638 { China’s Quest
the items at the top of the US agenda was securing termination of China’s
assistance to Iran’s and Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs. Progress was
rapid; Beijing expanded nonproliferation cooperation with Washington. In
May, following an agreement between Qian Qichen and Warren Christopher,
Xinhua announced that China would not assist any foreign nuclear facility
not under IAEA safeguard and supervision. Privately, Beijing agreed to set
up an effective system of export controls to give substance to this and other
nonproliferation promises.
The United States considered these moves to be an important Chinese
shift toward cooperation. Beijing had long responded to US complaints about
Chinese proliferation by asserting that it simply lacked the ability to control
China’s independent economic fiefdoms. Now, under Qian and Jiang’s tute-
lage, Beijing was agreeing to work with the Americans to figure out a way to
rein in those fiefdoms. Avoiding charges of complicity with the Americans
in interfering in China’s domestic affairs was probably a key reason why the
MFA kept this agreement confidential. Of course, Chinese concessions were
not without a US quid pro quo. Washington agreed not to implement sanc-
tions and to continue government guarantees of US business loans in China.
MFA negotiators were also cooperative on US concerns about protection
of intellectual property rights, at least in principle. The actual behavior of
Chinese firms would turn out to be another matter. By June, MFA and US
negotiators were able to reach an agreement, with the United States getting
much of what it wanted. The MFA also began occasional releases of political
prisoners in response to US demands, typically arranging for these people
to depart for the United States. This practice satisfied some US demands and
brought the release of these people to US media attention, while getting rid of
some of the CCP’s most troublesome dissidents.^4 By the end of 1996, the MFA
had returned PRC-US relations more or less to their pre-confrontation level.The 1997 and 1998 Summit VisitsAn exchange of summit visits—Jiang to the United States in 1997 and Clinton
to China in 1998—symbolized the return of PRC-US comity. Jiang’s visit
was the first by China’s president since Li Xiannian’s visit in 1985, and the
first by China’s paramount leader since Deng’s 1979 visit. It was also the first
state visit by a top-level Chinese leader to the United States since the Beijing
Massacre. The summit exchanges drew a line under the post-6-4 deteriora-
tion of PRC-US relations. From the standpoint of Jiang Zemin, his 1997 US
visit—which was given extensive laudatory coverage in China—symbolized
his role as statesman and protector of both China’s interests and its vital re-
lation with the United States, styling himself successor to Mao and Deng in
that regard. So successful was Jiang in this effort that in 2002, when he was