Jiang-Clinton summit questionable

Normally summits between world leaders arise as a logical extension of a positive, developing bilateral relationship. This will hardly be the case when Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton meet on Tuesday in New York. Sino-American relations are not developing positively in the first place, reports Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin, and arranging the summit itself provoked some friction.

HONG KONG (JP): The brief "summit" meeting on Tuesday between Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary- General Jiang Zemin and United States President Bill Clinton in the stately New York Public Library building ought not to be taking place at all.

The seriously impaired condition of Sino-American relations does not justify it. The current state of domestic politics within China and the U.S. cannot support it. There is no immediate crisis so acute that it will help the two leaders to conjure non-existent affinity out of the blue.

Summits can ratify a positive trend but they cannot rectify a negative drift. They usually amount to something when they culminate a process whereby a relationship is already improving. Contrarily, using summits to try and halt the deterioration of a relationship is hazardous diplomacy at best. Heads of state seldom, if ever, can recall all the complexities and nuances over which diplomats should haggle in extended pre-summit negotiations.

The fact that the summit should not be taking place at all was illustrated with crystal clarity by the Chinese themselves as the two sides dickered over where, when and how the two presidents should meet. Beijing's diplomats took the most unusual step of publicly insisting that Jiang Zemin be accorded a state visit to Washington DC, complete with a 21-gun salute.

Diplomats normally do not do this, least of all the Chinese with their reputation for diplomatic subtlety. When a demand by one side risks being rejected by the other, negotiators usually avoid publicly advertising the snub. To the contrary, on this occasion, the Chinese used rejection as one more reason for castigating the United States.

The Chinese wanted a state visit to Washington. The U.S. instead offered a working visit to Washington. A working visit to New York was the compromise accepted by the Chinese. Foreign Minister Qian Qichen publicized the apparent loss of face. Speaking to Xinhua, the New China News Agency, Qian attributed the failure to secure a state visit to a lack of "political will" on the part of the Clinton Administration.

The incident perfectly illustrates one aspect of what is wrong with Sino-American relations for the time being. Domestic political calculations inside Zhongnanhai and inside the Beltway make harmonious ties all but impossible.

Anxious to consolidate his early lead in the post-Deng Xiaoping power struggle, Jiang Zemin cannot afford to be seen to be "soft on the Americans".

Equally anxious to try and create the image of foreign policy "success" in advance of the 1996 presidential election, Bill Clinton cannot afford the controversy that would arise if he was "soft on the Chinese".

It would appear to signal some anxiety, if not desperation, over the eventual outcome of the CCP's internal power struggle, that Jiang pushed so hard and so publicly for a full state visit to Washington. It is a reminder of the positive as well as negative notes, which the U.S. still strikes in China's body politic.

Jiang and his close associate Prime Minister Li Peng have tended recently to publicly elevate the U.S. to the position of China's main antagonist. Yet they both know that powerful factional interests might come into play against them, were they to alienate the U.S. unduly. So Qian Qichen adroitly, though undiplomatically, helped Jiang by making it clear that it was the Americans who were to blame for making the summit merely a working visit.

Wining and dining Jiang Zemin in Washington DC could easily arouse the foreign policy controversy Clinton is so anxious to avoid. It would almost certainly allow the Republicans to throw Clinton's 1992 campaign charge against former President George Bush, that of "coddling the Butchers of Beijing", right back into Clinton's face.

In these circumstances why have a summit at all? The Republicans can easily place an electoral bet each way without batting an eyelid -- and charge Clinton with weakening Sino- American ties. Factional opponents of Jiang Zemin's hard-line stance within the CCP Politburo could be equally hypocritical.

So the two presidents as they meet in New York probably share a basic political motive: They must demonstrate that they can "manage" the Sino-American relationship without letting the deterioration get out of hand.

However merely recognizing a shared interest is not enough to guarantee satisfaction at the summit. The way in which the two administrations have recently sought to halt the deterioration in relations scarcely suggests that this limited goal of sustaining ties will be easily achieved.

In the case of the Americans, there has been too much pretending, avoiding, glossing over, and concealing in relation to key issues involving China.

When U.S. Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff finally made it to Beijing in late August he was "encouraged" by the fact that he had been invited, without ever mentioning that at least two earlier dates had been rejected by the Chinese.

When the Chinese belatedly gave their agreement to U.S. Ambassador-designate Jim Sasser, it was widely hailed by the U.S. as a positive sign. This glossed over the negative reality that Beijing had been sitting on the U.S. request for agreement for at least three months -- and maybe even more, depending upon how long Clinton procrastinated before nominating Sasser in the first place.

U.S. officials have praised China's "help" in relation to North Korea, avoiding all mention of the fact that China effectively supported the North's efforts to demolish the Korean Armistice by withdrawing Chinese personnel from the Military Armistice Commission.

When the Chinese finally released human rights activist Harry Wu, the U.S. hailed this as a sign of Sino-American progress, while little official mention was made of the detention, trial and sentencing of a U.S. citizen, which had caused the regress in the first place.

After U.S. Intelligence leaked reports of China's nuclear and missile proliferation efforts in relation to Iran and Pakistan, the Clinton Administration went out of its way to avoid mandatory sanctions, saying the evidence was not conclusive, but declining to publicly release the "inconclusive" reports anyway.

Faced with these clear signs of American appeasement, China has been busy asserting, demanding and confronting over key issues, most notably Taiwan. Granted that the reunification of One China is a neuralgic issue for the Chinese, and the fact remains that they deliberately chose to exacerbate contention.

Beijing could have finessed the whole affair, after noting the near-unanimous Congressional votes mandating a visa for a private visit to the U.S. by Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui. It chose not to do so, with Qian Qichen insisting that Secretary of State Warren Christopher had assured him that no visa would be issued. (Seeing the world purely in terms of Beijing reality, Chinese officials have talked airily about Clinton reversing those majorities, rather as if it should be easy to make the U.S. Congress into a rubber stamp. But those majorities themselves were sustained in large part by those who see the world purely in terms of Washington DC reality).

Since then, the consistent Chinese demand has been that the U.S. must pledge never to grant another visa to any Taiwan leader -- with scant regard for the fact that for Clinton to concede this demand would help doom his re-election prospects.

Undeterred by any such calculations, Qian outlined to Xinhua a detailed U.S. compromise under which future visas for top Taiwanese would be rare and would prohibit public speeches. The U.S. has denied this "compromise". It would have been incredibly inept for the U.S. to have made such an offer. But if the U.S. denial is believed, that makes Qian's untrue assertions truly amazing and also inept.

None of this suggests promising raw material for even a modestly successful summit. The political will for such an accomplishment is absent on both sides. To the contrary, whatever images the two leaders contrive for the TV-cameras Tuesday, meaningful Sino-American rapprochement is both a long way off -- and is continuing to recede into the distance.