China’s President Jiang Wins Gingrich’s Vote
WASHINGTON — Chinese President Jiang Zemin paid a visit Thursday to the long-hostile environment of Capitol Hill and emerged with an extraordinarily strong expression of support from House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
After a contentious breakfast session between members of Congress and Jiang, Gingrich said China is moving in the direction of democracy and should not be viewed in the same way the United States once saw the Soviet Union.
The Georgia Republican tried to dampen criticism voiced by other House members about China’s political and religious repression.
China “is not the kind of problem we faced with the Soviet Union,†Gingrich told reporters.
When Jiang talked about the political situation in China, Gingrich said, “there was no defense of dictatorship†of the sort that the Soviets used to make.
Some of the other members of Congress who met the Chinese president were considerably less positive.
Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said in an interview that Jiang “told some whoppers†when he answered questions about human rights and arms sales.
Gingrich’s stance is particularly significant because he presides over the House, whose members over the last eight years have been the driving force behind legislative measures aimed at China.
The Senate has been consistently less willing to support such legislation, including failed efforts to restrict China’s trade benefits.
For the last two years, Gingrich has tried to maintain a careful balance between Republican conservatives who seek a more confrontational U.S. stance against China and business-oriented Republicans who favor a policy of engagement.
He has also talked several times to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who has argued that China is too important to alienate.
The House speaker, who visited China last spring, said he plans to return next summer--to visit Tibet.
“I hope he [Jiang] and the Dalai Lama will be there to meet me,†he said.
It was difficult to tell whether Gingrich intended these last words to be taken seriously. The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, has not set foot in Tibet since he fled into exile in 1959, and Beijing has been unwilling to allow even his picture to be displayed there.
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Jiang, who had spent most of Wednesday with President Clinton, met over breakfast Thursday with about 30 House members and 25 senators assembled at tables in the Mansfield Room of the Capitol.
The legislators had the chance to ask questions of the Chinese president.
Many of them seized the opportunity to quiz Jiang about China’s policies on human rights, religious freedom, abortion, arms proliferation, Taiwan and Tibet--all subjects that have come up repeatedly in Congress in recent months.
Afterward, congressional leaders boasted that the questions to Jiang had been tough ones.
“I’ve never attended a meeting with a leader of another country where the members of Congress were more candid,†Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said. “Every point that needed to be made was made in that meeting.â€
The Senate leader also served notice that he is not particularly eager to challenge Clinton’s China policy. “We are pleased with the commitments and agreements that have been reached by President Clinton and President Jiang,†he said.
Clinton had said at a news conference Wednesday that the congressional leadership generally supports his China policy.
Both Gingrich’s and Lott’s public remarks Thursday indicated that, while the Republican leaders may voice some public criticism of the president over China, they are not inclined to do much to interfere with his policy.
House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) seemed much more critical of Clinton than did the Republicans.
“Something has been missing amidst all of the pomp and circumstance and the 21-gun salutes [for Jiang]: real honesty,†Gephardt said. “Real honesty about the deep issues that divide our two countries.â€
Some of the legislators believed that Jiang was going out of his way to be conciliatory.
“It was very different than when [former Chinese leader] Deng [Xiaoping] was here†in 1979, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said in an interview. “With Deng, it was, ‘We’re the Middle Kingdom, take it or leave it.’ This time, there was an obvious attempt to woo congressmen. Jiang was saying: ‘We understand your concerns, give us some time.’ â€
Biden said that in some ways, Jiang reminded him of former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
Jiang “is a guy who knows the death knell has been sounded for communism and is trying to accommodate his system to reality in a way that it can’t accommodate,†the senator said.
Others were less impressed.
“He was loquacious, but what he had to say was amazing,†Cox said. “He simply denied everything. . . . He said China has never sold any technology for weapons of mass destruction to anyone, anywhere, at any time.â€
The CIA has reported that China has exported nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan and Iran.
Over the last three years, Congress has approved measures to renew China’s trading privileges with the U.S., which are commonly known as most-favored-nation benefits. And each year, proponents of extending that status to Beijing, both in the Clinton administration and in the U.S. business community, have argued that denying the privilege would be the wrong move for bringing about changes in China’s policies on human rights, arms exports and other issues.
Recently, members of the House have responded by drawing up a series of nine new bills that would leave China’s trade benefits untouched but would try to influence the Beijing government through other methods.
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The bills, for example, would ban travel to the United States by Chinese Communist leaders involved in religious persecution or forced abortion. They would also help Taiwan to develop a missile defense system and require the CIA and FBI to report to Congress on Chinese espionage activities.
Gingrich succeeded in having these measures kept off the House floor in the weeks before Jiang’s visit to Washington to avoid embarrassing the Chinese president.
However, Cox, who is chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, won a promise from the speaker that the package of bills will be called to the floor next week.
Jiang concluded his visit to Washington with a speech in which he boasted that China freed slaves of Tibet in a fashion much like the emancipation of black slaves in the American Civil War.
“Until the democratic reform of 1959, Tibet was a feudal serfdom, a theocracy with a heavy tint of slavery,†he said at a lunch hosted by five U.S. foreign policy groups. “It was our democratic reform that emancipated some 1 million serfs and slaves through peaceful means.â€
Later, Jiang visited Philadelphia, emphasizing the twin themes of his U.S. trip--the growing profitability of Sino-American trade and a well-publicized homage to the icons of U.S. nationalism.
He talked to business-oriented gatherings at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania and then paid a nine-minute visit to Independence Hall, the site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
At Drexel, Jiang’s brief appearance followed an hourlong China business forum.
He was welcomed by Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge and Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, a sharp contrast to the reception he faces today in New York. There, Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani have said they will boycott the Chinese president to protest Beijing’s human rights record.
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Clearly in a cheerful mood, Jiang switched repeatedly between Chinese and his own distinctive brand of English in his brief remarks. He noted that his son, Jiang Mianheng, earned a doctorate at Drexel while “I only have a bachelor’s degree.â€
He beamed when he was presented with a Philadelphia Flyers hockey jersey, declaring happily: “My grandson lived not far from here for three years, and he loves football.â€
Jiang stood silently with his hands clasped in front of him during his brief stop at Independence Hall, where he signed a guest book but said nothing. Nevertheless, the stop marked the first time on his U.S. tour that Jiang has been in a position to see any of the human rights protesters who are trying to dog his footsteps.
Several hundred demonstrators shouting “independence for Tibet, independence for Taiwan†huddled on a street corner when Jiang’s motorcade arrived at Independence Hall.
He did not acknowledge them but, unlike earlier stops, he could hardly help but see and hear them.
Meanwhile, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on Thursday announced at her weekly news briefing in Washington that Chinese Justice Minister Xiao Yang has accepted a long-standing invitation to meet with her in the U.S. capital. The meeting is set for Nov. 17.
“I have let it be known that we will be addressing the issues of how we can cooperate on the campaign-financing investigation,†Reno said, referring to accusations that the Chinese government tried to make contributions to candidates during the 1996 U.S. election campaigns. Reno declined to be more specific.
Asked whether the United States will ask the Chinese government to help locate individuals whom the Justice Department might be having trouble interviewing, Reno said: “We will be asking them, in terms of mutual legal assistance, to do everything that we think would be helpful in terms of the investigation.â€
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Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus and staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed from Washington and staff writer Norman Kempster from Philadelphia.
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