COMMUNIST REGIMES DON'T REFORM, THEY COLLAPSE

by Jim Hoagland

The Washington Post - The International Herald Tribune

Monday, June 29, 1998

Reform communism, whether in Soviet or Chinese garb, exercises a strange fascination on some American intellectuals, journalists and presidents. Out there on the horizon they see a third way, a nonideological path where the Leninist lion lies down with the laissez-faire lamb to order seaweed for lunch. The defenders of reform communism expect the Leninist gerontocracy in Beijing to stage a lost-our-lease sale soon and peacefully yield to a Chinese-style democracy paid for by increasing trade. Their arguments echo the fervor and conviction of those who once saw Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to overhaul and save Soviet communism as the only peaceful, viable future for that now ex-empire. President Bill Clinton's predecessor was a founding father of both claques. George Bush argued in 1989 that America had to support reformers like Mr. Gorbachev and the Chinese party leader Zhao Ziyang. The only problem with his analysis was that Mr. Gorbachev was soon presiding over the destruction of his own country, and Mr. Zh

ao was ousted and detained by his more bloodthirsty colleagues during the Tiananmen Square massacre. Mr. Clinton and his more tradecentered aides have not thought through the ideological implications of their current nine-day escape from Monicaland into the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Clinton collects aides who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde would say of this bunch. His trip is likely to demonstrate that he has learned every single fact known to man or woman about China, and none of the truth. He has much company. In the faculty lounges at Harvard and other prestige universities, on the pages of The Washington Post and other quality newspapers, the latest utterances of kindly old Jiang Zemin portraying China as a new humanistic El Dorado are treated with a gee-whiz attention once given to Tito's pronouncements on the coming dominant role of nonalignment in international affairs. The depth of Mr. Clinton's analysis of the political meaning of his trip is apparent in his use in W

ashington this month of the standard State Department phrase specifically designed to avoid calling for democracy in China. America wants a "stable, open and prosperous China," he obediently said. Since he refuses to meet with Chinese dissidents on his trip, perhaps the only other way to measure his true commitment to getting on the right side of history on this issue is to check whether he deviates from the "stable, open and prosperous" code word slogan no doubt agreed to with the Chinese. I fear he has been cautioned against saying that America wants to see "a democratic China" in the near future. That would presumably disturb President Jiang's comfort, which seems to be the organizing principle for this trip. As the dissident Harry Wu has pointed out, Mr. Clinton's -use of the code words implicitly expresses a wish for a stable Communist regime that will continue in power. So does the lapdog praise that Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin lavished on China this month as "an island of stability" in economic af

fairs. Interesting words those. They repeat almost exactly the formula Jimmy Carter used to describe the shah of Iran shortly before the shah's ouster. They also echo François Mitterrand's history-blind assessment of the East German regime in its final days as an enduring force for stability. Mr. Clinton is not so much under the influence of the school of reform communism as he is taken with what could be called the Goldman Sachs view of the world. The merchant banking Weltanschauung of the 1990s has been to pay attention to China and the emerging markets, while hammering Japan and Europe to increase profitability for foreign investors and traders by risking social peace and consensus if necessary. The fast bucks are always in El Dorado, not in advanced capitalist societies. And there is no ideological adventure or new story angle in acknowledging its forms edging that communism in all is a political dodo bird. It's more fun to pretend that the decaying, bloodstained gerontocracy in Beijing can stay stable,

reform itself and soon lunch with lambs. Why let history be your guide?