Sino-American squabbles to be eased by visits

Presidents Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton agreed yesterday to visit one another's countries in what will be the first state visits by Chinese and American leaders since the Tiananmen Square massacre seven years ago.

The exchange, agreed at a bilateral meeting during the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum in Manila, marks the latest stage in efforts to improve Sino-American relations, which have been chilly over the past three years.

The two governments have squabbled regularly over human rights and trade issues, and last year the US mobilised a fleet of warships as China conducted missile tests in the run-up to the Taiwanese presidential elections.

The two presidents are scheduled to visit one another in 1997 and 1998, although no details of the state visits have been confirmed. On two of the touchiest issues - China's admission to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its human rights record - no substantial progress was made yesterday.

Washington continues to block Peking's entry into the WTO, and insists that it must liberalise its markets before being granted membership. The state visits could still be jeopardised by human rights issues, particularly China's handling of Hong Kong after the hand-over on 1 July. A Clinton aide said, on the matter of human rights: "This is not a matter on which the United States has a smiling relationship with the Chinese side. It is a matter we take seriously and pursue seriously."

None the less, yesterday's announcement appears to confirm a new resolve on the part of the Clinton administration to focus on Asian policy during the president's second term.

For Mr Jiang, the promise of official summits with Mr Clinton has been a long-awaited prize. The Chinese president has for more than a year been angling for reciprocal state visits with Washington, knowing that it will promote his image as a world leader and consolidate his position at home before next autumn's full Communist Party Congress. That gathering is supposed to confirm Mr Jiang as heir to Deng Xiaoping, the ailing 92- year-old patriarch.

The Chinese President is already scheduled to make a state visit to Moscow in April, and will then take centre stage during the festivities surrounding the return of Hong Kong to the mainland. Ideally, say analysts, Mr Jiang would like to keep up his statesmanlike progress by welcoming Mr Clinton to Peking before the party congress. The Chinese side may push hard to be the first host in the exchange of state visits, with the official media set to relish the propaganda value of a US president beating a path to Peking. Mr Jiang's reciprocal visit to Washington would be harder to stage- manage.

From the US's point of view, there is little incentive to hurry. Washington has given Peking what it wanted, dropping the stick in favour of the carrot. But the Clinton administration is likely to put off fixing any firm dates until China has offered commitments on those issues that preoccupy the US most, which include arms proliferation as well as market liberalisation and human rights.

The US may now have decided to address human rights issues in a less high profile manner, but American domestic opinion dictates that the subject does not disappear altogether. Thus, in the more conciliatory atmosphere, Washington will still want to reopen a human rights dialogue and tackle the perennial question of prison-labour exports.

Mr Jiang will nevertheless leave Manila buoyed by the belief that America is now in step with China's approach to their bilateral relationship. The Americans, and others, feel the stakes are rather higher. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's elder statesman, yesterday said it was in everyone's interests for China's energies to be absorbed "constructively for another 50 to 100 years" through international co-operation. "If such a route is not open to China, the world must live with a pushy China," he warned.

The economic goals of the Apec forum, an annual gathering of 18 leaders from North and South America and Asia, have been largely overshadowed by such concerns, although progress in defusing the region's other tensions has been symbolic at best. A meeting between Mr Clinton and the South Korean president, Kim Young Sam, achieved little in calming anxieties about North Korea which threaten to wreck the peninsula's fragile peace.