World Tibet Network News Wednesday, June 24, 1998

by Lorien Holland

BEIJING, June 24 (AFP) - President Bill Clinton on Thursday becomes the first US head of state to visit China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre but a host of issues, from Taiwan and Tibet to human rights, threaten to cloud the event. Clinton heads a power-packed delegation of 47 officials, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, on a landmark trip aimed at forging a better relationship between the two superpowers after years of turbulence.

For China especially, relations with the United States have moved to centrestage and the visit is the most important here since former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in May 1989 to normalise Sino-Soviet relations. Telecoms deals worth 300 million dollars have already been signed with major US companies, with a further 80 million dollars worth in the pipeline. In a bid to change US perceptions of China, Clinton is scheduled to witness grass-roots democracy and nascent housing reforms which encourage Chinese citizens to buy their own homes. But the meticulous arrangements planned by both sides may not be enough to avoid pitfalls over traditionally thorny issues such as Tibet, dissidents, the Tiananmen Square massacre, freedom of the press, alleged transfers of sensitive satellite information, and Taiwan.

Beijing has already shown its intransigence on human rights and the Tiananmen Square massacre by refusing to allow Clinton to meet dissidents during his visit, and justifying the June 1989 crackdown. And while John Ackerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet, slipped past Chinese immigration with a tourist visa, Beijing abruptly revoked the visas of three Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporters who were to cover the Clinton visit, saying the travel documents had been issued in error. Even Clinton, who has taken pains not to criticise his hosts and has kept quiet about a reported list of dissidents to be handed to Jiang, reacted with anger over the RFA reporters."I think it's a highly objectionable decision. We will protest it. We hope they'll reconsider it," Clinton told reporters at the White House.

But for China, the most objectionable US position is not human rights or Tibet, but the nationalist island of Taiwan, which remains separated from the mainland following the end of a bitter civil war in 1949. The United States continues to sell high-technology arms to Taiwan despite a Sino-US agreement signed on August 17, 1982 which called for a gradual end to such sales. Beijing wants Clinton to make a public affirmation of Washington's commitments to China on Taiwan, including undertakings on arms sales, much to Taiwan's chagrin. "The US should not sell any advanced weapons, equipment or related technologies to Taiwan" and "should act according to the provisions of the communiques and gradually reduce its arms sales, leading over a period of time to a final resolution of its arms sales to Taiwan," Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said.

For its part, the United States, which suspects Chinese technology played a vital role in recent Pakistani nuclear tests, hopes to obtain firm guarantees against future leaks of weapon and missile technology to other countries, such as Iran or Myanmar (Burma). In a further complication ahead of the summit, fears that China is attempting to boost its high-tech weaponry by poaching from US satellites surfaced with a New York Times report that US officials discovered a sensitive circuit board was missing from a US satellite on an abortive Chinese rocket launch in 1996. Administration officials questioned by the House National Security and International Relations committees said they suspected China stole the circuit board in violation of a technology safeguards agreement.

Members of a US-based pro-Tibetan human rights group who came to Beijing to push Tibetan issues during Clinton's visit, said Wednesday they will distribute leaflets at a planned briefing by China's religious affairs minister. In Taipei, some 200 pro-independence activists held an overnight vigil to highlight fears that Taiwan's interest will be compromised at the upcoming summit in Beijing.