A Viewer's Guide To Clinton's Trip

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 23, 1998 / 12:48 PM EDT / CBS

If there were an old Chinese saying to describe President Clinton's trip here, it would be: "What you see is what you get," or perhaps,"Eighty percent of life is just showing up." For both the U.S. and China, this visit is all about Mr. Clinton just showing up. Not much else is likely to happen. Real business takes up less than two days of this nine-day trip. The rest is sightseeing.

CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante

He's bringing almost 1,000 people with him, including officials, security, communications and support staff, and the press. So what are they all going to do while the president does China?

There's no shortage of real policy differences between the U.S. and China: human rights issues, including suppression of dissent; lack of religious freedom and the occupation of Tibet; the sanctions imposed after China crushed the 1989 democracy rally in Tiananmen Square; sales of nuclear materials and missile technology to other nations; the environment; and China's desire to get control of Taiwan as it did of Hong Kong.

CBS.com reports on President Clinton's trip to China

But with Congressional investigations back home into whether the Chinese illegally received U.S. missile technology and into possible Chinese attempts to buy influence with political contributions, substantive progress doesn't seem possible.

So the White House line is "we have a fundamental national security interest in engagement with China, which doesn't mean we endorse...all of China's policies."

For the Chinese, it's simply important that the president of the United States come here, stopping nowhere else (especially Japan), thereby showing that China's leadership is legitimate.

Click here to find out about a daily ritual near Xian that recalls an emperor and his concubine.

So, Mr. Clinton starts out in the ancient Chinese capital of Xian (pronounced si-ahn), rather than in the "new" capital city, Beijing. That's because his visit is constructed as a mirror image of Chinese President Jiang Zemin's trip to the U.S. last fall. Jiang began his visit in Colonial Willamsburg, an American historical site, then came to Washington. ven the length of the president's trip is exactly the same as Jiang's - nine days. In the U.S.-China relationship, protocol rules!

Look for the opening ceremonies on Thursday morning, U.S. time. The president receives what the Chinese are calling an "Emperor's Welcome" at the Southern gate of the old walled city of Xian.

Later, Mr. Clinton will visit a nearby village for a roundtable (one of his favorite pastimes) with ordinary Chinese to talk about "Life in a Changing China."

Some of the best television pictures will come from this first day, as the president stops at one of China's most famous ancient treasures and one of its most popular tourist sites: the Terra Cotta Army.

More than 2,000 years ago, China's first emperor ordered life-sized replicas of his entire army sculpted from clay and buried near his own tomb to protect him in the afterlife. More than 7,000 statues of warriors and horses, each with distinctive features, were buried near the emperor's tomb. An official history says this took 39 years and 750,000 laborers. But it did represent an improvement on the previous practice of simply burying everyone alive when the time came.

Mr. Clinton will probably meet one of the farmers who discovered this spectacular treasure in 1974. Yang Zhifa now spends his time at the museum tourist shop signing autographs and giving interviews.

Saturday begins the brief substantive portion of the trip, in Beijing, with a controversial image. Look for the official welcoming ceremony on the steps of the Great Hall of the People, just across the Boulevard from Tiananmen Square. Mr. Clinton is the first president of the U.S. to visit China since troops gunned down protesters near the square in 1989, and many people felt he should not take part in a ceremony near the square. Mr. Clinton will review troops of the Peoples Liberation Army, which carried out the massacre.

Administration officials say they had no choice. That's where the Chinese welcome all visitors. But as many have pointed out, for the Chinese, the welcoming ceremony in sight of the square is all about politics, not protocol. Remember that old Chinese saying: "A picture is worth 1,000 words."

This all happens at 10 a.m. local time, which is 10 p.m., Friday night on the U.S. East Coast, long after the network news programs (though not the local news) and without much potential live audience for the cable networks. (Of course, it is prime time on the web.)

The timing means that newspaper coverage will get only into the later editions of the Saturday papers, if at all. On top of that, the Saturday papers have the lowest readership of the week. None of this is an accident.

After the 15-minute ceremony, Presidents Clinton and Jiang will move inside the Great Hall of the People for their talks and whatever substantive business is to come from the trip.

Watch carefully what happens next. Each president makes a statement, and this may e the only time any part of Mr. Clinton's visit is carried live on Chinese TV. It is probably his only chance to speak to a mass audience of Chinese people about the U.S. idea of democracy and the American view of what happened at Tiananmen.

On Saturday morning U.S. time, you'll see the president at a State Banquet in the Great Hall of the People.

On Sunday morning, you'll see Mr. Clinton at church, visiting the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.

Late Sunday night U.S. time, the president goes to Peking University to make a speech, followed by questions from the students. This is Mr. Clinton's best opportunity to speak out, as many people hope he will, about China's human rights policy. Will he echo Ronald Reagan's call to tear down the Berlin Wall, or John Kennedy's statement, "I am a Berliner"? Will he repeat what he said to Jiang when the Chinese president was in the U.S. last fall, a warning that China is on the wrong side of history in matters of human rights?

Next week, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, it's back to boosting commercial ties and sightseeing. Mr. Clinton will be in Shanghai, the commercial and banking center, talking to young entrepreneurs, real estate people, and bankers, perhaps in recognition that this part of the new China is moving quickly forward in spite of the heavy hand of the communist state.

Thursday, the president visits Guilin, and takes a scenic river tour of one of the most picturesque places in China. This is an opportunity to talk about the environment and natural resources in one of the most polluted nations on earth.

On Friday, July 3, Mr. Clinton moves on to Hong Kong, now part of China after 157 years of British rule, but officially a Special Autonomous Region, keeping the basic social and economic structure it had when it was ruled by Britain. This has special significance for the Chinese, since it's the model they'd like to use to bring Taiwan back under Beijing's control.

Mr. Clinton will make his final speech here. Look for him to sum up his trip and take questions from the reporters who've been following him on the trip. This is also the president's opportunity to meet with Martin Lee, a democracy advocate who was elected to the Hong Kong legislature.

But despite the urging of human rights advocates, the president has no plans to meet with dissidents in China.

So what's the real purpose of this trip? It is to move the American image of China forward from that of the man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, to advance the view that China is a nation the U.S. can't afford to ignore.

There are almost 400 journalists along for this adventure, so the administration's spin is likely to find some takers.

Stay tuned!

Written by Bill Plante, CBS News White House Correspondent