It’s the second Jiang that’s on his way to America. The Chinese president plans to dazzle the U.S. people by conjuring up a new, modern China that strives to put Tiananmen in the past, play a leading role in global commerce and perhaps even countenance political reform. He’s been looking at movies, reading briefing books, rehearsing positions and getting in on minute decisions. To sell the vision, he plans to sell himself. ““He wants to show he’s a Chinese leader who can perform on the world stage like no one else can,’’ says James Lilley, a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing.
That’s a side of Jiang nobody has seen. In the nine months since Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping’s death, Jiang, 71, has consolidated power, presided over Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty and managed a critical Communist Party congress that approved the most radical economic reforms ever undertaken by a Marxist regime. Through it all, precious little of his personality has shown through.
To hedge his bets, Jiang last week paved the way for a showy White House signing ceremony that will help bring China into the nuclear-nonproliferation club. Clinton administration officials said Beijing had agreed in principle to end nuclear assistance to Iran. That would clear the way for implementation of an agreement that would permit U.S. companies to sell nuclear power plants to China–a market worth $45 billion to U.S. companies. First put forth in 1985, the accord on bilateral nuclear cooperation was never implemented because of U.S. fears that China would re-export sensitive nuclear technologies to Pakistan and Iran. Subsequent Chinese missile exports and dual-use nuclear-technology transfers kept the deal shelved; Republican critics of President Clinton’s engagement policy argue that Beijing hasn’t yet proved it can be trusted on proliferation.
By pledging to comply, Jiang would remove a huge impediment to China’s efforts to be a global player. And a stellar performance during the visit would secure Jiang’s steady climb to power at home. University of Chicago political scientist Yang Dali calls the summit ““the last building block for Jiang’s edifice.’’ Deng Xiaoping faced a similar challenge in 1979, when he toured America just months after taking control and confidently stole the show. In Texas, Deng took in a rodeo and posed in a ten-gallon hat. At NASA in Houston, he wanted to know how toilets work in space. Less than five feet tall, he posed with the Harlem Globetrotters. The chain-smoking revolutionary put across his message–Maoism is dead. The glow lasted for a full decade, until he snuffed it out by ordering soldiers to open fire on unarmed student demonstrators near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Jiang’s U.S. tour seems tailored to win back America’s sympathy by evoking its values. ““I told him that this summit means even more than Deng’s visit,’’ says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who has known Jiang for years. To prepare for the trip, Jiang ordered up dossiers on America’s work ethic, pioneering spirit and fondness for innovation–attributes he both admires and deems useful to China’s modernization. He has pored over Beijing’s archive of video and press clippings from Deng’s 1979 U.S. tour. Jiang is so intent on topping Deng’s act that he’s even considering a musical number. ““He might sing, or perhaps play the piano,’’ says one Chinese source. ““One Chinese diplomat felt Jiang should work the lines, shake a few hands, act American,’’ said a Clinton administration official. Jiang also plans to lay a wreath at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor memorial, tour Colonial Williamsburg and give a speech at Harvard. A visit to Independence Hall will send a powerful, if tacit, pro-democracy message: Chinese call that ““doing a lot but saying little.’’ All this in addition to the summit meeting, red-carpet treatment and state dinner in Washington that Jiang has lobbied for since Clinton’s first term.
Jiang’s cram course includes a tutorial on America’s welling fear of his homeland, best argued in the controversial 1996 book ““The Coming Conflict With China.’’ The book challenges the view that ““comprehensive engagement’’ is in the U.S. interest, arguing that Clinton’s policy has strengthened China economically while failing to curb human-rights abuses or hold Beijing to international norms. Jiang recently read an edition of the book that includes critiques by senior Chinese foreign-policy experts. Jiang himself sought to discredit the book’s thesis in last week’s interview with The Washington Post, NEWSWEEK’s sister publication, declaring: ““China’s supreme interest is in peace and nation-building.''
His biggest worry is that he’ll be upstaged by protests. Jiang’s advisers–fortysomething intellectuals trained after Chairman Mao’s death in 1976–have closely questioned administration officials about what to expect and have sent the boss a series of blunt warnings. Jiang’s people expect to encounter opposition from human-rights groups protesting the imprisonment of political dissidents; they know that with the movie ““Seven Years in Tibet’’ playing at multiplexes across America, U.S.-based Tibetan activists could draw large crowds. They are alert to Taiwanese independence advocates, Christians promoting religious freedom and labor unions unhappy over the U.S. trade deficit with China. Jiang turned aside suggestions that he drop the Harvard stop, where protests over what one U.S. official calls ““the terrible T’s’’–Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen–are inevitable. Jiang clung to the Cambridge, Mass., stop because he considers Harvard the best–and most prestigious–forum to present his political vision. Behind the scenes, his aides are still arguing over how to invoke ““Asian values’’ and argue that Western-style democracy is culturally inappropriate in China while still conceding that China should democratize–slowly, to avoid the turmoil that has plagued former Warsaw Pact countries.
Jiang’s toughest challenge will be in dodging critics of China’s human-rights record. Every one of the country’s prominent political dissidents currently languishes in jail. Just weeks ago, Chinese police arrested Su Zhimin, a 65-year-old bishop in China’s underground Roman Catholic Church, after 17 months on the run. His crime: building a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Then there’s Tiananmen. In the interview, Jiang referred to the 1989 crackdown as a ““political incident,’’ a term more conciliatory than Beijing’s official verdict of ““counterrevolution.’’ But he reiterated that ““the resolute actions taken at the time were correct.’’ He restated Beijing’s basic line that economic reforms achieved in the 1990s could not have happened without order and called U.S. pressure on the incident a ““man-made obstacle’’ to better bilateral relations. Jiang avoided bloodshed in Shanghai as party secretary during the student protests, a fact that helped him win his job. Clinton administration sources say he could best impress Americans by expressing regret at the loss of life and sympathy with some of the protesters’ grievances.
Jiang is mostly interested in selling his agenda for China’s future. His plan to privatize thousands of unprofitable state enterprises hinges on foreign investment. He must convince Clinton and Congress that he needs support as he embarks on a risky strategy that could idle millions of factory workers in the name of economic reform. Most of all, Jiang wants to show the American people that he isn’t a tyrant, and that his government, while it remains worlds away from the American ideal, is less and less like the one Chairman Mao bequeathed to the nation upon his death. On this trip, Jiang just wants to be loved.
Which of these descriptions comes closest to your view of China’s relationship to the United States today?
A serious problem 46% Not serious 32 An adversary 14 Undecided 8
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bill Clinton is dealing with China?
Approve 37% Disapprove 37 Undecided 26
SOURCE: THE PEW RESEARCH CENTER. BASED ON PHONE INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED SEPT. 4-11, 1997. FIRST QUESTION: POSED TO 2,000 ADULTS, MARGIN OF ERROR +/- 2 PERCENTAGE POINTS. SECOND QUESTION: POSED TO 1,007 ADULTS, MARGIN OF ERROR +/- 4 PERCENTAGE POINTS.
