US-CHINA: Moving Beyond Tienanmen

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 24 1997 (IPS) - The state visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin next week – the first Sino-American summit since the 1989 Tienanmen Square killings – marks a major effort by both governments to restore their previously positive ties.

Jiang will fly from beijing to Hawaii Sunday and is scheduled to arrive in Washington Tuesday.

Apart from a nuclear technology accord that could earn U.S. manufacturers tens of billions of dollars over the next 25 years, no major breakthroughs are expected from his talks here with U.S. President Bill Clinton. But both leaders appear determined to use the summit to put on a sounder footing the relationship between the world’s only superpower and the most important emerging power, according to analysts here.

“This is a rebuilding summit,” says Richard Solomon, President George Bush’s top Asia aide and now director of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Its aim, is to “rebuild the political basis for normalisation of relations” more than eight years after ties were badly frayed when tanks and troops crushed the pro-democracy movement in China.

Washington imposed a number of economic and military sanctions against China after the crackdown, most of which have since been lifted. The repression left a cloud over bilateral ties which, combined with the growing popular perception of Beijing as a future adversary of the United States, has made it difficult to restore good relations.

For that reason, some analysts believe next week’s summit – which is to be followed by Clinton’s own state visit to Beijing next year – could be the most important since President Richard Nixon’s ground-breaking trip to Beijing in 25 years ago.

“Since 1989, we’ve really not had a framework (that is) either agreed upon within our society, let alone agreed upon with China,” according to Harry Harding, a veteran China-watcher at George Washington University.

The challenge, he says, is to “come up with a new framework that will have to deal with a lot more complexities than the 1972 framework” established by Nixon and Mao Zedong. “That was very simple: a common enemy” in the Soviet Union, adds Harding.

Indeed, much has changed, even since 1979, when Deng Xiaoping captured U.S. hearts and minds during a tour of the United States that culminated in the diminutive leader donning a 10-gallon cowboy hat at a Texas rodeo to rapturous applause.

Deng’s sweeping economic reforms resulted in China becoming the world’s fastest-growing economy, capable of attracting tens of billions of dollars in foreign direct investment each year. But it also racked up a nearly 50-billion-dollar annual trade surplus with the United States that has become a new source of bilateral tension over the past decade.

At the same time, and particularly since the 1989 crackdown, human rights and other groups have focused much more attention on Beijing’s repression of dissidents and nationalist sentiment in Tibet, while post-Cold War fears of missile and nuclear proliferation to “rogue states” have cast a negative spotlight on China’s performance in this area.

Finally, the democratisation of Taiwan – the island which Beijing considers a renegade province – has stirred great sympathy in the United States. Last year this turned to popular anger, and even a show of US military muscle, when China conducted missile exercises just off Taiwan’s coast.

All of these developments translate into “weak political support in the Unityed States for normal relations” on the eve of Jiang’s arrival here, says Solomon, who adds that Jiang’s “objective is to overcome the burden of Tienanmen.”

Both capitals share that aim. Jiang told the Washington Post in an interview only last week that he wants to find “common ground” with Clinton to bring bilateral relations “to a new level.”

To prepare the way – and to remind the US public of its immense potential as an export market – China this week sent a a senior trade delegation here to spend some four billion dollars on goods made in the United States in US goods – including almost two billion dollars in Boeing aircraft.

Top Chinese officials in the last few days also have sounded conciliatory notes on Taiwan and hinted that they may release for humanitarian reasons two of Beijing’s most famous political prisoners – Wang Dan, a student leader during the 1989 democracy movement, and Wei Jingsheng, a leader of the 1979 Democracy Wall movement. U.S. officials have said such a gesture would give a major boost to next week’s events.

For his part, Clinton aims to set a positive tone for the summit Friday when he gives a major policy address on China which will highlight recent cooperative efforts on Korea at the United Nations on the environment, trade, and proliferation.

He also persuaded Republicans in Congress to put off until after the visit a series of votes intended to toughen U.S. policy towards China, including a measure that would deny visas to Chinese officials who head government-regulated religious organisations.

In the meantime, last-minute talks on possible agreements to be signed next week have intensified. The centrepiece is expected to be an accord that would permit American companies to bid on what are expected to be 100 billion dollars worth of nuclear-power projects in China over the next generation. In exchange, Beijing would pledge to halt exporting nuclear and missile technology to Iran and other states suspected of building nuclear weapons.

Earlier this year, many analysts had hoped that the summit might produce more far-reaching economic accords, including concrete terms for China’s admission to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). But, despite months of talks, “virtually no progress (on this subject) has been made” according to Nicholas Lardy of the Brookings Institution, a major thinktank here.

Like Deng’s 1979 trip, Jiang’s visit will take him to a number of cities outside the capital, including Honolulu, where he will visit the Pearl Harbour World War II memorial; Philadelphia; New York, where he will tour the New York stock exchange; Boston; and Los Angeles.

Unlike Deng’s experience, however, Jiang’s sojourn will be dogged by human rights, religious, labour, and exile groups who plan demonstrations in each city. “We hope the environment will not be disrupted,” said one Chinese embassy official here.