Not for all the rice in China É

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

The State DepartmentÕs heavy lifter, Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage, has just come away from Beijing with a list of new missile export controls by the Chinese that would choke a horse.

The fact that China ø often through its ally, the North Koreans ø has been shipping these weapons and selling its technology in violation of its obligations under the anti-proliferation treaty has been of deep concern. That the Iranians, for example, have increasingly better Chinese-made missiles overhanging our U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf, is not a comforting thought ø with the possibility of a Bush Administration swat at IraqÕs Sadaam Hussein. Chinese transfer of missiles and technology to Pakistan has exacerbated the frightening nuclear Subcontinent. Much of North KoreaÕs ability to sell missiles to Libya, Syria, and Egypt comes from ÒborrowedÓ Chinese guidance technology. There is some evidence that Hizbullah in southern Lebanon has aquired Chinese missiles for raising significantly the level of violence in Israel-Palestine.

The question is ø details are not yet available ø whether these agreements will be honored. There is little in Chinese past performance to lend assurance nor in the fact that the increasingly politically volatile PeopleÕs Liberation Army directly profits from these sales.

The Chinese announcement is obviously a concession to engender warm feelings in the buildup to a meeting between Presidents Bush and Jiang Zemin at Crawfiord, Texas, in October.

The meeting will be crucial for Jiang. This week Beijing officially announced the Chinese Communist Party Congress originally scheduled for September had been postponed. Jiang presumably would have liked to come to the U.S. with his tricornered hat intact ø that is, bureaucracy leadership as president, Party secretary-generalship, and his most crucial role as Party military commission chairman.

The Hong Kong press, increasingly mouthpieces for Beijing, has trumpeted a victory, that Jiang has managed to ignore the 70-year mandatory retirement rule and will be hanging onø at least to the military commission chairmanship, the case with his predecessor and mentor, Deng Hsiao-peng. It made Deng to his death in his 90s unofficial supremo in the Chinese gerontocracy.

But that may not be the case. A much more bitter succession battle has been raging than many foreign observers admitted. A combination of surviving geriatrics and younger Party officials call for JiangÕs moving on. His going was supposed to usher in Òfourth generationÓ Chinese Communist leadership, who if not reformers in any Western sense, at least are dedicated to technocratic solutions to the host of the regimeÕs perennial problems. ItÕs no secret the eldersÕ crony system is part of the problem.

That Jiang may not have got his way, that he may not have been assured of continuance in power, harks back to earlier when he suffered a major defeat and unprecedented humiliation. Jiang had proposed Ñ publicly Ñ that some of the proliferating Red millionaires ø several of them like Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong based ø be given Communist Party membership. They were seen as JiangÕs allies. And it would have been, in fact, a confirmation that the Communist Party has long since left behind its revolutionary traditions to become the new Chinese mandarinate. The obvious distinction from earlier dynastiesÕ all-powerful Chinese bureaucrats was at least a kowtow to examinations and classical Chinese scholarly learning as their license to power. Now corruption and nepotism have reached new levels.

More important than this falderal about missile proliferation which Beijing seems unlikely to honor are the latest statistics on Chinese trade. The United States recorded this year's biggest monthly trade deficit with China in June Ñ an imbalance of $8.53 billion in favor of Beijing. U.S.-bound exports climbed 28.2 per cent year on year to U.S.$10.73 billion. The deficit between what the U.S. buys and what it sells China has reached $43.13 billion so far this year, a significant advance on the $31.9 billion recorded in last yearÔs first six months. It seems likely to reach the $100 billion mark this year.

It is this trade surplus, which is funding ChinaÕs, imports of RussiaÕs highest tech armaments ø including naval ships and additional missiles and nuclear technology. The Administration is making noises about pressuring China to live up to its obligations under its recent admission to the World Trade Organization. But like other Beijing international commitments that may not be an easy task. The entry of U.S. goods ø particularly agricultural products ø would dramatically and unfavorably increase one of BeijingÕs greatest problems, the worsening situation in ChinaÕs inefficient agricultural sector and growing militancy among ChinaÕs impoverished farmers who initially had profited greatly from the switchover to state capitalist economic strategies under Deng.

Whatever the haggling at Crawford, it is not at all clear that Jiang either has a mandate or has the will to make the kinds of concessions on the real issues that separate the U.S. and China.