Bush Calls for Change in China

President Bush, speaking days before a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing, called on the communist nation’s leaders today to ease restrictions on free expression and religion, and cited Taiwan as a possible model.

But his remarks reflected more of a nudge than an ultimatum -- underscoring the increasingly delicate balancing act of weighing China’s expanding influence in the world against demands by religious conservatives and human rights advocates at home, who want Bush to be more confrontational.

And the first comments from Chinese officials did not indicate great concern about Bush’s pronouncements.

“As the people of China grow in prosperity, their demands for political freedom will grow as well,” Bush said in a speech today in Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital.

“I have pointed out that the people of China want more freedom to express themselves -- to worship without state control -- and to print Bibles and other sacred texts without fear of punishment. The efforts of China’s people to improve their society should be welcomed as part of China’s development. By meeting the legitimate demands of its citizens for freedom and openness, China’s leaders can help their country grow into a modern, prosperous, and confident nation,” Bush said.

He punctuated his comments by drawing an unusually direct parallel between China and Taiwan, an island democracy claimed by China that the U.S. has pledged to protect.

Bush did not mention China’s ongoing military buildup, viewed in the region as a signal of Beijing’s intention to fight for control of Taiwan. Nor did he alter U.S. policy backing “one China” that includes Taiwan, reiterating that stance at a brief news conference. But using potentially provocative terms, he said the island had fostered a “free and democratic Chinese society” that could be a model for the mainland.

“Taiwan is another society that has moved from repression to democracy as it liberalized its economy,” Bush said. “This opening to world markets transformed the island into one of the world’s most important trading powers. Economic liberalization in Taiwan helped fuel its desire for individual political freedom -- because men and women who are allowed to control their own wealth will eventually insist on controlling their own lives and their future.”

Bush and other officials sought to balance the president’s relatively tough language with assurances that their overall relationship with China was progressing.

“The point is not to lecture,” said Mike Green, a senior White House advisor on Asia. “We approach this from the premise that U.S.-China relations are good and we’re committed to making them better.”

On Taiwan, Bush said he was “not necessarily trying to compare one system to another.”

He added, “What I say to the Chinese, as well as others, is that a free society is in your interests.”

Bush’s decision to press religious freedom and human rights was the latest turn in his approach to China. Although the Clinton administration had long viewed Beijing as a strategic partner, Bush initially viewed China more as a rival. But over time, partly under pressure from U.S. business groups that want access to China’s massive markets, the White House has opted to describe the relationship as “complex.”

That was apparent as the U.S. president chimed in from Kyoto today, during the same week that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading a trade mission to China and the president’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, attended a business conference there. The former president was an envoy to China in the 1970s.

The president’s speech followed his meeting last week with the Dalai Lama, condemned by Beijing as a threat to Chinese unity. And in recent weeks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick have urged greater religious freedom and democracy in China.

Bush is to attend a state-sanctioned Protestant church while in Beijing. But by criticizing China from a safe distance today, before seeing Hu in person, he was directing his message more at a U.S. audience while avoiding a confrontation in Beijing that could strain relations on other fronts.

U.S. officials need Chinese cooperation in joint efforts to rid North Korea of nuclear arms, and the Bush administration has also sought to persuade Beijing to float its undervalued currency, a move that would make Chinese goods more expensive on the world market and less competitive with U.S. exports.

Chinese officials did not appear worried about Bush’s comments. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told Reuters news agency that he had “not noticed” the speech and that the two nations were “now getting along very well.” The Chinese are accustomed to the U.S. dance.

“I don’t think Beijing is overly concerned,” said Tao Wenzhao, a scholar with the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “After all, human rights had a much more prominent role in U.S.-China relations in the early 1990s,” immediately after the suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests.

Throughout much of the 1990s, China would lash back at foreign critics, reproaching them for meddling in its internal affairs. Now the arguments from Beijing are more sophisticated, namely that it is making progress, has made reference to human rights in its constitution and considers lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty the ultimate human right.

“As far as religious freedom and freedom of speech go, we have different policies,” Tao said.

But even as Bush aimed his words at a domestic audience, they were unlikely to mollify critics, such as Amnesty International, which had called on him to demand specific concessions as a precursor to China playing host to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Democrats and organized labor are also likely to continue criticizing policies that they charge have allowed the annual U.S. trade deficit with China to approach $200 billion. The president pledged only “frank discussions” about China’s currency.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada sent a letter to Bush this week charging that the White House’s approach had only made matters worse on all fronts with China -- increasing the trade deficit, giving Beijing greater power over the U.S. economy and permitting North Korea to expand its nuclear arsenal.

“China’s nondemocratic government has taken actions and pursued policies that understandably stoke concerns and fears in America,” Reid wrote. “The current ad hoc, inconsistent, and essentially aimless, approach of U.S. policy toward China has exacerbated these fears.”

Bush’s speech capped a day of meetings in Japan, the United States’ closest ally in the region and a nation confronting its own discomfort with China, its regional rival.

The U.S. and Japan are increasingly isolated in Asia as China, South Korea and others move closer on economic issues and engaging North Korea. Tokyo and Washington have grown closer thanks in part to a friendship between Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, despite lingering differences over Japan’s ban on U.S. beef.

Bush was not able to persuade Koizumi to maintain a Japanese troop presence in Iraq. Japan is to reassess its presence there this month.

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Times staff writer Mark Magnier in Beijing contributed to this report.