China Reform Monitor, No. 1, October 27,
1997
American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, D.C.
Gingrich
Urged to Allow Religious Persecution Debate Before Summit;
Party Documents Show Beijing's Strategic Planning for P.R.
Coup
Editors' note: Since we began
publishing Russia Reform Monitor in April 1995,
many of our readers have asked us to produce a similar
bulletin on the People's Republic of China. Now, to mark
the historic summit between President Bill Clinton and
Chinese President Jiang Zemin, we are happy to launch the
China Reform Monitor to chronicle change in China and
U.S. policy toward the region. We begin our series with a
review of events leading to the summit.
- October 16
-
China will have great difficulty
adhering to the regimen imposed by World Trade
Organization (WTO) membership because of a lack of
central control over provincial actions and a general
lack of legal institutional framework, experience and
personnel, the Financial Times reports.
The paper questions Beijing's willingness to respect
WTO rules: "Unless it did so, its liberalization
pledges would be worthless, and its membership
disruptive. However sincere Beijing's commitments, its
capacity to deliver is unclear."
Leading Democratic Members of Congress
issue a letter calling on Speaker Newt Gingrich to
clear the way for open debate on various pending
legislative proposals regarding China before the
summit. In the letter, House Democratic Leader
Gephardt (D-Mo.), Assistant Leader Bonior (D- Mi.),
and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) said that Congress
"must be allowed to speak out on China's
religious persecution, trade violations, weapons
proliferation and other important issues. We recently
learned that you do not intend to permit such
legislation to be debated by the House of
Representatives prior to the U.S.- China summit. . . .
the time for the House to act on U.S. policy toward
China is now, not after the summit has
concluded."
- October 17
-
Party documents circulating in Beijing
detail the planned pre-summit publicity buildup for
President Jiang Zemin. Jiang is portrayed as having
"inherited and developed" the diplomatic
theories of Deng Xiaoping toward diplomatic
maneuvering with the United States. The venerated
Deng's "axioms" are, "keep a low
profile, never take the lead," and "don't
strike first but nail your enemy while striking
back." Writes Willy Lo-Lap Lam in the South
China Morning Post, "Deng also instructed
the party to pacify the U.S. temporarily through
strategic concessions so that China can get maximum
elbow room to develop." Jiang is portrayed in the
documents as having advanced these tactics and being
fully prepared for a diplomatic coup. The reports note
that Jiang's restoration of full relations with
Washington will help further to isolate Taiwan.
"Chinese traders with billions of
dollars to blow plan a shopping spree" designed
to "silence American complaints about a growing
trade gap," the Associated Press reports. Beijing
will publicize its billion-dollar purchases of
airplanes, automobile plants, wheat, chemicals, and
its interest in billions of dollars' worth of nuclear
plants "so that the U.S. people can understand
that this relationship is indeed very important and it
is not a one-way relationship," says Vice
Minister of Foreign Trade Sun Zhenyu. China's 1997
trade surplus with the U.S. is estimated to range
between $44 and $50 billion; it reached a record
monthly high in August, topping $5.2 billion, half of
which is in Christmas season toy and related imports.
- --Al Santoli
-
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