Clinton’s China Strategy Seen Falling Short

Few American presidents have worked the sound bite or the photo op to better advantage on overseas trips than Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

Reagan stumbled badly only once: when he laid a wreath at a West German war cemetery in Bitburg where members of Hitler’s notorious SS units are buried.

Clinton’s equivalent could come Saturday. Bowing to Chinese demands, he has agreed to be officially welcomed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square--where Chinese troops massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands, of student demonstrators nine years ago.

“It’s wrong,” said Sen. Paul Wellstone, a liberal Minnesota Democrat.

Added Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), “Tiananmen Square is an infamous killing field, and the president shouldn’t be part of a ceremony there.”

But unlike Reagan’s ill-fated wreath-laying, Clinton’s willingness to go through with the Tiananmen welcoming ceremony has an added dimension: It is seen by many as symbolic of a larger failure.

Refusal to Impose Sanctions Cited

To a wide cross-section of U.S. foreign affairs specialists, the decision stands as a striking example of Clinton’s inability to reap benefits from his policy of “engagement”--his strategy of cooperating with China on issues of common interest without letting serious differences, particularly on human rights, get in the way.

“I can’t think of a single situation with regard to China where the administration hasn’t backed off,” said Warren Cohen, director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

Cohen cited Clinton’s refusal to impose sanctions against China despite compelling evidence that it sold sensitive weapons technology to Pakistan and Iran. And he said Clinton has failed to win human rights improvements in China in return for trade preferences for Chinese products entering the U.S.

“This isn’t a poker game, but if you say an issue is important to you, then you need to get at least something on that issue,” Cohen said. “This administration has gotten nothing out of the Chinese except promises the Chinese haven’t kept.”

Other specialists credit the administration’s engagement policies with yielding progress in several important areas, including trade and weapons nonproliferation. But they echo Cohen’s opinion that a harder-edged engagement could bring even greater rewards.

“They’ve constantly pulled their punches on China,” said Joseph Cirincione, an arms control specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “The entire history of tracking Chinese assistance to countries like Pakistan and Iran is one of refusing to see the evidence or implement sanctions.”

Noted Mike Jendrzejczyk, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch/Asia: “It’s right that the administration’s long-term objective should be making China a full partner in international regimes governing trade, human rights and proliferation, but I don’t think they’ve come up with a credible way of achieving that objective.”

Jendrzejczyk and others cite preparation for the Beijing summit, with its planned stop in Tiananmen Square, as merely one in a long list of Clinton’s failures to exert American leverage with China.

They argue that the White House first squandered valuable bargaining leverage by quickly agreeing late last year on a date for the summit, then made matters worse by moving up the date from November to June, sharply reducing time for U.S. officials to negotiate a favorable outcome.

“This is when the Clinton administration could have played hardball, saying the president is willing to come in principle, but not unconditionally,” said a U.S. China specialist who declined to be identified by name or organization. “Instead, they did it backward. They agreed to the dates and are now scrambling to make the trip more than a series of photo ops.”

U.S. Officials Admit Problems Remain

For the Chinese, photo ops alone are the payoff--a de facto endorsement that relations between the two great Pacific powers have moved beyond the Tiananmen era.

Although Clinton’s decision to engage China across a broad range of issues has yielded results, administration officials, reacting to reports that China was assisting both Iran and Libya on missile technology, admitted last week that problems remain.

“They have improved; they still need to improve,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a Senate committee. “We will continue to press that.”

But the real emphasis of Clinton’s engagement with China has been in the commercial field, underscoring the president’s personal view that strong trade ties are the key both to international peace and to the United States’ long-term prosperity.

That conviction led Clinton to shift the main responsibility for monitoring the export of sensitive U.S. technology from the State and Defense departments to the trade-friendly Commerce Department.

Conflicting Messages Received From U.S.

After receiving some early confused signals from the Clinton administration, including a halfhearted attempt to link trade preferences with progress in human rights, the Chinese understand that Clinton’s desire to build strong commercial ties rests at the heart of the U.S.-China relationship, Asia specialists maintain.

Chinese officials have reportedly described to visiting American scholars how the late Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown once advised them to ignore tough human rights messages delivered by then-Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher and that trade was Clinton’s main priority.

“You get this from Chinese officials,” Cohen said.

In her office near the White House, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky charted the harvest of this emphasis: a 70% rise in U.S. exports and a 140% jump in imports during the Clinton era; the conclusion of 15 trade agreements covering agriculture, textiles and intellectual property rights; and a successful crackdown on Chinese-produced pirated compact discs.

“In 1995, China was the chief pirater of these products,” she said. “Now they are a minor offender.”

For California especially, the strong emphasis on developing trade with China has contributed to an enormous economic windfall stemming from Asian markets.

In 1996, the latest full-year figures available from the Bank of America show, California exported about $2 billion worth of goods to mainland China, a volume of trade that would normally support between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs.

“It’s had a big impact on the California economy,” said Kelvin Lee, president of the Los Angeles-based Asian Business League.

For many critics, however, the administration’s preoccupation with boosting trade has seriously jeopardized U.S. leverage in other key areas, including human rights and even national security.

Earlier this month, Clinton found himself on the defensive, deflecting charges that, in doing business with China, two U.S. satellite producers may have provided Beijing with information that could help it build more accurate nuclear missiles.

By making it easier for U.S. companies to sell sensitive technology to countries such as China, “we are now giving trade a dangerously high priority at the expense of national security,” said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., director of the conservative Center for Security Policy, goes further. He says the U.S. has frequently helped China and other “proliferators” by providing them with technology they need to bolster their weapons arsenals.

Clinton is certainly not the first president to ease the restrictions on what U.S. firms may export to former Cold War adversaries. That relaxation was begun by Republican presidents Reagan and Bush in the 1980s and early 1990s. But Clinton is the first to give the Commerce Department the lead on technology transfer decisions, a move some critics argue reflects a misplaced presidential enthusiasm for trade.

Rights activists, like the arms control community, also lament the absence of a stronger administration stand. They complain that progress on such issues as worker rights, political prisoners and Tibet has been painfully slow, even if China recently released its two most prominent political dissidents, Wang Dan and Wei Jingsheng.

Cohen said the reason for the administration’s reluctance to exert greater leverage on China is simple: “They fear the Chinese will buy from Airbus [a European company] and not Boeing.”

To Cohen, this also explains Clinton’s presence at Tiananmen Square. And he argued that even if Clinton condemns the events of 1989, it wouldn’t offset the visual impact of his appearance.

“What the Chinese people will see is the president of the United States standing in the square next to those responsible for the massacre,” Cohen said. “They’ll never hear the words.”

Times staff writer Art Pine contributed to this report.

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Clinton’s Itinerary

President Clinton leaves Washington on Wednesday for a 10-day tour of China, the first presidential mission to the world’s most populous nation since 1989.

XIAN: Thursday-Friday

Clinton’s first stop is the ancient capital of China. The president, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea will visit the village of Xia He and the tomb of the Qin Emperor (221-206 BC), famous for its thousands of terra cotta models of the emperor’s warriors.

BEIJING: Friday-Monday, June 29

The theatrical high point of Clinton’s China trip is Saturday’s welcoming ceremony at Tiananmen Square, site of the 1989 massacre. Later, President Jiang Zemin hosts a state dinner for the Clintons in the Great Hall of the People. Other public appearances: the Forbidden City and Great Wall on Sunday, and a speech at Beijing University on Monday. In private consultations, Clinton is expected to discuss the U.S.-China “strategic partnership” and other priority policy issues.

SHANGHAI: Monday, June 29-Thursday, July 2

Clinton will focus on economic growth and trade relations during his visit to China’s biggest city and its center of commerce and industry. The president will participate in a series of public sessions with Shanghai community leaders, U.S. business executives, young Chinese entrepreneurs, and new homeowners and their lenders.

GUILIN: Thursday, July 2

On his way to Hong Kong, Clinton will make a quick stop in this picturesque city, situated on the Li River amid the towering Guilin Peaks. He will deliver a speech stressing environmental themes.

HONG KONG: Thursday, July 2-Friday, July 3

On the final stop of his tour, Clinton will meet with business and community leaders in this former British protectorate now under Chinese rule. The president will hold a concluding news conference before departing China for the United States.

Source: The White House

Compiled by Times staff researcher Tricia Ford in Washington