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the forces of economic and political liberalization in that great and highly
important country.”^3 To underline his commitment to fostering change in
China, Clinton had invited the Dalai Lama and 1989 student movement
leader Chai Ling to be present when he signed his executive order. Several
months later, when Clinton’s National Security Advisor Anthony Lake gave
a speech outlining the purposes and contours of US post–Cold War strategy,
Chinese leaders were left little doubt about the nature of linkage. Core US
values, Lake explained, were democracy and market economy—capitalism,
in CCP terms. The highest US priority was to strengthen the bond between
major market democracies and minimize the ability of nonmarket regimes
to threaten them. Lake specified a number of such nonmarket regimes: Iran,
Iraq, North Korea, Burma—and China, though the latter, Lake stipulated,
was “opting for liberalization.”^4
No one in the Chinese hierarchy favored giving in to US human rights
demands.^5 Jiang Zemin declared those demands to be a “coercive ultimatum.”
China’s leaders decided to reject them, although they did so cautiously and
while leaving room for retreat until the end of 1993, by which time it appeared
clear that Clinton would be forced to abandon his own executive order.
Beijing rejected US demands and, in effect, dared Clinton to follow through
with his threat to revoke MFN. At a high-level meeting in September 1993,
Jiang Zemin reiterated Deng Xiaoping’s policy of not seeking or provoking
confrontation with the United States, but added that China would neither
fear nor avoid confrontation if the United States chose that path. When Jiang
met Clinton for the first time in Seattle in November 1993, Jiang was tough,
giving no concessions and lecturing the American president on his misun-
derstandings of China.^6 As a new general secretary of the CCP, Jiang could
not afford to seem weak in facing down the American president.
Beijing’s response to Clinton’s linkage of human rights and MFN was
three-pronged. First, Beijing sought to exploit contradictions in the enemy
camp by mobilizing US business interests with operations in China. Scholar
Mike Lampton dubs this approach the “big cake strategy.”^7 Second, Beijing
sought areas of cooperation with the United States on key issues of common
interest, thereby underlining for US leaders the benefits of having a decent,
cooperative relation with China. Cambodia, North Korea, and nonprolifer-
ation were the main areas in which this tactic was activated. Third, Beijing
made very modest conciliatory moves on human rights issues to undercut
assertions in the US camp that China was doing nothing in this area.
The most important of these tactics was the mobilization of the US
business community. Chinese representatives visiting the United States
spread the message that China’s loss of MFN status would injure US busi-
ness. The vice chair of the State Planning Commission, on a visit to Boeing
Aircraft in Seattle in April 1993, presided over China’s purchase of one
large 575-model passenger jet and twenty smaller 737 jets. The 737 sale was