A Policy Derailed by Anti-Asian Thinking

I realize that I complain a lot about the European orientation of American foreign policy. But surely it would be churlish to begrudge President Clinton his wooing of Mother Russia last week and to label him, after another trip to Europe, “Wrong-Way Clinton.” Not yet, anyway. Russia is always important. Still, Russia is not America’s steepest challenge right now.

That distinction clearly goes to China, and indeed to Asia at large. It’s funny, though, that China and Asia seem to cause far more problems for America in its domestic politics than abroad. In 1992, then-candidate Clinton played the soft-on- China card on President Bush, then succumbed to reality once in office. Last week, Democratic presidential wannabe Richard Gephardt, the Missouri congressman, launched his own politically inspired missile against renewing so-called most-favored-nation trade “privileges” for China. The move not only heaves the China issue into the year 2000 presidential race but could paralyze U.S. foreign policy for at least the next three years.

Sure, China can be hard to love. Gephardt did raise all the obvious questions about repressiveness in the People’s Republic of China. But isn’t its human rights record most effectively and equitably criticized in those multinational forums in which China has membership? After all, people are entitled to ask tough questions when the Chinese fail the ideals of the organizations they join. But here in America, whenever Congress pushes to raise the heat on China bilaterally, China promptly claims Western imperialistic interference in its internal affairs--always a wonderful card to play in Asia. The rest of Asia then feels pressured to choose between China and America. That’s not a corner we should want to push anyone into.

Beijing’s claims about U.S. domestic meddling to the side, what about alleged Chinese interference in our internal politics? Sure, if Beijing played illegal games during the 1996 national election, the full story should be told. But let’s have some perspective, please: Whatever the truth about Chinese contributions, nothing Beijing could possibly have done to our election process last year could be remotely in the same league as what the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has done over the years in the Philippines, in Italy, in Australia, in Nicaragua or in Panama, to mention just a few moral low points. So let’s get off our high horse--and let’s recall how the British Conservative Party once dispatched campaign advisors and performed research back in London on Clinton’s Oxford era files to help President Bush. Had China’s Communist Party made bold with anything so cheeky as that, no doubt the 7th Fleet would have been set a-sailing again.

Even if China slipped something like a million bucks into friendly hands through laundered contributions during the 1996 campaign, that’s not much dough. What could it have bought at today’s campaign-contribution prices, a minor time-share in the Lincoln Bedroom? And note, too, that, at least judging from the figures on officially reported legal campaign contributions from abroad (giving funneled through subsidiary firms of foreign corporations), Asians don’t dig into their pockets as deeply as those sinister Europeans. Japan was the only Asian country to crack the top-10 list of technically legal foreign contributors last year. The No. 1 foreign “corrupter,” in fact, was Britain.

Even so, Asia gets all the raised eyebrows these days. The brouhaha over Asian giving to U.S. universities is another case in point. The University of California at Berkeley, its faculty in an uproar, spurned a big grant from a Taiwan-based foundation named after Chiang Ching-kuo, a past right-wing president of Taiwan. If the university took the money, critics said, it could wind up with a building defaced by the chiseled-in name of a dictator and be seen as taking sides in the China-Taiwan dispute. As a member of another UC faculty, I defer to my esteemed colleagues up north: But in truth, universities take money from all sorts of folks rather this side of sainthood, from American corporations with domestic-agenda axes to grind to foreign sources trying to improve their agenda or their country’s image. Why is money from, say, Singapore or Malaysia necessarily dirtier than money from, say, Texaco or Mobil?

Before long, America has to get its head screwed on straight about China, Asia and Asians. I wish Clinton’s presidency was in better shape to help. In a speech at West Point on Saturday, Clinton spoke well: “With all of our power and wealth, we are living in a world in which increasingly our influence depends upon recognizing that our future is interdependent with other nations, and we must work with them across the globe [because] the threats we face tomorrow will cross national boundaries.” But this sensible vision is being dragged into the cellar by domestic American politics rooted in the knee-jerk, the stereotype and the partisan.

I almost feel sorry for Clinton: Even if he tried to set sail with a comprehensive China or Asia policy, one major constituency or the other here would sink his effort before it left its current safe harbor of blandness. Clinton’s in a China box from which there may be no escape.

Tom Plate is a Times columnist and an adjunct professor at UCLA. E-mail: [email protected]