Many Rivers To Cross

BEIJING: Vice President Al Gore began a four-day visit to China with soft words and poetry straight from Foggy Bottom, as he prepared to meet President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng in hopes of building a productive rapport with Dengs successors. "The landscape of U.S.-China relations is filled with many rivers, Gore intoned, some flowing together, others flowing apart. Such variety befits the interaction of two great nations and civilizations." Translation: the Administration believes it can make more progress with the Chinese on tough political issues such as human rights in private one-on-one meetings than it can through public confrontations on its social and political policies. While Gore is expected to discuss China's critically-important most favored nation trading status, the trade deficit, nuclear proliferation, missile sales and human rights, he has no desire to provoke the government in public. He told reporters vaguely that he would raise the issue of human rights only "in the context of the overall agenda." As TIME's Beijing bureau chief Jaime Florcruz reports: "Since last year, the Clinton Administration has cobbled together a more coherent, over-arching China policy that Clinton has described as 'constructive engagement.' It's a relationship that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright maintains will not be held hostage by a single issue." Maybe so, but considering the U.S.'s ballooning trade deficit with China and it lack of progress on human rights, the grade on Clinton's China policy is still out.