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1 1 (October 16, 1997)

handle is hein.crs/crsaanv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 97-941 F October 16, 1997 China-U.S. Summit, October 1997 Kerry Dumbaugh Specialist in Asian Affairs Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division Summary Despite being troubled throughout much of the 1990s, U.S.-China relations have improved in recent months. On October 28, 1997, China's President, Jiang Zemin, will arrive in Washington D.C. for a summit meeting with President Clinton. It will be the first official Chinese state visit in the Clinton Administration, and the first time a Chinese head of state has been in Washington D.C. since 1985. Unlike the unofficial New York summit meeting between the two leaders in 1995, the 1997 summit stands to be more than symbolic. This year several agreements may be reached, including the creation of a telephone hotline, and understandings on non-proliferation, nuclear cooperation, and military exchanges. Introduction and Background U.S.-China relations have been troubled since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown - an event from which China has not yet been rehabilitated in American eyes. With an ambiguous policy direction from the executive branch, no concrete overtures or concessions from Beijing, and with congressional attitudes and actions increasingly fractionalized, U.S.-China relations drifted through the early 1990s. No state visits occurred after 1989. Congress increasingly challenged China's most-favored-nation (MFN) trading status. Although the Clinton Administration by 1994 was fielding a policy of engagement with China, several informal meetings between President Clinton and senior Chinese leaders were only marginally productive. One such meeting, a brief 1995 meeting in New York between President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, was especially illustrative of U.S.-China problems; not a state visit, the only accomplishment of the meeting was the symbolic one of its having occurred at all. Tensions in U.S.-China relations reached a peak in 1996 when China conducted live- fire missile exercises in the Taiwan Strait to protest the policies of Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-hui. The United States responded by sending two carrier battle groups to the area. The 1996 missile crisis appeared to surprise many policymakers in both Washington and Beijing, and both governments appeared to reassess their policies in efforts to find ways to mend the relationship. On November 11, 1996, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Congressional Research Service **** The Library of Congress CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web