NEWT GINGRICH BRISTLED last week when a visitor to his office told him how to handle the touchy issue of renewing most-favored-nation status for China. The visitor was Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, who was there with 12 other people to brief Gingrich before his trip to China later this month. Bauer, who has come out against renewing MFN, said the speaker ought to let the Chinese know that it “isn’t an easy vote anymore, because public opinion has changed.”
Bauer told the speaker that China’s poor human-rights record has made the issue a new focus of concern for Catholic bishops and evangelical Protestants, including the largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptists. ” We’re going to take note of who votes how,” Bauer said, and he asked Gingrich for an assurance that there would be “honest” congressional hearings on the wisdom of renewing MFN.
Gingrich was dismissive. “Anybody can have hearings,” he said; what’s needed instead “is a long-term strategy.”
Not really. For his visit to China, all Gingrich needs is a little boldness. If he is willing to be candid in public about Chinese shortcomings and American misgivings, his trip might have beneficial and immediate effects not only on U.S.-China relations, but on Gingrich himself.
A tough stance might lead to increased leverage for the United States in dealing with China on trade, human rights, arms proliferation, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and the persecution of Christians. And it might raise Gingrich’s profile as a player in foreign policy.
Vice President Albert Gore is making a four-day visit to China that will end just as Gingrich arrives, and he is likely to stick to risk-free State Department talking points. That will leave Gingrich with an enormous opportunity. And he is perfectly positioned to seize it because he has standing with China when it comes to MFN. He was a strong backer of the trade measure last year, so much so that he pressured MFN critic Chris Cox, a Republican representative from California, to offer a toothless resolution on Chinese abuses and give up on staging a frontal assault against the trade measure.
But things have changed since last year’s vote — China’s aggressiveness toward Taiwan, its threats to Hong Kong’s civil liberties, and evidence of Chinese interference in American elections. In addition, the State Department’s new human-rights report notes that all political dissidents in China have been jailed, silenced, or exiled.
American officials have protested — privately. Secretary of state Madeleine Albright did so during her day in Beijing last month, and House whip Tom DeLay says Chinese leaders reacted frostily when he and other members of Congress “laid into” them during a visit last year.
These private complaints haven’t done much. But even a mild public protest might produce a different result. In the speech he plans to give in Beijing, Gingrich could present himself honestly as an MFN supporter worried about its future. “I’m for MFN,” he could say, “but there’s rising opposition in the United States, especially in Congress. People are concerned about your treatment of Christians and dissidents, about Hong Kong, and about arms exports, including AK-47s that found their way to the United States. They’re alarmed that China is also behaving as an aggressive power in Asia, which upsets the strategic balance.” Finally, he could warn China’s leaders that if Beijing doesn’t start moving toward democracy, American opponents might block renewal of MFN (and deny China entry into the World Trade Organization as well).
The Chinese wouldn’t be pleased by such a speech, but they couldn’t dismiss it lightly with the MFN vote coming in June. The Clinton administration could exploit the Gingrich opening by arguing, reluctantly but truthfully, that the speaker is correct. There’s trouble ahead on MFN, they could say, unless China cleans up its act. Clinton officials — and the president himself when he visits China later this year — could suggest that MFN’s passage requires that Beijing release dissidents, preserve democracy in Hong Kong, curb arms proliferation, etc. To keep unfettered trade with the United States going full-tilt, which is China’s top priority, China must make some changes — if only to accommodate anti-China hardliners with influence in Congress.
If things developed in this way, Gingrich would find himself with renewed status. And it wouldn’t cost him a thing. The speaker wouldn’t even have to flip-flop, since he doesn’t have a clearly defined position on the broader question of how the United States should deal with China.
Nor does the Republican party, which is divided into two camps. The first camp believes that public criticism or sanctions won’t produce any change in China, and that Chinese leaders should be accommodated as much as possible while China modernizes. Tom DeLay and David Dreier are the foremost exponents of this view in the House. The most surprising player in this camp is the Heritage Foundation, the Reaganite think tank considered an anti-Communist stronghold in the 1980s. In meetings with congressmen and senators, Heritage chief Edwin J. Feulner has forcefully expressed the opinion that MFN renewal should be Congress’s top priority in 1997.
The second camp favors public chastisement of Chinese leaders and the levying of sanctions. These worked with the Soviet Union, they insist, and will change China as well. Chris Cox and Virginia’s Frank Wolf are the most vocal members of this camp in the House (Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi is with them), and Jesse Helms holds the banner aloft in the Senate.
Gingrich straddles both camps. His foreign-policy aide, Gardner Peckham, is “of four or five minds about China, and so is Gingrich,” says a Republican adviser. In July 1995, Gingrich said the United States should recognize the sovereignty of Taiwan and “tell the Chinese they would have to live with the reality that the people of Taiwan are a free people.” That prompted Henry Kissinger, who was visiting Beijing at the time, to call Gingrich and lecture him on the one-China policy he helped frame in 1972. Gingrich changed his tune: “I was trying to rattle their cage, to get their attention,” Gingrich said. “I don’t think we should recognize Taiwan.”
Kissinger later met several times with Gingrich to discuss foreign policy. But he appeared to lose interest in Gingrich when the speaker’s clout in Washington waned. And Gingrich has not consistently toed the easy-on-China Kissinger line. Last year, Gingrich denounced Chinese missile tests off the coast of Taiwan as “an act of terrorism.” He told Beijing’s national security adviser that China will “pay a price” for bad behavior. And he’s expressed the view that China has the potential for developing into a strategic threat to the United States.
In the meeting attended by Bauer, Gingrich didn’t commit to anything. Several times, he ducked out for votes on the House floor. He seemed distracted. Once, he asked out of the blue, “Sanctions on China? What about sanctions on Burma?”
Even if Gingrich decides against confronting the Chinese, at least one member of his delegation, Chris Cox, probably will. But a Gingrich statement would have far more impact — on the Chinese, on the press, and on the Clinton administration.
What surprised Bauer was that the defense and foreign-policy experts around the table told Gingrich to take a firm line. For the United States to gain leverage, they told Gingrich, the Chinese must be warned that MFN is in trouble. The representative from the Heritage Foundation remained silent.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
