Sino-U.S. Tensions Ease After Talks, but Strains Remain

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Sunday that a two-hour meeting here with China’s top diplomat had eased tensions with Beijing and begun to mend nearly paralyzed relations between the world’s most populous nation and its most powerful one.

Most important, the two sides announced that President Clinton will meet with Chinese President Jiang Zemin during an Asia-Pacific economic forum in mid-September in Wellington, New Zealand, for the leaders’ first face-to-face talks in more than a year.

Planning for the summit will require vastly increased contacts with Beijing in coming weeks. China angrily suspended nearly all normal diplomatic exchanges and official contacts after a U.S. warplane mistakenly bombed China’s embassy in Belgrade on May 8 during the NATO air war against Yugoslavia.

But China’s minister of foreign affairs, Tang Jiaxuan, refused Albright’s request to again allow visits by U.S. warships to Chinese ports or to resume talks aimed at curbing proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. And the U.S. continued to walk a diplomatic tightrope over its relations with Taiwan at the risk of alienating China during such a sensitive time.

Tang also said that China was not prepared to revive talks to gain U.S. support for its application to join the World Trade Organization, which sets global trading rules. “There lacks the necessary atmosphere for continued negotiations,” he said.

Tang did, however, agree to Albright’s request to send several senior State Department officials, including an undersecretary for environment and the director of policy planning, to Beijing for other matters.

“I would characterize this as an easing of tensions,” Albright told reporters after sharing dim sum, shark’s fin soup and five other dishes with Tang at a lavish Chinese banquet. “While there are still subjects upon which we disagree and have to work out the arrangements, I was quite satisfied with the restoration of communication over a very friendly lunch.”

Tang was less effusive, but he too seemed pleased with the session, calling it “useful and positive in relation to the future direction of the U.S.-China relationship.”

Albright and Tang gave their careful but upbeat assessments at separate news conferences on the eve of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations regional security forum. Together, their comments suggest that the worst may be over for a bilateral relationship that is crucial to both nations, as well as to stability in Asia.

“Things are starting to move,” said a U.S. official who attended the lunch. “Not all the way, clearly. But we moved forward.”

Tang formally announced the September meeting between Clinton and Jiang, their first since the two leaders held a summit in Beijing in June. Tang and Albright agreed to immediately begin preparations for the presidents’ meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Wellington.

Clinton first proposed the meeting when he telephoned Jiang from the White House two weeks ago, and Jiang accepted, according to a senior administration official. But neither side publicly confirmed the meeting until Albright and Tang had a chance to discuss it here.

“The fact that they agreed to this does suggest that they want to get the relationship back on track,” said the senior administration official. China traditionally uses presidential meetings “as an opportunity to make progress on the bilateral relationship,” the official added.

Focus Is on Taiwan, Embassy Attack

In their meeting, the two diplomats focused largely on the embassy attack and on how the two nations view the unexpected announcement July 9 by President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan that the island’s relations with China must be conducted on a “state-to-state” basis. That appeared to directly challenge the vague but long-standing formulation that allowed both governments to coexist by claiming to be part of “one China.”

Lee’s comment provoked a furious response from Beijing, which considers Taiwan a renegade province, and mounting concern in Washington, which supports the “one China” formula and opposes independence for Taiwan.

Albright suggested that she is not satisfied with Lee’s subsequent and often-confusing explanations, including those he gave in private to a U.S. envoy, Richard Bush, who visited Taiwan last week seeking clarification.

“The explanations offered thus far don’t quite do it,” Albright said.

Her comments added to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwanese officials to back down from their new assertion of equal status. On Sunday, Beijing signaled through the official media that it may call off groundbreaking talks with Taipei scheduled for October and hinted at military exercises simulating an attack on the island in the coming week.

Lee’s policy shift “damaged cross-straits ties to the extreme,” said the official New China News Agency. While Beijing has yet to cancel the long-anticipated trip to Taipei by Beijing’s top Taiwan negotiator, the commentary said “the basis for Wang Daohan’s visit to Taiwan no longer exists.”

At the news conference in Singapore, Tang dropped his genial smile and friendly demeanor to warn Washington not to meddle in the Taiwan issue. The United States, he said, “should be very careful not to say anything or do anything to fan the flames of Taiwan independence or separatist remarks or activities. The U.S. should say little and act with great caution.”

China Doesn’t Accept Attack Explanation

Washington is caught in a delicate balancing act: Since helping defuse the last confrontation, in 1996, between the mainland and Taiwan over Beijing’s perception of Taipei’s drive for independence, the Clinton administration has been trying to build closer ties with a more powerful China, while quietly expanding military ties with Taiwan.

On Sunday, Tang said China still does not accept the U.S. explanation for the airstrike on the Chinese Embassy that killed three journalists. The administration has said that a CIA analyst misidentified the location of another bombing target and that no one in the U.S. intelligence or military chain of command caught the mistake.

“The report they offered is too strange to be true,” Tang said.

But the senior administration official argued that “it’s quite clear” that China is ready to resolve the issue. The official said Beijing’s goal is to obtain “humanitarian payments” for the families of the three Chinese killed and 20 wounded in the air raid, as well as guarantees that those responsible are held accountable.

“These are the outstanding pieces that could enable us to start putting the issue behind us,” the official said. The State Department’s legal counsel, David Andrews, will return to Beijing this week to discuss compensation to the families, while various U.S. agencies are still reviewing how the accident occurred.

Albright said she and Tang also discussed North Korea’s threatened missile test, and recurring tensions over competing claims by China and five other nations to a string of mineral-rich islands in the South China Sea. A Chinese fishing boat was sunk last week in a clash with a Philippine naval vessel in the area.

Albright also raised the issue of China’s crackdown last week on a mass spiritual sect called Falun Gong, including the reported detention and arrest of several thousand followers. “The secretary made it very clear we did have concerns about what was going on,” the U.S. official said.

Times staff writer Maggie Farley contributed to this report from Taipei.