Section A · Page 6A
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, October 27, 1997
China's Jiang visits Clinton in hopes of reconciliation
China president first state visitor since Tiananmen
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Eight years after the Tiananmen Square massacre chilled diplomatic relations, the United States and China are on the verge of a historic reconciliation.
A new era could begin Wednesday as President Clinton welcomes President Jiang Zemin to the White House.
Jiang, who likes to impress Americans by reciting Lincoln's Getsysburg Address and singing "Yankee Doodle," is the first Chinese leader on a state visit to Washington in 12 years. Born into a family of intellectuals and trained as an electrical
engineer, the 71-year-old Jiang was Deng Xiaoiong's chosen successor.
Douglas Paan,
ington's Asia Pacific Policy Center, said:
"Jiang is going to work hard to convey a folksy image. He has asked his advisers to give him softer speeches that have a relaxed style — give him a more human image in the minds of the American people."
Clinton: Wants closer ties with China.
Clinton once seemed an unlikely champion of closer ties with China. He accused President Bush in the 1992 campaign of coddling China and came to the White House promising to be tough on Beijing until it improved its human-rights
record. When that didn't work,
Clinton made an about-face, the first of his many reversals on China.
Clinton has concluded it would be a grave mistake to try to punish the world's most populous country, whose economy should surpass the United States' as the world's largest early next century.
China's crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 threw U.S.-China relations into a tailspin. The United States banned official exchanges on political, military and strategic issues at the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet levels. The framework of dialogue between the two countries collapsed.
Jiang, then Shanghai's mayor, was brought to Beijing in the midst of the protracted Tiananmen demonstrations. Deng named him general secretary of the Communist Party, beginning Jiang's rise to power.
Tiananmen had a huge impact on
American public opinion. Before the shooting, Americans viewed China as a booming country with market-led reforms. Afterward, it was seen as repressive and hostile to democracy.
The public remains skeptical about China, but the Clinton administration has decided to turn the page on the bloody past and build new relations.
Jiang will get a full dose of diplomatic honors. He will be welcomed with a 21-gun salute on the South Lawn, pose for pictures with Clinton in the Oval Office, join the president at a news conference and exchange toasts at an elegant state dinner.
The two leaders' talks are planned to run just 90 minutes, and translations will cut that time in half. Whatever agreements may be announced, the real significance will be the simple fact that Clinton and Jiang met to end the U.S.-China estrangement.
Navajo face high stakes in gaming vote
The Associated Press
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — To some, the vote on whether to bring casinos to America's largest Native-American reservation is a referendum on whether The Gambler will return.
In Navajo legend, The Gambler was the son of the sun's spirit who learned gambling from his father and went on to win — and then lose — everything. He is ni'hwil bihi — the one that wins the people.
The Gambler wins; The Gambler loses. And so, the Navajos are ambivalent about joining the surge of Native-American casinos prompted by a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding tribes' rights to offer gambling.
In 1994, they rejected casinos by a wide margin. On Nov. 4, they
will vote again, and the debate within the tribe is intense.
"People in our tradition are usually told you have to be very cautious to be a gambler," said Johnson Dennison, a traditional healer and dean of instruction at Dine College in Talsie.
"You have to understand, it involves losing, power, desire, winning," he said. "You gamble for every bit of property you have, and in the end you lose everything."
Others like Ferdinand Notah, head of the tribe's Division of Economic Development, support the plan to open as many as five casinos on reservation land in Arizona and New Mexico, near Interstate 40 or attractions such as the Grand Canyon.
"The Navajo Nation has millions of visitors, but very little is spent in the Navajo Nation economy."
Notah said. "Gaming will help to capture much of this tourist entertainment dollar."
Notah said the tribe initially could earn $25 million per year if all five casinos are opened. The casinos would employ thousands of Navajos, at a time when about 50,000 adults are without jobs, he said.
The stakes are high, not only for Navajos but for Native-American gambling in general. The Navajo Nation has 173,000 members living on a reservation the size of West Virginia, encompassing parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
The Navajos, therefore, have been perhaps the most prominent and politically influential Native American tribe in America. But the money flowing from a few successful tribal casinos has made other tribes major players in
Andrew Rohrback / KANSAN
Washington, most notably the Mashantucket Pequots of Connecticut.
Adding casinos, Notah said, will give the Navajo Nation more of a voice on Native-American issues, as well of a piece of what has become a $6 billion-per-year economic development pie.
"We're sitting idle while other tribes are making a killing," he said.
Persian Gulf petroleum fuels economic worry
The Associated Press
The talk these prosperous days is of boundless economic horizons. But just over the horizon lies a familiar patch of troubled waters — a blue-green whirlpool called the Persian Gulf.
As the global economy sped ahead in 1997, navigating through market dips and Asian currency scares, optimists began speculating about a "repeal" of the laws of boom and bust. But they'd better repeal the laws of internal combustion first.
A check of America's gas tank tells you why: The United States is importing more than half the oil it burns. And Persian Gulf petroleum is even more important elsewhere in the world economy, especially in parts of Asia where the optimism already is tempered by currency crises and stock market slumps.
It's been a generation since the industrial world first learned what an oil crisis could mean.
At that time, in 1973, an Arab embargo led to a quadrupling of oil prices and a world recession. A few years later, Iran's revolution produced another global oil squeeze and economic slump.
In those years, the United States relied on imports for as little as one-third of its oil.
The new heavy dependence on foreign oil troubles some in Washington. Hazel O'Leary, former energy secretary, said earlier this year that the United States needed a wake-up call that only a new oil price shock might provide.
Oil traders, of course, don't need reminders. When the U.S. aircraft carrier Nimitz rushed to the Persian Gulf this month, amid heightening tensions
there, crude oil prices jumped almost $2 a barrel, to more than $23.
That crisis may be subsiding, but the twists and turns of the Gulf whirlpool remain unpredictable:
—In the Gulf's tight quarters, crowded with American, Iranian and other naval vessels, miscalculations and mishaps easily can escalate into confrontation.
Iran and Iraq might clash because of Iraq's sheltering of anti-Iranian guerrillas, a flash point for tensions in recent weeks.
Iraq might draw U.S. or international retaliation if it violates no-fly zones or rejects U.N. weapons inspections.
—Terrorists might again attack American forces in the region. If an Iranian link is uncovered, a major Gulf showdown could result.
Crises like these each could affect the flow of oil in different ways. For one thing, long-distance pipelines make the region less dependent on Gulf shipping than it once was. But any Gulf conflict inevitably would drive oil prices up sharply and quickly. The waves and ripples from such an emergency, even if short-lived, would reach everywhere.
Until then, the Gulf, with its oil and its crises, lies comfortably — and uncomfortably — closer at hand. It's a fact of life sometimes forgiven as stock indexes have risen on Wall Street, but never forgotten in the whirlpool itself.
"My job is stability," a U.S. destroyer captain told a reporter in the Gulf earlier this year. "Because if this neck of the world blew up, what would really suffer is the world economy. That's what it all comes back to—economics."