CHINESE LEADER HAS U.S. GOALS; JIANG LOOKS TO REFINE IMAGE, GAIN FRIENDS.

Byline: Les Blumenthal Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

Chinese President Jiang Zemin reads Mark Twain, quotes from Shakespeare and the Gettysburg Address, can sing ``Yankee Doodle,'' carries a Visa card, speaks Russian, Romanian and English, understands French and Japanese and is one of the few leaders of his country able to read classical Chinese prose.

A year ago during a summit meeting of Asian and Pacific leaders in the Philippines, he and Philippine President Fidel Ramos spent an afternoon sailing on Manila Bay and practiced singing Elvis Presley's ``Love Me Tender,'' one of President Clinton's favorite songs.

He reportedly can be charming in private, witty and conversational.

At first glance, the 71-year-old Jiang, with his slicked-back hair dyed black to make him seem younger, would appear the perfect emissary to the United States. His visit to the United States this week, beginning today with a stop in Hawaii, is the first by a Chinese leader since the crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

But don't be fooled.

Jiang is the adopted son of a ``revolutionary martyr,'' who received training as an engineer at the Stalin Automobile Factory in Moscow, helped manage state-owned factories producing cars, soap and food, and rose steadily through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party.

While dismissed by some as a lightweight and a caretaker, Jiang has shown himself to be a survivor, who for now has solidified his position in the sometimes brutal world of Chinese politics. In addition to being president, Jiang is head of the party and chairman of the Central Military Command, a trifecta no other Chinese leader, including Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, ever held.

China's economy has boomed under Jiang, an economic liberal, but every major Chinese dissident is in jail.

His first face-to-face meeting with Clinton, in 1993 in Seattle before he took power, was described as frosty. And at an extraordinary news conference later, Jiang showed himself to be a tough-as-nails party boss unafraid of the Western media and its taunting questions on everything from human rights to Taiwan.

``In him are found all the ambiguities and complexities which underlie U.S.-Sino relations,'' said James Przystup, director of Asian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. ``He sings `Yankee Doodle Dandy' at the same time he oversees one of the most repressive regimes in the world.''

Twelve years after Deng wore a cowboy hat and rode around a Texas rodeo in a stagecoach, Jiang hopes, through a bit of personal public relations, to convince the American public that China isn't as repressive as it seems.

By visiting the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor, putting on a tri-corner Revolutionary-era hat in Colonial Williamsburg, touring Independence Hall in Philadelphia, visiting the New York Stock Exchange and delivering a speech at Harvard University, Jiang would like Americans to forget about Tiananmen Square.

``He wants to reverse the verdict of Tiananmen,'' said Przystup.

But everywhere he goes, Jiang will likely be trailed by demonstrators, including actor Richard Gere, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, Gary Bauer of the conservative Family Research Council and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.

``Of course he realizes what he is getting into,'' said Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, who has written nine books on China.

Schell and others, however, say what's most important to Jiang is not how he appears to Americans, but how the visit appears on television back home in China. With a tightly controlled media there will be no pictures of demonstrators.

``The shots on Central China television will not be of protesters, but rather of Jiang at the White House with Bill Clinton, of him giving a speech at Harvard or at Colonial Williamsburg,'' said Schell. ``It will be one big commercial for him back home.''

While Jiang appears to be firmly in control of the Chinese government, his stature as a leader falls far short of that of the legendary Mao and Deng. Though he has traveled on the world stage before, to Russia and Europe, his performance in the United States will be crucial to his cementing his power and enhancing his image.

``He's a little bit like Rodney Dangerfield,''' Przystup said. ``He wants respect as a statesman.''

There is more to the Chinese agenda for the summit than just style, including a lifting of the remaining U.S. sanctions imposed after Tiananmen, convincing the U.S. to drop its opposition to China's joining the World Trade Organization, securing permanent trade standing with the United States, and ending the U.S. effort in the United Nations to condemn China's human rights policies.

``But this summit will be more symbolism than substance,'' said David Shambaugh of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Despite his emergence at the top of the Chinese power structure, Jiang has to be careful not to offend the still-powerful elder leaders of the Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army. Since the Communists took over in 1949, the country has been headed by men with military and political backgrounds. Jiang did not fight in the revolution and has never served in the military.

``He's not Mao and he's not Deng,'' said Schell. ``He's a bureaucrat and he does not have a natural constituency.''

So far, the Chinese have taken a hard line on issues Clinton is expected to press.

At a press briefing last week at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., Yu Shuning, a Chinese spokesman, dismissed political dissidents in China as criminals ``bent on subverting the government'' and made clear Tibet was an internal matter and the United States had better not interfere.

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Photo

PHOTO Chinese President Jiang Zemin, left, greets attendees of an engineering symposium in Beijing on Friday. Jiang begins a U.S. tour today.

Associated Press