If China Could Have a Say: Gore for President

While China is officially neutral in the American presidential elections this year, Chinese officials and scholars make clear they would be happiest with a victory by Vice President Al Gore.

One reason is the Chinese fear that a Republican president--even Texas Gov. George W. Bush, whose own father forged strong relations with Beijing--might try to go further in supporting Taiwan against China than either Gore or his Democratic rival, Bill Bradley.

“We can foresee that if George Bush or another Republican comes to the White House . . . they will try to sell more arms to Taiwan and move closer to Taiwan,” said Chu Shulong, a scholar at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

“The Democrats would be more stable [in dealing with China] than the Republicans. Gore has been in office for eight years already. And [Bill] Bradley’s record shows that he is a moderate on Taiwan.”

China’s hopes for Gore fit into a well-established pattern. Over the past three decades, Chinese leaders have regularly cheered along the election campaigns of incumbent U.S. presidents or vice presidents, from Richard Nixon in 1972 through President Clinton in 1996.

The Chinese view is that any incumbent has already been “house-trained”--that is, made aware of the costs and difficulties of trying to change America’s China policy--and will therefore be less confrontational in dealing with Beijing.

Sometimes, Beijing lends a hand by inviting incumbent candidates to China, which can be used as backdrop for campaign footage. That was the case with Nixon and with presidents Ford in 1976 and Reagan in 1984.

In 1988, China’s top leader Deng Xiaoping even gave an unqualified public endorsement to then-Vice President Bush. And in 1996, China apparently tried to steer money to Clinton’s reelection campaign.

In a series of interviews here and in Shanghai, Chinese officials and scholars all said they believe that over the long run, it makes little difference for China which American candidate is elected president, so long as he comes from the mainstream of the Democratic or Republican Party.

Any new U.S. president will eventually wind up with the same China policy, they argued, although some of the current candidates could create more trouble for China than others during the first year or two in the White House.

“No matter who is president, they will all continue the policy of engagement” with China, said Xiong Zhiyong, dean of studies at Beijing’s Foreign Affairs College. “During the early 1990s, after Bush left the White House, people here were nervous. Now, we’re not so nervous. The economic relations between the United States and China are so close, no one will want to take risks.”

Nevertheless, some Chinese scholars said that if the Republicans win, there could be tensions in the short term, probably over Taiwan. The Republicans “would eventually return to the policies of the Clinton administration,” Chu said. “But there’s room for lots of trouble in the learning period.”

He and others recalled that when Reagan came to the White House in 1981, he tried at first to give greater public support for Taiwan. After a couple of years, Reagan set the Taiwan issue aside and developed stronger ties with Beijing, largely because of the need for China’s help in Cold War efforts against the former Soviet Union.

The interviews were conducted before the New Hampshire primaries, and most of the Chinese assumed that Gore and Bush would likely be the Democratic and Republican nominees. Few offered any views of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), although one scholar said he thought McCain seemed “quite tough.”

Of all the current presidential candidates, Bush seems to be the one the Chinese are most uncertain about. On the one hand, they voice some unease over the campaign speeches of Bush and some of his advisors.

In a foreign-policy speech last November, Bush termed China “a competitor, not a strategic partner,” and said that if he were president, China would be “unthreatened, but not unchecked.”

Asked about Bush’s words, a Chinese foreign ministry official, Lu Shumin, replied: “I don’t believe any effort to have China checked or contained will be in line with the trend of our times.”

But some Chinese scholars discounted Bush’s hawkish rhetoric as merely a cosmetic effort to court electoral support, rather than a sign of what he will do if he is elected.

“I see Junior Bush just using this [tough talk on China] for public opinion, to create a new issue against the Clinton administration,” explained Huang Renwei of Shanghai’s Pudong Institute for the U.S. Economy.

Moreover, several Chinese scholars said they respected Bush’s foreign-policy advisors, a team that includes a number of alumni of the last two Republican administrations.

“They are quite realistic,” said Huang of Gov. Bush’s team. “They are not rightists. . . . They are close to the [U.S.] military industries and to the Taiwan lobby, but these Republicans have a pro-business orientation too.”

“The Republicans are generally better at foreign and security policy than the Democrats,” asserted Yang Jiemian of the Shanghai Institute for Strategic Studies.

Indeed, Chinese officials and scholars voice greater anxieties over what might happen during this year’s election campaign than over what the next president will do.

At the moment, China’s greatest fear is that American presidential politics may propel the Clinton administration to approve major new U.S. arms sales to Taiwan this year. They worry that the Republican nominee will portray the Democrats as soft on Taiwan, and Clinton will eventually try to help Gore deflect the criticism by authorizing the sale of new weapons systems.

Chinese officials point to the precedent of the 1992 presidential campaign. That September, President Bush, with his campaign floundering and his China policy under attack, decided to open the way for the $6-billion sale of F-16 warplanes to Taiwan.

This year, Taiwan has asked the Clinton administration to authorize the sale of several new weapons systems, including four Aegis destroyers. And the House of Representatives, led by the Republican majority, last week overwhelmingly approved new legislation supporting military ties to Taiwan, a move which could put additional pressure on the White House.

Sha Zukang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s top disarmament official, warned in an interview against election-year arms sales by Washington.

“The election year should not be an excuse to do anything which would compromise the interests of international peace and security, or the interests of the United States itself,” Sha declared.