World Tibet Network News Friday, Jul 03, 1998

By Charles Hutzler, Associated Press

BEIJING, July 3, 1998 (AP) - For Communist Party rulers, giving President Clinton unprecedented, direct access to China's air waves and people was a small gamble that largely paid off. Images of Clinton and President Jiang Zemin together on television - and of Jiang rebutting Clinton - impressed a Chinese public eager to see their nation recognized as a world power. Like much statecraft in fast-changing China, the summit strategy borrowed standard communist tactics while blending in fresh evidence of China's rising global status. The mix sheds light on how the party wields power as its once totalitarian slips somewhat. With communist ideology discredited by two decades of successful capitalist-style reforms, Chinese leaders need new symbols to justify their rule. Clinton discussed Tibet and other political taboos with Jiang on Chinese television, live. Clinton talked human rights on state TV two days later and yet again the day after on Shanghai talk radio.

In allowing Clinton on air, Jiang bet the signal of openness would bewell-received by the public. Any fallout from unwanted frank talk could be contained by the party's control of state-run media and the security forces. Under scoring the limits, police detained at least seven dissidents in the past nine days. Clinton's trip offered Jiang - the party chief and former state industry bureaucrat once dismissed as a political light weight - the opportunity to add the luster of international statesman to his ceremonial role of state president. To make sure the message got through to the Chinese public and his critics in the party and abroad, Jiang mobilized the propaganda machinery, packed with allies and proteges, Chinese media sources said. "The Chinese government wants to make people feel that Chinese-U.S. relations are going to a better stage and that this will give China a better image in the world," said one television reporter familiar with the strategy. Before Clinton boarded Air Force One for China last

week, the Propaganda Ministry, charged with keeping the media on the party line, issued orders on covering the first visit by a U.S. president in nine years.

All reporting on Clinton was to be "not hot, not cold" and must mention that the U.S. president's trip occurred solely because of Jiang's successful White House diplomacy last year, said the media sources who, fearful of losing their jobs, spoke on condition of anonymity. One Jiang protege, government spokesman Zhao Qizheng, personally quashed Foreign Ministry opposition to giving Clinton air time during his nine days in China, one source said. Turning a side worries about what an uncensored Clinton might say, Zhao argued that the patriotic Chinese public could be trusted to back Jiang, the source said. During Clinton and Jiang's nationally televised news conference Saturday, the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrators, dissident arrests and negotiating with the Dalai Lama on Tibet - politically sensitive issues rarely mentioned in the media - all came up. But the sensational news went no further. The next day, newspapers by government order all carried the same official Xinhua News Agency

account, reducing the discussion to a one-sentence reference, the sources said. Despite the fleeting exposure, many people cheered Jiang for holding the live news conference, just like other world leaders, and for standing up to Clinton on issues in which Chinese feel Americans shouldn't meddle. "President Jiang made a lot of sense," said Xin Qingong, an auto repairman in Beijing. He added that Clinton came across as "humorous" for suggesting Jiang meet with the long-vilified Dalai Lama.

Likewise, Clinton confronted an undertone of nationalistic, slightly hostile questioning from students at Peking University during a speech broadcastlive. One questioned whether Clinton's smile concealed a scheme to contain China's rise. The question-and-answer session was rebroadcast in prime time; Clinton's speech was not. Such responses are predictable in China where pride in the present is strong and access to impartial sources of information limited. The government still jams broadcasts by the Voice of America and the BBC. "We think that given the chance, all Chinese will jump for freedom of expression and be more critical of inequities and injustices," said Orville Schell, a journalism professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written several books on China. "But in reality there are a lot of other things at work here: nationalism and pride and all these things that have made China feel insecure, inferior and defensive." While Clinton aides have repeatedly praised the Chinese leaders

' "bold" decision on the broadcasts, they too have noticed the carefully shaded coverage. "You have a system which still, obviously, is far from a free system and which was selective and restrictive in the way it covered" the president's visit, said Jeff Bader, Asian affairs expert at the White House's National Security Council.

Beijing correspondent Charles Hutzler has reported from China for The AP since 1995.

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