Is Clinton Losing China?

The Clinton administration certainly has a lot of explaining to do. Many Americans will inevitably wonder about a possible sinister connection between the administration’s inexplicable slowness to respond to reports of Chinese espionage and funds that flowed from China to Democratic political campaigns in 1996. No wonder the Republicans are finally starting to feel chipper about the prospects of nailing the ever-elusive Clinton.

The GOP should be almost worshipful over the careful handling of this sensitive issue by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), in many respects the coolest Republican cucumber on Capitol Hill. He was able to get his committee’s five Republicans and four Democrats to work in a bipartisan style. This is no minor achievement given the report’s inherently explosive content and timing--less than a year before America’s presidential campaign. By handling this as a national security issue, Cox has managed to avoid it being perceived as a purely partisan issue. This rising politician may be far more threatening to China than America’s vastly superior nuclear arsenal; he is certainly more threatening to the Democrats than any Chinese missile.

It is unrealistic to expect the Asian reaction to the report of Cox’s House Select Committee to match the predictable American sense of violation and national security alarm. Rightly or wrongly, Asia has many other things on its mind and is not, like Washington, on red alert. One preoccupation is its regional economic recovery. In this interrelated global economy, Asians feel far more threatened by a sudden downswoop in the vibrant U.S. economy, which has been helping Asia recover, than by any long-range buildup of ICBMs in China. But Americans will inevitably wonder why, for all their tax support, the Central Intelligence Agency and other clandestine outfits weren’t able to keep a lid on our secrets. After all, the nuclear technology stolen over the years is being described as so sensitive as to warrant nothing less than the most scrupulous handling. Was this the best we could do--year after year of leaks and thefts going back to the Reagan administration?

But if the persistent pattern of Chinese spying and U.S. security incompetence induces even fair-minded Americans to condemn China, Asia’s most populated nation will of course have a different reaction. For starters, China reflects that it is not a U.S. ally and is scarcely under any obligation to help us protect our technological secrets, especially ones so militarily useful. Indeed, many Asians are likely to agree that, instead of blaming China, America has mainly itself to blame. For them, this China spy story is nothing more than a case of Chinese opportunity meeting American incompetence.

And China will view the report, both its content and timing, not for what it says but for what it portends. Caught red-handed in the spy act, Beijing circles will take the position that “imperialist circles” in America are seeking to sabotage Sino-American relations. Indeed this is how they view the recent cascade of anti-China developments in the U.S., from NATO’s bombing of their Belgrade embassy to the Clinton administration’s failure last month to accept visiting Premier Zhu Rongji’s many trade concessions as sufficient to support China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

Other Asian nations will react to the Cox report with mixed feelings. To be sure, Japan and Taiwan can breathe easier now. They recall that only yesterday the Clinton administration had been vaguely speaking of some kind of airy “strategic relationship” with China. Now the Sino-American relationship has sunk to such a low point that U.S. warships have been barred even from docking in Hong Kong, ordinarily a neutral safe harbor from the world’s political storms. This would be almost funny if it were not so retro--and worrisome.

Though there are varying perspectives from other countries as different as Singapore and South Korea, Asians generally believe their stability and prosperity are enhanced when Sino-American tensions ease. The alarm of the Cox report derives from the premise of China becoming a military threat. But in Asia in general, China is viewed as properly preoccupied with its own mammoth economic and social problems, not with military adventurism, despite occasional pushy behavior in the South China Sea. If the Cox report winds up worsening the Sino-American relationship, many Asians will mark it as a fatal turning point in world politics.

What an outcome that would be for the Clinton administration, which has put so much emphasis on better Sino-American relations. Although the technological leakage originates in the Reagan era, the scandal has surfaced on Clinton’s watch. It is his administration that will take the fall for this scandal. If Sino-American relations continue to deteriorate, it will be Clinton who “lost” China.