Clinton’s Asia Policy Puts China First

China up, Japan down. That, in essence, is the Clinton administration’s policy toward Asia these days.

In the midst of Asia’s financial crisis, President Clinton has been quietly forging an American strategy that gives greater weight to China, and less to Japan, than at any time since Alexander M. Haig Jr. stepped down as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of State in 1982.

Indeed, one of the many curious ways in which Clinton’s presidency can be said to resemble that of Richard Nixon’s is that both men eventually settled on a China-centered foreign policy, one which tilted toward Beijing and away from Tokyo.

The Clinton administration’s new policy was fully on display in Washington last week.

First, White House officials served notice that the president will travel to China in June, months ahead of schedule, for a second summit with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. By comparison, Clinton shows little eagerness for summit meetings with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin or Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.

*

Second, the administration announced Friday that it would drop the eight-year American effort to obtain a United Nations resolution condemning China’s human rights record.

For Clinton, these developments mark a remarkable turnabout, not just in the tactics for dealing with China, but in underlying strategy. Indeed, Clinton going to China will be, in its own way, almost as much a symbol of personal transformation as was Nixon’s trip to China a quarter of a century ago.

Many Americans remember how, during the 1992 campaign, Clinton denounced President Bush for “coddling dictators” in Beijing and promised not to extend China’s most-favored-nation trade benefits unless the regime improved its record on human rights.

Yet Clinton’s 1992 campaign also had a little-recognized but broader strategic component. The approach was crafted for him by campaign aides Anthony Lake and Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger--the two men who subsequently served in turn as his national security advisors.

At the time, their notion was that China’s strategic importance in the world had diminished because of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Bush administration’s forbearance in dealing with the Chinese regime “might have made sense during the Cold War, when China was the counterweight to Soviet power,” Clinton asserted at the time. “It makes no sense to play the China card now, when our opponents have thrown in their hand.”

Now, six years later, Clinton is playing a China card of his own.

What has changed? One factor, of course, has been the role of the American business community, which looked to China both for growth in exports and as a source of low-wage labor. Clinton’s abortive effort to tie China’s trade benefits to human rights showed him the dangers of ignoring this constituency.

However, the desire for trade hardly explains Clinton’s recent actions. At the moment, U.S. firms seem to be scaling back earlier plans for investment in China, yet the Clinton White House seems ever more determined to upgrade American ties with Beijing.

Instead, the explanation is a broader one: The Clinton administration seems to have concluded that China, more than Japan, is the key to preserving stability in East Asia--both political and economic.

*

Over the last few months, administration officials have praised China for not devaluing its currency in a way that would harm the rest of Southeast Asia. At the same time, U.S. officials have also repeatedly criticized Japan for its unwillingness to stimulate its own economy in a way that might help other Asian governments.

One senior administration official recently acknowledged that Japan had taken some steps to help rescue the economies of Asian countries, such as Indonesia. However, he quickly added, “that’s bailouts, and what Asia is looking for [from Japan] is growth.”

Indeed, there now seems to be an implicit deal between Washington and Beijing, in which Clinton and Jiang help each other out.

Jiang gets smooth relations with the United States at just the time when his regime is about to launch the most difficult part of its economic reform program.

Over the next few months, China is likely to lay off large numbers of workers as it overhauls its state-owned industries. The last thing China needs right now is a confrontation with Washington, or aggressive American support for the cause of democracy in China.

*

Conversely, Clinton obtains China’s help as he seeks to manage the Asian financial crisis in such a way that it won’t damage the American economy too much. And if a trip to China will boost Clinton’s personal standing at home, so much the better.

There are dangers inherent in the administration’s approach. Whenever an administration becomes enamored of the strategic importance of China, the result is to give Beijing vastly greater leverage in dealing with the United States.

Moreover, there are long-term risks involved in minimizing Japan’s significance to the United States. It is, after all, Japan, not China, which is America’s military ally and which agrees to permit American bases and troops on its soil.

For now, however, such matters are being brushed aside. We are seeing that the maintenance of good relations with China has become one of the central preoccupations of American foreign policy in Clinton’s second term.

Thus, Clinton’s decision to speed up his visit to Beijing is not just an itinerary, but a strategy, and a questionable one at that.

*

Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.