The Lingering Legacy of Tiananmen

That the Tiananmen massacre occurred just at the moment when the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe was collapsing and old Cold War fears were evaporating must seem, in Chinese eyes, a particularly cruel joke. For the United States, China was no longer a necessary strategic partner against the Soviet Union. China's one-party authoritarianism was no longer excusable, and its repression of domestic foes no longer had to be overlooked.

Strategic "realists" who had dominated Washington policy circles for 40 years suddenly found they had to compete for influence with groups and issues new to the China-policy arena. Beijing's coercive population policies assumed an unfamiliar significance for the bilateral relationship. So, too, did its use of prison labor to produce goods for export and its toleration of intellectual-property piracy. Tibet proved an impediment to collaboration out of all proportion to the small size of America's Buddhist community. China's alleged harvesting of human organs became grist for impassioned speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives. Religious conservatives, labor unions, environmental organizations, Hollywood actors, and immigrant groups all sought to influence America's China policy to an extent unimaginable a decade earlier. The introduction of these disparate voices greatly complicated Washington's decision-making process and brought far more volatility and acrimony to U.S.-China ties.

Ironically, the same events that sparked American calls for greater pluralism in China-namely, the disintegration of Soviet power in Eastern Europe-convinced Beijing's Communist Party elders that they could not afford to release their iron grip or tolerate even modest levels of dissent. Nor could they respond to White House pleas to consider American public opinion as they fashioned their domestic policies. The Chinese leadership, after all, had its own internal political problems and preoccupations.

WHO'S THE BOSS?

Behind much of the Washington debate on China over the past decade lay two related and fundamental questions. How much influence or leverage to shape the behavior of other countries does the United States possess? And how can it most effectively promote human rights, nonproliferation, or any other issue on its agenda? To put it more crudely, does Washington have the power to compel China to behave in ways that are more acceptable?

Many members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, have little doubt on this score. The typical legislator, cognizant of America's vast power and freed from the day-to-day responsibilities of managing relations with a recalcitrant foreign government, is far less apt than executive branch officials to acknowledge limits on Washington's ability to push, prod, persuade, or pressure other countries to do the United States' bidding. And when such tactics proved insufficient to elicit compliance in China's case, Congress found ready explanations for this failure in executive branch incompetence, inattention, naiveté, or, in extreme cases, treason. The (Bush or Clinton) administration did not try hard enough, the critics complained. It did not care enough; it failed to use all the weapons at its disposal. "We have real clout," one senior legislator has implored, expressing a view shared by many of his colleagues throughout the 1990s. "Let's use it on behalf of the millions of suffering people in the People's Republic of China."

Unsurprisingly, given his years in the executive branch, Suettinger's sympathies in these pages lie more with the White House and the State Department than with the lawmakers down the length of Pennsylvania Avenue. He describes Congress with some accuracy as the "guardian of a values-based foreign policy." But he is less prepared to concede that on occasion Congress' approach to China produced results. House Speaker Newt Gingrich's mandate to the chair of the Asia subcommittee to monitor Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese control and to submit regular reports to Congress may have helped convince many in Hong Kong that the United States was not going to abandon them after the 1997 turnover.

Conceivably-although at present it cannot be proved-this congressional scrutiny also gave clout to those in Beijing and Hong Kong who counseled the latter's new Chinese rulers against a sharp break with pretransition practices.

This is not to say that the executive branch itself spoke with one voice, however, or functioned as a unitary actor. To the contrary, the half-hidden competition between the State Department and the National Security Council for control of China policy becomes a recurring theme in Suettinger's treatment. Bush's secretary of state, James Baker, was largely uninterested in China, which he saw as a political liability and on which he was only too pleased to have Brent Scowcroft, the president's national security adviser, take the lead. After Clinton entered the White House in 1993, control of China policy reverted to the State Department, which, in keeping with the president's campaign promises, gave the promotion of human rights pride of place among its priorities for China. But disappointment with the meager results of this approach (a failure as much Clinton's as State's) led to a reassertion of nsc authority, and by Clinton's second term, China policy was once more run out of the White House.

DEPEND ON THE DETRACTORS