CHINA: WAKING UP TO THE NEXT SUPERPOWER

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The goal of comprehensive engagement, the approach pursued by all U.S. Presidents since Richard Nixon, is to bring China into the world community through broadly based dialogue and diplomacy; an example is the Pentagon's policy of expanding contacts with the Chinese military through naval visits and official exchanges. Admiral R.J. Zlatoper, the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific fleet, has made a priority of better military-to-military relations. "I see myself as a missionary, not just a war fighter," he says. "I sense on the Chinese side an equal interest in being engaged with us."

The advocates of containment are led by an odd-bedfellow alliance of human-rights activists and old cold warriors. "Both [Senator Edward] Kennedy and [Senator Jesse] Helms are in a pro-Taiwan mode," says a senior U.S. official, "the former because of China's appalling human-rights record, the latter because Taiwan is the last anticommunist country in the world." Angered by what they interpret as Beijing's uncompromising, uncooperative behavior, the containment forces are convinced China is a bully that needs to be disciplined, not indulged. They urge that the U.S. get tough and stop acquiescing. Says former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger: "Their whole foreign policy has turned suddenly much more aggressive, and that bodes no good for the nature of any people."

Across the board, the critics contend that comprehensive engagement has amounted to giving in to China whenever the two countries have come into conflict. To some degree, the record over the past few years bears that out. China's responses to Washington's efforts have been "a mixed bag," says a State Department official. The U.S. has been quietly appreciative of Beijing's cutoff of military assistance to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in 1990, of its cooperation in the apparently successful effort to freeze North Korea's nuclear-weapons program and of its restraint in using its U.N. Security Council veto against U.S. initiatives. But Washington remains utterly frustrated by insensitivity--if not outright resistance--to other American concerns where China is giving little ground or no ground at all.

In 1993 President Clinton "delinked" Beijing's human-rights record from the annual decision on whether to grant China most-favored-nation trading status. The rationale was that repeated attempts to deny this status had not only made China more recalcitrant but also threatened to hurt U.S. business in China. By reinforcing trade ties, the Administration argued, the U.S. would be in a better position to influence China on human rights. But China's record has not improved. The State Department's latest annual report, made public two weeks ago, talks of "widespread and well-documented abuses," particularly in Tibet.