Bush The Riverboat Gambler

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

This time, by golly, no one would call George Bush timid. Quite the contrary, the President made a rare appearance as Bush the riverboat gambler. By sending a high-level delegation to Beijing to confer with Chinese authorities who only six months earlier had ordered the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators near Tiananmen Square, Bush knew he would stir up a hurricane of outraged protest. And for what? The slender chance that China would respond with concessions that could begin to melt the ice in U.S. relations with the world's most populous nation.

A week after the return of the envoys, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, the White House is still waiting for that payoff. The Chinese leaders did promise not to sell missiles to Middle Eastern countries. That, however, was merely a repetition of a pledge first made more than a year ago. China also agreed to let a Voice of America reporter into the country for the first time since July. But if those are the only results of the Scowcroft-Eagleburger mission, it will not lower the criticism a decibel.

The criticism may well be the angriest the Bush White House has heard. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, using an image taken up by many other critics, accused Bush of "embarrassing kowtowing." Others assailed the surreptitious nature of the mission -- it was announced in Washington at 2 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, after Scowcroft and Eagleburger had already landed in Beijing -- and the obsequious nature of Scowcroft's toast at a banquet. Scowcroft addressed the Chinese rulers as "friends," referred oh-so- delicately to "the events at Tiananmen" and described U.S. critics of the massacre as "irritants" to Chinese-American relations.

Administration sources say Scowcroft was blunter with the Chinese in private, telling them that since the U.S. had made the initial move to repair relations, Beijing had better reciprocate, and soon. He gave that demand a sharp twist, blaming the U.S. Congress for the frostiness in Sino-American relations. Says a U.S. official: "Scowcroft made very clear to the Chinese that our Congress is the main problem in the U.S.-China relationship, and that if the relationship is as important to them as it is to President Bush, they need to give a positive response, or a series of them, by the time Congress returns in late January."

Some helpful responses, Administration sources indicate, would include free passage out of China for Fang Lizhi, the dissident astrophysicist who took refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing last June and is still there; the lifting of martial law in Beijing and Tibet; Chinese pressure on the murderous Khmer Rouge to allow a political settlement in Cambodia, and amnesty for pro- democracy demonstrators.

If China still appears unresponsive when Congress reconvenes on Jan. 23, the lawmakers might do two things: override Bush's veto of legislation extending the visas of Chinese students who fear persecution if they return home, and enact economic sanctions stricter than those the Administration reluctantly imposed in June. The disclosure last week that the Administration is preparing to loosen the sanctions by allowing export of three communications satellites to be launched by Chinese rockets did nothing to improve the congressional mood.

Why did the normally cautious Bush take such a risk? The President and his aides feared that China was slipping into a mood of angry isolation that would be no help for world stability. Bush, who lived in Beijing as U.S. envoy for 13 months in 1974 and '75, fancies himself an old China hand. He seems to rate preserving the carefully nurtured U.S. strategic relationship with China well above human-rights considerations, which he has always valued below the need for order and stability in world affairs. When former President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger returned from exploratory trips to China with the news that Beijing wanted closer relations but thought the U.S. should make the first move, Bush judged the time to be right.

Bush still resents being portrayed during the presidential campaign as manipulated by handlers, and he is out to prove that he can move boldly and effectively in foreign affairs. In China he found an area where he thought he could rely on his expertise to act. Explains White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater: "The President knew he would be criticized for this, but he feels strongly that it's in our national interest to improve relations with China. He feels he knows China as well as anybody -- and better than his critics in Congress." The next few weeks will tell whether that faith is well founded.

With reporting by Sandra Burton/Beijing and Dan Goodgame/Washington