Alla fine di questo articolo il giornalista fa esplicito riferimento alla mancata assegnazione del Nobel a Wei.

The New York Times

November 2, 1997

Essay

WILLIAM SAFIRE

Let's try Disciplined Engagement

Like Johnny Chung and Charlie Trie, Chinese President Jiang Zemin knew exactly how to gain access to the Clinton White House: lay the money on the table.

The entry fee was a $3 billion order for 50 aircraft to be built by Boeing, a mismanaged U.S. company that cannot turn a decent profit on the orders already on its books. The big money $60 billion to build nuclear power plants - goes to Westinghouse and other U.S. firms, which will make our nuclear policy dependent on the good will of Beijing.

A mere bump on the road to the summit was China's record of mendacity about transferring nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan and Iran. Our President, bonding to the man whose Great Wall he needs for a photo-op before next November's elections, extracted "clear assurances" that, China will not do what it insists it never did but promises to stop.

Jiang comes away from his state visit, as the man who triumphantly closed the Tiananmen chapter in relation with the barbarian superpower, while the dissidents Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan still languish in their cells.

Jiang can also boast to China's nervous neighbors in Japan and Southeast Asia - including democracies that look to us to counter Chinese hegemony - that the prospect of trade is the key to influencing American policy, and that no other potential market can compete with 1.2 billion Chinese.

Clinton comes away in the pose of the geopolitical realist. He would have us believe that while candidates can campaign against "coddling dictators" ( as he did and as Dick Gephardt is now doing), sitting Presidents must park all ideals and accommodate despotism. He suggests that the only alternative to his pragmatic declaration of normality would be "to create a new cold war."

That's a straw-man argument, lacking subtlety, a quality Chinese diplomats cultivate exquisitely. We should adopt a policy of disciplined engagement, intricately verifiable,

some times saving face through temporary secrecy, but based on reciprocity and coolly penalizing intransigence or betrayal.

Cutting through the diplomats: How do we get Jiang, so hung up on the appearance of stability, to spring Wei and Wang?

Clinton knows the approach; he touched on it, too gingerly, in last week's joint press conference. The societies of the 21st century that will do best will be those that are drawing their stability from their differences; that out of this whole harmony of different views there is a coherence of loyalty to the nation."

He should punch that up into words that wound pride. Only a government that is strong and stable can tolerate dissent. A weak regime betrays its fear by jailing its opposition.

Every day that Wei and Wang spend behind bars is Jiang's admission that the Beijing leadership is afraid of being overthrown by the people. Repression is weakness.

This argument hits where it hurts - in the soft stomach of instability - and as Henry Kissinger used to say, "it has the added advantage of being true." The American focus on human rights everywhere should be no threat to order in China if that country is stable. Why do Beijing's leaders want to advertise to the world their horror of what a couple of longtime jailbirds, with no following and no army, might complain about?

Evidently Mr. Clinton has not been able to get this point across. Mr. Jiang still thinks the release of a couple of tortured but unbroken human beings would be a concession to the West, not a display of governmental confidence.

Norway's craven Nobel committee has not helped. By again denying the Peace Prize to China's heroic Wei, and bestowing it instead on America's land-mine activist, the committee delightedly embarrassed the U.S. President and flinched before the glare of China's leaders. (Send 37,000 Norwegians to Korea with no land mines to slow an attack from the North.)

When Beijing adopts free-market rules, and not before, we should support entry to the World Trade Organization. When China, over time, demonstrates adherence to nuclear-spread rules, we should proceed in stages on power plants. When Jiang feels secure enough to permit his people to speak and worship freely, we will be dealing with a genuine superpower.