Beijing's Leadership Seeks Closer Relations, but Not if It Means Interference by U.S.

By Steven Mufson - The Washington Post

BEIJING, Nov. 19, 1996 -- This is supposed to be a time for healing in U.S.-Chinese relations. If all goes according to plan, the missiles and verbal salvos of the past year will give way to banquets, 21-gun salutes and talk of common strategic interests. Just last week, President Jiang Zemin entertained a group of U.S. senators with shots of potent Chinese liquor and renditions of Chinese opera and American show tunes.

But listen to these recent words about the United States from the People's Daily, the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party: "In this world, just one country is famous for its xenophobia, its wild arrogance and haughtiness known to all. Every day it issues Cold War propaganda to interfere in other nations' internal affairs and tries vainly to foist its own values on others."

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, arriving in Beijing today, found a Chinese government that has been sending many such conflicting signals about its posture toward the United States.

The mixed signals may be part bargaining tactic, but analysts say that they also reflect real tensions in China's foreign policy.

On one hand, Chinese leaders are tugged by nationalism and a domestic political calculus that makes overly chummy relations with the United States risky.

On the other hand, the Chinese leaders are driven toward improving relations with the United States as a way to boost their image as world leaders by making state visits and by the need for foreign trade, technology and investment to nourish the domestic economy.

Against that background, China's leaders seem to "exhibit a combination of supreme confidence and great vulnerability," Stanford University professor Michel Oksenberg said. The confidence flows from the country's stunning economic growth, its war chest of foreign exchange, seven years of social stability and the giddy notion that China will rival the United States within a generation.

That cockiness is bolstered by the outside world's return to China's doorstep in pursuit of profit, just seven years after the June 4, 1989, crackdown on Beijing democracy demonstrators. Premier Li Peng, once reviled as the "butcher of Beijing," now graces world capitals; over the past week, he met with leaders of Brazil and Italy.

However, "down deep, China's leaders know that they remain rather weak," Oksenberg added. China's military capabilities are limited, economic problems remain daunting, the potential for social disorder is high, corruption runs deep, and Taiwan remains troublesome.

Chinese leaders also believe the United States has a containment policy to hinder growth of China's economy and power. U.S. senators here last week said this idea came up at virtually every meeting. "If China continues to grow, the West will try to stop it," says Song Qiang, one of five co-authors of the popular nationalist tract, "A China That Can Say No."

At the same time, China is in the midst of the closest thing it has to an election year. At the Communist Party congress late next year, party chief Jiang Zemin hopes to solidify his power. Li, who must leave the premiership, will seek a new post and others are jockeying to replace him.

China's reluctance to limit arms sales to Pakistan is another sore point in the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Washington fears China is helping Pakistan develop nuclear weapons or long-range missiles, and thus the United States has blocked the sale of nuclear energy technology to China. But China fears an India that possesses nuclear weapons, fought with China and its neighbors in the past, and once forged an alliance with Moscow as a bulwark against Beijing.

At the same time, however, China has made a triangular relationship with the United States and Japan part of its global chess game, reflecting fears dating from the brutal 1931-1945 Japanese occupation in China.

But two developments have forced China to reexamine its foreign policy assumptions. First, with the collapse of the Soviet threat, the U.S.-Japanese alliance that once was aimed against the Soviet Union now seems to be directed against China. Second, last April, as part of talks about "upgrading" or "strengthening" the U.S.-Japanese defense pact, President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto announced increased Japanese logistic support for American missions.

On another front, China both longs for and fears membership in groups such as the World Trade Organization, which it is still struggling to join. China contends that as a world power it deserves a place at the councils of power. But it suspects such organizations might limit its ability to act in its own self-interest.

The principle of noninterference, a cornerstone of Chinese policy, is designed in part to keep other countries from criticizing China's human rights abuses.

Guided by that principle, China has defended some of the world's most oppressive regimes. However, while it condemns the linkage of trade policies to its human rights record, China has done much the same. It recently threatened trade retaliation after Germany and Australia welcomed the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

Although friction over human rights and U.S. support for Taiwan has underscored China's potential for belligerence, one analyst argues that the Chinese "see themselves as having exercised great forbearance in the face of challenges from the U.S."

Those challenges include the violation of the 1982 pact limiting U.S. arms transfers to Taiwan; the boarding in international waters of the Chinese vessel Yinhe, which the United States suspected, incorrectly, of carrying chemical weapons to Iran; U.S. sanctions of China for noncompliance with the missile control treaty of which China is not a member and by which it is not bound; trade sanctions to influence internal Chinese political practices; the blocking of Beijing as a site for the Olympics; congressional initiatives to back Tibetan secession from China; and U.S. objections to China's membership in the WTO.

In many ways, ties between the United States and China have never been stronger. Tens of thousands of people from each country work and study in the other, including the children of most of China's top leaders. Trade has boomed, as has U.S. investment in China. Flush with investment dollars, China has become the leading buyer of U.S. Treasury bills. Beijing has hired U.S. professors to train Chinese civil servants and American Navy ships have docked at Qingdao.

Despite these ties, initial affection has given way to suspicion. The United States should respond to this situation, Oksenberg said, "by not paying too much attention to the Chinese domestic scene but assuming China's leaders are rational actors who can calculate and pursue their own interests."

Such an approach might sound familiar here in Beijing. When Henry Kissinger conducted secret diplomacy here 25 years ago to open relations between the United States and China, he tried to reassure Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong about American intentions by telling him that neither country wanted anything from the other.

Mao did not agree, Kissinger recalls. "He said, `If I didn't want something from you, I wouldn't have invited you, and if you didn't want something from me, you shouldn't have come.'"