Clinton Calls Fiscally Strong China Good for U.S.

President Clinton, on the eve of his meeting with visiting Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, warned Wednesday against trying to isolate or contain Beijing, and insisted that the United States has more to gain from a strong, prosperous China than a weak, unstable one.

In the face of intense friction between the U.S. and China in recent months, Clinton strongly defended his administration’s attempts to “engage” China as the best way to manage a relationship plagued by fundamental differences of policy and values.

In what appeared to be a preemptive defense of a still-incomplete deal, Clinton also argued that intense negotiations underway on allowing China to join the World Trade Organization are “profoundly in our national interests,” because an agreement would give U.S. exporters access to Chinese markets and make Beijing subject to international trading regulations.

“The bottom line is this: If China is willing to play by the global rules of trade, it would be an inexplicable mistake for the United States to say no,” Clinton said.

Beijing’s attempts to win U.S. support in its 13-year bid to join WTO appeared to be in the endgame stages Wednesday. But White House aides said it was still unclear if a full agreement would be reached before Zhu arrives at the White House this morning for a reception on the South Lawn.

“We’re trying to narrow differences, but we’re not there,” said Lael Brainard, Clinton’s deputy national economic advisor.

In his speech Wednesday to the congressionally funded U.S. Institute of Peace, Clinton warned against viewing China as a Cold War caricature. He instead sought to reassure Americans about China’s nuclear threat after acknowledging allegations that a Taiwan-born scientist at New Mexico’s Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory may have passed information in the 1980s to help China design and build smaller nuclear warheads.

Clinton defended his administration’s probe of the alleged espionage and said China has “at best only marginally increased its deployed nuclear threat in the last 15 years.”

“China has fewer than two dozen long-range nuclear weapons today,” he added. “We have over 6,000.”

Clinton spoke at length about what he portrayed as a more likely danger: a potential breakdown of China’s social system. “The weaknesses of great nations can pose as big a challenge to America as their strengths,” he warned, citing Japan’s long recession and Russia’s economic collapse.

“So as we focus on the potential challenge that a strong China could present to the United States in the future, let us not forget the risk of a weak China beset by internal conflicts, social dislocation and criminal activity, becoming a vast zone of instability in Asia,” he added.

Clinton said the “first danger signs” are already evident, including “freewheeling Chinese enterprises selling weapons abroad, the rise in China of organized crime, stirrings of ethnic tensions and rural unrest, the use of Chinese territory for heroin trafficking and even piracy of ships at sea.”

Most China experts consider a collapse of China’s economy highly unlikely, and little evidence suggests a political revolt is brewing. Moreover, some of the warning signs Clinton cited are hardly new. Chinese organized crime, drug trade and piracy in the South China Sea date back generations.

Clinton said he will use his meeting with Zhu to press his concerns about China’s recent arrests and trials of political dissidents, its failure to follow through on a pledge to establish a dialogue with Tibet’s exiled Dalai Lama, and other human rights issues.

“But there is one thing we will not do,” Clinton said. “We will not change our policy in a way that isolates China from the global forces that have begun to empower the Chinese people to change their society and build a better future.”

Clinton and Zhu have met once before, at a large lunchtime gathering with a bad audio system during Clinton’s summit last summer with Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Beijing. This time, the two leaders will meet at the White House and hold a joint news conference. Clinton will host an official dinner in the premier’s honor.

“This meeting will certainly provide ample opportunity for them to take each other’s measure, to understand each other’s perspectives and hopefully, therefore, to build a basis for further progress in this important relationship,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

Zhu, considered the architect of China’s economic reforms, also will meet with members of Congress, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Zhu is making his first visit as premier to the United States, in a nine-day trip that began Tuesday in Los Angeles and will include stops in Denver, Chicago, New York and Boston.

But he comes at a time of mounting distrust and anger in Washington concerning China’s alleged spying, its political crackdown, the alleged funneling of Chinese money to U.S. political campaigns, and its missile buildup aimed at Taiwan. China, in turn, bitterly opposes U.S. plans to develop an antimissile shield that could be deployed in parts of Northeast Asia and the current North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

These disputes already have made China a hot-button issue for Republicans in the 2000 presidential race. In his speech, Clinton warned that overheated campaign rhetoric could do lasting harm to relations with the world’s most populous nation.

“We cannot allow a healthy argument to lead us toward a campaign-driven Cold War with China, for that would have tragic consequences,” he said. “No one could possibly gain from that, except for the most rigid backward-looking elements in China itself.”