THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED

New York, Friday, December 13, 1996

On My Mind

by A.M. ROSENTHAL

NAKED IN THE SQUARE

With a superb sense of timing and of its own power, Communist China picked exactly the right messenger, the right message, the right day, place and audience to humiliate the Government of the United States.

The only thing the messenger might not have known is that on China the Clinton Administration, his host, cannot be humiliated because it has no shame. The messenger is Gen. Chi Haotian, China's Minister of Defense. He is the man who ordered the troops to fire on the students in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989. Now he is the guest of the Defense Department, treated with military and social honor, touring American military installations, including the nuclear. The place was the National Defense University in Washington, and the audience U.S. officers studying there, on their way up. It was International Human Rights Day. The message was that Beijing has not crumb of respect or concern about what this Administration thinks about the massacre of Chinese dissidents - or its warnings on the use of military force against Taiwan. It wants the world to know it. The general lied so brazenly about the Tiananmen massacre that his remarks were a contemptuous slap at the U.S., which knew and had told the truth, back i

n those days. As commander at Tiananmen, the general said he could report that no students had been killed at the square. In the streets nearby there was some "pushing," he conceded, but casualties were greatly exaggerated, by the media. Western diplomatic and intelligence reports from the killing grounds were of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of casualties. Asked by a Navy officer about any regrets or lessons learned, the general said yes: students should be better educated. About Taiwan, the general said Beijing hoped for a peaceful settlement but specifically refused to renounce force. If certain Taiwanese gained strength, obviously those favoring independence, he said, China would not "stand idly by." Why is all this very important? After all, China's leaders lie and threaten as easily as they breathe.

But the general's visit was especially significant for Washington and Beijing, It was America giving honored status to the man who ordered the shooting, drawing the curtain on the whole Tiananmen tragedy.

Washington dreams of more trade from China. But China was seeking a prize it sees as far more important. The whole rationale for the Clintonian courting of China and the President's decision to turn away from Chinese human rights is that American forbearance would win trade for American businesses, and also make Beijing more moderate, reasonable and honest about human rights and Taiwan. Without that rationalization the Clinton policy would be seen as one more nasty stew of appeasement. Americans might even get upset about how U.S. business and government help build China militarily, how Washington tries to ignore Chinese sales of missiles and nuclear technology to other dictatorships. The general deliberately stripped away the rationalization. The objective was not just to put America in its place but once and for all to kill the fantasy that China could be "softened" by foreigners, by Chinese, by trade, or even by purposeful blindness to its weapons trade. Beijing cannot tolerate that idea. It knows that th

e concept of more freedom unless squashed could take hold in China. That would threaten the essential instrument of Communist governance: police terrorism. The Communists happily accept the economic fruits of U.S. capitalism. But even the possible rooting of democratic benefits of capitalism is terrifying to them. Beijing has taken the economic advantage while barring the democratic - and it intends to keep it that way; fantasies forbidden. The Administration took what General Chi said in silence. It's probably better that way. The spectacle of Clintonians explaining why the butcher of Beijing became an honored guest and remains one after his lying unrepentance while the President refuses to see the Dalai Lama or Chinese dissidents - no, it would have been too much. but no rationalizations exist now; the general saw to that. The U.S. government just has to stand there, naked in the square.