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With Clinton in Check, China Flexes its Muscles
GEORGE MELLOAN
HONG KONG--China seems rather benign when viewed from this city. Bankers and businessmen talk of deals afoot in Shanghai or Wuhan. Recession has only somewhat subdued the bustle of the China trade handled by the denizens of Hong Kong's gleaming skyscrapers. The beautifully engineered expressways, bridges and tunnels that link the central district with the expansive new Chek Lap Kok airport on Lantau Island enhance Hong Kong's reputation as a "pearl of the Orient."
China clearly was sincere in its pre-handover pledge not to tamper with Hong Kong's role as Southeast Asia's premier commercial and financial center. Why would it want to, after all? But don't assume that that pragmatic decision reflected a Beijing wish to preserve the regional status quo. Quite the contrary. The acquisition of Hong Kong 20 months ago, coupled with the economic decline of Japan and other regional powers, has clearly sharpened China's long-standing desire to replace the U.S. as the political kingpin of eastern Asia.
On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan could hardly have been more confrontational when he warned the U.S. not to try to supply America's friends in the region with a theater missile defense system. He referred specifically to Taiwan, but implied opposition as well to a system that would primarily defend Japan, saying that such a deployment would go far beyond that country's "legitimate defensive needs."
Japan would of course beg to differ. It is so uptight about the missile threat from North Korea, which has fired a test missile over Japanese territory, that a defense official reportedly has raised the issue of whether Japan should launch a pre-emptive strike at North Korea. That suggestion rattled teeth in Seoul as well as Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, China, using technology widely believed to have been stolen from U.S. laboratories, is producing weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. A Pentagon report last month said China is building up its missile forces targeting Taiwan. China fired "test" missiles over the Strait of Taiwan sea lanes in an attempt to intimidate Taiwan prior to Taiwan's presidential election in 1996. Mr. Tang's warning to the U.S. two days ago says, in effect: "Don't help our neighbors build missile defense systems, because we may want to threaten them with annihilation at some time in the future." That's about as brazen as you can get.
Lurking behind that brazenness, perhaps, is the belief in Beijing that it has been very successful in having its way with Bill Clinton since he assumed the American presidency. On Saturday, the New York Times carried a front-page article by James Risen and Jeff Gerth saying that the Clinton administration did nothing about a suspected spy for China working in the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories at Los Alamos after suspicious activities were discovered in 1995. The suspect had allegedly stolen crucial data on how to miniaturize nuclear weapons to enable them to be fitted on submarines that could menace the continental U.S.
The story, derived in part from the still-secret results of a congressional investigation chaired by Republican Chris Cox, suggested that Mr. Clinton didn't want the spy story to surface at a time when he was trying to improve relations with China and setting the stage for a state visit to the U.S. by Chinese President Jiang Zemin in the fall of 1997. Two years is a rather prolonged stage-setting, of course. The White House brushed off the Times story with its favorite excuse, that Ronald Reagan was to blame; the miniaturization thefts reportedly occurred in the mid-1980s. But that doesn't explain what happened, or didn't happen, after the 1995 discovery. And since the suspect presumably still is beavering away at Los Alamos, who's to say that secrets are not going out the door even today?
A more plausible motive for the cover-up is the fact that in 1996 Mr. Clinton and the Democratic Party were charged with taking illegal campaign funds from the Chinese. The money was reportedly returned after the story broke, but the sensitivity of the administration to those charges can be judged from the willingness of Attorney General Janet Reno to risk the wrath of Congress with her refusal to appoint a special prosecutor to probe into them. We might have learned what John Huang, a man with important China connections, was up to when he occupied high posts in the Commerce Department and Democratic National Committee but this case, like that of the suspected Los Alamos spy, remains open. You can charge a lot off to the mere incompetence of the Clinton administration, but surely not everything.
Last June, Mr. Clinton finished off his goodwill tour of China by accepting, in seemingly offhand remarks in Shanghai, China's three "noes" in reference to Taiwan. In short, he buckled to China's demands that the U.S. do nothing to even suggest that Taiwan might someday be recognized as an independent state, whatever the wishes of its people. His capitulation left Taiwan's leaders in a state of shock and forced them to immediately begin taking steps toward an accommodation with the mainland, which they fear will leave them vulnerable to Chinese demands for reunification.
It is of course not known what role the campaign contributions might have played in inducing Mr. Clinton to take a soft line toward a China that might have been busily stealing secrets that make the U.S. more vulnerable to a nuclear attack. Clearly that's a favor somewhat more generous than offering a night in the Lincoln bedroom. But even if it is too horrible a thought to imagine a president committing what amounts to treason, it should be clear by now that the soft line has not been a howling foreign policy success. A China that dares to tell the U.S. that it will not be allowed to help Japan defend itself against a clear and present threat, can hardly be regarded as a friendly nation.
Indeed, the above sequence of events is a rather scary tale of the mismanagement of an important foreign policy relationship. There is nothing wrong with cutting China some slack and trying to support the positive forces at work there, but not when it threatens the security of the U.S. and its allies. Countering national security threats is an American president's most important job. A failure here dwarfs in importance even the lying about Monica, and perhaps Congress should give it at least equally serious attention. |
