502 { China’s Quest
the exit of Fang Lizhi as an adequate quid pro quo for lifting of US sanctions.
The two matters, Scowcroft insisted, were simply not on the same level.^35 Fang
and his wife were not allowed to depart China until June 1990, and then in
response—according to Fang—not to American moves but to a Japanese will-
ingness to resume loans.^36
In the meantime, the Bush administration began to disengage from
close attention to China policy. Facing an election battle in November 1992,
Bush was coming under increasingly strong criticism from congressional
Democrats and potential presidential rivals. Bush’s efforts to quickly repair
the relation with Beijing and put the Beijing Massacre behind were simply not
popular with many US citizens. This was one reason why Scowcroft’s first visit
to Beijing in July had been kept secret. When it was revealed at the time of his
second visit in December, along with the photographs of Scowcroft toasting
China’s leaders, a storm of criticism erupted. Bush was charged with hypoc-
risy or duplicity: publicly declaring suspension of high-level exchanges, then
sending Scowcroft to China! The charges of weakness, appeasement, and a
lack of understanding of American core values were leveled at Bush. Areas
of foreign policy other than China demanded Bush’s attention and were
more politically profitable for him: East Europe, German unification, and the
Soviet Union’s mounting crisis.Beijing’s Use of Middle East Leverage against the United StatesIn the estimate of Qian Qichen, the 1989 upheaval in Eastern Europe, com-
bined with focus on the upcoming 1992 elections, caused Washington to be-
come less enthusiastic about repairing PRC-US relations.^37 Beijing offered to
reciprocate Scowcroft’s two 1989 missions by sending a high-ranking emis-
sary to the United States in April 1990, but Washington declined. It was, in
Qian’s estimate, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, that renewed
Washington’s interest in cooperation with China, offering China an “ad-
vantageous opportunity to promote the normalization of Sino-American
relations.” But President Bush was also happy to have a politically palatable
reason to lift post 6-4 sanctions and renew the US-PRC link he valued.
Beijing saw the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as a blunder that would give
the United States an opportunity to expand its position in the Gulf, and on
August 4 Vice Foreign Minister Yang Fuchang summoned the Iraqi and
Kuwaiti ambassadors, one after the other, to receive China’s demand for swift
Iraqi withdrawal and resolution of the territorial dispute by negotiations. This
put China on the moral high ground, but it also demonstrated to Middle East
countries China’s essential irrelevance to realistic solutions of major secu-
rity problems. Once in possession of Kuwait, Iraqi forces quickly began to
destroy all aspects of Kuwait’s sovereignty in an effort to turn that region into