By Jeane Kirkpatrick

From: World Tibet Network News, Thursday - August 10, 1995

With visible relief, the U.S. Department of State announced the talks between Warren Christopher and China Foreign Minister Qian Qichen during the ASEAN meeting in Brunei last week had been "very positive and very useful." Chinese objections were dropped to subsequent high-level meetings (between Deputy Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff and the Chinese vice foreign minister) and the possibility explored that Bill Clinton may meet with China President Jiang Zemin at the United Nations in early fall.

Christopher's trip dissolved some of the atmosphere of crisis that spread in the weeks after the Clinton administration granted Taiwan President Lee a U.S. visa to attend his Cornell University class reunion. China's leaders had treated that visit as a serious affront for which the United States must make amends. But although Christopher reaffirmed U.S. commitment to the traditional "one-China policy" and carried a three-page letter (whose contents have not been made public) from Clinton to the President Jiang, these assurances did not satisfy the Chinese government.

"Words have their value only when they are honored in deeds," the foreign minister emphasized. To which the U.S. secretary of state replied: "We are not in the business of apologies or concessions. We are trying to construct a future path in our relations." Appropriately, Christopher declined to apologize and proposed they get on with other business.

The Christopher-Qian Qichen talks took place in a context of worsening U.S.-China relations that many assumed to be the fault of the Democratic Clinton administration, the Republican U.S. Congress and the disorscientists, rapidly developing its own capacity to build advanced weapons.

China thus became Asia's principal military power in the midst of a growing power vacuum in Asia, and it almost immediately began to behave in a more aggressive fashion. In the past year it has pressed claims of "absolute" and "indisputable sovereignty" over the strategically essential Spratly Islands, to which neighboring ASEAN states also have claims.

Also during the past year, China has broken promises and violated agreements with the United States by providing Pakistan the missiles and missile technology it had promised to safeguard. It has sold Iran the technology needed to develop nuclear plants -- a first step to developing a capacity to build nuclear weapons. It has refused to cooperate with other members of the U.N. Security Council in imposing sanctions or otherwise applying pressure to encourage North Korea's compliance with the agreement not to build nuclear weapons.

Most recently, China has stepped up a war of nerves against Taiwan, holding "exercises" that landed missiles within 100 miles of the island.

The arrest of U.S. citizen Harry Wu is only the most highly publicized of a series of repressive actions. In Tibet the destruction of indigenous people and culture, the transfer of populations, the arrest and mistreatment of dissidents continues and, according to some reports, has intensified.

This dramatic expansion of power takes place at a time China's government already faces a "succession crisis." Not only will its octogenarian leaders soon be forced from office by age or death, their successors will be drawn from a generation that did not share the experience of the revolution.

I believe China is due for a period of change and instability that may well shake the regime to its base -- as a generational change in the Soviet Union brought to power new leaders who brought down that revolutionary regime.

These are not changes caused by U.S. politicians.

Clearly, the United States should tread carefully, because a regime as intrinsically unstable as China today is potentially dangerous. Obviously, the United States does not desire to shore up this powerful one-party dictatorship, but I believe it is in the interests of Americans to speak softly, and stick with our principles. It looks as if that is what Warren Christopher did in Brunei.