India’s nuclear tests with tests of its own. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful, but Berger noted that China “played a generally constructive role” in the crisis. “The [Pakistanis] weren’t listening to voices outside Pakistan,” he said.

While the nuclear tests on the Indian subcontinent give the administration a new focus for Clinton’s trip, they could also cloud the chances for progress on Tibet.

Focus on Dissidents

Until this year, the focus of the administration’s human rights policy had been on winning the release of political dissidents--such as Wei Jingsheng, who was set free in November, and Wang Dan, who was released this spring.

When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Beijing in April, she made it clear that, for the first time, the administration was giving a new priority to Tibet. Administration officials have been seeking to win the release of Tibetan prisoners and, more broadly, an easing of Chinese policies toward the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

But Tibet lies along China’s border with India, and U.S. officials say that in the wake of the nuclear tests, it’s less likely that Beijing will be willing to do anything that could open the way for political instability there. Over the past 40 years, Tibet has been the site of several uprisings against Chinese rule.

“Tibet now becomes more difficult,” one administration official observed after the Indian nuclear tests last month.

The administration has not changed the underlying assumptions and goals of its China policy. The primary aim, officials have said repeatedly, is to establish a more normal relationship with the Chinese leadership than the one that has existed since 1989.

Yet those very goals too are coming under renewed scrutiny.

“The word ‘normal’ is interesting,” said Arthur Waldron, an Asia scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “What’s normal about a country that has its former prime minister under house arrest?”

He was referring to Zhao Ziyang, the former prime minister and Communist Party secretary who voiced sympathy with the 1989 demonstrations, was ousted from his job and remains under loose house arrest.

“I think Clinton was thinking this [trip] was going to be a triumph. He bought a scenario that was unrealistic,” Waldron said. “This is a good example of how things can go wrong in politics. If you play for stakes that are too high, they can fail.”