BULLS IN THE CHINA SHOP

By KARSTEN PRAGER

The Washington-Beijing relationship was already tense enough when the Clinton Administration allowed congressional pressures on Taiwan to jostle its larger China-policy goals. "Prepare for difficult times," an Administration official said darkly. "This is another nail in the coffin of China policy." Beijing's ultimate reaction could range from trade retaliation to rapprochement with Iran to, perhaps most troubling, noncooperation with U.S. efforts to resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear-weapons program.

Before last week, Washington insisted the ties with Beijing had actually steadied over recent months. "We try to maintain momentum, acknowledging that it will be a sweet and sour relationship," says Winston Lord, a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing and now Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. The Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, John Shattuck, describes China policy as "one of Clinton's underrated achievements."

The underraters, both in and outside the U.S. government, demur. They argue that America's dealings with Beijing lack strategic vision. They also contend that public hectoring and flip-flops over human rights, nuclear nonproliferation and now Taiwan have created dissonance in China policy: a U.S. trade official talks of "an orchestra in which each player plays his own music, and there is no conductor." Cautions Burton Levin, director of the Asia Society in Hong Kong: "If the U.S. harangues, it strengthens the hands of the xenophobes in China and weakens those forces that want to move toward a less authoritarian society. The U.S. can't improve China's values by stamping its feet." That is particularly true at a time when the uncertain succession to Deng Xiaoping means no one in the Chinese leadership wants to be perceived as soft on anything, least of all foreign policy. Says Levin: "Until the succession question is totally clear, expect Beijing to be cautious, prickly and nationalistic."

While human rights and other sensitive issues must be kept on the table, they are probably better fostered through commercial and academic contact and in backroom conversation, out of the spotlight of public discourse and posturing congressional debate. China is simply too important to become a political football in Washington. Clinton conceded as much when he ended linkage between trade and human rights by renewing China's most-favored-nation status a year ago despite its dismal human-rights record. By then it was evident that for all its brutality, the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown had not been a political watershed, that economic reform was continuing and that ideology was in general retreat-even if the regime remained rigidly authoritarian. The record of Clinton's "comprehensive engagement" policy since has been mixed: no measurable impact on human rights, no progress on persuading China to stop nuclear testing, but a resumption of military exchanges and other consultations and a successful seven-month negotiation on the protection of intellectual property.

That is more than will come from bullyragging by Congress. In fact, if its actions prompt an increasingly confrontational tone, an already suspicious Beijing might be convinced that the U.S.'s real aim is not cooperation but, as in days past, containment-a situation in which, as Levin puts it, the "two countries could come to see each other as enemies." In short, a vision that might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.