Jiang gets fair marks on U.S. trip 'performance'

By Edward Neilan

Debriefing sessions back in Beijing might ask the question: 'Who is this guy Richard Gere?'

TOKYO (JP): China's President Jiang Zemin is back in Beijing, facing the music from his colleagues, in a series of critiques on his recent visit to the United States.

Although outsiders cannot get inside the councils that are debriefing Jiang, it is safe to say that he will get fairly high marks for his performance on a tough assignment.

His biggest achievement may have been in keeping his cool in the face of taunts from protesters. But Jiang won few points for his stiff repeating in English of Confucian and Lincolnesque platitudes.

His major shortcoming may have been an absence of the spontaneity which his predecessor Deng Xiaoping showed during a ground-breaking visit 20 years ago. Deng's donning of a cowboy hat in Houston was impromptu; Jiang's wearing of the three- cornered Jeffersonian hat at Williamsburg appeared contrived and even hypocritical.

Deng's visit heralded the promise a new era of U.S.-China cooperation in strategic positioning against the Soviet Union.

But Jiang's visit seemed to expose and sharpen differences, while establishing a more solid dialog.

"Don't forget that China demanded that Jiang get a red carpet treatment, like the old U.S-Soviet summits," said a Western diplomat. "They want to be seen as a great power so respect is the issue. Some disagreements with the U.S. are allowable, short of demonization."

China has four big areas, the visited exposed, on which it has to show some moderation and movement if it is to truly expect improvement of across-the-board relations with Washington.

They are Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square and human rights generally.

The best-prepared Americans for the Jiang visit turned out to be the U.S. business community which got a reward in the form of sales orders for 30 Boeing jetliners, members of Congress who have strong feelings regarding a fair shake for Taiwan, protesters championing the causes of Taiwan and Tibet, President Clinton and the U.S. Stare Department, in that order.

For all the criticism about a lack of interest in China by the average American, did you notice how intelligent were the questions asked at news conferences after luncheon and dinner speeches, particularly at the Harvard session?

A major problem, of course, is that the Chinese folks back home got only a sanitized version of the Jiang visit on their radio and television and in newspapers. The dissent was not reported.

All the evidence suggests that Beijing will try to come up with a move on Taiwan after Jiang's visit. Some measure will have to be undertaken to get the cross-strait talks going. This is one area where China can show that for the moment it is really interested in engagement, not confrontation.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen's upcoming visit to Beijing should help in settling some rules of naval engagement that will prevent miscalculations in the Taiwan Strait. We'll see about that. The written strategies of the Chinese navy are aimed at the conquest of Taiwan, period.

On Tibet, Jiang was probably asked by Communist Party Central Committee members on his return the equivalent of "Who is this guy Richard Gere?"

Movie actor Gere showed some finesse in leading protests on China's record Tibet. He drew sour comment from Henry Kissinger, who seems increasingly out of touch with Americans' feelings on China unless they are tied to business deals. The U.S. movie industry has a series of films coming out on Tibet and has decided to fight Beijing's censorship every step of the way.

Gere stars in the upcoming Red Corne with a Tibet story line that is critical of Beijing. China has already expressed displeasure at Sony's Sixteen Years in Tibet and Kandu made by Walt Disney"s Touchstone Films unit. Harrison Ford and Steven Seagal are other stars who have been championing Tibetan causes.

Beijing may get the soft soap treatment from the State Department but making Hollywood kowtow is a different matter. China's paranoia is seen in the fact that it allows only 10 American movies into the country each year.

China has a chance to put the Tiananmen issue further behind it when Premier Li Peng retires next spring, to be succeeded by economics czar Zhu Rongji. If Li assumes one of Jiang's post, like the Presidency, it will mean the factional power struggle continues. If Li, identified with the order to crack down at Tiananmen, is given the head chair at the National People's Congress or a lesser post, it will mean the Tiananmen debate is subsiding.

But someday China is going to have to say Tiananmen was a mistake. Whether the Chinese Communist Party can survive such an admission without inviting challenge to its control is another matter.

Edward Neilan has been invited as a visiting scholar to Fudan University, Shanghai, for one month starting this week. In 1996 he was visiting professor of journalism, National Chengchi University, Taiwan.