Christopher Upbeat About China Talks

BEIJING —  Amid heady rhetoric about entering a new era in U.S.-China relations, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Wednesday that talks with senior Chinese leaders had yielded important progress toward limiting the spread of nuclear technology and included “the most coming-to-grips discussion on human rights that we’ve had.”

Collectively, these issues and marginal steps forward in areas such as trade, law enforcement and the environment appeared to heighten prospects that President Clinton and his Chinese counterpart, President Jiang Zemin, will announce an exchange of presidential visits when they meet Sunday at a gathering of Asian and Pacific leaders in Manila.

A Clinton trip to China would be the first by a U.S. president since the Communist authorities crushed the 1989 pro-democracy uprising in Tiananmen Square.

“The groundwork has really been laid for a series of high-level visits,” said a U.S. official who sat in on Christopher’s talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and shorter meetings with Jiang and Premier Li Peng.

This assessment came despite unusually blunt language on Taiwan used by Qian before meeting with Christopher.

In prepared remarks and with Christopher standing only a few feet away, he called Taiwan “the core issue in the Sino-U.S. relationship.”

He later accused the United States of failing to live up to its international commitments by agreeing to supply Taiwan with more than 100 F-16 combat aircraft. The first of those planes is due to be delivered by early summer.

The United States argues that the delivery falls within the framework of a 1982 joint communique with China governing arms sales to Taiwan.

On human rights, U.S. officials said Chinese leaders Wednesday acknowledged the existence of international standards on human rights, yet insisted that no one had the right to scrutinize Chinese actions in this field.

“They are engaging on human rights, but it’s schizophrenic,” one U.S. official said.

Christopher said that during the course of his talks, he raised the general issue of human rights violations in Tibet as well as the specific cases of prominent dissidents Wang Dan, recently sentenced to 11 years in jail, and Wei Jingsheng, released in 1993 after more than 14 years in prison but rearrested a year later.

“Human rights were discussed in each of the three meetings,” Christopher told a news conference. “More time was spent on that issue than anything other than nonproliferation.”

However, there were no immediate signs of Chinese concessions on the issue. A U.S. official said the gist of Li’s remarks was that the U.S. “had no right to come to China to judge or preach.”

If the point required any underscoring, two U.S. reporters attempting to visit an aging nuclear scientist, Xu Laingying, whose public appeal for political tolerance landed him in trouble with authorities, were turned away and told that Xu was under house arrest.

While the two nations remain deeply divided on the emotional issues of human rights and Taiwan, progress in other areas seemed to maintain the sense on both sides that China and the United States are gradually rebuilding a relationship that came dangerously close to breaking only 18 months ago.

Christopher said Wednesday’s talks produced a Chinese pledge to adopt a comprehensive set of regulations controlling the export of nuclear technology and also what he termed “a very important commitment” to not provide assistance to nuclear facilities that are not subject to international safeguards.

The Chinese had already agreed in principle to extend export controls on nuclear technology after it was discovered that Chinese-made nuclear components used for producing weapons-grade uranium had been sold to Pakistan. The Pakistanis are believed to have spent billions of dollars to develop atomic weapons.

Wednesday’s pledge represented a further tightening of China’s commitment on nuclear technology, U.S. officials said.

These developments, and indications that China may join an international group dedicated to preventing nuclear proliferation, have led the United States to consider what Christopher called “further steps” in the area of peaceful nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

The progress could revive a dormant, decade-old bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation and open the door for U.S. companies to bid on billions of dollars of construction contracts in China’s nuclear power industry.

However, U.S. officials here were cautious on the timing of such a move, noting that it hinged on a presidential certification to Congress that China was not helping countries gain atomic weapons.

U.S. officials also said Christopher reiterated U.S. support for Chinese entry into the newly formed World Trade Organization.

China’s membership in the WTO would help the United States because it would require the Asian nation to further open its markets and drop hidden state subsidies that have contributed to China’s large trading surplus with the United States.

On other issues, the two countries agreed to heighten cooperation in stopping illegal immigration and drug smuggling and reviewed progress on environmental issues such as climatic change, toxic waste and ocean resource.