Chinese President Jiang Zemin (
The day after a meeting at a seaside resort in northern China, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said Jiang appeared preoccupied with the fate of the country.
The US and China are slowly rebuilding ties after a string of security and human rights disputes in the first half of this year, but remain deeply divided over the issues of Taiwan, arms proliferation and missile defense.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The US delegation described meeting Jiang in a glitzy modern building at his Beidaihe retreat a few hundred meters from the sea as members of his entourage relaxed around a swimming pool.
Biden said he warned Jiang that Chinese exports of missile technology to countries such as Pakistan and Iran were likely to encourage the US to build a missile defense system (NMD).
But Chinese officials repeatedly linked the issue to US weapons sales to Taiwan, he said.
"They are sending a not-so-subtle message -- you have a problem with Pakistan, with Iran, we have a problem with Taiwan," he told reporters.
Biden, who visited Taipei on Monday, said he had told Jiang and Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian (
But the senators said there was no indication that dialogue would resume across the Taiwan Strait in the near future.
"I got the distinct impression Jiang did not anticipate any movement by the Taiwanese government that would be favorable for cross-strait relations," Biden said.
Jiang appeared less concerned about US plans for a national missile defense system, Biden said.
"They're against it, but I don't think it's the highest item on their agenda," he said. "It didn't seem to be the compelling issue."
The senators said they were surprised at a relatively mild response to a question about how China would react to a deal between Russia and the US to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow for NMD.
Jiang also emphasized that it was not in China's interests to help North Korea develop inter-continental ballistic missile technology, they said.
The senators said they were generally impressed and encouraged by Jiang's openness in the meeting.
When asked how China would look in 20 years, Jiang talked about the problems of balancing state industry reform and social unrest, they said.
Jiang also admitted China's judicial system needed to be improved and the two sides discussed setting up a protocol for dealing with US citizens arrested in China, they said.
But a lunch with several lower-level officials, including a senior Chinese diplomat in Washington, was not so encouraging, they said.
The officials lectured the delegation about China's superiority over the US in a way reminiscent of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Biden said.
"I could have been sitting in Budapest or any East European capital in 1977," he said.
Biden seemed less than pleased when told yesterday morning of the continued detention of Liu Yaping (劉亞平), a US-based Chinese businessman under investigation for suspected tax evasion and fraud.
``We had been told that he had been released,'' Biden said. He said he would raise the issue of Liu with Chinese leaders he was to meet yesterday, including Premier Zhu Rongji (
``They are using these detentions, arrests, releases as a political tool with us,'' said Senator Fred Thompson, who was part of the delegation. ``That's very thinly disguised, and does not work.''
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