US business pressures pushed Clinton to intervene in May 1994 to reverse
existing policy and allow for unimpeded US renewal of MFN status for
China. 33
Pro-Taiwan interests in the United States, backed by US public relations
firms in the pay of entities and organizations in Taiwan, took the opportunity
of congressional elections in 1995, which gave control of the Congress to
pro-Taiwan Republican leaders, to push for greater US support for Taiwan,
notably for a visit by ROC president Lee Teng-hui to his alma mater, Cornell
University. Under heavy domestic political pressure, President Clinton inter-
vened again and allowed Taiwan’s president to visit the United States despite
the strenuous opposition of China. 34
The resulting military confrontation with China in the Taiwan Strait in-
volving two US aircraft carrier battle groups saw the Clinton administration
eventually move to a much more coherent engagement policy toward China.
The policy received consistent and high-level attention from the president
and his key aides, and was marked by two US-China summit meetings in
1997 and 1998. By the end of the Clinton administration, progress included
US-China agreement on China’s entry into the WTO and US agreement to
provide PNTR status for China. However, the new approach failed to still the
vigorous US domestic debate against forward movement in US relations with
China on an array of strategic, economic, and political issues. 35
As in the case of Clinton’s attacks on George H. W. Bush, many of the
attacks on Clinton’s engagement policy with China after 1996 were not so
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Chapter 5
much focused on China and China issues for their own sake as on partisan or
other concerns. Most notably, as congressional Republican leaders sought to
impeach President Clinton and tarnish the reputation of his administration,
they endeavored to dredge up a wide range of charges with regard to illegal
Chinese fund-raising; Chinese espionage; Chinese deviations from interna-
tional norms regarding human rights, nuclear weapons, and ballistic missile
proliferation; and other questions in order to discredit President Clinton’s
moderate engagement policy toward China, and in so doing cast serious
doubt on the moral integrity and competence of the president and his aides. 36
The Clinton policy of engagement with China also came under attack
from organized labor interests within the Democratic Party, some of which
used the attacks on the administration’s China policy as a means to get the
administration to pay more attention to broader labor interests within the
party. In a roughly similar fashion, social conservatives in the Republican
Party used sharp attacks against the continuation of US MFN tariff status for
China (a stance often supported by congressional Republican leaders) despite
China’s coercive birth control policies; they did this in part as a means to
embarrass and pressure the Republican leaders to pay more positive attention
to the various agenda issues of the social conservatives.
During the 1990s, congressional criticism of China and moderation in US
policy toward China was easy to do and generally had benefits for those
making the criticism. The criticism generated positive coverage from US
media strongly critical of China, and it generated positive support and per-
haps some fund-raising and electioneering support for the congressional crit-
ics by the many interest groups in the United States that focused criticism on
Chinese policies and practices during that decade. The Chinese government,
anxious to keep the economic relationship with the United States on an even
keel, was disinclined to punish such congressional critics or take substantive
action against them. More likely were Chinese invitations to the critical
congressional members for all-expenses-paid trips to China in order to per-
suade them to change their views by seeing actual conditions in China.
Finally, President Clinton, like President George H. W. Bush, often was not
in a position to risk other legislative goals by punishing congressional mem-
bers critical of his China policy.
China policy after the face-off with Chinese forces in the Taiwan Strait in
1996, they emphasized—like George H. W. Bush—a moderate policy of
engagement, seeking change in offensive Chinese government practices
through a gradual process involving closer Chinese integration with the
world economic and political order. The US-China relationship improved but
also encountered significant setbacks and resistance. The high points in-
cluded the US-China summits in 1997 and 1998, the Sino-American agree-
ment on China’s entry into the WTO in November 1999, and passage of US
Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Post–Cold War Realities, 1989–2000
105
legislation in 2000 granting China PNTR status. Low points included strong
congressional opposition to the president’s stance against Taiwan indepen-
dence in 1998; the May 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
and Chinese demonstrators trashing US diplomatic properties in China; stri-
dent congressional criticism in the so-called Cox Committee report of May
1999, charging administration officials with gross malfeasance in guarding
US secrets and weaponry from Chinese spies; and partisan congressional
investigations of Clinton administration political fund-raising that high-
lighted some illegal contributions from sources connected to the Chinese
regime and the alleged impact they had on the administration’s more moder-
ate approach to the PRC. 37
China’s calculus amid the varied initiatives from the United States in the
decade after the Tiananmen crackdown is explained in more detail later in
this chapter. It shows that Chinese leaders had long sought the summit meet-
ings with the United States. Coming in the wake of Chinese meetings with
other world leaders in the aftermath of the international isolation of China
caused by the Tiananmen crackdown, the summit meetings with the US
president were a clear signal to audiences at home and abroad that the Com-
munist government of China had growing international status and that its
position as the legitimate government of China now was recognized by all
major world powers. 38
The benefits for the United States in the summit meetings were more in
question, though the Clinton administration justified these steps as part of its efforts to use engagement in seeking change in offensive Chinese government practices through a gradual process involving closer Chinese integra-
tion with the world economic and political order. US and other critics failed
to accept this rationale and honed their criticism on what they viewed as
unjustified US concessions to Chinese leaders. Heading the list were per-
ceived concessions by the US president articulating limits on American sup-
port for Taiwan in the so-called Three No’s. Speaking in Shanghai in June
1998 during his visit to China, President Clinton affirmed that the United
States did not support Taiwan independence;
two Chinas; or one Taiwan, one
China; and that the United States did not believe Taiwan should be a member
of an organization where statehood is required. The Clinton administration
claimed the Three No’s were a reaffirmation of long-standing US policy, but
the president’s action was roundly criticized in the Congress and US media
as a new gesture made to accommodate Beijing and undermine Taipei. 39
Progress in US negotiations leading to eventual agreement on China’s
entry into the WTO was not without serious difficulties and negative conse-
quences. The United States took the lead among the WTO’s contracting
parties in protracted negotiations (1986–99) to reach agreements with China
on a variety of trade-related issues before Chinese accession could move
forward. Chinese premier Zhu Rongji visited Washington in April 1999,
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Chapter 5
hoping to reach agreement with the United States on China’s entry into the
WTO. An agreement was reached and disclosed by the Americans, only to be
turned down by President Clinton. The setback embarrassed Zhu and raised
serious questions in the Chinese leadership about the intentions of President
Clinton and his administration. Recovering from the setback, Zhu was able to
complete the US-China negotiations in November 1999, paving the way for
China’s entry into the WTO in 2001. US legislation passed granting PNTR to
China in 2000. This ended the need for annual presidential requests and
congressional reviews with regard to China keeping normal trade relations
tariff status, previously known as most favored nation tariff status. 40
Making such progress in US-China relations was difficult because of
incidents and developments affecting US-China relations and vitriolic US
debate over the Clinton administration’s China policy. Heading the list was
the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the most important
incident in US-China relations after the Tiananmen crackdown. The reaction
in China included mobs stoning the US embassy in Beijing and burning US
diplomatic property in Chengdu, a provincial capital. Both governments re-
stored calm and dealt with some of the consequences of the bombing, but
China and the United States never came to an agreement on what happened
and whether the United States explained its actions appropriately. 41
Taiwan’s president, Lee Teng-hui, added to Taiwan Strait tension, thus
worrying American policy makers when he asserted in July 1999 that Taiwan
was a state separate from China and that China and Taiwan had “special
state-to-state relations.” Chinese leaders saw this as a step toward Taiwan
independence and reacted with strong rhetoric, some military actions, and by
cutting off cross-strait communication links. 42
Complementing difficulties abroad were the many challenges at home to
the Clinton administration’s moderate policy of engagement toward China.
The US media ran repeated stories in the second term of the Clinton adminis-
tration that linked the president, Vice President Albert Gore, and other ad-
ministration leaders with illegal political fund-raising involving Asian do-
nors, some of whom were said to be connected with the Chinese government.
Congressional Republican Committee chairmen, Senator Fred Thompson
and Representative Dan Burton, held hearings, conducted investigations, and
produced information and reports regarding various unsubstantiated allega-
tions of illegal contributions from Chinese backers in return for the Clinton
administration turning a blind eye to Chinese illegal trading practices and
Chinese espionage activities in the United States. 43
More damaging to the administration and its engagement policy toward
China was the report of the so-called Cox Committee. Formally known as the
Select Committee on US National Security and Military/Commercial Con-
cerns with the People’s Republic of China, and named for its chairman,
Republican Congressman Christopher Cox, the committee released in May
Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Post–Cold War Realities, 1989–2000
107
1999 an eight-hundred-page unclassified version of a larger, classified report.
It depicted long-standing and widespread Chinese espionage efforts against
US nuclear weapons facilities, allowing China to build American-designed
advanced nuclear warheads for use on Chinese missiles that were made more
accurate and reliable with the assistance of US companies. It portrayed the
Clinton administration as grossly negligent in protecting such vital US na-
tional security secrets. The report added substantially to congressional, me-
dia, and other concerns that the United States faced a rising security threat
posed by China’s rapidly expanding economic and military power. 44
CHINA POLICY DEBATE IN PERSPECTIVE: STRENGTHS,
WEAKNESS, AND IMPORTANCE
Looking back at Tiananmen from the perspective of the end of the Clinton
administration in 2000, it was fair to assert that the domestic American
debate over China policy had emerged powerfully in the 1990s and would
continue to have a primary influence in the American approach to China for
the foreseeable future. The incoming George W. Bush administration in Jan-
uary 2001 adopted a policy toward China that was tougher and more consis-
tent with the widespread criticism of the Clinton administration’s more mod-
erate engagement policy. Bush’s approach calmed the critics for the time
being. A more lasting and significant impact on the China policy critics came
with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on America. Though not com-
parable to the strategic danger posed by Soviet expansion during the height
of the Cold War, the new challenge of terrorism became the focus of US
government, media, and interest group attention. Those in the United States
who endeavored to use criticism of China and their attacks on moderation in
US policy toward China had a much harder time getting the attention of
officials, media, donors, and the general public. The China debate as a force
that pushed US policy toward a significantly harder line against China basi-
cally was overwhelmed by perceived American requirements to focus on
other issues related to the complicated US war on terrorism. As the danger of
terrorism to the United States appeared to subside and the popularity of the
Bush administration also declined, the domestic US debate over China began
to revive again in the middle of the decade. But it remained a secondary force
influencing American China policy. It was more a drag on forward move-
ment and improvement in US relations with China than it was a significant
determinant of a more negative and critical American policy toward China. 45
Closer examination shows that the rapid and unforeseen decline in the
salience of the American domestic debate about China policy during the first
year of the George W. Bush administration reflects some important weak-
nesses of the critics and their arguments in favor of a tougher stance toward
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Chapter 5
China. In fact, a comparison of the US China policy debate in the 1990s with
&nb
sp; the US debate over China policy debate in the late 1970s and early 1980s
appears to illustrate weaknesses in the resolve and approach of the critics in
the later period. The resolve and commitment of critics seen in late-1970s
and early-1980s episodes related to both the passage of the Taiwan Relations
Act and resistance to perceived excesses in US accommodation of China at
the expense of US relations with Taiwan, Japan, and other interests, appear
strong. They seem notably stronger than the resolve and commitment on the
part of many of the various individuals and groups seeking a tougher US
approach to China after the Cold War. The comparison of the two periods of
criticism of prevailing US policy leads to a conclusion that even though the
number of critics and their supporters in the 1990s was larger and broader
than those of critics in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the commitment of the
leaders and followers was comparatively thin and expedient in the post–Cold
War period. 46
COMPARING THE US DEBATES ON CHINA: LATE 1970S/EARLY
1980S VERSUS POST–COLD WAR
Domestic debate and related domestic interests have sometimes been an
important determinant pushing forward the direction of US policy toward
China, including Taiwan and related issues. More often, they have been an
obstacle slowing the momentum of US policy. From Richard Nixon through
Jimmy Carter and into early Ronald Reagan, domestic factors generally were
a brake slowing the policies led by the administration to move the United
States away from ties with Taiwan and closer to the PRC. For several years
following the end of the Cold War, they generally were a driver pushing US
policy against China and toward closer ties with Taiwan, though they re-
verted to the status of brake during the second term of the Clinton adminis-
tration. 47
As noted in chapter 4, the debate in the Nixon-Reagan period (1972–83)
involved important tangible costs and benefits for the United States. The US
strategic posture vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and the future of Taiwan headed
the list of the serious issues at stake for the United States. Reflecting deep
uncertainty about US power and purpose in world affairs, US policy was