U.S. about-face on China policy

Our Asia Correspondent Harvey Stockwin comments on the latest developments in Sino-American relations, as the U.S. elevates commerce to top priority and relegates human rights pressure on China.

HONG KONG (JP): A few weeks ago U.S. President Bill Clinton was standing in Berlin pronouncing a new post-Cold War special relationship with Germany.

Now, as U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown visits China, the first fruits of that special relationship are observable. They appear to involve the United States adopting German policy rather than, as expected, Germany picking up a few wisps of strategic wisdom from the United States.

While a full accounting is not yet in, the U.S. appears to have been half as successful as the Germans, in dollar terms.

In a nutshell, the Clinton administration is adopting Germany's longtime foreign policy of putting the stress on commercial opportunism in the absence of firm political or strategic objectives. In a sense, it's also a policy as American as apple pie. Way back in the isolationist days of the 1920s a commonplace thought during the presidency of Calvin Coolidge was that "the business of America is business".

Of course commercial opportunism is a tune which plays very well in Chinese ears. Once they hear foreigners talking about pursuing business opportunities in China, Beijing knows exactly what song to sing. It cranks out all the optimistic estimates about the fast growth of China's huge market, knowing full well that this is almost bound to make Western businessmen salivate.

Ever since the 19th Century, when Westerners first mesmerized themselves with the thought of the vast market, if only every Chinese were to buy one oil lamp, the Middle Kingdom has possessed an unique ability to inject greed into other nation's foreign policy.

At first, this tended to work to China's detriment, as foreigners grabbed parts of China rather than its market. The least that can be said for China's communist rulers is that they have often succeeded in manipulating the trend to their advantage.

After suffering recurring bouts of what is called "China fever", ever since the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in 1972, the Japanese alone appear to have developed a sensible degree of immunity to Chinese blandishments.

As Brown has been demonstrating in China this week, Westerners generally still succumb.

Earlier this year, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl took a high level delegation of German businessmen to China, and was able to sign contracts worth some US$10 billion for his pains. At the time it seemed a lot, but the Chinese had several foreign policy objectives in mind.

Beijing was aiming to get Britain to kowtow over Hong Kong, France to kowtow over selling any more arms to Taiwan, and the United States to kowtow over human rights.

Germany has good reasons, born of guilt over the past, for not making too much of an issue of other nation's shortcomings on human rights. Kohl did raise some perfunctory objections in the wake of the Beijing Massacre in 1989. These faded from view fairly quickly as China trotted out vastly inflated estimates of its future public works budgets in the next few years, running into hundreds of billions of dollars. Compared to these, the ten billion the Germans actually nailed down for themselves were but a drop in the bucket.

Bill Clinton was something else again. He had gained the presidency after deriding President George Bush's tendency to mollycoddle the "Butchers of Beijing". Given that when Clinton said this, the U.S. was already running a substantial trade deficit with China, the strong cards all appeared to be Clinton's to play. He would make a serious effort to improve human rights in China and try to reduce that deficit at the same time.

Alas for human hopes, Clinton and his foreign policy team are obviously not card-players. China, with a realpolitik combination of bluff, verve and finesse, has trumped the potential American aces. It called the U.S. over its planned human rights pressure, and the Americans backed down, as Clinton delinked the renewal of China's most-favored nation (MFN) trading status from China's perceived degree of repression.

Had the U.S. Commerce Secretary made a quiet routine visit to Beijing, he might have achieved the same results without all the hoopla. Instead Brown has appeared in China leading a "presidential business development mission" composed of top chief executives in leading U.S. businesses. Mission spokespeople are busy remembering that what Clinton really stressed during the presidential campaign was all about government supporting business. So the Brown Mission exudes the aura of a complete American volte face in its China policy -- in a way it is.

Human rights pressure is out, commercial opportunism is in. Not surprisingly the Chinese are treating the U.S. not with the respect accorded to the world's only superpower but with the condescension reserved for one more barbarian supplicant to share in the bounty of China's allegedly vast market.

Quite a few contracts have been signed but so far the Americans have only wrapped up five billion dollars worth of business. How much these are mere letters of intent, and whether China itself will actually fork out the five billion, rather than expecting the U.S. to subsidize its own businesses, remains obscure.

Along with the contracts, the Chinese make further demands of their American guests. The Middle Kingdom must be allowed to enter the new World Trade Organization (WTO) to be formed as GATT's successor by the end of 1994. So far, the U.S. has been insisting that China must meet certain international standards in its trading practices before GATT-WTO membership can be assured. Perhaps Washington can be pressured to abandon these positions too. China also demands that textile restrictions be eased, along with prohibitions of high-technology U.S. exports to China.

Meanwhile China goes on arresting, detaining and suppressing even on the eve of the Brown Mission's visit. If this gives Brown any pangs of conscience -- after all, he entered politics with Jesse Jackson in the civil rights movement -- he hides it well. A vague promise for more Sino-American dialog on human rights is trotted out as if it was a Chinese concession. It is, in fact, a lone piece of weak American card-playing, as is the resumption of meaningless talks which the Chinese had earlier refused to attend now claimed by the Clinton Administration as a significant development.

Those whose business it is to monitor human rights in China without fear or favor say the situation has definitely worsened since Mr. Clinton reversed himself on MFN.

"You have to be a pretty negative person to be looking for a cloud today" says Brown as he wraps up his Beijing visit, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the U.S. has lost credibility and, with its commercial antics, is losing even more.

News from Tokyo confirms this conclusion. While the U.S. was still applying human rights pressure, Japan dragged its feet on new yen loans to China. But as the news of the Brown Mission hit the headlines, Tokyo officials let it be known that 600 billion yen worth of loans for the 1996-1999 period would be in Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama's briefcase when he visits China, probably in mid-October. No point in allowing Germany and the U.S. to take all of China's market.

As they monitor these maneuvers, the Chinese leaders must be chuckling. Like the Japanese leaders before them, they know which vast and growing market Chinese commercial opportunism is best directed. Second only to Japan's regular $60 billion surpluses, China is currently running a $23 billion dollars surplus in trade with the United States market, and it is still rising. A fairly sizable cloud, by any reckoning.

Window: Those whose business is to monitor human rights in China without fear or favor say the situation has definitely worsened since Clinton reversed himself on MFN.