Military

DATE=2/18/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=3-54

NUMBER=ADELMAN/BUSH CHINA

BYLINE=TOM CROSBY

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=

///// ED'S: AVAILABLE IN DALET UNDER SOD/ENGLISH NEWS NOW INTERVIEWS IN THE FOLDER FOR TODAY OR YESTERDAY /////

HOST: President Bush is in Asia on a trip which will take him to China Thursday. He follows in the footsteps of all the presidents who have held office since President Richard Nixon who headed to China 30 years ago this week. But despite all the overtures from those presidents...building a relationship between the United States and China has been a long difficult process. With that in mind..VOA News Now's Tom Crosby spoke with Jonathan Adelman, the author of "Symbolic War: The Chinese Use of Face," and asked him what he thinks this president hopes to accomplish in China.

MR. ADELMAN: I think what he hopes to accomplish on the China visit is to normalize and regularize the relationship. The relationship has been very up and down. The Chinese have been conspicuous by their absence, after September 11th, in joining countries such as Russia and India in allying themselves with the United States, and have been rather critical of us. So I think he wants to improve the relationship and see if we can get it on a better footing.

MR. CROSBY: Now, he goes with a specific issue on his mind, that being terrorism. How cooperative do you think he is going to find the Chinese when he raises this issue with them?

MR. ADELMAN: Well, on the one hand of course, the Chinese, in their view, have their own terrorist problem, which are the Muslim separatists/fundamentalists in western Xinjiang Province. So in that sense he will definitely find cooperation. But when he goes beyond that and he wants to talk, for example, about the "axis of evil," such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, and the Chinese will not be cooperative because they have good relations with all three countries. So there he is going to find a significant problem.

MR. CROSBY: North Korea would be a particularly significant problem, wouldn't it?

MR. ADELMAN: Absolutely. Not that China, as in 1950, is prepared to send troops to fight and die for North Korea, but still they are one of the very few countries, and perhaps "the" country, that has still a special relationship with Pyongyang. And they believe that if things are left alone, that they would be able to work together with Seoul in developing an improved relationship there. So they are going to be hostile to the concept of North Korea as part of the axis of evil.

MR. CROSBY: Do you see President Bush going to China having perhaps, maybe, softened the views that he once held about China, bearing in mind that back during the presidential campaign he called China a strategic competitor? And he wasn't talking about partnership; he was talking about a competitor.

MR. ADELMAN: This is a very good point. But, as you know very well, there is a big gap between American campaign rhetoric and the reality once you become President of the United States. We can all remember Bill Clinton, in 1992, talking about the leaders in China, talking about the despots in Beijing and how we shouldn't have anything to do with them. And then of course, six years later, he is standing in Tiananmen Square and talking about a strategic partnership with China. So I think you get an evolution in the foreign policy of nearly every new administration, and the Bush people are not exceptional.

MR. CROSBY: You invoked Tiananmen Square, which of course brings to mind the 1989 massacre of rights activists there. Rights will be an issue that President Bush will certainly have on his mind when he meets with China's leaders, but is it anything that he can actually influence?

MR. ADELMAN: Not a great deal, but I think there are one or two aspects of human rights that are of particular interest to this President. One is the suppression of religious groups, underground churches. The President is a religious man and I think that is something that would be on his mind. And then the other would be the suppression of democracy, because we have put a lot of emphasis on this. But I don't think we should mistake this President for Jimmy Carter. This is going to be in a minor key. The major key is to try to smooth out the somewhat rocky relationship with Beijing. But they've got the Olympics 2008, they're getting into the World Trade Organization. These should be big positives that should help smooth the way.

MR. CROSBY: Let's talk about a negative, though. It was a year ago that a U.S. Navy surveillance plane crashed into a Chinese fighter plane, killing the Chinese pilot. That issue is largely a thing of the past, but I can't think it's an issue entirely of the past, is it?

MR. ADELMAN: That's a very good question. I think the problem is that we have so many crises between China and the United States because of all the differences. The most recent little contretemps was over the sale of the Delta Airlines plane to China for Jiang Zemin's personal plane. So, yes, you're absolutely right, this was certainly a problem, but I think it really just highlighted for this administration the need to have a better working relationship with the Chinese and to try to put these issues behind us. China is too important. Especially if we are trying to pursue the axis of evil and deal perhaps particularly with Saddam Hussein, we would want to regularize our relationship with countries like China, that make it very difficult for us by supporting them. I think these issues will become minor compared to the big-picture issues since September 11th.

MR. CROSBY: You alluded to the Chinese purchase of a plane from the Boeing Corporation for Jiang Zemin, a plane that they later alleged had bugging devices on board. But that story I guess also is still somewhat up in the air. There are some skeptics saying that it may not have been U.S. devices planted there at all.

MR. ADELMAN: And I think that's right. You can get into all these crises, and there is all this complexity. I think the bottom line is how the two sides treat it. And I think, in this particular case, the Chinese have decided to downplay the issue. They want WTO. They want the Olympics. They want a decent relationship with America. Because without decent prosperity, this regime, the Chinese Communist Party of Beijing, will be out of power very quickly. And after 1989 and 1991, they know that. So that is their limit. They will be very cordial to the President while disagreeing on a significant range of issues.

HOST: Jonathan Adelman, the author of "Symbolic War: The Chinese Use of Face," speaking from his home in Denver, Colorado with VOA News Now's Tom Crosby.

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