New Red Scare Costs California Jobs

The sweet story line of “Restless,” a romantic comedy due out this summer that’s the first English-language film financed by both U.S. and mainland Chinese private money, is that China-U.S. relationships require lots of work to overcome the towering cultural barriers dividing East and West. The film from Venice-based Celestial Pictures, to be released this summer in the U.S. and Asia, talks about interpersonal relationships, of course. But its observation could well apply to the larger canvas of the political-military relationship between the two countries. It’s getting in more and more trouble.

Last week, the Clinton administration backtracked on a preliminary decision made in 1996 and blocked a huge telecommunications deal with China. The reversal stunned California-based Hughes Electronics. The El Segundo firm watched helplessly as a half-billion-dollar satellite contract, years in negotiation, seemed to be going down the drain.

President Clinton killed the Hughes deal that his administration once had seemed to encourage to protect his presumed heir apparent, Al Gore, from the predictable Republican assault that their administration has been “soft on China.” The Clinton retreat came amid the backdrop of a Republican-led probe said to conclude that past U.S. technology transfers did provide aid and technological comfort to the People’s Liberation Army. To protect Gore from China-scare crossfire during his presidential campaign, Clinton blew off the gigantic, meticulously negotiated Hughes contract with an Asian consortium that’s 51% owned by mainland Chinese interests.

It would be unfair to the Republicans--and some congressional Democrats--bird-dogging the president on these technology-transfer deals to make light of the national security issues here. America’s military security is based not so much on quantitative factors like numbers of troops as on qualitative ones, expecially our technological lead in almost all military categories. It’s a genuine issue if America is somehow giving away the technological store. But as the purpose of the satellites was to provide cellular telecommunications technology to China’s vast population, for whom wiring every home would be a monstrous economic challenge, it is difficult to understand why Beijing is more menacing to Los Angeles or Seattle or Boise if it is armed with cell phones. It’s especially difficult to understand this when the Chinese will simply now turn to European suppliers for its communications satellites.

This issue desperately needs more airing, especially on the West Coast. California, with its large trading relationship with China, its vast Chinese diaspora and its countless Chinese American communities, has a profound stake in this issue. And it is the state’s Republican members of Congress who are at the head of this anti-Clinton and anti-China charge, especially Newport Beach Republican Christopher Cox, who headed the House probe. He bears a special responsibility on this issue. So do high-minded local civic institutions like the Asia Society. They should invite Cox--and perhaps Hughes--to a public forum to explain why selling cell-phone technology to the Chinese imperils America. For the decision, if it stands, will vaporize thousands of jobs in California, a move that could come back to haunt politicians perceived as playing domestic politics with such vital issues.

The atmosphere in Washington about China is increasingly vile, notwithstanding the planned spring visit of Premier Zhu Rongji. Commented a despondent but philosophical U.S. administration official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, “The decision is terrible news. But it certainly does fit in to the larger picture of a sharp downturn in China-U.S. relations.” Beijing surely bears a good measure of blame. It simply seems not to give much of a damn, not only about the rights of political opponents, despite its recent signature on a recent U.N. human-rights covenant; but also about the mixed picture it presents to a concerned Western public, not to mention ultra-critical human rights groups. Equally unfazed, apparently, by any major China-U.S. retensioning is the congressional leadership, which senses that it may finally have a hot issue with which to nail Clinton. Perhaps Hughes’ only hope now--a very long shot--is to amend the contract enough to meet Clinton’s concerns and permit the president to be able to tell Congress to back down.

It’s not clear whether a whole new Cold War is in the wind. But politicians who would use the China issue for domestic advantage may burden future generations with a wholly unnecessary trans-Pacific cold war. Heed well the words of New York University professor Joanna Waley-Cohen, in her excellent new history “The Sextants of China”: “Westerners who blame [anti- American] Chinese rhetoric . . . for the lion’s share of the mutual hostility between the People’s Republic and the United States fail to acknowledge the role of the American anti-communist movement, which for years led the United States to treat the People’s Republic as a virtual pariah.”

Let’s go back to the delightful little movie “Restless.” Its example of China-U.S. film-making cooperation will probably not inspire more than additional Hollywood co-production adventures with China. But the movie’s theme--that, while China-U.S. relations always need lots of work, the effort can be well worth it--should set us thinking. Are we so sure it’s necessary to go back to the future of a new cold war with China? Is the current Chinese menace that threatening? Why is Washington so restless?

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Times contributing editor Tom Plate’s column runs Tuesdays. He teaches at UCLA. E-mail: tplate@ucla.edu.