534 { China’s Quest
replied that the United States had no standing to concern itself with China’s
internal affairs. Christopher described his negotiations with Li Peng this way:
I opened ... by explaining to the premier what China needed to do if
[Clinton] was to extend [MFN]. With an acerbic smile playing at the
corner of his lips, Li Peng responded that China was fully prepared to
lose favorable trade status, and if it did, Clinton and I could expect to be
blamed [in the United States] for losing China. Li went on to make it clear
that China’s human rights policy was none of our business, noting that
the United States had plenty of human rights problems of its own that
needed attention. He made the point personal by pointing out that I had
investigated the beating of Rodney King in my hometown of Los Angeles.
He then said that by feeding the people, the Chinese government was
dealing with the most important human rights. To ensure that I had not
failed to appreciate the depth of their unhappiness, the Chinese abruptly
canceled my meeting later in the day with President Jiang Zemin.^16
“China will never accept the US concept of human rights,” Li Peng told
Christopher. Li also flatly told Christopher his views did not represent the en-
tire Clinton administration. MFN would be extended in spite of Christopher’s
failed efforts. And as for human rights, racism in the United States should be
addressed.^17
By punishing and humiliating Christopher while rewarding and praising
China’s American friends, Beijing made clear the difference between enemies
and friends. At a strategic level, Beijing had defeated the most aggressive US
effort at “peaceful evolution” since 6-4. As scholar James Mann put it, “China
had called the Administration’s bluff; it had shown that America would back
down from the threats it made about human rights and democracy in cases
where its commercial and strategic interests were jeopardized.”^18 But Beijing
also doled out a modest concession. Near the end of Christopher’s talks in
Beijing, Foreign Minister Qian Qichen informed the American envoy that
China would release two prominent organizers of the 1989 demonstrations
who had been held in prison since then.
Beijing won a clear diplomatic victory over the United States in the battle
over MFN linkage. On May 19, 1994, President Clinton announced that MFN
was being renewed in spite of inadequate overall improvement in China’s
human rights situation. This diplomatic setback for the United States created
a reservoir of bitterness and grievance in some quarters in Washington, and
determination that the outcome would be different in the next round of con-
frontation with Beijing that came up. Resentment at Beijing’s humiliation of
Washington was added to intense dislike of the putative communist troglo-
dytes ruling in Beijing. But while resentment was building up in the United
States, the same process was underway in China too, over Beijing’s applica-
tion to host the 2000 Olympics.