July 9, 1998
ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The Eight Yeses
WASHINGTON - To ingratiate himself with the Communist
leadership in China, Bill Clinton became the first U.S. President to
publicly embrace what Beijing calls "the three noes" -- no support for two
Chinas, no independence for Taiwan, no membership of Taiwan in any
international organization of sovereign nations.
Our former policy was brilliantly ambiguous: we acknowledged both sides'
agreement that there was only one China, and called for a peaceful
settlement -- which carried an implicit promise to help Taiwan if Beijing
launched an invasion. The newly expressed Clinton policy dismays Taiwan
because "the three noes" explicitly deny self-determination.
Beyond that, Clinton forked over The Eight Yeses.
1. Yes to the purification of Tiananmen Square. By his ceremonial
presence, Clinton helped Jiang scrub away the memory without reversing the
verdicts.
2. Yes to China's insistence on exclusivity in the Presidential itinerary. At
a time when financially shaky Japan and South Korea were desperate for
reassurance, China demanded that the Clinton pilgrimage not be diluted by
side trips to U.S. allies. Clinton meekly agreed.
3. Yes to giving China a veto over the American President's visiting
party. Three Radio Free Asia journalists were denied visas and in effect
bumped off the press plane. When the U.S. press failed to show solidarity,
Clinton caved, setting a demeaning precedent.
4. Yes to China's pretense of being an "emerging" country that deserves
special treatment in entering the World Trade Organization. By publicly
asserting on Shanghai radio that "China is still an emerging economy,"
Clinton paved the way for a concession that would push the W.T.O. into
giving China's powerful economy a competitive edge on subsidized exports.
5. Yes to China's harsh treatment of dissidents. Clinton acceded to China's
denial of access to dissidents and made no personal protest at the roundup
of protesters. He hailed the "freeing" of Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan -- as
if their forced exile were not a victory for repression.
6. Yes to Jiang's need for superpower support of his new cult of
personality. "He has a good imagination ... vision ... extraordinary
intellect," gushed our President, which can be dismissed as the sort of
hyperbole once lavished on Mikhail Gorbachev, but then Clinton blundered
by giving America's political endorsement to an autocratic, Communist
regime: "China has the right leadership at the right time."
7. Yes to China's decision to delay joining the Missile Technology
Control Regime. Jiang wanted more time to sell missiles to countries
developing nuclear weapons, and was willing only to "study" Clinton's plea;
this was peddled to the traveling press corps as progress. 8. Yes to the
"strategic partnership" desired by the Chinese leadership. This na‹vely
accepted formulation depresses our Asian allies, which fear China's growing
military and economic power, and panics India, which responds to what
sounds like Chinese-American hegemony by going nuclear.
China may be a lopsided trade partner of the U.S., but to pretend that our
geopolitical rival is a "strategic partner" is to eviscerate the meaning of
strategy.
In return for accepting the three noes and offering the eight yeses, Mr.
Clinton was given the opportunity to tell the Chinese people that we
consider the "loss of life" at Tiananmen to be wrong, but it's not for us to
impose our views, etc.
In 1969, as Richard Nixon shared with Charles de Gaulle his idea of an
opening to China, the French President told him: "Better to deal with the
Chinese now, when they need you, than later, when you're forced to
because of their strength."
In 1978, the former President recalled that de Gaulle advice, and added to
me : "Today it's to our interest to make China strong. When they do become
strong enough that they no longer need us, they will have other reasons, ties
and so forth, which will enable us to cooperate."
That is what justified Nixon's opening, Carter's normalization, and even
Clinton's campaign-style visit. Then he added this chilling caveat: "In the long
haul, looking way down the line -- this is deep background -- 15 years from
now, we may have created a Frankenstein."
nytimes.com
No, that was Slick's job and one of his few "accomplishments" in orifice. |
