November 2, 1997

Distribution Of Energy The Unspoken Issue Of Summit

Distribution Of Energy The Unspoken Issue Of Summit

Presidents Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin played good-cop bad-cop with each other Wednesday at the White House to the satisfaction of folks on each side of the

Pacific who were afraid their leader would give away the homestead.

By the time the minuet was over, everyone sighed with relief. United States sold 50 Boeing airliners and received “very firm, clear and explicit assurances” that China would stop helping Iran develop nuclear missile and chemical weapon programs.

China got access to American technology previously denied them - particularly nuclear power reactors.

Clinton bluntly told Jiang that China was “on the wrong side of history” in suppressing human rights. The Chinese president told the American president to mind his own business.

To assure each other there were no hard feelings, Clinton hosted Jiang at a state banquet, having already given him a 21-gun salute earlier. Jiang invited Clinton to China next year to pursue their new friendship.

Of all the tidbits exchanged, the most significant was that of furnishing China with nuclear power components. Neither Clinton nor the media seem to have grasped the import of energy in the development of the world’s most populous nation.

Former President Richard Nixon understood and, literally, set the wheels in motion.

It was Nixon - the fervent anti-communist - who “opened the door” to China in 1972 by going there in person to pow-wow with Mao Zedong. Aim of that first visit was to wean Red China from its close ties to the Soviet Union. This crack in the Bamboo Curtain paved the way for President Ronald Reagan’s victory in the Cold War waged on economic terms against Russia.

Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974, and brooded about his downfall for two years. He started rebuilding a positive place in history by visiting China - scene of his greatest triumph. The Chinese people hailed him as a great benefactor and heaped honors on him.

Then, Nixon returned to China in 1979 for reasons that puzzled Americans. He seemed to be merely a tourist seeing the sights. He was treated cordially by the Chinese leadership, but no official fanfare.

By coincidence, I and my wife, arrived in Beijing simultaneously with Nixon. We were part of a U.S.- People’s Republic of China Friendship Society tour of journalists shortly after China was opened to outsiders. I kept tabs on Nixon by reports in Chinese newspapers translated by our local tour guide - a young woman speaking perfect English.

When Deng Xiaoping became General Secretary of the Communist Party, following Mao’s death, he ordered all schools to teach English. Everywhere we went, just six months later, young people approached us and asked politely, “May we walk with you and practice English?”

It is interesting to note that Deng’s first reforms were to open his country to capitalist visitors and make his people literate in the language of commerce.

While my group was visiting the Forbidden City, Great Wall, farm communes, and old temples Nixon was visiting oil fields then being discovered. Obviously, he was on a specific mission of some sort.

Upon returning home, I wrote a column for my 24 client newspapers - speculating that Nixon was in China to open the oil fields for American participation.

Remember, this was during the OPEC oil embargo against the U.S.

A copy of my article found its way to Nixon. He sent me a note commending my “accurate and perceptive” comments about his Chinese oil “initiatives.”

China today is the fastest developing country in the world - averaging 10 percent annually. It is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal. Though it produces huge amounts of oil - with American oil company partners - it has to import about half its needs.

Like the United States, China is dependent upon Mideast supplies. Hence China’s cozying to Iran.

China has barely begun modernization. To continue, it must have enormous amounts of energy. Even with full utilization of coal, coalbed methane, oil, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power generators China will not have enough energy. The great challenge for China, and the rest of the world is finding enough energy in the coming few years. If the shortage gets much more acute, the temptation by a desperate China to take oil by force of arms from weaker producers will be worrisome.

In any case, environmentalists are going to be frustrated. The burning of coal in China for smelting, generating electricity and heating homes is going to double in the next 20 years - according to Charles Johnson, an energy analyst at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Johnson expects China to follow the pattern of “wealth first, clean up later” - like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Of all the variables necessary for modern living, energy is the most critical. Every leap in civilization comes from invention of a new way to utilize energy resources more efficiently.

Interestingly, China invented the first method of multiplying the rudimentary source of muscle power - the wheelbarrow. Major advances elsewhere came with water wheels, wind mills, sails, steam engines, electricity, internal combustion engines, rockets, and nuclear fission.

Now the race is on to find a new source of affordable, mass energy - hopefully clean. Nuclear fusion would be ideal if someone can devise a container to hold it. More likely in the near future will be hydrogen fuel cells, or methane gas engines.

There are about a million automobiles in China today for 1.2 billion people. Imagine the torrent of gasoline that would be needed when ordinary citizens there achieve the same ratio of cars to people as in the U.S.

As the world’s foremost energy users, the United States and China must work together - human rights or no - lest they stumble into disaster together.

PARTING SHOTS

• When all else fails, read the instructions.
  
• The White House has released a transcript of what Clinton said during his visit to South America recently. Somewhat unsettling is the statement, “What I’m trying to do is promote a process of reorganization of the world.”
  
  Are we ready for a New World Order with Bill in charge?
  
• At the height of the stock market sell-off last week, TV reporter Andrea Mitchell, bride of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, was “roasted” at a charity banquet.
  
  Best barb was tossed by Jack Kemp:
  “Every night, Andrea’s in bed with Alan. She’s the envy of Wall Street.”

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers