530 { China’s Quest
victory on China which was circulated among China’s senior leaders. The US
goal was world domination, He Xin wrote. With Iraq’s defeat and the demise
of the USSR, China stood as the last remaining obstacle to US realization of
that goal. The United States would now turn its strength and attention against
China, where Washington had “decided it must thoroughly destroy the ex-
isting order.” The United States could be expected to isolate and blockade
China while creating internal disorder to render it powerless via democrati-
zation.^1 The anticipated drive to overthrow the CCP and cast China into dis-
order came soon, under the new US president, William Clinton.The Linkage of Human Rights and Most Favored Nation
Trade StatusWilliam Clinton assumed office in January 1993. On May 28, the new presi-
dent signed an executive order indicating that if China did not demonstrate
“overall significant improvement” in seven specific areas of human rights,
he would not recommend to Congress the extension of China’s most fa-
vored nation (MFN) trade status beyond July 3, 1994. China’s continuing
MFN status was thereby “linked” to its human rights status. Without MFN
status, China’s exports to the United States would face prohibitively high
tariffs. The seven areas specified by Washington included allowing free em-
igration, the nonexport of goods made by prison labor, Chinese compliance
with the UN Declaration on Human Rights, an end to jamming of radio and
TV broadcasts into China, and the release of prisoners held for nonviolent
expressions of religious or political beliefs. The logic underlying the policy of
linkage was that China’s dependency on exports on the US market, combined
with the importance of those exports to China’s continued rapid economic
growth, would lead China’s leaders to substantially concede to US demands.
The Clinton administration expected that bilateral negotiations would begin
following Clinton’s executive order, with the two sides bargaining over who
much “overall improvement” China would undertake to make.^2 In fact, this
would not be the case. Beijing refused to negotiate over what it took to be is-
sues of China’s internal governance. CCP concerns with social stability and
regime survival would dominate China’s response to Washington’s “linkage”
effort.
From Beijing’s point of view, Clinton’s policy of linkage was a manifes-
tation of the strategy of peaceful evolution designed to foster dissent and
nongovernmental organizations, spread anticommunist ideas, and gener-
ally undermine Communist Party control over China. The new secretary
of state, Warren Christopher, had himself declared during his Senate con-
firmation hearings: “Our policy will be to seek to facilitate a broad, peace-
ful evolution in China from communism to democracy by encouraging