United States Foreign Relations China

How should one judge the trip to China that President Clinton is embarking on today? What are the standards by which to decide whether his eight days in the Middle Kingdom are a success? There probably will be few concrete agreements between the two nations. A national security council aide, Sandra Kristoff, has been in Beijing in recent days, negotiating what the summit will produce. But in the end, the tangible results likely will be meager.

In planning his upcoming trip to China, White House political strategists wanted some of the first images of President Clinton's eight-day visit to come from a typical village representative of this country's impressive economic progress over the past two decades. "A villager should be found to introduce the president," the internal, advance White House script for the visit prescribed in detail.

As public spaces go, it's not a pretty sight: a vast plain of concrete bounded by a mishmash of architecture, including a mammoth Stalinist government building and a three-story Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. But as symbols go, Tiananmen Square is one of the most recognizable on Earth, 100 acres spread out under the heavy-lidded gaze of Mao Tse-tung and featured in countless cutaway shots by filmmakers needing a quick and easy emblem of China.

The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday dismissed the flap over China's withdrawal of visas for three journalists scheduled to travel with President Clinton on his visit here this week, saying that it had acted according to its regulations governing foreign media. Ministry spokesman Tang Guoqiang declined to specify what rules the three representatives of Radio Free Asia might have violated to warrant the revocation, made just days before the president's departure.

Intelligence reports indicate that for the past two years, China's military has used U.S.-made satellites, sold solely for civilian uses, to send messages to army posts across the vast nation, the New York Times reported today. The U.S. has barred American companies from selling any military equipment to the Chinese military since the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square.

While Beijing's pledge to maintain its currency's value has meant economic losses, its sacrifice for the sake of regional stability also has brought political gain. This week, China used that clout to push the U.S. and Japan to stop the yen's slide, say economists who met with China's top officials. In the process, China strengthened its regional role at Japan's expense.

By a nearly unanimous vote, the House set up a special panel Thursday with a $2.5-million budget to investigate whether campaign contributions affected President Clinton's decisions to allow technological exports to China and whether China used the U.S. know-how to improve its nuclear ballistic missiles.

Two weeks before embarking on the first presidential visit to China since the Beijing regime's 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, President Clinton on Thursday defended his planned stop at that site of tragedy.

President Clinton today went further than any president has gone before in publicly opposing the independence of Taiwan, giving Beijing the visible commitment it has long sought that America will not support Taiwan's quest for international recognition or its readmission to the United Nations.

President Clinton's taboo-breaking dialogue with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his later uncensored discussion with Beijing University students--both sessions broadcast live nationwide--have sparked another debate here: Is this the beginning of more openness in China? "It is a turning point for our country," said Huang Renwei, a professor of American Studies at Shanghai's Academy of Social Sciences.