Compassionate Conservatism, Chinese-Style

BEIJING —  Premier Wen Jiabao shook hands last week with AIDS patients, the first Chinese leader to do so publicly. In a country where HIV-positive people are beaten, tattooed and treated like pariahs, it was a significant signal from a top official.

It’s the kind of assignment Wen is good at, part of a new administration seen as more user friendly and sympathetic to the plight of ordinary Chinese even as it helps maintain the Communist Party leadership dating back half a century.

Planners hope that Wen’s mix of compassion and conservatism with Chinese characteristics will play well when he visits Washington this week. His nation places great importance on its relations with the U.S. and hopes that the new premier can develop the kind of close personal bond with President Bush that leaders from Japan and other lands have formed.

Topping China’s wish list in meetings that start Tuesday would be some sort of written language from Washington categorically opposing any moves toward independence by Taiwan, which Beijing views as rightfully part of the mainland.

Beijing is highly unlikely to get such a declaration from the U.S.; however, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s statement Thursday -- apparently under pressure from Washington -- that any island-wide referendum will not call for Taiwanese independence takes some of the pressure off Wen.

On Saturday, Chen’s office announced details of the March 20 vote, demanding that China stop threatening Taiwan and remove hundreds of missiles aimed at the island.

Still, Wen wants something to take home, including at the very least private reassurance that the U.S. will rein in Taiwan’s threatened moves toward independence, along with some public reaffirmation of U.S. support for a “one-China” policy.

Wen’s ability to deliver will be closely watched back home, where the U.S. is viewed as a key broker of China-Taiwan relations and, in some quarters, as an instigator fanning the island’s statehood aspirations.

The trained geologist has a firm handle on economic issues, but his credentials as a diplomat are less distinguished. For many Chinese, the way Beijing handles Taiwan is a key test of their new administration’s legitimacy.

“The Taiwan issue is the first priority in our relationship,” said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Qinghua University. “The U.S. and China have to avoid conflict over this. Sometimes the tail wags the dog. We can’t let this tail wag two dogs.”

Another issue on the agenda is Iraq. Washington would welcome more help from Beijing, but China is expected to balk at sending troops, given the lack of a U.N. mandate. It may consider giving a symbolic contribution to the rebuilding effort.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is another security issue high on the agenda. Wen’s visit comes shortly before a possible second round of six-party talks in Beijing, involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan. The Bush administration would welcome China’s help in brokering a deal with the North, given everything else Washington is juggling, said Wang Jisi, head of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Studies.

“With Iraq, European relations and an upcoming election year, the U.S. doesn’t want to make things more complicated,” he said.

Wen, Bush and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing will try to iron out their different views on a possible North Korean settlement. Beijing wants the regime in Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear weapons program and the U.S. in turn to promise it will not attack the North. Washington would prefer to wait until after the program is fully shut down before offering that concession.

Another issue high on the agenda will be trade and economics, an area where Wen is on much more familiar ground.

Wen will ask the U.S. to reconsider recent moves to limit Chinese imports, pointing to his country’s recent multibillion-dollar deals to purchase U.S. goods. Wen probably will also ask Washington to ease restrictions on sales of U.S. high-tech products to China. The U.S. for its part will seek safeguards on intellectual property and improved access for U.S. companies to the Chinese market.

Even as the Bush administration comes under pressure to act tougher toward China to help preserve U.S. jobs, China’s leadership faces critics at home who contend that it’s giving away too much by cozying up to a country that sells advanced weapons to Taiwan.

In a bid to ease American concerns about the loss of jobs to China, the premier might meet with U.S. labor groups. “He wants to understand what Americans are thinking about, especially ordinary people,” said Wang Yizhou, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Although the chemistry between two leaders is hard to gauge in advance, several analysts said they didn’t expect any problems between Wen and Bush.

“Both Wen and Hu have no problem getting along with the American president,” said Qinghua University’s Yan, referring to Chinese President Hu Jintao. “Neither one talks a lot. Bush is no-nonsense and doesn’t like big mouths.”

The son of teachers, Wen was born in the city of Tianjin in 1942 and grew up in a tumultuous period.”My childhood was spent in the turmoil of war,” he said in March at his first news conference as premier. “Our home was literally burned down by the flame of war and so was the primary school, which my grandfather built.”

After graduating from high school, he headed in 1960 to the Beijing Institute of Geology, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in structural geology. Along the way he joined the Communist Party and was sent after graduation to remote Gansu province in northwestern China.

Wen remained a geological engineer for a decade in Gangsu before party officials noted his abilities and promoted him to a series of successively higher posts. In 1985 he was named to the General Office of the Central Committee where over the next 15 years he earned high marks as an aide to three top Chinese leaders, including then-President Jiang Zemin.

His ability to weather the shifting tides of China’s top leadership earned him a reputation as a budaoweng, a doll that stays upright no matter how hard you try to tip it over.

Wen and Hu are seen at home and abroad as compassionate leaders sympathetic to the plight of the underprivileged. “I am a very ordinary person,” Wen has said.

He’s known to have a good memory, telling reporters this year that “a former Swiss ambassador to China once said that my brain works like a computer.” By some accounts, he also has a healthy suspicion of official reports, preferring to do his own legwork.