Trends Evolving About U.S.-China Ties

WASHINGTON — Let’s look at the future of the relationships among the United States, China and Hong Kong as the British colony returns to Chinese control on July 1. What’s going to happen? Three broad trends are already emerging and will become ever clearer over the next year.

First, the United States and China will clash with each other repeatedly over the issue of elections and democracy in Hong Kong. Second, by contrast, it seems Washington and Beijing will work together surprisingly smoothly in continuing ordinary government business, even on touchy matters such as defense and law enforcement. And third, the changes in Hong Kong are going to alter dramatically the dynamics of the annual debate in Washington over the renewal of China’s trade benefits in the United States.

Elections and Democracy

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has declined to attend the July 1 ceremony at which the members of Hong Kong’s “provisional legislature” will be sworn in. These pro-China legislators were handpicked, with Beijing’s backing, to replace the democratically elected legislature that took office in 1995.

Albright’s move will not be the end of U.S. efforts to shun the unelected legislature. In general, Clinton administration officials say they will press hard for Hong Kong to hold free and fair elections and to have them as soon as possible.

State Department officials are now said to be putting together a longer-term policy in which congressional delegations to Hong Kong would be urged to avoid meeting with unelected legislators and the U.S. government would refrain from sponsoring trips by them to America.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would go further. He is proposing a bill that would deny visas to the United States for members of the provisional legislature.

Chances are, then, that Hong Kong will quickly become part of the larger struggle over America’s desire for political change in China’s still-Leninist system. And China may well use the United States as its whipping boy; if anything should go wrong in Hong Kong, whether economically or politically, one likely approach for China will be to say, “Don’t blame us, blame America.”

Routine Business

This summer, a U.S. Navy warship will make the first official visit to Hong Kong after it becomes a Chinese port. That event will underscore the extent to which the Clinton administration has been quietly working with Beijing to make sure the U.S. government can keep functioning as it has in the past in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has been important to the U.S. Navy because of its location. It is the perfect stopover point for ships traveling from Hawaii to the Persian Gulf and back.

In the past year, the administration has obtained assurances not only of the right of the Navy to make port calls, but also of the right of the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong to preserve its staff level and functions.

That means the myriad U.S. government agencies that have long had key operations in Hong Kong--including the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Naturalization Service--will be able to remain.

The China Trade Debate

These days, if you listen to President Clinton or other members of his administration argue for the renewal of China’s trade benefits, you will notice that one argument is invoked again and again: Even China’s strongest critics in Hong Kong are in favor of preserving these benefits, because U.S. trade with the Chinese contributes to Hong Kong’s prosperity.

Clinton made this pitch last weekend. In his radio address, the president noted that even Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong who China has reviled for his introduction of democratic reforms, favors the preservation of China’s trading privileges.

Similarly, others in the administration and on Capitol Hill have pointed out that Martin Lee, the staunchest advocate of democracy in Hong Kong and an elected legislator, is against any revocation of China’s most-favored-nation trade benefits.

The views of these Hong Kong officials carry weight on Capitol Hill this year. But what happens next year? Patten sails off into retirement on the royal yacht Brittania July 1. Who knows what future awaits Martin Lee as he tests China’s 1984 agreement to preserve Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy.

“After reversion, when there are no more independent authorities to argue Hong Kong’s case in Washington, Congress may worry less about preserving its economy,” writes Georgetown University scholar Nancy Bernkopf Tucker in one of the essays in the new book “Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule.”

One administration official admitted ruefully this week that after this year, Clinton may have to search for new luminaries outside of Hong Kong to help him win support for China’s trade benefits. “Next year, it’s going to be [Taiwan President] Lee Teng-hui and Billy Graham,” he joked.

That remark was a telling indication of how the return of Hong Kong, in ways both obvious and subtle, is changing America’s overall policies toward China.