Thursday, April 5, 2001

By Steven Thomma, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON — For the first time in his presidency, George W. Bush is facing a split among his most loyal supporters as rival factions push him in different directions over China and threaten the kind of unity he will need to enact his agenda and win re-election.

On one side are social conservatives, demanding that he adopt a hard line against a country they see as a Red Menace, a brutal authoritarian regime that violently represses human rights and religious freedom at home while threatening American and international security. These are the people who supply volunteers and the bulk of votes for Republican candidates — and can rise in anger against those who cross them.

On the other side are wealthy GOP business interests and internationalists who don’t want Bush to rock the boat any more than is necessary. They believe that more trade with China is the best way to lead the regime toward freedom and democracy — while supplying Americans with a 1.3 billion-person market for U.S. goods and a source of low-cost consumer items. They are the party’s major contributors, who helped arm Bush with an unprecedented $100 million campaign war chest in last year’s primaries.

Finding a way to end the standoff while keeping these two influential wings of his party happy could be crucial to a new president elected without a popular mandate. That’s especially true now, when he is trying to get his agenda through a closely divided Congress.

"He and my party have a real dilemma here," said Gary Bauer, a social-conservative activist who ran for the Republican presidential nomination last year and who now heads American Values, a Virginia-based conservative public-policy center. "How they resolve it will say a lot about the future of the party and the country."

Unless China frees the American spy plane’s 24 crew members by Thursday, Bauer said, Bush should dramatically raise the stakes for Beijing.

Bauer said the president should recall U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher from Beijing for consultations, cancel military exchanges with China and send a strong signal that the standoff would lead him to approve a controversial arms sale to Taiwan, an island that is governed independently but that China claims as its own.

Bush should do it, Bauer said, despite the fear that an increase in tensions might hurt trade with the world’s most populous country.

"For 10 years, we’ve emphasized trade at the expense of our own national security," Bauer said. "Our policy with China cannot be based on how much Tupperware we sell them."

In Congress on Wednesday, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and others introduced a resolution urging that China’s trade status be rescinded.

"The fact is, while we trade with China, they prepare for war," Hunter said.

Businesspeople countered that Bush should be firm but not bellicose, and urged conservatives and China-bashers to restrain their anger.

"I would urge Congress and other interested parties not to rush to judgment, not to take rash actions," said Myron Brilliant, managing director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for Asia issues.

While winning freedom for the American crew is crucial, Brilliant said, the diplomatic standoff should not hurt the commercial relationship between the countries, nor hinder negotiations to boost trade by getting China into the World Trade Organization.

Steve Forbes, a wealthy magazine publisher and trade supporter who also ran for the GOP presidential nomination last year, said that if the standoff continues the Chinese eventually would learn on their own that they would suffer a decline in trade, or other ill effects, even without reprisals or threats from Bush.

"He’s doing fine," Forbes said. "The president just has to hold the line."

Bush learned the danger of alienating the conservative wing of the Republican Party when his father, former President George Bush, was weakened by a primary challenge in 1992 from Pat Buchanan and later lost the White House to Democrat Bill Clinton. The elder Bush was challenged mainly for raising taxes, but many conservatives also criticized him for allowing his national security adviser to toast Chinese leaders at a dinner soon after they crushed a pro- democracy movement.

"Conservatives still remember the elder Bush sending Brent Scowcroft to toast the butchers of Beijing," said Republican strategist Keith Appell.

Another lesson Bush learned from watching his father lose in 1992, however, was how much a president can be hurt by a recession, and by an impression that he has not tried hard enough to end it.

"The economy has to play a part in his decision-making, too," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist at the Claremont Graduate School in California. "Trade is critical. . . . Does he move to lessen the risk of confrontation and thus help the markets and shore up the economy, or does he risk angering his conservative base? . . . It’s a dilemma."

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