Jiang Visits With Capitol Hill Lawmakers

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Oct. 30) -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin got mixed reviews on Capitol Hill today, where lawmakers by turns described a breakfast exchange as "excellent," "candid," "evasive," and "very beneficial."

"He got it from the president, and now he got it from Congress," House minority leader Dick Gephardt said, one of 45 lawmakers to barrage Jiang with questions at a private breakfast that ran 30 minutes later than scheduled.

Jiang told the bipartisan group that since China began opening to the outside world in the 1970s, "the Chinese people have enjoyed a much better life, and it has intensified efforts to improve democracy and the legal system."

Implying China needed to do more, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said, "We believe that all men and women should be able to live, work and speak free from governmental interference."

And one of Congress's fiercest abortion foes, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, called forced abortions "crimes against humanity."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who gave the Chinese leader a tour of the Capitol Rotunda, called today's session an "encouraging dialogue," noting Jiang had invited him to visit Tibet.

"When I visit Tibet next August I hope he and the Dalai Lama will be there to greet me," Gingrich told reporters.

But California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, a frequent critic of China's human rights policies, said Jiang had been "evasive" in some of his replies about Tibet and China's population control policies.

Before heading to Philadelphia for a visit to historic Independence Hall, Jiang addressed a friendly audience at the Asia Society. After an introduction by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, he spoke optimistically of China's pursuit of a mixed socialist and market system.

"Between now and the end of the first decade of the next century, we will work to establish a fairly ideal socialist market economy while maintaining a sustained, rapid and sound development of the national economy so as to lay a solid foundation for basic achievement of modernization by the middle of next century," he told the group through an interpreter. (More from Jiang in English 640K wav sound)

Near the end of his speech, to the delight of his audience, the Chinese president abandoned the translator and finished his address in English. During lunch, Jiang was seated next to Kissinger, and the two shared a lively conversation and appeared to enjoy each other's company.

The first Chinese leader in 12 years to be greeted with a state visit, Jiang ends his 8-day tour in Los Angeles this Sunday.

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