THE GLOBE AND MAIL - Canada's National Newspaper

Thursday, October 30, 1997

Editorial

THE U.S. naval memorial at Pearl Harbour was the perfect place for Chinese President Jiang Zemin to begin his American grand tour, which culminated yesterday in a summit with President Bill Clinton. After all, there's nothing better than a reminder of Japanese wartime aggression to press Mr. Jiang's subtle point of contemporary diplomacy: Beijing's not where the bad guys are.

Of course, Washington's strategic bigheads would agree, reformist China is not an enemy. It's certainly nothing like the Soviet Union, for example, nor like Imperial Japan which sank U.S. ships and killed Chinese civilians. But the pace of China's rise, both in terms of economic power and population, is unparalleled in this century, whether by the Soviets or the Axis powers. And therefore it's wise to keep watching where increasingly rich, confident, nationalistic, Communist and deeply authoritarian China is headed.

The best way to keep watching is up close, which is why it's very positive that Mr. Jiang and his entourage are getting an intimate, red-carpet treatment this week. The more contact China and the democratic capitalist West have, the better.

That's not to say Mr. Jiang and his one-party cronies should be told they're the bee's knees, as Canadian and U.S. politicians chasing business deals have done in recent years. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright captured the correct approach when she welcomed the fact that the Chinese leader would meet protesters at every turn on his tour. There's no need to appease China by playing down its political and judicial abuses. After all, China's not a behemoth whose reactions need to be feared, or not yet anyway.

Rather, the best China policy is one that openly criticizes the country's egregious shortfalls just as Mr. Jiang has openly criticized the West's views of democracy and encourages its progress out of poverty toward responsible strength and openness.

What's to be complimented so far? Some baby steps. China acceded this week to the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Covenant reviews could help eliminate China's chauvinistic policies toward minority cultures such as that of Tibet. Moreover, China's accession raises pressure to sign a second, tougher United Nations covenant on civil and political rights. Beijing contravenes the second covenant in many ways, including by holding political prisoners.

China also pledged commitment to nuclear non-proliferation agreements which it has violated by exporting nuclear technology to Pakistan and Iran. It's not a big deal when China says oops and promises to do better. But here, too, engagement, if coupled with reproach and oversight, is best.

Mr. Jiang's greatest undertaking has been the recent pledge to reform the economy's state sector. Alas, much in those reforms relies on the stock exchanges and business acumen of Hong Kong and Shanghai. It's a terrible irony that the Hong Kong market, through which capitalist and legal reforms would flow best into China, should have suffered such a blow this week. For now, neither human rights nor non-proliferation pressure will be as important as a clear U.S. message that China must support and defend the monetary, business, and legal conditions that make the Hong Kong economy great.