My life

The next day, Jiang Zemin came to Washington. I invited him to the residence for an informal meeting that night. After almost five years of working with him, I was impressed with Jiang’s political skills, his desire to integrate China into the world community, and the economic growth that had accelerated under his leadership and that of his prime minister, Zhu Rongji, but I was still concerned about China’s continued suppression of basic freedoms and its imprisonment of political dissidents. I asked Jiang to release some dissidents and told him that in order for the United States and China to have a long-term partnership, our relationship had to have room for fair, honest disagreement. When Jiang said he agreed, we proceeded to debate how much change and freedom China could accommodate without risking internal chaos. We didn’t resolve our differences, but our mutual understanding increased, and after Jiang went back to Blair House, I went to bed thinking that China would be forced by the imperatives of modern society to become more open, and that in the new century it was more likely that our nations would be partners than adversaries. The next day at our press conference, Jiang and I announced that we would increase our cooperation to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction; work together on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and on fighting organized crime, drug trafficking, and alien smuggling; expand America’s efforts to promote the rule of law in China by helping to train judges and lawyers; and cooperate to protect the environment. I also pledged to do all I could to bring China into the World Trade Organization. Jiang echoed my remarks and told the press we had also agreed to regular summit meetings and the opening of a direct telephone “hot-line” to assure that we could maintain direct communication. When we opened the floor to questions, the press asked the inevitable ones about human rights, Tiananmen Square, and Tibet. Jiang seemed a little taken aback but maintained his good humor, essentially repeating what he had said to me on the subjects the night before, and adding that he knew he was visiting a democracy where the people were free to voice their different opinions. I replied that while China was on the right side of history on so many issues, on the human rights issue “we believe the policy of the government is on the wrong side of history.” A couple of days later, in a speech at Harvard, President Jiang acknowledged that mistakes had been made in dealing with the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square. China often moved at a pace that seemed maddeningly slow to Westerners, but it was not impervious to change.

October brought two developments on the legal front. After Judge Susan Webber Wright dismissed with prejudice (meaning they could not be refiled) two of the four counts in Paula Jones’s lawsuit, I offered to settle it. I didn’t want to, because it would take about half of everything Hillary and I had saved over twenty years, and because I knew, on the basis of the investigative work my legal team had done, that we would win the case if it ever went to trial. But I didn’t want to waste any days in the three years I had left on it.

Jones refused to accept the settlement unless I also apologized for sexually harassing her. I couldn’t do that because it wasn’t true. Not long afterward, her lawyers petitioned the court to be released of their duties. Soon they were replaced by a Dallas firm closely associated with and funded by the Rutherford Institute, another right-wing legal foundation financed by my opponents. Now there was no longer even a pretense that Paula Jones was the real plaintiff in the case that bore her name. Early in the month, the White House turned over videotapes of forty-four of the much-discussed White House coffees to the Justice Department and the Congress. They proved what I’d said all along, that the coffees were not fund-raisers, but wide-ranging and often interesting discussions with some people who were supporters and some who weren’t. The only thing most of the critics could do was to complain that they weren’t released sooner.